No way she was going to be trainedo be the Public Office holder that her father was and her sons would become. Having said that, i think her life is filled with paradoxes, and thats one of them. While she was not a feminist and did not begin as a suffragette, she pushed the boundaries as far as she could within her society and religion and pushed them as far as she could to become the vocal spokesperson for the Kennedy Family whenever possible, and she was trained to do that by her father. To shed go out on the campaign trail with him when she was a teenager. So she in some ways was pushing the envelope, as they say, but in others she was certainly not a feminist by any stretch of the imagination. Host you know, before we talk about her, the role she played in forming that incredible family, let me go back to something you said about wellesley. What do you think was important about her father not letting her go there . Guest right. Well, the story is that she had her heart set on going to wellesley. She was an a student coming through high school. She went to the dorchester host so there was intellect there. Guest there was definitely intellect. She was a very bright woman, and she herself strove for perfection in all the right things, usually lived up to her own high standards. Host right. Guest so she thought she was ready to go to wellesley and probably was. The story is that the archbishop encountered her father and said this wouldnt be a good idea politically for you, the catholic mayor of boston to send your daughter, your eldest child to a noncatholic institution. Host oh, i see. Guest so that thwarted her plan, and she expressed to Doris Kearns Goodwin late in life that that was one of the saddest moments of her life, when she found that out, and she regretted it for the rest of her life. Host this was a woman who did not express much regret about anything. Guest she did not. At first i was distracted by the goblet of water in the forefront, and then i decided this is the perfect metaphor for rose kennedy because, if folks will notice, its exactly half full with water, and that was host i didnt think of that. Guest viewed life. She was the eternal optimist. That didnt mean she didnt have sad moments, but generally speaking, she tried to keep this optimistic, upbeat approach to the life and tried to have her children do that as well. In addition to not being able to go to wellesley, her father to add insult to injury sent her away to a convent abroad host a con vent. Guest a con vent. [laughter] not that she was going to become a nun because she had fallen in love with her future husband, joe kennedy, as teenagers, and we think that was part of the reason that her father sent her abroad, to get her away from joe kennedy. The kennedys and the fitzgeralds were not always political allies in boston politics, so her father was not completely approving of joe kennedy. Host right. They were at rivals at one point, right . Guest indeed. So this was a problem for roses father to see her fall in love with a sometimesrivals son, joe kennedy, and he also had picked out a suitor for her and wanted her to marry a neighbor boy who was catholic and irish and doing well in the business world. His parents were in construction. He thought that would be the perfect match, but rose was not to be deterred even by what started to be two years at a con vent, she persuaded her father to sent her back. Host so theres an independent spirit expressing itself already. Guest there is, which i find ironic because when her daughter, kathleen, decides that shes going to marry billy hardington, the protestant nobleman, during host this is kick, right . Guest kick, the effervescent child of rose, and i think in many ways like her hour, but often times that creates conflict host sure. The closest ones argue the most. Guest indeed. Rose didnt seem to remember how, in a sense, she thwarted her parents wishes, and kit was not to be denied and, of course, she did marry billy hardington. Sadly, the marriage only lasts four months, and he was killed in europe in 1944. Host lets talk about joe. Joe gets a lot of credit for this family, and he was a patriarchal figure, larger than life, and even some of the sons sort of gave him credit for spurring his family on to the greatness. But, um, how did that marriage work . Because your book makes the point and you see a lot of it in the research that youve done that rose was a partner and was a significant player especially in joes absences in forming this family. Guest right. Well, i would say that the marriage was built on love. Theres no doubt about that. Host yeah. Guest i think they both loved each other very much, and by looking at roses letters host nine children. Guest nine children. There was definitely love there. And joes letters to his wife are very expressive, very warm at times and very loving. In some ways more so than roses to him. Host really . Guest but i think you have to start with her teenage romance with him that i dont think ever left her. I think that concept of the first love that in teenagerhood, sort of puppy love that did mature into adult love, i think rose kept that with her always. We know that her husband was unfaithful to her host right. Guest and so that was a cross to bear as rose would have said host but not a deal breaker. Guest it was not a deal breaker though we think that in 1920 after rose had her fourth child, in fact, that was kick, that she left home and went back to her home, her fathers home and said i cant do this anymore. And we dont know all of the details. We dont know if it was just she was overwhelmed by having four children in five years, was it that she was having some postpartum depression, was it that she worried about her husband . He was building a business career, so even if he had not been unfaithful, he was gone a lot. Host right. Guest so she was just frustrated and, supposedly, her father said to her you are a catholic woman, you are in a catholic marriage, you must go home and make this marriage work. And certainly she did for over 40 years. Host catholics, i mean, divorce was just not an option. Guest it was not an option for her, and ive checked with catholic clergy even today and said what if someone with rose kennedys issues came to you today, and they said to me we would say probably what a priest would have said to her in the 1920s host not that different, huh . Guest its not that different. Its not changed. Youre married, youve made this choice, now you must go home and make this marriage work and bring up your children in the faith x. So rose did that with a caveat. We must say that she absented herself a lot of times from the household. Sometimes staying within the same bounds of the household so when the family spent its summers at hyannis host she had a little house. Guest she had a Little Cottage, a prefab host her own sort of space. Guest it was her own space so that she could get away from what she described as just the boisterousness of her own children that she couldnt bear. The famous touch Football Games that she said i went