Word: marilyn
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...family into real time, which is intolerant of the bright and ideal. The fracture set a pattern of sharp contradiction: the "brief shining moment" would give way to long, sordid aftermaths. Greek tragedy ("the curse of the Kennedys") would degenerate into sleazy checkout-counter revelations ("Jack and Bobby and Marilyn"). The serious lawmaker in Ted Kennedy would turn now and then into a drunken, overage, frat-house boor, the statesman into a party animal, the romance of the Kennedys into a smelly, toxic mess. The family patriarch, the oldest surviving Kennedy male, would revert to fat, sloppy baby...
...This kind of tragedy crashes into our world without warning, a cruel uninvited guest," sermonized Father Hartz at the memorial service for Marilyn and her children. (A Lutheran service was held for John, Agnes and Robert.) "We can neither anticipate it before the fact, nor understand it after the fact...
...first the community was too stunned to react, clamming up protectively as the TV vans rolled into town. "It was as if we could hide this horror from the outside world as well as from ourselves," says Molly MacDonald, then editor of Algona's weekly newspaper, and Marilyn's lifelong friend...
Still gnawing at the community's conscience are the many missed signals of the danger that was lurking in Robert. "The Dreesmans were very private people who didn't inflict their problems on friends," says Midge Andreasen, wife of a state-supreme-court justice and a close friend of Marilyn's. "Some of us knew about the black hole of hatred in Robert. We should have involved ourselves more with the family...
...years ago, a train strike derailed Marilyn Manassee's plans to tour the Spanish countryside. Then, this winter, just when she was ready to try again, the Persian Gulf war came along, and she delayed putting her money down. "It was not fear of terrorism as much as uneasiness," says the retired music teacher from Denver. "It was the idea of spending this much money and having to look over my shoulder to see if it was safe." With the war over, Manassee is finally set to take her long-postponed trip. "I have been dreaming about this," she says...