What Is The Kennedy Curse?

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with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe to bring the past alive. It seems almost inconceivable. The sheer weight of misfortune, sadness, loss, even murderous violence that has over time been visited upon a single American family. And yet this is no ordinary family. It is among the most powerful, most influential and most famous in the nation, known, respected,

even loved the world over. Which makes what has happened to them all the more unsettling, because a pattern to it all seems hard to dismiss. Across generations through triumphant and prosperity and eerie gloom seems to fall again and again as if there is some dark design woven amidst the branches of this remarkable family tree. They are the Kennedys of Massachusetts, and this design, this pattern, has a name, the Kennedy Curse.

Hey folks, welcome. This is American History Hit on Don Wildman. Extraordinary family, the Kennedys, no matter your politics or point of view, they are a dynasty, an undeniable presence, looming large to this day. Yet with the Kennedys, for all the time in the dazzling sun,

a dark shadow never seems far away. Calling it a curse may be magical thinking, but tracing

the events as we'll do today certainly gives one pause. Joining us for this conversation is Barbara A. Perry, professor of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia Miller Center and institution I hardly endorse consulted their website many times in our presidential series. Professor Perry has authored major works on the Kennedys family, including Rose Kennedy, the life and times of a political matriarch, and Jacqueline Kennedy, first lady of the new front tier.

Professor Perry, Barbara, welcome to the show. Great to be with you, Don. First of all, brief disclaimer for all. So many American families, past and present, have endured profound loss in heartbreak. We do not diminish that, but we also won't be talking about them today. We talk about the Kennedys because of their fame, their power, and glamour. Nonetheless, when you step back in and take it all in, the list of tragedies and misfortunes that has happened

to this poor family is astonishing. It's called the Kennedy curse. Where did this idea come from,

“and when was it first named? It goes back to, I think shortly after President Kennedy's assassination,”

which has to be deemed the worst of the curse, if I may coin a phrase, and the fact that not at that very moment, it was a curse upon the country that an assassination like that would happen. The first of the modern presidential era, the television era, the, I'll call it the Zapruder era. That is with a video of it. So prior to that point, the most recent assassination, up until 1963, had happened in 1901 of William McKinley. And so long before our video.

So the fact that this was brought into people's homes in such a horrific manner, that if you

then layer upon that, his brother Robert Kennedy, senior, I now always point out, Robert Kennedy,

senior's assassination, five years later, and then the capacytic incident with their brother Edward Kennedy in which a woman in a car, he was driving went into a pond in near Martha's then Urdon, Massachusetts. The woman was killed somehow Edward Kennedy survived, but if he actually uses the term in his speech to the voters of Massachusetts, and he says, you know, some say that

“there's a curse that has descended upon the Kennedy's. So I think you can probably start it there”

from his own lips in 1969. Interesting. It's a list, boy, a boy. I forgot in half of what we're going to talk about today, you know, over time, it's remarkable. Of course, the headline events, no one ever forgets those, but there's a lot in between. I had a friend that once, you know,

when the subject would come up, she'd always say, it's a Greek tragedy, you know, at a tragic

because it's power alongside grief, the stuff of fate, you know, suffocally's and your rivity stuff. And maybe you've had it, girls. Yeah, exactly. You mentioned the glow and the sun, and yet they sometimes slide too close to the sun, and we know what happened in that Greek tragedy, and to add

the depth. Exactly. There are so many angles to this, which we won't necessarily go into,

but it all begins, of course, with Joseph Kennedy, who is JFK and RK's father. In terms of there being some sort of source to all of this, and he is a man of great accomplishment. Again, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole on on Joe Kennedy, but it starts off big this family in the

“early 20th century, and the suns are riding that wave, just important to keep in mind.”

And down could I just pause there for a moment and think about even before that. So Joe's as Kennedy senior is just really one generation removed from the great famine in Ireland. And so as I was contemplating our topic today, it made me think about the fact that all eight of John F. Kennedy's great grandparents came from Ireland during the famine, most of them escaping from the terrible hunger and the poverty. And I would say that the fact that they survived the

so-called coffin ships that brought that massive numbers of them from Ireland to particularly Boston, sometimes New York, and then spreads throughout the country. But isn't an irony that all eight of them survived to come to the United States and yet to see these future generations

“who had risen to the heights that they could not even imagine then to have such ill fortune.”