to harvard Football Games, i understood real football, but she said i dont know what they were playing, and all i know was it was loud and noisy. And she would retreat to this Little Cottage on the beach. And then a hurricane came and swept it away, so they put another one out there, and then another hurricane swept it away. So she joked about it and said after two hurricanes, i decided this was not meant to be. I was not going to have my cottage on the beach anymore at hyannis. So she said i just went to paris. Host she traveled a lot. Guest she did, she did. She loved haut couture, so she couldnt wait to get to paris to see the latest fashions, so she would go three and four times a year before the war to get new fashions and bring them home. And she just loved travel. And she had done this with her father. She had gone on political trips with him in the United States and to south and latin america which was very unusual for women in her generation. Host right. Guest and so she had the wanderlust from the time she was a young girl. She was very proud of the fact that she spoke fluent french and german which she perfected at the convent making the best of a bad situation which would become her mantra in life, and once she married, this was a way to escape both the boisterousness of the children, perhaps some of the upset over some of the weaknesses in her marriage and in some ways, perhaps, was also a form of Birth Control because, of course, the Catholic Church would not allow contraception. Host she thought nine was enough. Guest she did, and in later years she was on the merv griffin show in the 1970s, and he brought up that bobby and her wife had brought up 11, and rose said if i had known it was a competition, i would have had more than nine. Host i think it was a competition. Guest i think it probably was. Host one trip you wrote about was where they went to russia. Did rose and the daughter go . Guest yes, rose and kick in 1937 host and that was rose just wanting to see russia . Guest her son and the apple of her eye, joe jr. , had gone to england at joe sr. s request and planning. Joe wanted both of his you would sons, joe jr eldest sons joe jr. And jack, to study with a socialist at the London School of economics because even though joe sr. Was the ultimate, the epitome of the capitalist, he said to his sons you need to know what are the ways of the future, and socialism may be one of them. Host seriously . Guest absolutely. So the year between prep school and when joe jr. Went to harvard, he went to london to study at lse, and then he spent some time in the soviet host fact finding. Guest fact finding and would report back to his dad what he saw there. Rose was so taken with joe jr. s reports that she decided she would go. Her daughter kick said why cant we go to italy the way the other wellheeled mothers and daughters do . Rose said weve been to italy, lets go to the soviet. Host right. Guest so off they went in 1937, imagine, the height of the stalinist era, to the soviet union. Host thats great. Guest she was a very adventuresome woman. Host you mentioned she liked paris and going to see fashion, and that reminded me that she was quite the image maker and stage manager of the family. And i love how honest your book is about that and how important it was to her. Can you talk about that a little bit . Guest yes. And as i often say, i dont mean to indicate that rose had a more significant role than she did, youve mentioned that it was a patriarchal family, to be sure. So her husband ruled the roost. Host right. Guest and then of all things they had two sons to begin with, so when the sons came of age, they ruled the roost as well host right. Joe and jack. Guest went into their careers first in the military, joe jr. , sadly, was killed in the war as well. But jack and then bobby and teddy, it was the men always who were running the show. So i would say if you ran credits for the Kennedy Family and the kennedy legacy, it would be joe, quite appropriately, who had a career in hollywood as a producer, joe kennedy sr. Would be listed as the executive producer. Host right. Guest and rose would have almost all of the other duties. She would be the stage manager, the wardrobe host key grip. Guest the key grip, the best boy, ive never known what that was. [laughter] she would have been the best girl to be sure. Host absolutely. Guest and the dialogue coach and certainly the wardrobe mistress. So she would have had all of the other roles. And then the argument that i fake the book is that as make in the book is that as the men began to disappear from the stage, roses role gets larger and larger. And what she had done by that point is taken all the typically female roles, worked them to the hilt and then was ready to take over and become, if you will, the executive producer when necessary. Host oh, really . Guest yes. Host okay. So but that sense of creating an image, that came from rose a lot, right . With the, with the life magazine cover stories and i remember a tv show they put on, coffee with the kennedys. Guest yes. Host it seemed like that, creating an image of the family was important to her but also important to the family, the legend to have family. Guest its so true. It starts in 937 as 1937 as joe sr. Comes into the new deal. Host right. Guest so theyre billed as a new deal family. And newspapers begin to show joe and rose and their nine children or however many are on the scene at the time wind up in stair step lined up in stair step host and they just were captivated. Guest i say it would be as if you had jon and kate plus eight. And, again, joe sr. Because he had had this hollywood career and he wanted the family to have this public image, he was pushing as well. But this is where joe and rose are on the same page. Host right. Guest theyre on the same script. And it is where rose, who was attempting to make this family look perfect, is the perfect person to stage manage host to do that. Guest to follow the lead of joe sr. And to the point when they first appear if 1937 in newspapers in 1937 with the children in stair step fashion just simply lined up, one of the major photographers on broadway, he writes to mrs. Kennedy, and hes noted for taking beautiful portraits of stars. And he says you have a beautiful family, but i dont think this is the best way to present them in a stair step fashion. He said bring them into my studio, and i will host seriously. Guest yes. He said ill put them in a way that is much more becoming. Well, rose was on that immediately, and one of the most famous photographs of her was a portrait taken by mr. Feiss that jack kennedy then put if his room if his harvard dormitory when he was in college. Host oh, thats neat. Guest right. Host so even then they were shooting the pictures of the family. Guest even then. So then as they move over to london in 1938 and joe becomes the u. S. Ambassador to the court of st. James host then they were celebrities right . Guest they were huge celebrities not just on the american stage, but on the world stage. And you mentioned just the sheer