Ethel Kennedy’s iron will and ‘tough love’ ruled her family

Ethel Kennedy, the legendary matriarch of the Kennedy clan, will be remembered for her steely will, ruthless competitive streak and an iron fist.

Those characteristics were forged through many tragedies, including suffering the assassination of her husband, Robert F. Kennedy, and untimely deaths of two of their eleven children.

Ethel, 96, who died Thursday following complications from a stroke, stoically presided over generations of the Kennedy clan, and is seen by many as keeping them in line and, as much as was possible, their scandals out of the public eye.  

It has been remarked within the family how she was even “more Kennedy than the Kennedys.”

“Ethel could be a tough disciplinarian, who kept a tight rein on her children, even when they were adults,” said a source close to the family. 

Her third son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., echoed that in a statement Thursday, noting his mother “invented tough love,” and “could be hard on her children,” but praising her loyalty and defense of the Kennedy name, as well as crediting his best qualities to her.

Ethel, who devoted her life to humanitarian causes after her husband’s 1968 assassination, was also the social center of the Kennedy clan’s world.

She threw legendary parties and dinners at the family summer home in Hyannis Port, Mass., where in her later years she preferred to live full-time, according to Kate Storey, author of “White House by the Sea: A Century of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port.”

“She is the one who continued to host Thanksgiving there,” Storey told The Post. “They always post a large group picture.

For years Ethel made sure Hyannis Port home was filled with visiting luminaries, including Olympic Gold medalist Rafter Johnson, NFL player Rosey Grier and boxer Mohammed Ali.

“The joke among the compound staff was that if you left your car door unlocked, Ethel would have someone staying in it that night,” Storey writes.

In 2010, as the family’s political influence waned and many family members ceased coming to Hyannis Port off season, Ethel was determined to inject some fun into Thanksgiving and show the Kennedy children a live turkey, Storey writes. She dispatched Robert Jr. – known to the family as Bobby – to buy the bird. However, the turkey escaped from his car and ran wild through the neighborhood for three days.

“It was chaos,” writes Storey. “But Ethel’s plan worked. The grandchildren shrieked with delight as they chased the bird around the compound…A new normal was setting in.”

However, even into her 80s, Ethel would have a strong influence over the family’s public image. When Mary Richardson Kennedy, the second wife of Bobby Jr., committed suicide in May 2012, Ethel adeptly helped shift much of the public’s attention away and onto a budding romance between Mary’s grieving son Conor Kennedy, then 18, and pop superstar Taylor Swift — who was invited to visit the seaside compound that summer.

Swift had been invited to meet Ethel by her youngest daughter, Rory, after the two met at one of the singer’s shows. Swift had written “Starlight,” a song she said was inspired by Ethel and Robert Kennedy’s romance in the 1940s.

Swift spent part of the summer of 2012 in Hyannis Port, where she was photographed hanging out with Conor, and visiting Mary’s nearby grave.

Although the relationship didn’t last, “Soon everyone forgot about the negative publicity surrounding Mary Kennedy’s death, and all they could talk about was Taylor Swift in Hyannis Port,” a source close to the family said.

Although she gave her all for her family, Ethel reportedly had a rocky relationship with Bobby Jr. who she felt was “the reincarnation of her own cheating husband,” the source said.

The former longshot presidential candidate who is now backing Donald Trump, kept a sex diary of his conquests even while married, which was first revealed by The Post.

Bobby Jr., who is currently married to actress Cheryl Hines, was recently caught up in a sexting scandal with New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi. Mediate has reported he also had romantic relationships with three additional women he knew through anti-vax organization, Children’s Defense Fund, although he denied those claims.

Robert Snr. was involved in a number of high-level trysts, including with actresses Marilyn Monroe and Kim Novak, as well as his sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy, following the assassination of his brother in 1963.

Ethel publicly stated she would never remarry after her husband’s assassination, and was always disappointed when family members divorced, “She expected her kids to get married once as the devout Catholic she purported to be,” the source told The Post.

But she was also no saint. She took out her aggressions on the tennis court, severely hurting one of her opponents in the weeks after her husband was killed, while she was still pregnant with her 11th child. She played tennis “with a fury” in a doubles game against longtime friends, singer Andy William and humorist Art Buchwald, and was so bitterly disappointed when she lost she kneeled on the court and banged her head against it, writes Storey.

The next morning, during a rematch, she hit the ball so hard it smashed Buchwald in the face before he could even lift his racquet, she added.

Ethel Skakel was born in Chicago on April 11, 1928 to George Skakel, a coal executive and a Protestant, and his wife, Ann Brannack, a devout Catholic.

The family — Ethel had six siblings — moved to Connecticut where she attended the all-girls Greenwich Academy and then Convent of the Sacred Heart in the Bronx. When she was 17 and attending Manhattanville College, her roommate, Jean Kennedy, introduced her to her brother Robert, who at the time was dating Ethel’s sister, Patricia.

Ethel campaigned for Robert’s older brother John F. Kennedy when he ran for Congress in 1946, and soon became engaged to Robert. They married in 1950, and had their first child, Kathleen, a year later.

Following her marriage, Ethel endured several tragedies and heartbreaks, including the death of both her parents in a plane crash in 1955. In 1963, her brother-in-law and then-President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Three years later she lost her brother in another air crash in Idaho.

Ethel’s own husband was then also assassinated while he was running for president in Los Angeles. After he had been shot by a lone gunman, Ethel attempted to comfort him as he lay bleeding on the ground of the city’s Ambassador Hotel.

“Kennedys don’t cry,” she famously said after becoming a widow.

Before her husband was killed she had organized a surprise remodeling of their Hyannis Port home, Storey said. After his death, she installed a juke box in her garage and played loud music day and night to drown out her sorrow, writes Storey.

But the tragedies didn’t end there. In 1984, Ethel lost her son David who died from an accidental drug overdose, and in 1997, her son Michael died in a skiing accident.

Of her remaining children, most have gone on to successful careers in politics and the media including Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who is a former lieutenant governor of Maryland, Joseph P. Kennedy II, who was a US representative from Massachusetts and documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy.

More recently, in 2019, Ethel was left heartbroken once again following the death of her 22-year-old granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill, who died in August of that year after suffering an accidental overdose in Hyannis Port. Ethel and Saoirse had spent a great deal of time together watching the Patriots play football on TV at Ethel’s home, Storey said, with Tom Brady their favorite player.

Following her husband’s death, Ethel threw herself into numerous humanitarian causes which would become her life’s work, founding the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Centre which hands out a number of human rights and journalism awards in her husband’s name.

The group is run by her daughter, Kerry Kennedy. She also co-chaired the Coalition of Gun Control, and is involved with other human rights organizations.

Although not given to making public statements, Ethel agreed to be interviewed by Rory for a 2012 documentary where she declared: “Introspection, I hate it.”

In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom and in 2016 she presented then-vice president Joe Biden with the RFK Ripple of Hope Award.

In a statement on her passing released Thursday, President Biden said it was “one of the greatest honors of my life because I received it from a hero in her own right.”

The question of what will happen to the Kennedys now and if anyone can step into Ethel’s shoes remains to be answered.