It's such a small span of time between those arrivals and the greatness so-called greatness of a Joe Kennedy in that time period. But there's also the mayor of Boston who was a relative of Virginia, it was his uncle, I forget honey. His grandfather, his maternal grandfather, he was infected with his namesake. That fellow was called John F. John Francis Fitzgerald. And so the second son, then of Joseph Kennedy Sr. after Joe Jr. was born, the second child of Joe and Rose Kennedy

was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. So they all had a politics in their blood, really, in their DNA. Right, and the determination to leave all that prejudice and bigotry behind that the Irish had to deal with in the 19th century. No Irish allowed that kind of those signs or what everybody grew up hearing the stories of and they turned that on their head and were inspiring to millions for that reason. I mean, let's be clear. And we will talk about Joe, but we also must before this

conversation is visit Rose. You know, this was a pair of these parents, amazing forces of nature

that these children were raised by. All right, let's dive into these events as we go. It's a long list, so we'll move gradually through in sort of chapters. There are political assassinations, of course, but any number of aviation disasters and let's start with the first one, August 12, 1944. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. the sion of the family, the apple of Joe's eye, like handsome kid, my god. Dies in the aircraft he was piloting when it accidentally exploded in England.

This is late in the war. They're converting B-24 liberators. I didn't know this until I read about it for this. They were converting these liberators into remote controlled drones. Explain this plane and what was the idea behind this? Well, it was to be remote controlled except for the takeoff and the aiming of it. So drones we know that they can just be sent off from the ground and remotely controlled to any target that the controller wishes. In these cases, they packed these liberator

bombers and Joe had, by the way, this is again, the sadness and tragedy of it all. He had completed the number of missions as a Navy pilot that he needed and he was about to be sent back to the states, but he volunteered for this very, very difficult mission. So he climbs in along with his copilot and navigator into this liberator bomber. The trick of it was that they were to get up above the English channel then set a fuse and bail out after pointing this plane towards those super cannons

that Hitler placed along the French coast that were raining bombs down on England. And we think what happened is that when he set the fuse and before he and his copilot navigator could exit the

plane, it exploded into spitherines and there was never any sign of him found. Wow, the results

of this death are what changes the story so profoundly because Joe Jr was was going on that track that later JFK becomes. He was the the choice of Joe Kennedy to run for the office and do all the

“things that then went to JFK who wasn't really the astonishing man he becomes as a youth was he?”

I always point to the fact that in my rose Kennedy biography that she, because Joe Jr,

son had been elected president in the United States, what would you put with the most memorable

“experience of your life? She would say the birth of my first child. That was Joe Jr.”

And she always said he was smarter than Jack. Actually, when people go back and look at the IQ

records, Jack had a higher IQ than Joe. But yes, he wasn't the the apple of his parents' eye. So he wasn't being groomed to be the one to become in their minds the first Irish Catholic president of the United States. Joe Jr wanted that role, but he ruined that by ruining his reputation as being a very poor diplomat in England as the U.S. ambassador to the court of St. James leading up to the war and he made some comments that were very undiplomatic. And so he became a

toxic figure on the public stage. But behind the scenes, once Joe Jr died, he was put up with pulling those strings, the strategy, the tactics pouring in the money. Now for Jack, the mantle

went to Jack to become the first Irish Catholic president. The second event on this is kind of

related in that way as you're discussing because of the Anglo-American connection. September 9, 1944, we're a month away from Joe's death. Am I right about this? Joe goes first in August of 1944 and one month later, his sister's husband, Billy Hartington Cavendish, the aired. He would be the aired to the Duke Dump of the Cavendish's Devonture, that would be. And he was killed by a sniper in Belgium, a Nazi sniper shot him through the heart. And so he and Kathleen, the sister of Jack and

Joe, lost her husband of only four months. And that, now itself, had been a trauma for the family, because Billy was an Anglican nobleman. And the Catholic Church would not allow Kathleen to marry in the Catholic Church unless Billy agreed to raise their children Catholic. And he couldn't do that as a very prominent Anglican. And so they were married in a registry office in London in May of '44, sending Rose to the hospital in Massachusetts with a nervous breakdown. She was so upset

because in those days, the Catholic Church didn't recognize the civil marriage. And so for Joe and Rose, but particularly for Rose, admit that her daughter wasn't married in the eyes of the Catholic Church. And she was therefore excommunicated from the church and Rose was so devout that this put her into a real nervous tailspin. How much is the public know about that issue, as far as the marriage goes of the daughter and Catholicism, because it becomes such a huge issue when John F. Kennedy runs

for president, of course. Yes, I had to colleague some years ago, as I was writing my book on Rose Kennedy. And he was reading parts of it and he said, "I just don't understand why Rose that would be so mean spirited like that." And I said, "Are you Roman Catholic?" And he said, "No." And I said, "Ah, you don't understand." Even in the 1970s, I have two older brothers and they married. And they had gone all the way through Catholic education from kindergarten to

through university. And yeah, it's so happened that they married non-Catholic women. And I'll never

“forget hearing my mother in a very kind of sweet voice, say to my dad, "Did we do something wrong?”