number of children. That made them stand out, that made them different. Host right. Guest but such beautiful children and handsome children, also active and all different age ranges. And rose herself who prompted someone to say they believed in the stork once they first met her knowing that she had nine children and kept host she was just thin. Guest kept this girlish, petite figure that she worked very hard. I even say she may have had some body image issues because she was very careful host it was important to her. Guest about what she ate. She liked Nothing Better as she got older to be confused with her daughters. Host well, and she did some of the same things with her children. You mentioned the index cards where she kept a record of their weights and then adjusted what they were fed according to how much weight they looked like theyd gained . Guest oh, yes. She had gone out when they were little children, and she bought an index card box on their walks, because she was devoted to their health. If you think of it, shes only two generations removed from the great potato famine of the 1840s when people were dying in droves, and her father was born in the tenements of the north end. So rose, obviously, gets to move out of there with her father, and then for her children its all about health and fresh air. So from the time these children are born, shes pushing them in strollers and taking toedlers out with her toddlers out with her. On one of these walks she famously goes in, buys an index card box, the index cards and then begins to keep by hand much as parents would keep this material now, im sure, in a computer she is writing down their weight. Every weekend she would weigh each child and keep tabs on their weight and record their religious milestones, so first communion and confirmation. Any kind of shots, there werent very many vaccines then, and she worried so much about their health. But any kind of medical procedure she would write down. Then she wouldnt just keep a record of it, she was constantly trying to, as you say, gauge their weight. If someone was perhaps gaining weight, shed cut down on their calories. If someone was, as in jacks case, the boy was always ill and tended to be painfully thin, and this worried her so. So she would say i would give him cream instead of something less fatty in terms of milk. She would di him the juice of the give him the juice of the roast beef because she thought that would build up his body. When he was chronically late for dinners, and she had this victorian rule host start without him, right . Guest that child would have to start whatever course was being served, but she said, oh, hed sneak back into the kitchen and charm the cooks to give him [laughter] the part of the meal that he had missed. Host thats where that charm started, in the kitchen. Guest absolutely. Host you know, i remember reading stories that they used to have a map they pulled down sometimes in the dining room to give the kids geopolitical lessons. And, you know, was rose a part of that, or was that all joe . Did rose try to stimulate them intellectually, get them interested in politics and World Affairs . Guest she did, but it was just as we discussed before about the patriarch key. If joe sr. Was there, if he was home from business, then he host he would do it. Guest he ran the dinner discussions. Host right. Guest but if rose was there, then she would run the show, and she would run the dinner conversations. Now, she tended not to focus as much on geopolitical issues or theories of international relations. She tended to ask the kids and quiz them about Church Issues and if they had gone to mass that sunday, if it was a sunday, what was the celebration that sunday, what was the sermon about. So she would test their theology. She would also do grammar lessons and arithmetic lessons at the table. But she was also noted for cutting out Current Events pieces from the paper and either passing those around to the kids, or shed put them on a bulletin board, and they were to read those and discuss them. Host be able to discuss at dinner. Guest at dinner time, yes. Host thats fabulous. Well, you mentioned their theology and their religious lessons, and i think faith is a big part of your book and a big part of roses life. And i i wanted to know how important it was to her overcoming tragedy after tragedy, and if you can speak to that a little bit. Guest well, its completely important to rose. This is who rose kennedy is. She is first and foremost a roman catholic. She is raised in that tradition as a very staunch Irish Catholic woman. She would tell stories in later life about how her own mother who had six children would during the yearly celebration in commemoration of lent, so for 40 days every night those six children would be brought into the living room, and mrs. Fitzgerald would have them kneel on the Hardwood Floor and say the rosary. Host every night. Guest every night during lent. Host she was really fond of the rosary, wasnt she . Guest while rose said that was somewhat painful to be kneeling for the time it said to say the five decades of a rosary every night and that that was somewhat of a punishment she thought as well, and that was appropriate for lent, she thought, but she said in later life she would tell her children if youre fretting, if youre upset, if theres been a tragedy, if youre nervous she said i would so rather that they pray the rosary she said rather than turning perhaps to a cigarette or a drink. Host right. Guest and she said i know that they claim she said her children or but claiming were claiming that that helped keep their weight in check, ive heard that as well, but she said, oh, if only they would pray the rosary, that would be much better. And there are stories about when her daughter pat had an emergency appendectomy, was brought home and an infection set in, and before they rushed her back for another surgery, rose was praying the rosary over pat. And in a way it sounds a bit unsophisticated, i think, to us today. But i can remember my own mother, i remember when i was about 6 i had a fever, and my mother pinned religious medals to my pajamas host oh, yes, of course. Guest as a means of helping to get beyond this illness. Host right. Guest so this was something that clearly was indoctrinated in my own mother who would have been the same host same era, yeah. Guest and i know my grandmother who would have been in the generation of rose, when my grandmother would visit us on weekends, she would remove herself from the family, shed go and she just would disappear, and id wonder where is grandma, and we would find her in the quiet living room playing the rosary praying the rosary every afternoon. So this was a great source of comfort. Rose even said the tactile feel of the rosary beads in her hand gave her comfort. Host do you think that catholicism, because john kennedy was our first catholic president , do you think that helped create that ethos, that kennedy ethos of taking care of others, a contributory life . Or, and how that might have expressed itself in