The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [43]
Each time he played them, however, it got harder to win. Then finally, one summer day when he was in his early forties, he struggled harder than ever against Joe Jr. Joe came off the court that day a victor, but he never played his sons again, preferring to give up tennis rather than lose to them.
Joe turned the luncheon and dinner table into another playing field, quizzing his sons about events in the world. He might ask a perfunctory question or two of one of their friends, or even squander a moment on one of his daughters, but his sons were his pedagogical target. When he was not there, Rose continued the questioning, often reading from a prepared list, relentlessly asking her queries in her tiny, grating voice.
Some of the Kennedys’ friends dreaded sitting there, having to respond to questions they could sometimes hardly understand, much less answer. Harry Fowler, one of the friends, believed that for a boy summer was vacation time. “My lord, this is a nice summer afternoon,” he thought as he sat there with the family at lunch. “What in the hell is Mrs. Kennedy doing anyway?”
Rose and Joe were attempting to imbue every aspect of their sons’ lives with a fever-pitched competitive intensity. Joe was proud of saying that second best was not good enough. Winning was everything. “Don’t come in second or third,” he admonished his children. “That doesn’t count—but win.”
To Joe, life itself outside this pristine precinct was nothing more than an extension of it, an epic competition that went to the daring and the determined. “He always trusted experience as the greatest creator of character,” his daughter Eunice said.
Joe offered his sons the opportunity to gain a fine education. He bought them status and entree to the heights of society. But for them to be the kind of men he wanted them to be, they needed to pass through a crucible of experience. He did not flinch when Joe Jr. and Jack took their boats out in the highest of seas. He understood that it was dangerous, but he wanted his sons one day to sail bravely out into the storms of life.
Little Teddy, the last-born, was as much a part of this drama as Joe Jr., the firstborn, even if his big brothers treated him at times like a puppy that they could either ignore, coddle, or tease until it barked. Teddy was the last of nine children and the fourth of four sons, and in that one fact lay much of the drama of his life. “All children can be de-throned, but never the youngest,” wrote Alfred Adler.
He has no followers but many pacemakers. He is always the baby of the family…. In every fairy tale the youngest child surpasses all his brothers and sisters…. And yet the second largest property of problem children comes from among the youngest, because all the family spoils them. A spoiled child can never be independent. Sometimes a youngest child will not admit to any single ambition, but this is because he wishes to excel in everything, be unlimited and unique. Sometimes a youngest child may suffer from extreme inferiority feelings; everyone in the environment is older, stronger, and more experienced.
One of Teddy’s few early memories is of the day he walked home alone from kindergarten in Bronxville. “I wasn’t supposed to—and I remember getting spanked,” he recalled. “Someone was supposed to pick me up, and I walked home, so the person who was supposed to pick me up didn’t know where I was and it caused needless worry. I think she [Rose] used a hairbrush to spank me.”
If his older brothers and sisters had walked home at the age of six, their conduct would probably have merited nothing more than a rebuke. But since the kidnapping and murder of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s baby