They didn't marry Catholics." And I don't think my mother, you know, thought that it was improper as such. But she was wondered if she had failed. And she was the next generation after Rose. She would have been the generation, the greatest generation of death Kennedy. So it showed you what an impact that Catholic dog my hat on believers. So I don't think that the Kennedy's wanted to publicize that very much that, you know, Kathleen had gone down this road. But in fact,

prior to the marriage, because they were so prominent, they had gone to a Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Cardinal of New York City, and had him go to the Pope to see if they could get some kind of dispensation. And the church would not be moved on that. And Kathleen was just desperately in love. And vice versa, Billy really loved her. And they were not going to be disweighted. So they were married and then it only lasted four months. And then Rose wrote to Kathleen

“saying, now that I look back, Billy was really a lovely person. And I think that, you know,”

he probably is in the great beyond, in other words, it probably went to heaven. And then Kathleen could come back into the church because now she was a widow. Wait, the 20th century had its impact, didn't it? That's so many aspects of our life. And the Kennedy said a lot to do with it. Kathleen was named Kathleen Kick Kennedy. That was her nickname, Kick. She was formally known at that time as Kathleen Cavendish, as we've mentioned, married to William, five years later,

May 13th, 1948. She dies in a plane crash in France, four years from being widowed and was

worth and Billy a divorce man. Oh, my gosh. And non-Catholic on top of it. She was a rebel. I imagine was she. Well, yes, she certainly was. And maybe a bit rebellious against her own mother because Rose was so devoutly Catholic. And it sent the girls primarily to a Catholic boarding schools and conference. And she worried about Kathleen because she was such a lively character. That's the nickname Kick. People got a real kick out of her. And she was so effervescent. And she was very

beautiful. And Rose saw that she was a very attractive to boys. And so off to the convict, she went, much as Rose's father, honey fits. The mayor of Boston had sent Rose and her sister to oppression convict because Rose had fallen in love with Joseph Kennedy. And honey fits didn't approve of him.

So Rose never seemed to realize that history was repeating itself. But Kick, yes, again, upsetting

particularly her mother reported that she was going to marry this divorced on Catholic man. Joe was over in Paris for business and Kathleen and this fellow were going to be meeting with him. Kathleen hoped to get her dad's approval. But in the meantime, they decided to take a quick trip from Paris down to the Riviera for a weekend. And they flew right into a storm and crashed into a mountain between Paris and the coast. And this is part of the story of the curse. The pilot had said to

the intended of Kathleen, a bad weather. We shouldn't take off. No, no, go ahead, take off. And this is part of the curse is that they often camped fate and fate has the last word.

“And they get into planes over and over again. But it's important to consider the fact that this”

is the era of World War II during and then in the aftermath. So a lot of things are going wrong for a lot of people here. It's a time of great loss. And frankly, they almost lost Jack. You know, when his boat is rammed in the Pacific by a Japanese destroyer, he's lost at sea for time. And if so, we could probably skip this curse because I mean, he would have never made it that far. But as we move on, the family story becomes a real roller coaster. Jack runs successfully

for office in Massachusetts, first to house three terms. Then I always love to review his career

because people often forget that he had such a long time in Congress. Three terms in the house then a term as a U.S. senator when he famously marries Jacky in Newport, Rhode Island, runs for and then wins the presidency. The age of Camelot is upon us. But of course, things start to go wrong. But one before the famous November event, we'll talk about in the moment,

“this is the loss of their baby, which I think I had forgotten about before this.”

Yes, they had two children as they entered the White House Caroline, who was three, had been born in 1957 after a couple of miscarriages and still born children for Jacky. So that was another set of tragedies that they had to experience. Again, many people have faced these issues. But it just is something that was visited upon the Kennedy. So they were thrilled when Caroline was born in Healthy in 1957. And then they remained today. The only couple who had a baby

between the election and the inauguration. So in late November 1960, John F. Kennedy Jr. is born and is an infant when they enter the White House. And then they were so delighted to hear the

Jackie was pregnant with what would have been their third child and would do in September of 1963.

“And that news went out all over the world. And we have to remember that Kennedy is still to this day.”

Jack Kennedy, the youngest president of Relected at age 43. And Jackie was only 31 when they entered the White House. So she was, you know, some 12 years younger. So they were so looking forward to this. And John Jr. was a little too young to comprehend. But Caroline, by this time, was five or six. She was looking forward to a new baby brother or sister. And Jackie again had this history of difficult pregnancies. And she went into early labor up in Hianis port at the family compound

in August of 1963. And the baby boy, they would name Patrick Boothier for the mother's maiden name Patrick Boothier Kennedy was born with a slightly undeveloped lungs because of his premature status, something that not long after that could have easily been treated. But it was not able to be treated well at the time. They whisked the baby to children's hospital in Boston. But after about a day and a half, he passed away. And it was a crushing blow to both parents. There are stories of President Kennedy

after a little mass that was said, a little funeral mass for this little baby in a little

the president of the United States, the leader of the free world, just held on to the coffin and wept over it. And the Cardinal had to say, Jack, we must go now and we must go to the cemetery. So Jackie is also a reporter to have said to the president, I couldn't now bear anything. If I were

to lose you, I could never bear that. And three months later, he's gone. Yes, exactly.