their politics . Guest i think it did and, certainly, teddy who was the only brother to live to write a memoir that came out host wonderful book. Guest literally, the day he died, and you have written beautifully about the teddy and about the impact of religion on him, but he specifically said in the his memoir that the gospel of matthew, i believe its chapter 25, about corporal works of mercy, clothing the naked, tending to the sick, taking care of the deceased, on and on, that that that is what rose was committed to. I have to say i dont find a lot of examples in her early life where she is taking her children to examples of how they can partake of corporal works of mercy host but she taught that, you think doing. I think she taught that ethos, and she raised her children in prevatican ii catholicism which was more about selfdenial than reaching out to others. But i think by giving her children that core of catholicism, i think we see it particularly in bobby and teddy and their policies which were postvatican ii about reaching out to the underprivileged. Host taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves. Guest yes. Host thats really interesting. Throughout her life she experienced a lot of tragedies, and i wonder how her faith helped her through those. Can you say any more about that . Were going to take a break pretty soon, but guest yes. Well, rose would turn immediately to religion and to her faith and to her rosary and to the mass. As soon as she would get word that one of her children had been injured as in the case of bobby when she heard that he had been shot, she was off to church in hyannis port to pray, and when he passed away the next day, the first thing she did was go off to maas, and thats what she did after jack was killed as well. She went to mass every day. But she found great comfort there, particularly in hyannis because the altar had been dedicated to joe jr. When he was killed in the war. Host lets take a break there, and well come back and talk about the kennedys more. Guest all right. Super. On the go . After words is available via podcast through itunes and xml. Visit booktv. Org and click podcast on the upper left side of the page. Select which podcast youd like to download, and listen to after words while you travel. Host were back with barbara perry. Thanks for being here. And, you know, i wanted to jump right into what a great campaigner rose was. Teddy, when i was researching, said rose was the best campaigner in the family. And i wonder what you thought about that. She helped out with Johns Campaign and bobbys campaign, and they considered her kind of a secret weapon, didnt they . Guest yep, they surely did, and for good reason. She really was, i think, the best campaigner in the crowd, and they were all very good at it. But she had started this, as she liked to point out, when she was a little girl, when she was 5 or 6 years old in the 1890s. Her dad had been in the u. S. Congress, he had been in the u. S. House of representatives. So she liked to say that she had been in the spotlight since she was a little girl, and she loved it. So as she went into teenagehood, we mentioned earlier, she would go out on the stump with her father when he was campaigning host sometimes taking the place of her mom, right . Guest she did, who was very inintroverted and really didnt care host but rose loved it. Guest rose embraced the limelight. She had the interesting combination of her parents. There was this certain side of her that wanted to be solitary, and thats when shed go to her cottage on the wave or to paris beach or to paris host probably helped her cope. Guest again, it helped her remove herself from a situation that could be painful to her, remove herself from unlimited childbirth. But she also loved the roar and the smell of the crowd. She loved to be out on stage. So from the time jack ran in 1946 for the u. S. House of representatives, they would begin to bring rose out, and she could tell the story about how he had been wounded in the war and was a war hero, how she had lost a son in the war, shah they was that she was a gold star mother, and jack would tell people that too, especially womens audiences. So rose could really reach out to women. Remember that jack was not married until much later in life. He started his campaigns in 1946, he didnt marry until 1953. Host right. Guest so there was no spouse for him to bring out on the stage, so there was rose. We also have to keep in mind that her husband, joe sr. , had become prettily toxic when he said some undiplomatic things about the United States and britain possibly losing the war to the nazis host do you think joe had political ambitions . Guest i do. There are stories that he wanted to be the first Irish Catholic president of the United States. Host makes sense. Guest and he was move anything that direction with all of his contacts in the new Deal Administration and certainly having been ambassador. But thats not viewed as having been highly successful tenure there, and he ended it on this very sour note of saying things that were very undiplomatic about and britain. So he really had to stay behind the scenes and, obviously, he worked behind the scenes for these sons, the remaining sons, and he put his money into their campaigns host and really transferred his ambition to them. Guest he did, and he was the key strategist. But most of the time behind the scenes whereas rose could be brought out, and she also had the added benefit of being Rose Fitzgerald kennedy. So in boston, in the campaigns in boston host carried a lot of weight. Guest she could link to her very popular father and the name sake for her son. Host so joe wasnt on the stump that much . Guest joe was not out on the stump very. You will rarely see him. And, indeed, when jack is nominated in 1960, is out in los angeles where the convention was, but he has to stay hidden from view in the rented home in which they were all living. When kennedy goes to the Convention Hall to accept the nomination, he brings his mother, and she goes out onto the podium with him, and she waves to the crowd. Host thats right. Guest jack and his dad only appear the day after the election when all is said and done and all is over, then joe comes out, and theres the famous portrait of the whole family at hyannis port all aglow in the close victory but victory, nevertheless, of jack. Host and they threw these grand parties when jack was first running, didnt rose and her daughters, and sort of give people a feel like they could come meet royalty . Wasnt that part of their appeal the. Guest it was. And they were called tea parties. Kennedy teas. Host kennedy teas. Guest kennedy teas that started in 1946, the very first ones. Host for the Congressional Campaign . Guest for the Congressional Campaign, and then they just kept doing these through the senate campaigns. In fact, when jack defeated Henry Cabot Lodge in 1952, lodge was quoted as saying it was those damn tea parties that did me in. [laughter] but youre right to say that, first of all, women loved to come to those because