The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [250]
Cadillac Eddie roared along, once outrunning a Virginia police lieutenant, Thomas Whitten. The next Saturday night the officer lay in wait, and when Teddy pulled over, Whitten thought he looked “weak as a cat.” Even after this incident, Teddy ran a red light and was caught again.
His big brother Joe Jr. had died a hero’s death, and Jack had risked his life saving his men, but there was nothing heroic about this business. Teddy was showing willful disregard, not only for his own life, but for those he endangered by his recklessness. His father had pleaded with his sons to drive within society’s laws. Teddy listened to everything else his father told him, and he followed the precepts of his family, but about this, he paid Joe no heed. Teddy was playing his little joke on the tyranny of time, and nothing was going to change him, not his father’s admonitions, not speeding tickets and warnings, not pleading friends. Nothing.
Teddy was oversized in everything from his biceps and his appetites to the splendidly resonant quality of his baritone voice. He was the natural speaker in his family, not Jack or Bobby, and when in October 1957 it came time to dedicate a gymnasium in his sister Kathleen’s honor at the new campus of Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, Teddy was chosen to give the address. His mother was there, as well as his sister Jean, and his sister-in-law Ethel, but it was unthinkable that one of them would stand up and talk when a Kennedy man was available.
The auditorium was full of privileged Catholic women whose education in becoming exemplary wives and mothers would be largely worthless unless they married a spouse like the splendid specimen of Catholic manhood who addressed them. To most of them, including Teddy’s mother, sister, and sister-in-law, the choice of a husband overwhelmed every other decision in a woman’s life. It was understandable why Jean walked up to her brother during the reception, bringing with her Joan Bennett, a blonde, twenty-one-year-old Manhattanville student. Jean had met Joan at a party and knew that she came from what was considered a fine Catholic family. Her father, Harry, was a prominent advertising executive, and she and her sister Candy had been brought up to exemplify all the virtues of traditional Catholic womanhood.
As Teddy talked to Joan that afternoon, he could hardly have been unaware of the two characteristics that largely defined her. At five feet, seven inches, Joan was a head taller than most of her classmates, but it was her stunning beauty, not her height, that set her apart. She had worked as an actress-model on national television, and if sheer loveliness was what mattered, she could have been a movie star. She was a woman who bore herself with more modesty than many women of such beauty would have considered appropriate. Since her childhood, Joan had learned that her beauty drew people to her. Beauty was the reason she was standing here next to what she considered a “darn good looking fellow,” and it was a secret code that opened all the doors of life.
Another quality of Joan’s was apparent even on first meeting. That was a startling innocence and lack of guile. She was full of a breathless incredulity that made some people think that she was rather stupid. She was in fact an intelligent young woman, but with an apparent lack of insight into the darkness of much of the world around her. She looked away from whatever was dark or distressing and moved always toward the light.
Teddy was delighted to go out with women who were willing to do things the nuns told them they must not do. Joan, however, was a potential wife, and