These people had become so famous. The wedding in Newport, I've seen the new news reels looked them up on YouTube. They are gorgeous people. The world is focused on these two. You know, this is before he's president. This is in the 50s when they get married. They are the couple of the year at that moment. And everybody's even without cable news. They are being watched

“like Hawks. You know, the public is aware of their every move. That's how famous and flying to the”

sun, as we mentioned, this story gets all the time. Well, and and on it, you know, in addition to that, it was because of Joe Kennedy behind the scenes pulling the media. Sure, strings. He had been a Hollywood producer in the 1920s in Hollywood, California. And knowing that he wanted Jack to be the

first Roman Catholic president, when that wedding happened in 1953, he wanted to be sure that life

magazine covered it and the news reels covered it. And the newspapers covered it. The much of Jackie's upset is she didn't want thousands of people surrounding the church. And it was Joe who made all of the invitations and made sure that there were thousands of people at the reception. So she was not pleased about that. But I'm sure Jack was, and I know Joe senior was. Of course, November 22nd, 1963, but four months after they've lost his baby, we keep that in mind.

U.S. President John of Kennedy has assassinated in Dallas and all that follows. We covered this in many different episodes in the past as well. And but you'd listen to those. This almost doesn't belong in this in this conversation. It's it's such an extraordinary, you know, American historical event. But when you step back, it just looks like it's part of this this grand pattern in some bizarre way because five years later after that, June 5th, 1968, U.S. Senator Democratic

presidential candidate, brother of Joe Jack and sister Catherine, all of whom have died at this point. Robert Kennedy is shot in Los Angeles the night of his victory in the California primary and passes the following morning. We're already at the point where I run out of words, you know,

“that's how it feels when you talk about this and why people are fairly glib about it, I think,”

because it's so extraordinary what has happened to this one part of his family never mind the whole.

Well, Rose Kennedy herself said if she had read this story of two brothers at the height of their careers and fame and power were to be assassinated within five years. She said if I read it in fiction, I would say it's unbelievable. And there was a woman who was a nurse to the family because one other tragedy that again others have faced. But just the piling on of the layers was that in 1961, Joe Kennedy senior suffered a very debilitating stroke that rendered him in effect mute. He could no

longer speak intelligibly and had trouble with his mobility. So from that point on, then they had a live in nurse. And the woman who had that role when Robert Kennedy was assassinated and it also remembered back to when Jack was five years before said, you know, the family somehow bucked up under the strain of Jack's death that was horrible, but they carried on, much like, you know, keep calm and carry on. But this woman said she just saw Rose Kennedy almost collapse in 1968

when she heard the news of Bobby and she just kept saying, my son, my son. And in many ways,

“I think Bobby was the closest of the four brothers to her. He just had a certain, at least with this”

mother, a certain sweetness, an ability to accept her critiques, which he as a Victorian mother gave out quite really and then joke with her and sort of poke fun at her and that she seemed to love that. And he was the most devout at that time of the four brothers as well. So I think it was especially a blow to her. Yeah. And it all comes of course in the late 60s when so many horror awful and trying things are happening at the same time for this country and everyone has

to suddenly digest the fact that the Kennedy curse is continuing. But I want to consider within this short span of of it's 24 years we're talking about. Joe and Rose Kennedy have lost four

committed to an asylum for strange reasons. All told they had nine children, including Ted Kennedy, of course, and we'll come back to him later on. You mentioned that Joe had this stroke, but did did Rose and Joseph ever sit down and talk about this curse in any way, like in so many terms,

they would never have called it that would they? Not that we know of and let's face it,

despite everything that's been written about this family and all of their public interviews and presentations and appearances, that still leaves probably 90% of what was said in their homes and

“to each other to be unknown. So we also have to remember sadly that as all of this is happening”

from 1963 onward, Rose can't speak to Joe and expect a response because he's rendered mute by the stroke. Interestingly, she then becomes the voice of the family and she had been that from the time Joe became toxic after his undiplomatic statements just before America entered World War II, but she now really takes on that role of being the campaigner and chief for the family. But yeah,

so imagine how sad that was not to be able to sit with your husband and have a heart to heart

conversation about how he was feeling and about how she was feeling. People should take a look at the photo and the video of Ted Kennedy and his mother reading their ulogies outside the home in Johannesburg with Joe sitting mute in June of 1968 in his wheelchair, even just to look at the still photograph, his quite poignant. I hadn't seen a picture of her as a young woman for a long time, before I was prepping for this. What a gorgeous face. You know, she was extraordinarily attractive.