they could meet what passes for royalty in the United States. Host right. Guest and the fact that the Kennedy Family had rubbed elbows literally with royalty during their time in prewar england, and so women would be given tease engraved invitations, come meet the kennedys at this tea. And women were known to go out and buy new dresses, and some of them wore farmals, and there are formals, and there are wonderful photographs at the library of women lined up in these big ballrooms of the finest hotels in various towns and cities around massachusetts, and there would be rose in the receiving line, usually one or two of her daughters, and then jack sometimes because of his bad back hanging on to crutches which, as his mother said, only sort of helped his image because older women wanted to mother him, young women wanted to marry him before he married jackie. Host so they kind of used their celebrity to help further their political causes. Guest they did, they did. They really were, i think, the epitome of the modern era of the merging of celebrity and politics and charisma. Host right. Guest and media, for that matter. Host right. Because they, jacks candidacy for the presidency came at a time when tv was really becoming a force in the country, and as you said, life magazine was a real key to their popularity early on. Guest it really was. Host started about the time they were becoming popular. Guest it literally begins as they come into the Roosevelt Administration with joes first positions in the new deal. And then off to england they go. And you and i have have talked about the fact that teddy used to say life magazine was their family scrapbook. Host it really was. Guest it really was. Life magazine just loved the kennedys, and why not . They were, again, a handsome, beautiful family. They were doing interesting activities and interesting things in their private lives. Obviously, we didnt know everything that was going on in some of the males private lives, but certainly in the public eye the sports and the vigor and the celebrityhood that also would be a part of hollywood at various times with the president s interest in the rat pack, etc. So there was always this glow about the kennedys that a very slick, glossy, big page newsstand magazine just loved to follow them around. Then, as you say, you add television on that, you layer television on it, i point to the fact that in 1952 when eisenhower was elected the first time, the statistic ive read shows that 20 of american households had televisions. But the time kennedy was elected in 1960, that had gone up to 80 . So the kennedys with their beautiful look and charisma happened to merge onto the scene with modern media and with modern television. Its a perfect blend. Host when images were more important. Guest absolutely, they were. And, obviously, the first debate with Richard Nixon proves that historically. Host are you segwaying off that, you mentioned that you think rose really gave birth to the whole idea of camelot. That it may have been jackie who articulated it, but rose sort of created that mythology. Guest i think i you have to give rose quite a bit of credit. We know that jackie, as you said, coined the term host right. Guest the week after president kennedys assassination in the famous interview with teddy white of life magazine, we should point out host id forgotten that guest but its rose that had the royalty concept going with the family and making them such a beautiful presence on the world stage and the american stage. She helped jackie have the material to work with, it seems to me. So i would call her perhaps the mother of, queen mother of camelot and jackie was the queen. Host so when john kennedy was assassinated then and that whole image system kind of came crashing down, how did she handle that . Guest well, anyone can imagine just how horrible that would be to lose a child to that kind of violence. Host right. After losing joe guest after losing the apple of her eye, joe jr. , in world war ii guest and kick too, right . Guest and kick had been taken in a plane crash in 1948. So rose has literally seen her children almost in birth order disappear from the scene. Not only that, but in 1964 in the summer of 64 rose wrote in her journal and this was unusual for her because she usually tried to be positive and on the to mystic host before john was killed. Guest this was in the summer of 64, so just after, the summer after his assassination, and she writes about what its like at hyannis that summer, and she says gone are the president ial helicopters that we would just so look forward to every weekend bringing my son, the president , and i would see his children run out to him. Gone are those days. And then she host she missed some of that. Guest she missed that, and she even says wistfully gone are the days when we were said to be the most powerful family in the world. Host wow. Thats revealing. Guest it is revealing. And she loved it. But its both human and public as well. And she even mentions that they all tried to get together in almost irish wake style that summer, and joan kennedy, Joan Bennett Ken key host teds wife guest his first wife, was a very good pianist. And so she would sit and play at the hyannis port home, and theyd all sing the old tunes that they loved, the old irish songs. And rose said but then at some point we started singing one of jacks favorites, and she said everyone just dissolved in tears and ran from the room. And i thought that was the most host i hadnt heard that story. Guest kind of a preoprah culture where everyone goes on television and talks about their pain and their grief and dr. Phil is there to help them. Again, very victorian. Host right. Guest for this family to hide its grief. Host kennedys dont cry. Guest that was the mantra of joe kennedy jr. , and rose tried to follow that as well. So it was a hard time for her that she gets through by her faith and by being, trying to be with family but sometimes just going off to europe and trying to get away from things. And yet she was in europe going around and trying to raise money for the planned kennedy library, so she was still remembering her son. But in a positive way. But she told the story about how the manager of the ritz hotel in paris where she always stayed came up to her and burst into tears. So she would be trying to be strong for host reassuring others. Guest and then people would break down because of their sadness over the loss of president kennedy, her son. Host but you do point out that she was fairly human at that moment, and she did resort to some medication to help her get through it, and i think that gives you a more threedimensional picture of her because in public she was very stoic and somehow saw the country through this, through their grief with her reserve and ability to carry on. But in private she did is have some moments where she really was in a great deal of pain. Guest well, she was a highlong insomniac, and she was very sensitive to noise. And so she always had trouble sleeping, and she told the story about when jack was in the