The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [0]
KENNEDY
MEN
1901-1963
The Laws of the Father
LAURENCE LEAMER
TO MY FATHER
LAURENCE E. LEAMER
AND
IN MEMORY OF MY FRIEND
DR. STEPHEN A. COLE (1940-2000)
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Book One
1 A True Man
2 Gentlemen and Cads
3 Manly Pursuits
4 “Two Young ‘Micks’ Who Need Discipline”
5 Moving On
6 “Most Likely to Succeed”
7 The Harvard Game
8 Mr. Ambassador
9 “It’s the End of the World, the End of Everything”
10 Child of Fortune, Child of Fate
11 A Brothers’ War
Book Two
12 A New Generation Offers a Leader
13 A Kind of Peace
14 The Grease of Politics
15 The Golden Fleece
16 Aristocratic Instincts
17 The Pursuit of Power
18 The Rites of Ambition
19 “A Sin Against God”
20 A Patriot’s Song
Book Three
21 The Torch Has Been Passed
22 The Road to Girón Beach
23 A Gold Winter
24 Bobby’s Game
25 Lives in Full Summer
26 Dangerous Games
27 “A Hell of a Burden to Garry”
28 “The Knot of War”
29 The Bells of Liberty
30 The Adrenaline of Action
31 To Live Is to Choose
32 Requiem for a President
Source Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
INDEX
Acknowlegments
About the Author
ALSO BY LAURENCE LEAMER
Copyright
About the Publisher
Book One
1
A True Man
Twelve-year-old Joseph Patrick Kennedy may have been dressed like a young gentleman, but he walked with the bold strut of an Irish tough full of the lore of the streets. As he hurried down Webster Street, his blue eyes exuded a hungry intensity for whatever life might offer. He was taller than most boys his age and had reddish hair and an abruptness to his features that left him just short of handsome. His strong, willful face had already lost whatever boyish innocence it once held.
Joe had been brought up on the island enclave of East Boston and knew the streets and byways with perfect acumen. Today, for the first time, he would be traveling without his family to the proud city across the bay. He would be passing through streets full of uncertainty, confronting strange new people. It was a prospect that would have filled many youths with apprehension, but nothing in Joe’s demeanor suggested that he was worried about the adventure.
Joe’s mother, Mary Augusta Hickey Kennedy, had arranged for her only son to deliver hats from a prestigious shop to the great ladies of Boston. Before Joe set off on his delivery in the summer in 1901, Mary Augusta looked at her son with what the family called “Hickey eyes.” They were piercing, dismissive eyes that with a mere glance could stop a vulgarity in midsentence or send a supplicant reeling backward in shame. Joe’s mother admonished him to behave impeccably and to refer to himself as the proper “Joseph,” not the vulgar “Joe.”
Joe rushed off down the street from the Kennedys’ two-story home located in the best residential area. From up here on the highest elevation on the island, Joe could look down far below where passenger ships glided into the harbor packed with immigrants. Driven from their land by the great potato famine, between 1846 and 1849 nearly one hundred thousand Irish immigrants had arrived on Boston’s pristine shores. Among them were Joe’s grandparents. Patrick Kennedy had disembarked in 1849 on these very streets, where he and his bride, Bridget Murphy, set up residence in a tiny apartment.
After only nine years in East Boston, Joe’s grandfather died. He left his thirty-seven-year-old widow with four children under the age of eight and an estate of seventy-five dollars. Bridget worked first as a servant but eventually found a job in a small variety store only a few blocks from where Joe now walked. In what was a difficult accomplishment for an immigrant widow, Bridget managed to buy the store.
Joe found his way to the hat shop and stepped up into the horse-driven wagon. As the driver guided the horse through the streets, the air was full of the stench of horse manure, the foul odor of rendering plants, the fumes of the steamers, the acrid malodor of the New England Pottery Company, and the smells of the Atlantic Steel Works.