“We'll talk a bit more about her, but I want to understand her steely-willed woman, right?”

Totally. I think part of that was just built in again to the DNA. I have to trace it back to those Fitzgeralds and Kennedy's who came to the U.S. In the 1850s, leaving the potato famine, and just last October, I appeared in "Bruff Ireland," and County Limrick, where all the Fitzgerald clan was from. In fact now, every October they run with they call the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Autumn School, and they bring together those who knew the Kennedy's the family. They're still

Fitzgeralds there, and you remember when President Kennedy came to Ireland in 1963, but I just could see in the people of "Bruff Ireland," this strength of them, and I think that Rose inherited that, and then her faith, her Catholic faith, gave her just such an iron will, that despite the fact that she would grieve, of course, but she had this view that they would all be together together, the family would be reunited in heaven. Okay, marching onward. There is more than a decade,

which was kind of my childhood, I would say, more than a decade in which we didn't have any Kennedy tragedy to speak of, unless you call Jackie Mering Aristotle, NASA's tragic for her, it was none. I remember the pictures that it was quite controversial, but then come the 80s and 90s, O Lord. April 25, 1984, Robert Kennedy's son David Kennedy, dies of a drug overdose in Florida, December 31, 1997, more than a decade later, Robert's son Michael Kennedy dies in a skiing accident

“in Aspen. I remember that very well, ran right into a tree, all that sort of thing.”

Not to say this makes a difference, but it's a remarkable fact that Bobby and Ethel had 11 children. I mean, they have a lot of kids, so that family extends the tree quite a bit beyond the tragedy, but that doesn't mean there's not more to come. Barbara, the shift happens over to Robert Kennedy's family, obviously when Jack is gone. Then indeed, when Jackie Mery's Aristotle, and as she's sort of, that's part of the controversy is that the public saying goodbye to her as a Kennedy.

He drops down the list of most admired women from about 1962, when she was first lady,

she replaced Ellen Erosa Valt, who had been on that list from the 1940s, and she replaces her as the most admired woman, at least in the United States, maybe even in the world, but that is a real blow to Americans, particularly in some around the world, who admired her and wanted her to be true to present a Kennedy even after his death. Right, exactly. But throughout the 70s, it all sort of calms down, because the world is in very strange turmoil. It's a depressing era, frankly.

What turns things around is the 80s, and as far as the Kennedy's go, the beginning of the talking of John F. Kennedy, Jr., coming to coming of age, and boys that a big story. Let's talk

he wanted to sort of stay out of the, out of the limelight and become a regular guy, which is so

interesting to me. He was more his mom's kid than a Kennedy kid, right, at that point. Sure, because he turned just three years old, the day of his father's funeral, and the day of the famous solute of his dad's casket outside, Saint Matthews, Basilica and Washington. But he didn't have any memories of that, and he told Oprah Winfrey one time, when she asked him, you know, what memories do you have of your dad? And he said, "I don't, I can't separate in my head,

“what I might have memories of." He said, "I do remember him. He said he used to call me Sam."”

And I, that upset me. Yeah, I'd say, "My name is John. Don't call me Sam." So he had that little

bit of a memory, but he said, "I've heard so much about him from other people, and I've seen all these

videos. So I can't separate out in my head, what I know and what I don't know." But he did give so much credit to his mother, or raising him and Caroline in a way that she could be proud, and the country could be proud. But yes, they would say he didn't use the term junior. He would call himself, "Hi, I'm John Kennedy. Not I'm John Kennedy Jr. I'm JFK Jr." No doubt, he obviously had a lot of benefits from that. But he was reluctant to be part of this mythology of Camelot that Mrs. Kennedy herself had

created the week after President Kennedy's assassination. But he did not want to be viewed as the Prince of the King of Camelot, who had been so tragically taken away. He wanted to be his own person

“to the extent that he could control that. And in a sense, he did. That was the key, is that the”

media story telling was so out of control now, compared to when his dad was a young guy, and it could be controlled by his grandfather. Everybody was feeling it back then. Lives of the rich and famous. And also, just think of the wedding of Diana and Charles in 1981. And then the paparazzi and the oncoming of the paparazzi. So yes, that and then cable television comes into being, and 24/7 television comes into being. So it's an unfortunate thing for John Kennedy Jr.

in terms of his privacy. Now, we know that he started George magazine. It was very helpful. Much as it was for Diana, when she had a cause like being working against landmines. When she wanted the press there, that was a good thing. When John wanted the press there for the debut of George magazine, it was snap of the fingers and they'd be there. It's hard then to draw that line when they're standing outside your house or taking photos inside your windows.