South Pacific in the Pacific Theater in world war ii that she would wake up in a sweat with her heart palpitating in the middle of the night because she would have these nightmares about his being lost. And be this was before her son joe was lost in the european theater and before jacks be pt boat was sunk and he was almost lost. So even just anticipating what could happen as a mother would. So after all of these things she feared would happen began happening, it had an even greater impact on her ability to sleep, and she would have nightmares after dallas. And so she would turn to pharmaceuticals and sleeping pills to help her get through that. Host you know, it was your portrait that documents some of those human moments. How do you feel it seems to me, and youve said this to me, that that makes you think that she was even more courageous than we realize because she did have to deal with a great deal of misery and pain, and she it wasnt that she just pushed it away, but she tried to get past it. Guest she did. And, again, it was a combination of faith but sometimes having to turn to pharmaceuticals. I do think that shows, to me, how courageous she was because i was in grade school and high school at that time, and my mother gave me as a gift at Christmas Rose kennedys memoir, times to remember. And my mother was a huge fan of rose kennedy. And so i remember my mother using rose kennedy as an example and a role model for all of us that heres this woman who has this deep faith, and even when bad things happening, my mother would say, well, now she does have lots of money, and that helps, but id say, mother, it only gives her more time to worry about these things. So, of course, at that time and rose doesnt talk about taking pharmaceuticals in her memoir but now that i see thats the complete portrait of her, it makes her seem more human. But as you say, it makes her seem more courageous that in public she was able to put on this stoic presence, help the country along with her daughtersinlaw as they would encounter these trammings to make the country strong tragedies to make the country strong and then go on. She would always say we mourn the dead, but we go on for the living. Host one of the things the kennedys did quite well, i thought, was took a personal tragedy and then tried to do something about it on, in a public way on a national scale. And i wonder if you could talk a little bit about how rose toward the later part of her life really got involved in trying to do something about mental retardation and speak out about it, but that it took awhile. And that came from, i assume, her experience with her daughter, rosemary. Guest indeed. Her daughter, rosemary, born with what was described at the time as she got a little bit older and was manifesting Developmental Disabilities and a lower iq, experts told rose this would have been in the 1920s that rosemary was mentally retarded. Host Developmental Disabilities, is that guest well, for rosemary they manifested themselves to her mother in very basic ways that she learned to walk at a later age than her two older brothers. She was the oldest girl born, we should add, at the height of the spanish flu epidemic in 1918 host really . Guest but she didnt learn to talk as rapidly as the boys. She didnt learn to read and write. And when she did write, it alarmed her mother that she was writing from the right side of the page to the left. Now, in modern times we might think it was simply a learning disability of some sort. Host right. Guest but the combination of these things, and you can see photographs, for example, of little toddler rosemary with her next sibling, kick or kathleen and kathleen is perhaps one year, one year old and shes being held up and walking, but her sister whos two years older is also being held up and walking. So she had sort of physical slowness as well as mental slowness, and the kennedys were told that she had this mental retardation. The kennedys were really way ahead of the game in attempting to mainstream her because they didnt want to send they were told you have to send her off host they didnt institutionalize her . Guest they did not institutionalize her until many, many years later when, as many people know, she had a lobotomy that joe kennedy sr. Had ordered for her in 1941 without consulting rose. Host he didnt tell rose. Guest as far as we know, he did not tell rose that he was going to do this. Guest was she upset about that . Did you see any reaction to that . Guest rose does not leave a record of her feelings about that with a couple of exceptions that she does explain to Doris Kearns Goodwin how she fete about it and that she did regret it and was angry at her husband because of it. And then i came upon a little known interview that she did with felicia row began who was at one time married to fdr jr. And knew rose kennedy and the family. In the early 70s, felicia stayed with rose a day or two and interviewed her for a day called doers and dowagers. Host oh, yes, about guest matriarchs in america. And felicia asked rose about rosemary and said you dont talk very much about her, and rose burst into tears and became choked up. And this would have been 30 years host after the lobotomy . Guest at which point then rosemary did have to be institutionalized because the lobotomy went terribly wrong. Now, we should say two things. One is that this was thought to be in 1941 a procedure that worked to try to minimize host right. Guest anxiety and depression which rosemary also suffered from. So joe, who was always up on all the latest medical procedures and host still do that. Guest exactly. And the kennedys can always go and get the best medical procedures. Host right. Guest they always talked to the best people in the field, and the people in the field were telling them at the time they thought a lo lobotomy might be appropriate for rosemary. It was disastrous. The other thing is that the kennedys, rose and joe, had avowed practically to each other that they rarely told each other bad news. In fact, rose asked that joe not be told of the president s assassination until the day after. She wanted to give him one more night of which he hoped would be restful sleep, and by that time he had suffered his own stroke in december of 61 and was an invalid himself. Host right. Guest but they had this lifelong pact as a married couple that if they were apart and they had bad news and the other was away, they wouldnt tell each other. But they also tried to keep bad news from each other so the other wouldnt worry. So in some ways it was just part and parcel of their marital bond. Host so how did they get from that to her actually being sort of an activist guest yes. Host for helping the mentally guest as you say, the Kennedy Family will take these tragedies and turn them into good for others. Host right. Guest so right after host Special Olympics. Guest Special Olympics would be the perfect example in the 60s, but even before that when joe jr. Was killed in the war in 1944, his father and the family founded the joseph p. Kennedy jr. Foundation at the