Word: skakels
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Such moments are rare, and probably always will be. Ethel Skakel Kennedy has been idle for hardly a minute in her life. Even as a child, says her brother Jim, her emotional makeup was "total reaction. The only time she rested, she rested from exhaustion." She was born in Chicago, the sixth of seven children (three boys, four girls). After her father moved his business, the multimillion-dollar Great Lakes Carbon Corp., to New York, the family lived briefly in suburban Larchmont and then on a 16-acre estate in Greenwich, Conn...
...George Skakel was a self-made former railway clerk who never forgot his humble origins, and used to caution the family, "We could all be thrown out on the street tomorrow." He usually appeared on the estate in old clothes, and got a great kick out of being mistaken for the gardener. Mother was Ann Brannack, a huge (200 Ibs. plus), cheery, moonfaced Irishwoman who relished a joke even more than her husband did?except perhaps when Joey the ram, the family's pet goat, butted her through a glass door. Mrs. Skakel was in dead earnest about only...
Otherwise, a raffish, indulgent and hyperactive atmosphere prevailed in the Skakel household. There were servants, a swimming pool, riding horses, a 35-ft. yawl and another smaller sailboat (significantly named, by Ethel, Sink or Swim). The house was always crammed with the children's schoolmates and other visitors, and it was not unusual for 25 people to gather at the Skakels' dinner table...
...Skakel and Kennedy families first came together around 1940, when the children met at schools. Thereafter, their lives progressively intertwined, as they dated one another, visited back and forth, and went on outings together. Seventeen-year-old Ethel and 20-year-old Bobby met in 1945, at Mont Tremblant, a Canadian ski resort near Montreal. They liked each other ("He was so handsome!" Ethel recalls) and began to date, until Bobby turned his attentions to Ethel's quiet, bookish sister Pat. This lasted a few months by most accounts, but to Ethel it seemed "two years at least." Finally...
Only one thing disconcerts Ethel, and that is flying. Airplanes have brought nothing but tragedy into her life. In 1955, her father asked her mother to fly with him on a business trip to Los Angeles in his company-owned plane. Mrs. Skakel usually preferred to take the train, but this time she made an exception. Near Tulsa, Okla., the plane exploded in midair, killing all aboard. Ethel's sister Ann phoned her the news. Ethel was silent for a few seconds, then said: "It's all right. It's all right." Softly, she added: "Goodbye." Ann was momentarily appalled...