The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [58]
When St. John heard of this mysterious group and their nefarious scheme for Spring Festivities, he reacted with unrelieved fury. He was a man whom humor had bypassed. He simply could not abide such a challenge from the likes of Jack Kennedy. Mucker. The very name was a confrontation. Jack was Mucker Number One. He and his friends had created a little revolutionary nest within the sacred reaches of Choate, a nest that had to be eradicated. He called the boys into his office and raged at them, threatening to throw them out, ruining their academic records and their chances of attending an Ivy League college.
The matter was so serious that the headmaster wired Joe at the SEC in Washington: “Will you please make every possible effort to come to Choate Saturday or Sunday for a conference with Jack and us which we think a necessity.”
Joe arrived that Sunday afternoon and went immediately to the headmaster’s study, seating himself in a leather chair next to St. John’s desk. The headmaster saw this as an occasion to teach this Catholic upstart an unforgettable lesson by heaving his troublesome son out the front gates, even though other faculty members, including Harold Taylor, had implored St. John to let poor Jack finish out his term.
Another father would have pleaded with the headmaster to allow his son to graduate. Joe did not do that. He was a brilliant businessman in part because he figured out his opponent’s motivation and tried to play to that. In this instance, St. John was angry because Jack and his friends dared to attack his authority by creating their own separate world. Joe flattered the headmaster by berating his own son as much as St. John himself ever did.
While this was going on. Jack was back in his room prowling back and forth, dreading the reaction his father would have. He was finally shown into the office where his father and the headmaster sat. He had a look of doom on his youthful countenance. While St. John took a phone call, Joe turned to his son and half whispered: “My God, my son, you sure didn’t inherit your father’s directness or his reputation for using bad language. If that crazy Muckers Club had been mine, you can be sure it wouldn’t have started with an M!”
That was enough to relax Jack, but as soon as St. John returned, Joe went back to berating his son, the two men punching verbally at Jack one after the other. “We reduced Jack’s conceit, if it was conceit, and childishness to considerable sorrow,” St. John remembered decades later. “And we said just what we thought, held nothing back, and Mr. Kennedy was supporting the school completely.” As the two Kennedys left, St. John felt richly vindicated, even though he had not thrown Jack or the other youths out of school.
Joe had acted with magnificent panache. He had come up to Choate that weekend to see to it that Jack graduated. That way his son would go to a top college and have the kind of life his father intended him to have. He had whispered to Jack in St. John’s office, not because he was winking at the headmaster’s authority, but to put his son at ease.
Joe was enraged at his son’s behavior. But nothing, no conduct, no crime, nothing, could diminish Joe’s aspirations for his son’s future or lessen his pride in family blood. Joe was always there for Jack. No matter what the crisis, what the time, what the cost, what the pain, Joe was there. For Jack, that was the lesson of his father’s weekend visit and of the Muckers’ revolt.
In the aftermath the headmaster arranged for Jack to speak with Dr. Prescott Lecky, a Columbia University psychologist. The analyst could see that Jack was “definitely