time for disadvantaged children. It was called. Host i didnt know that. Guest yes. And they then moved that foundation towards helping the mentally retarded, and that became the number one mission, and it is to this day. And these Special Olympics grow out of that. But the family couldnt say anything about rosemary because mental retardation was hidden from public view host right. Guest particularly since this was a family wanting to move ahead in politics. Only in the late 50s and as president kennedy, thensenator kennedy gets close to running for office does the word begin to filter out from the family about rosemary. And only in interviews in the late 50s and early 60s does rose begin to utter the words my daughter was mentally retarded. Otherwise the family would not talk about it prior to that. With that Eunice Kennedy shriver, the president s sister, runs with that mission very much involved with her mother, and they go out and raise millions and millions of dollars. Host wow. Guest for that charity. Host wow. And they had the power to do that. Guest they had the power to do that, and there was the cause of roses life. She was very much more like more traditional first ladies but in the modern era, if i can say that, where a first lady will pick one policy area to focus on. Rose kennedy did that, and her policy area was the personal one for her, mental retardation. Both trying to help those who were already born with it and, second, trying to prevent it by, for example, encouraging women to have measles vaccinations so they wouldnt contract german measles while pregnant and pass along a mental disability. Host let me ask you a tough question you made me think of. So rose is carefully calibrating her familys image, but theres also this sort of panorama of pathology in the family. Theres drinking, later theres suicide and philandering. How do you reconcile those . And, you know, some people have tried to make the case that rose contributed to that if some way. Did you find that in your research . What do you think . Guest well, i am a political scientist, not a psychologist. Host right. Guest so i wont go too far down that road. But i will say that rose herself recognized, i think inner own way in in her own way in these own private writings, the story about wishing in her journal that her children would pray the rosary when they were nervous rather that are turning to than turning to pills and alcohol. Host right. Guest when it became clear in the 970s because of very public arrests of some of her older grandchildren for pot possession, as i said in the book, some of them were putting the high in hyannis port [laughter] because they were host they were. Guest rose, i thought for the first time in any of the materials that i read, actually addressed that Inconvenient Truth in her journal. And she said howdies appointed she was host really. Guest that she had hoped that her grandchildren with all the advantages and the name and the celebrity status would have stood up against drug use, which she said i realize is very widespread. She said pot is being used in the private schools, and its in homes, and she said i know theyre exposed to it, but she said i had hoped the older grandchildren would stand up against it. So she was very, very disappointed. But we should say that if you go back through roses materials and her papers including her travel list, she was carrying what the npr syndicated show is called a Peoples Pharmacy along with her. Host oh, thats interesting. Guest because she had all of these various afflictions, perhaps even somewhat psychosomatic, i might say. Ten drugs a day she had this travel list, and she had every form of prescription and eventually nonprescription drug it seemed known to man kind. She just wanted to have with her, and sometimes she would take it including something that i understood from my older relatives was pretty commonly in household called paragoric, and it was an opiatebased drug as a lot of over the counter drugs were for many years that was in household medicine cabinets, if you can imagine. It would be given for upset stomachs, it would be given to teething children, to hysterical men pause aal women, and men pausal women, and rose had this on her travel list well into the 1970s when it began to be listed as a controlled substance in massachusetts. So it appears to me that even she may have had some issues. I dont want to go to the point of saying an addiction. But she certainly indicated by the drugs that she was taking with her on trips that he had quite an array of medications. Sometimes perhaps even what people do today they end up taking medications for the symptoms that are caused by the other medications that theyre taking. So i dont want to say that she contributed to the addiction problems, but it could be some sort of host part of the family guest some sort of genetic issue within the family that rose may have had as well. Host you know, were on the dark side of camelot here for a minute. What about chappaquiddick and her reaction to that or how she handles that. Guest again, she doesnt have a lot in her personal papers, but she does write to people about it at the time and has a little bit in her journal about it. And she tells what it was like to see teddy the day after the accident and that she said he wasnt hike himself. She said maybe it was because he had been injured in this car accident or maybe the death of the girl who was with him, but she said teddy was not like himself. So she points that out. She mentions that jackie had once called teddy the black sheep of the family. Host did she . Guest yes, this is what roses, but she says i didnt see that. She said i didnt want see that myself. I dont think he was, but she knows somethings dreadfully wrong, and shes also very upset that the press are hounding her and the hyannis port compound, and she can hardly come and go because they are there. So she, as we know, meets with Mary Jo Kopechnes parents in the kennedy apartment in new york. She empathizes empathizes and s, and she says i lost my daughter, kathleen, at the exact same age of 28 as your daughter, and so she does try to reach out to the family. But i think shes really perplexed by exactly what happened, how could teddy have done this . Hes the baby of the family. Host right. Guest hes the coddled one of the family. Host right. Guest hes the one who was often as a little boy when his older boys would get into trouble, hed go to joe to tell them because theyd think joe go easy on the little kid, and yet its teddy who cheats at harvard and is expelled, and joe says youre going into the army for two years which he does, but he ends up spending most of his time at a base just outside versailles. [laughter] so it wasnt host not too bad. Guest the harsh punishment joe thought it might be. Host so she helped him through that probably, is what youre saying. Guest i think she does. I think she does by being the supportive mother that she always was to her children and maybe not able to anytime to herself the more Inconvenient Truths about his life. But