In the summer of 2012, Ethel Kennedy — who died October 10 at 96 — made an appearance in Los Angeles at a Television Critics Association press tour. She was accompanied by her daughter, Rory Kennedy, who directed “Ethel,” the HBO documentary about her famous mother, the widow of slain senator and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy.
There were several polite questions about the film. Then a reporter asked if it was true that Ethel had a talent for matchmaking. There was a rumour going around that the Kennedy matriarch had tried to set her grandson Conor up with the then 22-year-old pop sensation Taylor Swift.
“Certainly not,” said Ethel, 84 at the time. Then she quickly added, “We should be so lucky.”
Swift, said Rory, was indeed good friends with the Kennedy family. The singer, in fact, released a song about Ethel and Bobby in 2012 titled “Starlight.”
The couple had 11 children, with Rory, the youngest, born six months after her father was fatally wounded at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The murder happened on what had been a moment of jubilation — Kennedy’s victory in the California primary, a key step in his bid for the White House. He was 42.
The couple first met in Canada in 1945. They were at the Mt. Tremblant resort in Quebec on a skiing holiday with their two extended families, the Kennedys and the Skakels. After a few false starts, a romance blossomed and the two were wed in 1950.
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Ethel, who hadn’t done an interview in 20 or 25 years, admitted that their two familys were very different.
“The Kennedys were very organized,” she said. “Dinner was always served at 7:15, and if you were a minute late, it really wasn’t worth it. And in my family you never knew when dinner was going to be. It could be at 7:00. It could be at 10:00. So it took a little getting used to and a little discipline to move between the families.”
Ethel, who lived 56 years a widow, endured a great deal of tragedy. Her brother-in-law, president John Kennedy, was assassinated five years earlier. Her parents died in a plane crash. Two sons died; David from a drug overdose in 1984, and Michael killed in a skiing accident in 1997.
At that same TCA press conference, Ethel was asked how she coped with so much sorrow.
“I’d say faith had a lot to do with being able to get through everything,” said Ethel, a devout Catholic. “But when we lost Bobby, I would wake up in the morning and think, he’s okay. He’s in heaven, and he’s with Jack, and a lot of my brothers and sisters, and my parents. So it made it very easy to get through the day thinking he was okay.”
Bobby Kennedy returned to another mountain range in Canada in 1965. He made a pilgrimage to the top of Mt. Kennedy, a 4300m peak in The Yukon named after his murdered brother the president. It was at that time the highest peak in North America not yet scaled.
“My mother really feels like that was a turning point for him,” Rory Kennedy told me in a separate interview at the time of that 2012 TCA press conference. Her father, she was told, came down off the mountain with new vigour and slowly emerged from the deep funk which gripped him in the months following his brother’s death.
Ethel received the presidential meda of freedom from president Barrack Obama in 2014. She was proud of the work done, especially on behalf of farm workers, at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, which she helped establish in 1968. Other children in her family entered politics, including daughter Kathleen, who was lieutenant governor of Maryland frm 1995 to 2003; and son Joseph, who was in the House of Representtives from 1987 to 1999. A grandson, Joseph Kennedy III, also served in the House from 2013 to 2021. Another son, Robert Jr., recently bowed out as an independent candidate in the current U.S. presidential race.
Ethel told reporters that, “if there is a formula for bringing up children, I really don’t know what it is.” Sshe suggested a family tradition may have kept everyone civic minded. Every night, t Kennedy clan had to arrive at the dinner table prepared to say something about what was going on in the world.
“And, you know, it was an adult conversation, and they responded beautifully,” she said, admitting that there was a rush before dinner to find a newspaper “and find out what the heck is going on.”
That quirky, Kennedy, suppertime civics lesson, Ethel believed, “helped make them aware that there are a lot of people out there who don’t live the way they live, and who need help. And I think those sessions really helped motivate them.” The key, she also thought, was that “there wasn’t a great divide between children and grownups. It was the children who spoke. And maybe that’s why they can all speak so well publicly.”
Ethel is still available to stream on demand on HBO and on Crave in Canada.