Right. Exactly. I can attest to something. I was in 1991, 1999, somewhere in there. I got an apartment above Walker's bar in in Tribeca. My first apartment in New York by myself. It was next store to where Carolyn and John had their apartment. That came later. I'd left. But in those years, he was living on Greenwich Avenue around the corner. And nothing was really happening in Tribeca and those days was pretty, pretty barren down there. And he had kind of come there because it was

out of the out of the line line. But I'd see the guy all the time at breakfast. He'd be sitting there eating up oatmeal before he was going to work as a public prosecutor. One time I stood behind him at a Korean deli. You know, I was barely aware of him. He was just a nice presence. He was a very

friendly guy. And he'd say hi and smile to you. But he never really got a conversation out of the

guy nor did I want one. But I was standing behind him late at night. I remember, and I'm talking about, I'm like 28 years old or something. So he's quite a number to be standing here. And I watched him buy, this is late at night after the parties, buy a ginseng, you know, from the thing. And I thought, oh, maybe that's the secret. I do can be handsome if I drink maybe a ginseng. I'd buy that little thing anyway. It was a fascinating period of time to see this, and it only made it more,

you know, torturous to know what had happened. July 16th, 1999, a lot has gone on in this young man's life before this obviously. Jonathan Kennedy Jr dies when his plane that he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha Jr. Also killed in the crash where, of course, his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her sister, Lauren Bessette. This was really in my mind. I mean, Jonathan Kennedy dying is a cultural defining moment of American history. In my life, this is the

nature. This one really hurts, because it just drives a nail in the coffin, as you will, of this

“story. They just can't escape this mega tragedy that happens to them. I can remember that day,”

and I have to say I also remember, I guess I'm the the last grouping of Americans in terms of age, who can remember when his father died. I remember that day because I was in Catholic school and we were taken to church to pray for the president. This time I was with my mother. We were shopping and

plane was missing. And I said to mother, oh, I think I feel sick to my stomach, and she said,

“I think I'm going to cry. And I think that this sums up, as you say, how Americans, particularly,”

maybe people around the world who had their hopes pinned on rightly or wrongly, John F. Kennedy Jr. as to be the restoration of Camelot in the White House. And he would be somewhat coy about whether he would go into politics, but you had the feeling that he would someday. And so to think of that handsome man with his beautiful wife and her equally beautiful sister to be lost, and so unnecessarily. And yet once again, the irony of the curses, he had been fascinated

with line and aviation from the time he was a little boy with his dad, particularly in the helicopter

that he would love to ride in with his dad, the president. So that goes back to when he was two or three

or so, but he also wanted to be a private plane pilot, so he would not have to put up with people

“in airports and people coming up to him and sitting next to him in planes and trying to talk to him.”

So because he was trying to escape from his fate, fate caught up with him, he should not have been flying that plane by himself into the darkness and into what turned out to be a marine layer, as they call it, where you can't tell the difference between the ocean and the sky. And he went into what they call the dead man's spiral, and he pulled the wrong way on the stick, and he drove the plane right into the Atlantic Ocean.

You know, we talk about the emotional impact of this, and it speaks to how much we are, perhaps the creators of this, the levels of which this goes, you know, we project, we experience rightly or wrongly, you know, these events in our own ways. And that is fueled this mythology, hasn't it? It has, because people take on celebrities, whether that be from the silver screen or athletes or politicians or royalty, and they bring them into their homes in the old days through

newspapers and the newsreels and then television and now all sorts of computer wizardry. And we've felt incorrectly that we know them, of course we don't, but but we feel that we do, and we sometimes in hopes on them, or we, you know, you talked about just being able to see John Kennedy Jr in person with meaningful to you. And that is the notion of celebrity that somehow people want to tie themselves to that, because they feel important, they want someone's

autograph, or they aspire to that kind of life. And so when people like that are taken from us, especially at such a young age, under such tragic circumstances, it, it feels as though they've lost a member of their family, and studies showed after President Kennedy's death that there were posters who found out across the country, asking people how they felt, and people actually work experiencing the signs of grief as if they had lost a family member. They couldn't sleep,

they didn't want to eat, they were crying uncontrollably. Barbara, tell me, I mean, the events

“go on quite honestly, I have a list that goes down a page here of events that happened after”

John John is gone. 2011, Ted Kennedy's daughter, Cara Kennedy, dies of a heart attack, Ted Kennedy, of course, died in in 2009 of natural causes, at least as far as the cancer that took him, but there are suicides. There are, so many more things, I almost don't want to get into this, because it gets almost modeling, you know, to talk about. What's so particularly sad is that it

carries on to the next generations. So this past is some bird, just before the first is this new year,

