Vince Bzdek: The Faces of a 'Royal' Generation Fade Into History
[Vince Bzdek is a Washington Post Staff Writer.]
Three days before John F. Kennedy won his first campaign, the 1946 Democratic primary in Boston's 8th District, the enormous Kennedy family threw an enormous party.
Eunice, the middlest of the middle children, was the driving force behind the idea: a huge formal reception at the Commodore Hotel in Cambridge, with engraved invitations sent to female voters, plans for ballroom dancing, and tuxedos required. The party was the crown jewel after a series of house parties Eunice and Pat had coordinated during the campaign to bring the family in direct contact with voters. The sisters oversaw every detail, even providing the cookies, silver, flowers, coffee cups and saucers.
The party plans were ridiculed by some of Boston's old politicos, as well as some of Jack's staff, who thought the event a pretentious dress-up ball that would leave the Kennedys a laughingstock if it didn't draw a crowd. But decades before she was the wife of a Democratic vice presidential nominee and mother of California's first lady, Eunice was often praised by her father as having one of the best political instincts in her generation of Kennedys, a generation that, with her death and Ted's grave condition, is fast fading into history. Others in Eunice's generation had milestones that were encyclopedia-worthy, but her service began with that ball, when the campaign tapped into a desire among Boston's Irish immigrants for a leader who showed them the heights to which they might climb.
By all accounts, she staged a glorious success. At least 1,500 women came in their finest, though many of the floor-length dresses were rented. The homage-paying guests queued up for a receiving line a block long, and hundreds of other women unable to get into the ballroom right away thronged in the streets, hoping to get a glimpse of the family.
The ball marked the moment when the Kennedys realized they could market themselves as a middle-class fantasy of American royalty. Jack's campaign offered not just a political candidate but a kind of pop-culture aristocracy that average Bostonians could join. In one glamorous evening, the family had harnessed an immigrant city's aspirations and imagination.
This generation of Kennedys -- Joe Jr., John, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Bobby, Jean and Ted -- went on to become America's royal family, not just Boston's. Eunice and her ball, Jack and his campaigns for Congress, the Senate and then the presidency, all the brothers and sisters and their dedication to public service embodied the American dream in upward motion and social progress, involving all those who participated in a contagious optimism about their improving future.
Ted and Jean survive the seven other Kennedy brothers and sisters from that towering generation, and Ted is suffering from a deadly brain tumor that has kept him from the Senate most of the year. As their generation dwindles, a six-decade chapter in America's political and cultural history is coming to a close, posing the question: Is the Kennedy story ending as a public saga? If it isn't, who will carry the torch now?...
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Three days before John F. Kennedy won his first campaign, the 1946 Democratic primary in Boston's 8th District, the enormous Kennedy family threw an enormous party.
Eunice, the middlest of the middle children, was the driving force behind the idea: a huge formal reception at the Commodore Hotel in Cambridge, with engraved invitations sent to female voters, plans for ballroom dancing, and tuxedos required. The party was the crown jewel after a series of house parties Eunice and Pat had coordinated during the campaign to bring the family in direct contact with voters. The sisters oversaw every detail, even providing the cookies, silver, flowers, coffee cups and saucers.
The party plans were ridiculed by some of Boston's old politicos, as well as some of Jack's staff, who thought the event a pretentious dress-up ball that would leave the Kennedys a laughingstock if it didn't draw a crowd. But decades before she was the wife of a Democratic vice presidential nominee and mother of California's first lady, Eunice was often praised by her father as having one of the best political instincts in her generation of Kennedys, a generation that, with her death and Ted's grave condition, is fast fading into history. Others in Eunice's generation had milestones that were encyclopedia-worthy, but her service began with that ball, when the campaign tapped into a desire among Boston's Irish immigrants for a leader who showed them the heights to which they might climb.
By all accounts, she staged a glorious success. At least 1,500 women came in their finest, though many of the floor-length dresses were rented. The homage-paying guests queued up for a receiving line a block long, and hundreds of other women unable to get into the ballroom right away thronged in the streets, hoping to get a glimpse of the family.
The ball marked the moment when the Kennedys realized they could market themselves as a middle-class fantasy of American royalty. Jack's campaign offered not just a political candidate but a kind of pop-culture aristocracy that average Bostonians could join. In one glamorous evening, the family had harnessed an immigrant city's aspirations and imagination.
This generation of Kennedys -- Joe Jr., John, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Bobby, Jean and Ted -- went on to become America's royal family, not just Boston's. Eunice and her ball, Jack and his campaigns for Congress, the Senate and then the presidency, all the brothers and sisters and their dedication to public service embodied the American dream in upward motion and social progress, involving all those who participated in a contagious optimism about their improving future.
Ted and Jean survive the seven other Kennedy brothers and sisters from that towering generation, and Ted is suffering from a deadly brain tumor that has kept him from the Senate most of the year. As their generation dwindles, a six-decade chapter in America's political and cultural history is coming to a close, posing the question: Is the Kennedy story ending as a public saga? If it isn't, who will carry the torch now?...