American Glossary

Eulogy

My Mother Ethel

Ranked among the world’s best amateur female tennis players, she could catch a football while sprinting and could hit all the keys on a piano with just five digits.

Compelled Cabinet members to play charades, freeze tag, capture the flag, kick the can, and to climb ropes, do push-ups, and fence with bamboo sticks over the swimming pool.

‘Both segregationist governor George Wallace and civil rights leader Vernon Jordan told me how much it meant to them that my mother was among the first at their bedsides after they were shot.’

By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

My mother was the sixth of the seven children of George and Ann Brannack Skakel. Her father grew up on a South Dakota homestead spread, never graduated high school, rode the rails to Chicago at age 14, and made a fortune in the carbon industry. He was a workaholic with a gift for numbers and a genius for turning muck into gold. During the Great Depression, there were 24 known millionaires in America. Joe Kennedy was one, George Skakel was another. My grandpa Joe was F.D.R.’s largest contributor and held three government appointments during his administration. The Skakels were, in contrast, oil and gas Republicans. Grandpa George rarely spoke disparagingly, except concerning Democrats, labor unions, and Franklin Roosevelt, all of whom he loathed. Grandma Ann was the daughter of a giant jut-jawed Irish cop in Chicago, who had a knack for spending moolah nearly as fast as Grandpa made it. Her children called her “Big Ann” because of her big personality, because she stood six inches …

America by the Numbers

My Mother Ethel