Caroline Kennedy lost her daughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, to a very rare form of leukemia, and the daughter was just 32 years old, and found out that she had this terrible fatal condition after giving birth to her second child, and they did a blood test or a team blood test and something wasn't quite right, and she tried every possible treatment and wasted away to death. That's the next generation after the Camelot generation of John Junior and Caroline,

and how someone like Caroline who had lost both of her parents, by the time she was in her early 30s, then her brother, and now her daughter, her much beloved daughter, it's just beyond me, Kathleen Kennedy, Robert Kennedy seniors, eldest of the 11, the 11, children named for her aunt, Kathleen, or kick, lost her daughter, and that daughter's son, so Kathleen Kennedy

pandemic in 2020, March of that year, and again, another one of these situations where the

daughter was playing soccer, kicking football back and forth with an eight-year-old, her son, by a creek in Maryland, and the ball rolled into the creek. You know, instead of saying, let's just go down to the store and buy another footballer, soccer ball. They jump in a canoe

“apparently without life jackets, and they are pulled out into the Chesapeake Bay. I remember the”

day on the coast here, it was very blistering windy, they capsized and drowned. Now again, this is could it just be that there's so many of them that the law of averages just has to catch up with some, just as it does with regular people. So there's some of that, and regular people make the stakes too. They drive too fast, they drive under the influence, they accidentally take too much of a substance. They are struck down by cancer, so it may be just be that there's so many of them

that it catches up with them. But things like this, or skiing into a tree, playing ice football, when they're told not to do that in Aspen, a drug overdose, and so it carries on. But the most recent tragedy of Tatyana Slasperg's death, she had done nothing but live a good life, and she wrote on November 22nd, 2025, a beautiful article about her oncoming death. And she said, "I feel so bad

“for my mother because my mother Caroline went through so much in her life." And she said,”

"I tried to be good. I tried to be good and never give my mother anything to worry about,

and now I'm dying." So it just brings a tear to the eye. [Music] To look at it in a more positive light, I want to say that this is a family that has been extremely proactive to say the least, not only in their own personal life, but of course politically, and civically. If you have such an overwhelming energy in a family like this,

you're not asking for trouble, but you're bound to run into things that other people might not. This is true, and let's also think of Joe Jr. and Jack Kennedy. They, first of all,

could have waited to be drafted into World War II. They both, like many men of their generation,

and particularly those that Harvard were, they were undergraduates, and then Joe Jr. by this time was a law student. They signed up. And in the case of Jack Kennedy, had had such poor health and did his whole life, but particularly from the time he was a child into his teen years, he probably would have been declared for F ineligible to be drafted and ineligible to serve, but he used his family's influence to get into the Navy, and then

Joe, who was very healthy, got into the Navy, then they could have fatted a desk in this country state side. Instead, they took on the most difficult roles of Aviator and PT Boat Skipper, and then they asked to go into combat. They volunteered to go into combat. So the energy and the courage that they have to do things that mere mortals tend not to, again, there were many courageous people who went into these wars and lost their lives. But not, I would say, a majority of

people don't want to do that. They want to live. They want to save their lives. So the very essence of their energy and courage and civic mindedness that causes them to go into combat and run

“for office and become president of the United States and senators is also, I think, the very”

characteristic that causes them to take risks in their daily lives, literally driving their cars too fast. You know, they just, they do that, and sometimes under the influence. So it's a two ad ford. My father was a World War II vet, and he took great pride in his service, but told me, you know, he figured out how to stay out of combat. It was the reason that he admired JFK so much is that he knew a man of his same age had made a more courageous decision in his,

a more courageous and daring choice in his life, and he greatly admired that about, about JFK. Same story for so many people I can. The healing force was going to be Ted Kennedy. He was going to be that final brother who was going to put it all together and escape this terrible curse. And in a way, he did. I mean, he had a full life, could have been fuller. He died a little bit young at 77, but nonetheless an extraordinary career in Congress and took this family

legacy further than the others for that reason. But again, it's, it's so ironic and sad that after the fact there are so many other situations that happen before the girl that stands out for me,

so tragically of a overdose in her grandmother's house in Johannesburg. But when you go past the