she does talk fairly frequently in her oral history and in her journals about how the boys would misbehave and how they were encouraged by their father to come tell him the truth host the funny stories, yeah. Guest the funny stories, but also tell him the truth, and then shed say and then my husband would take care of it. And she didnt seem to see the conflict between her victorian goal of having all the children be responsible, the r word was often in her writings and her missives to them, but she didnt seem to see the conflict there between having joe at the head of the clan the take care of all the scrapes and the misbehaviors. And so there were times in law school where teddy would crash the car. Hes noted, by the way, in charlottesville for going over the speed limit many times and being arrested, but he also crashed a car during law school over in europe. And what did joe do but take care of it host the fixer. Guest he was the fixer in the family. Host so was teddy the one who was closest to rose, or was that bobby . Guest i think of the boys it was joe jr. To begin with because he was the number one son. He was the fairhaired boy. When he passes, i think that role goes to bobby host yeah. Guest because hes so much younger. Rose and her mother would say, oh, hes going to become a us si because hes surrounded by girls in the birth with order. And rose even says later on after his death shes approached by a documenttarian who wants information about bobby for a film hes making, and rose writes back i dont remember too much about his boyhood because he was the seventh child, and he was in the midst of all these children, so i cant really give you details. Having said that, though, he was is sensitive one. He was the smallest of the four boys in stature or, he was the most religious, he was the most moral. So i think theres a beautiful clip on you can see it on youtube of bobby campaigning for senate in new york in 1964, and his mother on the stage, and they have this great bantering dialogue going that i think really shows how close they were. When bobby is killed, it then goes to teddy to be the youngest son, the baby but now to be the patriarch, and i think then he really gets his mother for the rest of his life. And he knows just how far he can push her in teasing, and he knows just how much he has to take of her everongoing letters about dont say this or this is a grammatical error, or youre dressing improperly or this is how you can speak. He takes as much of that as he knows he can, and he teases her about the rest, but he knows how far he can push her. He was lovely with her. Host were close to our time here. I wonder what you would finish with about what roses legacy is for the country but also her contribution to this whole kennedy myth. How would you, how would youd characterize that . Guest i would say that her legacy certainly to the country is not only that she produced this to tent dynasty host right. Guest she literally produced this dynasty and probably the most potent dine the si in the American History and politics, and for all of the good that her sons did and, we should add, her dollars, let us not forget Eunice Kennedy shriver and Jean Kennedy Smith who was made ambassador to ireland during the clinton administration, served five years in that role and was by all accounts very important in the peace process. Host yep. Guest so with her daughters as well. So she produced this very powerful family, given very much back to the nation which is what their goal was. Host right. Guest and then certainly in the mental retardation area. And rose is, as ive made the argument in the book and today, i think is very much a part of the queen mother of camelot, that it is she who contributes from the moment these children are born to this legacy which we should point out many politicians today from bill clinton host emulate. Guest and barack obama have attempted to draft behind host they sure have guest the kennedy image and legacy. Host thats great. Well, i think were out of time. Thanks for talking, its always fun to talk about the kennedys. I appreciate you being here. Guest oh, its been my pleasure. Thank you so much. That was after words, booktvs Signature Program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policymakers, legislators and others familiar with their material. After words airs every weekend on booktv at 10 p. M. On saturday, 12 and 9 p. M. On sunday and 12 a. M. On monday. You can also watch after words online. Go to booktv. Org and click on after words in the booktv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. Now on booktv Edward Mcclellan reports on Americas Industrial midwest also known as the rust belt. The author, born and raised in michigan, examines the regions oncepowerful Manufacturing Centers and how their demise has resulted in the shrinkage of the middle class and the exodus of local populations in search of employment. Its about an hour. [applause] thank you. That was a really good introduction because it segways right into what i wanted to talk about at the beginning which was the fisher body plant in its heyday. It was, i went to high School Across the street from the fisher body plant in lansing, michigan, and it was perfectly integrated into the industrial life of the state. The high school was kind of part of the supply chain. It would provide the workers for industrial labor. And there was a saying that you had a diploma in your hand one week and then a ratchet in your hand the next week. People would just walk right across the street two weeks after graduation, and theyd have a job. And when i was going to school, i remember inhaling paint fumes as i ran on the track. There was sort of, it was just this sweetish chemical odor. And seeing workers standing in the balconies during friday night Football Games watching from are across the street. And, of course, there was a bar across from every entrance. The prologue of the book is called gus bar, and its about an immigrant to lansing in 1960 because an american consul told him the most jobs were in michigan, so he figured that was the most promising place. By the time i started high school in 1982, the Unemployment Rate in michigan was 14 , and one of our chemistry teachers used to given his classes every semester by telling us it used to be that you didnt have to study here because you could just walk across the street and get a good job, but those days are over. Now you guys are going to have to study hard and go to college. So i studied hard, and i went to college, and even after that i didnt get a good job. I got out of college in the early 90s when there was another recession going on, and i remember being fascinated by stories from baby boom autoworkers about how easy theyd had it finding work. I read a story in the Detroit Free Press about a young guy who was pumping gas in flint when a gm Personnel Officer rolled in and asked why arent you working in the shop. So the pump jockey shrugged, and the driver took down his name and number, and a week later he got a call telling him to report for work