Ethel Kennedy, who died Thursday at age 96, lived a life full of tragedies made painful by knowledge of her husband’s numerous affairs.
But he put up with Bobby’s tricks because he knew from the beginning that “there was no tradition of monogamy in the Kennedy clan.”
Bobby’s widow understood the Kennedys better than anyone not born into the family and was fully aware of what she was getting into.
She knew that infidelity was the price to pay for being married to a Kennedy man and that she had to keep her mouth shut under an unspoken contract.
Ethel even turned a blind eye to rumors that her husband was sleeping with her sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy.
Jackie Kennedy exchanges a secret glance with her brother-in-law, Bobby, behind his wife, Ethel’s back, as they leave Jackie’s home in Washington, DC in 1963, a month after JFK’s assassination.
FBI files claim RFK slept with Jackie Kennedy between 1964 and 1968: Their relationship was based on pain
Ethel received the Presidential Medal of Honor from Barack Obama in 2014.
She admitted that the close friendship between the two may not have been all bad for her husband and that it may have been Jackie who finally brought Bobby out of his deep despair after Jack’s murder in 1963.
The details of Ethel’s unwavering support for her husband are best described in the 2016 book ‘Bobby Kennedy: The Making of A Liberal Icon’ by Larry Tye.
The book said that Ethel loved her husband “more completely than she thought possible,” and this meant she could look the other way.
Bobby was seen as the most puritan of his eight siblings and was asked by his brother to be Attorney General when he became president.
Bobby’s tough, naked political style was the same as that of his wealthy father, Joseph Kennedy.
And according to Tye, he also learned his wandering eye from his father, as Joe had a lover, silent film star Gloria Swanson, and had affairs with many other women.
Tye wrote that Joe passed on to his children the idea that “when it came to sexual mores, boys played while girls prayed.”
Bobby’s first sexual experience was in a Harlem, New York, brothel at age 21, after his father paid him to have sex with a black woman. Bobby’s verdict afterwards was that “it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either.” .
He married Ethel in 1950 when she was 22 and the following year Kathleen, the first of their 11 children, was born. Rory, the youngest, was not born when her father was shot to death in a Los Angeles hotel.
RFK, pictured with Ethel at their home in 1968, married Ethel in 1950 when he was 22, and the following year Kathleen was born, the first of their 11 children.
Ethel, Bobby and their 10 children posed for a family portrait. Rory, the eleventh child, was not born until her father was shot to death in Los Angeles in 1968.
Son Joe posted a photo of Ethel on her 96th birthday in April, surrounded by members of her extended family.
But outside of his marriage, Bobby’s list of conquests reportedly included stars like Kim Novak, Lee Remick and singer Claudine Longet.
He was also allegedly having an affair with Marilyn Monroe, possibly at the same time as his brother.
Tye interviewed Ethel, then in her 80s, at length for the book and gave one of the frankest accounts yet of her late husband’s flirtations.
The book said: ‘Ethel has lived with rumors for fifty years and says she stopped hearing or reading them long ago.
—She also tried to block them, although they must have hurt.
“She never revealed any suspicions.
“I also understood Bobby’s family better than anyone who wasn’t born into it, and I knew what his church and theirs said about sex outside of marriage; there was no tradition of monogamy in the Kennedy clan.
‘She loved her husband more completely than she thought possible and still loves him.
“And she knew that he always came home, not only to the children but to her as well.”
Richard Goodwin, a friend of Bobby’s who traveled extensively with him, was more direct, saying that sleeping with someone was a “Kennedy family tradition,” although Bobby was “much more selective and limited” than his brother Jack.
John F. Kennedy with his brother, Robert Kennedy, and their dog, Mo, in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in 1946. They were so close that RFK broke down when his brother was assassinated.
FBI files claimed that Bobby and Jackie, who died in 1994, slept together from 1964 until he was murdered in 1968.
Their relationship was said to be based on shared grief and a long-standing affection between the two.
According to Tye, on the night of Jack’s funeral, Bobby asked him, “Are we going to visit our friend?” and the two knelt in silent prayer before his tombstone.
Tye writes: ‘They had been close friends before, but not such close confidants as this.
“While Ethel had always had problems with Jackie, until now they had not included jealousy.”
FBI files revealed that Ethel was so concerned about the alleged affair that at one point she confronted David Ormsby-Gore, British ambassador to the United States during the Kennedy administration, and asked him what, if anything, he knew about the affair. relationship.
But what is clear is that both were “devastated by their loss and each was determined to help the other move forward.”
Bobby had a list of conquests that included stars such as Kim Novak (left), Lee Remick and singer Claudine Longet.
When JFK was shot, Bobby decided to go to Andrews Air Force Base to meet the body of Jackie and her brother.
Even though the entire nation was mourning, “no one, not even Jackie, would feel as ‘deeply or as long as Bobby did,'” Tye wrote.
The book said: “The two were closer than any brothers at the highest levels of government, speaking in private code, perpetually interrupting and finishing each other’s sentences.
‘Now the dreams of what they could achieve together are over…
“The sniper bullet that had penetrated Jack’s skull shattered Bobby’s vision even as it broke his heart.”
Jackie Kennedy grabs Bobby’s hand as she stands in her blood-stained clothes as the casket carrying President John F. Kennedy’s body is placed into an ambulance after arriving at Andrews Air Force Base.
During a party at film executive Arthur Krim’s home, Marilyn Monroe comes between Bobby and JFK in New York in 1962. Both brothers had affairs with Monroe, possibly at the same time.
Bobby’s murder was just one of a series of tragedies that affected Ethel during her life.
His parents died in a plane crash in 1955, and his brother, George, died in the same way 10 years later, two months before his widow died of asphyxiation.
Two of her sons predeceased her: David succumbed to a drug overdose in 1984 and Michael in a skiing accident on New Year’s Eve 1997.
Scandal also surrounded his family. Son Joe was in a car accident in which a passenger was paralyzed. Bobby Jr., who was estranged from most of the family over his support of Donald Trump, was arrested for heroin possession and before his death, Michael entered sex addiction therapy in Maryland after it was discovered that he was having an affair with his babysitter that started. when she was only 14 years old.