The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [47]
Joe had no use for the inane dinners and endless cocktail parties that clogged up life in Washington and that he usually managed to avoid. He preferred to stay at home and have people come to him for what he considered a truly good time. That did not mean liveried butlers and four kinds of forks, but sheer fun. That was what Joe liked, and that was what the president liked as well. The evening progressed with ample supplies of mint juleps and the freshest political gossip, a hearty dinner, and a new Hollywood movie, Ginger, shown on a screen set up on the lawn.
Then Corcoran took out his accordion, and it was time for song mixed liberally with joshing. The president was a man who could set aside the burdens of office with a song and a joke, that deep melodic laughter like a benediction. Joe felt comfortable enough with Roosevelt to trade him quip for quip, joke for joke.
The president was full of a sailor’s yarns, tales of Northeast fishermen told in dialect, and of the ineptness of Roosevelt’s own sailing companions at Harvard. Joe was not a sailor himself and had never been part of that world, but his sons were, and he matched the president story for story.
Each year Roosevelt went off on the Astors’ yacht, another outing to which Joe, even now, would not have been invited. “Your taste in dumb cruise mates doesn’t seem to have changed very much,” Joe told the president.
Roosevelt laughed loudly and asked Corcoran to play “Tim Toolan,” a favorite Irish ballad about a boy who makes good in the Irish business of politics. Roosevelt knew the words, and when it came to the refrain, he sang out loud and pure:
The majority was more
Than it h’d ever been b’fore
And our hero h’d carried the day!
It had been a wondrous evening, and Joe’s guests did not leave until well after midnight. By the way Washington looked at things, Joe, given full imprimatur as a friend and counselor to the most powerful man in America, had arrived.
6
“Most Likely to Succeed”
In the fall of 1930, thirteen-year-old Jack went off to Choate with his big brother. Rose did not accompany her sickly son that day. Nor did Jack’s mother ever visit the school in Jack’s five years there. She nonetheless inundated the headmaster and his wife with letters. She had all kinds of advice and suggestions, but always from a distance. She did not let her son know how much she loved him, how conversant she was with every last detail of his education, how great a concern she had over the myriad of illnesses that he faced.
Joe also wrote often to the headmaster about both his sons but rarely came up to Connecticut to see them. For years he had been off in New York or Washington or Los Angeles, seeing his children primarily during vacations and on weekends. He nonetheless dominated his sons as assuredly as if he had been present from morning until night.
Joe’s sons were extensions of him, young men bearing his name who would go out into the world to capture cities that he had seen only from the outer walls, to climb mountains that he had only gazed upon. Choate was a splendid crucible on which to forge the kind of men his sons were to be. There were few Jewish students, who had so dominated Boston Latin when Joe had gone there; the Choate application asked specifically whether the youth was “in any part Hebraic,” a question that helped to keep that particular contagion to a minimum. Nor would his sons’ unformed minds be contaminated by foul radicalism. A perfect indication of Choate sentiments was that the students voted each year for the “most conservative” student but not for the “most liberal.” That shameful category stayed largely where it belonged: outside the gated precincts of the school.
That first evening at Choate, Jack was