The House of Kennedy(76)
Multiple media outlets pick up on the phrase “poster boys for bad behavior” as proof of John Jr. chastising and attempting to distance himself from his cousins. Despite Joe himself having previously appeared on Good Morning America a few months earlier to also decry his brother’s “bad behavior,” he’s clearly miffed at being lumped in with Michael in John Jr.’s magazine, and lashes out: “I guess my first reaction was ‘Ask not what you can do for your cousin, but what you can do for his magazine.’” Kathleen takes a more tempered view, saying of their cousin John, “I think he probably wishes he hadn’t written it. I’m sure he wishes that.”
Lingering resentments are expected to blow over, however, and be largely forgotten. “A year from now, Michael and the Baby Sitter and Joe and the Annulment will have joined Amy and Joey and Donald and Marla in the landfill of tabloid dreck,” predicts Time magazine.
But unfortunately, it would only be a few months before Michael Kennedy is back in the headlines.
Chapter 52
The past year, 1997, has been a challenging one for the Kennedy clan, and for Bobby and Ethel’s sons in particular. Even so, former JFK speechwriter and family intimate Ted Sorensen tells the LA Times, “It’s a family that is accustomed to both controversy and criticism. Sometimes withstanding it is all you can do—just accept it and go on.”
Holding their heads high and soldiering on is something the family has long been taught to do. As Lem Billings—for whom Michael LeMoyne Kennedy is named—used to remind the younger generation after the deaths of Jack and Bobby, “Remember what Grandma Rose used to say: ‘Never forget that you are a Kennedy. A lot of work went into building that name. Don’t disparage it.’”
“The Kennedys all take care of each other,” Beth Dozoretz, a Washington Democratic activist, remarks. “They have an overwhelming sense of a continuing commitment to public service, through all the trials and tribulations of their lives,” says Thaelia Tsongas Schlesinger, a Massachusetts Democrat.
Despite his setbacks, Michael’s family encourage him, “You’re a Kennedy. You have to pull it together.” Pulling oneself together and moving on is “just Kennedy 101,” his cousin Patrick insists.
As 1997 comes to a close, Michael Kennedy is among extended family and friends congregating for the holidays in Aspen, Colorado, as they do nearly every Christmas season. Even though their divorce is imminent, Michael’s estranged wife, Vicki, is also staying in nearby Vail with her father and stepmother, Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford. “Probably the central thing in Michael’s life was his wife and his children,” Michael’s friend Larry Spagnola remarks. “It was his intention to reconcile.”
On New Year’s Eve, Michael and about twenty friends and relatives—a group that includes his younger brother Max and sister Rory, plus his three children—gather near the 11,212-foot-high summit, awaiting their last run down Aspen Mountain. They’re about to play a favorite Kennedy game, known as “ski football.” “They hang at the top of the mountain till everybody is off the hill, so they don’t endanger anybody else,” a family friend says of the game, which involves skiing downhill while tossing a small foam football back and forth. “It is Kennedyesque. There is a lot of laughing, vigor, excitement and a big rush.”
There are conflicting reports as to whether the family has been warned earlier that week against playing the made-up sport, but the daredevil game is certainly rife with potential danger.
The possibility of disaster doesn’t bother Michael, whom longtime friend James Hillard notes “really had a tremendous drive for living on the edge. Whether it was kayaking or skiing, he just did it.” It’s not a new attitude, or even exclusive to Michael. The Kennedy cousins are known to goad each other to jump from extreme heights, and Bobby Jr. notes of their childhood, “If we went more than two weeks without a visit to the emergency room, it was unusual.”
And in a family known for daring athleticism, Michael is touted as the best of them all. His brother Max calls him “an unbelievably good athlete,” and Joe agrees, remarking on Michael’s “amazing physical gifts” and deeming him “fearless—on the slopes, on water skis, wherever he could test himself at the edge.”
Bobby Jr. claims Michael’s “the greatest athlete of our generation,” and notes, “In all my life I’ve never seen anyone ski as beautifully as Michael.” Even Bob Beattie, a former US Olympic ski coach, has praised Michael’s talent for skiing. “Michael is the best skier, a tremendously gifted athlete who could ski downhill backwards and blindfolded,” another friend notes. He’s confident enough to not only forgo his ski poles but often to videotape the action as the group tosses and receives the brightly colored foam ball, though on this occasion the New York Times notes that it’s his ten-year-old daughter who is “videotaping their antics.”
They’ve played this game many times before, including earlier that week. The columnist R. Couri Hay, who was present on New Year’s Eve, says, “Michael is the ringleader, without question,” and recalls that the previous game had ended in a tie. “Then they said, ‘We’ll play tomorrow—death to the loser.’”
It’s mild weather, a little after four o’clock in the evening, and the group is about halfway down the run when Michael calls out to his buddy Blake “Harvey” Fleetwood, “Pass me the ball, Harve!” Michael catches it. He’s looking uphill and considering where to throw the ball again, not realizing he’s about to collide with a three-foot-wide spruce tree.