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 childre