The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [71]
Joe Jr. took his admonitions from the book of life he had learned from his father in the summers at Hyannis Port. A man did not give up or give in. He had lost weight, and he was far down on the list of ends on the team. Yet he went out for his final year, another dispirited season largely spent watching his teammates from the sidelines.
For his sheer devotion to the team, Joe Jr. deserved to be shuttled in for at least one play to win his Harvard “H.” Joe Jr. had no doubt but that he would indeed see action, for it was the honorable Crimson tradition to let all the seniors in for at least one play during their final Yale game.
His father could have told his son that as far as he was concerned, that tradition had ended a quarter-century ago on the baseball diamond. Since then his father had come to believe that fate was another word for pathetic fatalism. On the Friday evening before the game, as the backfield coach, Al McCoy, sat in his office perusing the list of seniors who were likely to play, Coach Dick Harlow received a call from a person identifying himself as a friend of Joe Kennedy. “He wanted to know if Joe [Jr.] was going to get his letter tomorrow because he wanted to tell the father,” Harlow fumed as he hung up the phone. “Well, nobody’s going to high pressure me!” Later that evening a man who identified himself as Joe Kennedy attempted unsuccessfully to reach the coach to put in a further plug for his son.
Saturday afternoon several games were played before the fifty-seven thousand fans as the damp wind blew fiercely across the Charles River. For some, the least interesting of the games was the one played on the frigid field. There the Yale and Crimson elevens struggled up and down the turf until, in the last quarter, with six minutes remaining, Harvard broke the tie with a touchdown.
For the seniors, the game that truly mattered centered on the coach’s decision to let them play in their last competition and win their letter. With that final Harvard touchdown, they were sure their moment had arrived. Up until then only seven substitutes had seen play, and the sideline was full of restive, nervous athletes ready for their moment of glory. The new coach had been brought in from Western Maryland, where he had a stellar record. Harlow’s mandate was to win. It was one of the ironies of this day that of all men it should have been that champion of winning at all costs, Joseph P. Kennedy, who glowered down on the coach, wanting his own son to play, winning be damned.
Harlow looked up and called for a new end to enter the game. If power and history meant what Joe thought they did, the coach would have bypassed Green, Jameson, and Winter and called out “Kennedy.” Instead, Harlow barked out, “Jameson.” The coach had made his last substitution, and when the final gun went off, there was as much sadness as joy on the long Harvard bench.
While Joe Jr. was lost in the surging crowds, his father made his way to the center of the field, where he greeted Coach Harlow with words that did not make their way into Monday’s Harvard Crimson. The Harvard paper did mention the names of seven worthy seniors who did not play that day. To add a modicum more of indignity to Joe Jr.’s final game, his name was not even listed.
8
Mr. Ambassador
When Joe was named the new ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, the announcement was greeted with wide approval. Joe was not what Americans perceived as the stereotypical diplomat, a pinstriped, lisping, top-hatted fop, but a straight-shooting, straight-talking American whom the British could not bamboozle. He was not going to be taken in by the highfalutin’ tomfoolery that had supposedly seduced previous ambassadors and turned them into hapless agents for the British establishment.
Before setting off from New York, Joe planned a dramatic gesture