“sensational headline of, and the, and the automatic judgment of all the 22 year old overdose,”

you start to see what was wrong. There was a depression involved. She was sort of self-medicating on this. She had undertaken the role of speaking out for people with depression. She'd done that Kennedy thing and then it catches up to her at 22. I mean, it just is a horrible story. But this is the, the way it goes so often. Barbara, in your studies as a presidential expert, the Miller Center, as I talked about, have you stepped close to this Kennedy myth? Do you have clues as to its true

nature? I do, because not only have I researched them extensively, but I have met with a number

of them over the years and particularly Robert Kennedy seniors, children. And what I see is a sense of

energy among them, a desire to be out in the world and do things that draw attention to themselves and their famous parent in that case. I've also seen a certain sense of entitlement. And I do think that this, as, as, as extreme ends up being that the normal rules don't apply to them. I had a chance to spend an entire day with Robert Kennedy Jr. in 2006. He was brought to my then college sweeper college in Virginia to speak on environmental issues. And I was driving him

away from the college and I had an hours drive with him back to Charlottesville, Virginia to drop him off where he was to stay and then take him to the airport the next day. And he started saying to me, "You seem to me," said, "You seem very rural, are you elderly, rural oriented?" Because I kept him on time through the whole day, all the things he needed to do. And I said, "Well, yes, I was raised that way. I was in a household that had discipline and rules and I went to Catholic school." And he said,

"Well, you know what, my mother, that would be Ethyl Kennedy taught us 11 children. If you're obeying all the rules, you're missing all the fun." And that was true of Ethyl Kennedy. And to some extent, Robert Kennedy senior. And I didn't say, "Well, that has cost you a brother, two brothers, maybe even uncles to some extent. But all during the day, throughout his events, receptions, dinners, everybody came up to him to say, "Oh, Mr. Kennedy, I loved your father.

Oh, Mr. Kennedy, I loved your uncle. I want to mentor father. I want, and I noticed he wasn't saying

“anything. You know, I would say, "Oh, really you knew my dad. Oh, I loved my dad." But it must, you must”

have to draw a line at some point to keep your own sanity. But I also realized he was 12 or 13 when his dad was assassinated. And he was the head of the casket, and with his mother coming to and from the funeral. And what impact that must have had on him, it really taught me a lesson about the Kennedy curse, and sometimes it's brought on by themselves. Exactly. I mean, one need only pause

for a moment to consider your father or who never being assassinated in your time and what an

impact that would have on your psychologically. And yet we project upon the Kennedy's, this sort of superhuman quality. That okay, they just, you know, hey, that happens to some people. No, it doesn't. Right, they move on. And in the case of his brother David, as you say in 84, who died of a drug overdose, he was at the Ambassador Hotel. The night his father was assassinated. He had been with him on that campaign swing as we're all the younger children who were in boarding school. So all throughout

California, and he's upstairs in his room watching the, the, the, the, his dad Bobby Kennedy senior making his victory speech. And then, you know, you can go back and watch the video, you hear shots, and people are screaming, and you hear the, but the senator's been shot as their doctor in the house. Here's this little boy who, at that time, would have been, you know, 10, 11 years old and, and he'd ever overcame it. Yeah, new character survivors go all the way through. The question,

as you mentioned, is how much is fate at hand here, how much is created by one's own actions,

“is there something mysterious? And I think it's a combination of all of the above.”

I mean, I agree with you. And I will say that Rose Kennedy, when she was asked, she did not die until 1995. She lived to be 104, and she suffered a series of strokes in the last 10 years or so of her life and became incapacitated. But up until that point, in at age 90, she was campaigning for San Tedi in the nomination fight with Jimmy Carter to get the nomination

"Wow, how do you describe your life?" And she borrowed a title of an Irving Stone biography of

“Michael Anjolo that was called the agony in the ecstasy. And that's how she described her life.”

And she didn't attempt, I think, to answer this question, is it a mystery? Is it fate? Is it something we're doing? She just described how she felt that sometimes it was ecstatic,

sitting and watching her son be inaugurated, president of the United States, being the wife of

the ambassador to the court of St. James and meeting with the King and Queen of England coming again

“from a tenement in the north end of Boston and one generation removed from the peepbugs of Ireland.”

That was the ecstasy. And the agony, she felt, I'm sure on a daily basis, as one by one, this family of nine children that in her Victorian way she tried to perfect. Most of them who went out into the world to do the things she taught them to do died. Yes, I have a feeling this is a family that does well with staying in the present moment. One hope. Yes. Barbara A. Perry is a professor of presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. It looked them up for a

meaty but digestible biographies and think pieces about our many presidents. MillerCenter.org is the website, right? That's right. And we've just released our Barack Obama presidential oral history.

“So now that's up on in front front center. And Barbara, you've got a new book coming out, right?”

I do. It's called Reconcilable Differences, the unlikely political alliance of John F. Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt. Oh, well, very cool. Well, thank you very much. It was good to be with you, John. Thank you so much for asking me. Thanks for listening to American history hit. You know, every week we release new episodes. Two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays from mysterious missing colonies to

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