The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [165]
When the family got together at Hyannis Port, Teddy played with his big brothers and their friends. He was eager enough but so slow of foot that Bobby or even Jack could dance around him and run down the expanse of lawn for a touchdown. At Catholic Cranwell, a Jesuit school where he spent eighth grade, husky Teddy challenged a priest in robes to a foot race. The father left Teddy eating his dust. As sluggish as he might appear, Teddy was so strong and vigorous that he seemed the very definition of good health. Jack looked at his youngest brother with awe at the precious gift that Teddy had been given, a gift whose value the kid could not possibly understand as Jack did.
In the first two summers after the war, Teddy and his friend and overseer Joey Gargan worked on the Kennedy farmland on the Cape, clearing the bridle paths and cutting hay for Joe’s horses. The two boys earned thirty-five dollars a week for their endeavors, and as with everything else, Teddy’s father attempted to turn their sweaty labors into a series of life lessons. Teddy had a subtle memory that tossed out much of what passed as a childhood, but these summers he remembered.
Teddy had a rapport with his maternal grandfather unlike any of his brothers, and it was on those long summer days that he first became close to Honey Fitz. The old man did not get along with his son-in-law, who had long ago tired of the ebullient Fitzgerald and his oft-told Irish tales. Honey Fitz found in little Teddy a worthy repository for his endless anecdotes. He was a vibrantly healthy octogenarian who fancied that he ingested immense quantities of iron and bromides by lying on the beach covered with seaweed.
Much of the time, though, Honey Fitz sat on the sunporch telling stories. “He was a marvelous storyteller,” Teddy recalled. “I heard my first off-color story from Grandpa. He was laughing so hard that I don’t think he ever did get to the punch line.”
In the fall of 1946, Teddy transferred to Milton Academy, where he spent all four of his high school years. He went out for football and made the team as the regular end for his junior and senior years. He did not have the speed to lope along the sidelines and stretch out his hands for a pass soaring thirty yards down the field. But he was big and tough, the choice for short five-yard passes, grasping the ball with certain hands and steeling himself for the tacklers who tried immediately to knock him to the ground.
Teddy was not only a poor student but a sloppy one, with little regard for such educational basics as grammar and spelling. He was a great talker, though, and made his mark on the Milton debate team. When he spoke, his arguments were perfectly organized, the way they were not in his term papers. No one checked his spelling, and he had such rich verbal gifts that his twisted syntax slid by on a burst of eloquence.
Teddy already had the makings of a politician, with an inordinate interest in getting his smiling picture in the Milton yearbook as many times as possible. Both Jack and Bobby had had a special close friend, but Teddy was like many politicians in that he had many acquaintances and no close friends.
At Milton, Teddy borrowed one of Commissioner Timilty’s cars so that he could drive into Boston for his dental appointment. Teddy was in a hurry. He