The House of Kennedy(53)

In 1946, Ted follows Bobby to Milton Academy in Massachusetts, where Bobby writes home that Ted (younger by seven years) is still struggling—by Kennedy standards—with his weight. “Teddy had his usual line of stories and seemed fat as ever,” he writes.

“But Teddy was a big physical presence too. He was strong as hell,” says the Boston Globe reporter Robert Healy. In some cases, his size worked to his advantage. His Milton coach Herbert Stokinger recalls, “Ted had really sticky fingers. He was a good all-around football player. He was able to do his blocking assignments well.”

Admitted to the Harvard class of 1954 as a Kennedy family legacy, Ted pays more attention to freshman football than to his first-year coursework. In the spring semester, he is in danger of failing Spanish. Without a passing grade, Ted will lose his spot on the football roster the following fall.

He concocts a scheme to swap exam booklets with another student, but they’re caught red-handed. “Ted was a bright guy. He didn’t have to cheat,” says Ron Messer, who played freshman football with Ted. Joe Sr. disagrees. “Don’t do this cheating thing, you’re not clever enough,” he rails at his errant son, then is outraged anew when Ted flubs his chosen path toward redemption: joining the military.

On June 25, 1951, one year into the Korean War, nineteen-year-old Ted enlists for a four-year term in the army, though only two are required under the draft. “Don’t you even look at what you’re signing?” Joe berates Ted, then smooths his way. After basic training at New Jersey’s Fort Dix, Ted is assigned rarified duty in Paris, as honor guard in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters. While he’s there, Rose insists Ted learn about fine French wines, in spite of Joe’s prohibition (enforced by a generous financial incentive of two thousand dollars) against any of his children drinking or smoking before age twenty-one. During an Alpine ski trip with sisters Jean and Pat, Jean writes their mother of Ted’s military physique: “He may weigh 215, but it’s all meat and muscles.”

In 1953, Ted is readmitted to Harvard, now six-two, two hundred pounds—and two academic years behind his entering class. “He learned a lesson,” his teammate Claude Hooton says of the cheating scandal that nearly derailed his chances at Harvard, especially his chances at becoming only the second Kennedy man to win a coveted varsity letter.

The first was Bobby, who played in jersey number 86, and Ted is proud to wear Harvard number 88. He’s a strong player, and following the 1955 season, receives a scouting letter from Green Bay Packers head coach Lisle Blackbourn. “You have been very highly recommended to us by a number of coaches in your area and also by our talent scouts as a possible Pro Prospect.” But when Joe Sr. arranges a session in a Chicago Bears practice uniform, Ted’s dreams of professional football dim. “He put on the pads, took two or three hits, and said he’d never been so frightened in his life,” remembers his roommate Ted Carey. “He got out of there.”

Had he pursued a rookie bid and made the Green Bay Packers team, Ted would have encountered Bart Starr and Forrest Gregg as first-years on their way to the Hall of Fame. Instead, Ted famously informs Coach Blackbourn that instead of football, he’s chosen “another contact sport.”

Politics.





Chapter 36



In the fall of 1956, Ted enrolls at the University of Virginia Law School, from which Bobby had graduated in 1951. The class of 1959 has 150 members, and Ted makes a fast friend in John Tunney, whose father, former heavyweight champ Gene Tunney, owns a summer house near the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. The classmates partner for the prestigious multiyear elective moot-court competition (winning in their third year, where Bobby had not). They also rent an off-campus house together on Barracks Road, where their lavish parties are catered by a cook named Carmen, formerly employed by Jackie.

At one white-tie affair, which Ted’s brother Bobby also attends, Mortimer Caplin compares the demeanor of the two Kennedy UVA alums. “The contrast was so dramatic. I mean Ted was the life of the party—singing, being the leader—and Bob was sitting there—thoughtful, quiet—and it stuck with me for a long time.”

When Ted invites Bobby to speak on the Charlottesville, Virginia, campus, Bobby first asks (allegedly on behalf of Rose), “what side of the court my brother is going to appear on when he gets out of law school, attorney or defendant.”

Bobby is referring to the speeding tickets—five of them—Ted has racked up during his time in Charlottesville. The most serious incident occurred in March 1958, when Ted was a twenty-six-year-old second-year student. That night Sheriff T. M. Whitten pursued a speeding car from the intersection of US 29 and US 250. “He cut his lights out on me and tried to outrun me,” Whitten recalls, before pulling into a driveway and “[getting] down in the front seat” to hide from the officer. Whitten arrests the man, who identifies himself as Edward M. Kennedy, and Ted is ultimately convicted of reckless driving and fined thirty-five dollars.

Ted can’t stay away from speed—or danger. Ted Sorensen recalls driving with then-undergraduate Ted from Cape Cod to Boston. “It was the first time in my young life that I realized when cars coming from the other direction blink their lights at you, it means there’s a trooper up ahead and you ought to slow down.”

During law school, Ted also earns his license to pilot single-engine airplanes. It’s a two-hour drive on US 29 from Charlottesville to Bobby’s Hickory Hill estate in McLean—and an even faster trip by air. John Tunney recalls Ted turning what should have been a routine flight into a wild ride. “I’ve never been more terrified in my life as when we came into [Washington] National Airport and they told us to follow a Colonial airplane into the airport landing strip. I point up at the plane and said, ‘Ted, is that the one up there?’ He said, ‘I think that’s it.’ So that plane goes in and we start coming in after that plane. The ground controller said—I think we were in a Cessna, ‘Cessna, Cessna, get out of there, get out of there! Hard left!’ And so we take a hard left turn and I look behind me and there is a four-engine plane coming in. There was a United plane on our tail…We got out of the way, we landed, and then we flew back the next day.”