The Murphy’s & the Irish President

About fifteen years ago, I took a position as the executive director in a small NGO (non-governmental agency, a non-profit) that was founded and run by one of the Kennedy cousins.  By “the” Kennedy’s I mean one of President Kennedy’s nephews.  During the course of my employment I had occasion to attend a retreat his mother, Jean Kennedy Smith, graciously hosted at her home on Long Island.  So my husband and I  . . .  both of us Irish Catholics from Englewood . . . found ourselves sleeping in a bedroom Rose Kennedy slept in, playing touch football on the lawn, and taking long walks by the ocean with a Kennedy.  It was surreal.

To put my experience in perspective, you have to understand where I grew up.  I came from a predominantly Irish Catholic blue-collar neighborhood.  My father first worked in the stock yards and later as a bus driver then a supervisor for the CTA.  As a supervisor his job was to stand on the corners and time the buses to ensure they were running on schedule.  He did this in all sorts of Chicago weather, 100 degree heat, sub-zero cold, blowing snow, pounding rain.  No matter what the midwest winds thew at him, he was out on the streets of Chicago working to make sure his eight kids had bellies full of food and got a good education.

The other men in our neighborhood did the same.  They were mailmen, pipe-fitters, railway workers.  They worked hard and they worked long hours.  They came home tired and dirty but they always got up and went to church on Sunday.  They joined the Holy Name Society and the Knight of Columbus and made sure their kids attended catholic school, learned their catechism, obeyed their mothers and went to church on Sundays.  Most families were first or second generation Irish.  If second generation, as my parents were, they more often than not, lived with or next to their parents.

Right after his Catholic faith and his family, on my dad’s list of “what’s important” was the Democratic party.   When I began to date and would bring a boy home, it was okay if he wasn’t Irish – –  but God help me if he wasn’t a Democratic.  Further, in the 1950’s my grandparents and parents could still remember the signs that in earlier times could often be seen in store windows: “Irish Need Not Apply.”  Despite the hard-working, family-oriented ethic of the majority of Irish, there had been widespread discrimination against them.

So it was no wonder that when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was nominated for Vice President of the United Stated on the Democratic ticket on a hot August day in 1956, my mother called my brother and me in from playing to get down on our knees and pray.  I was only nine years old and really didn’t understand much about politics and nothing about the nomination process but remember looking at the small black and white television in our living room and seeing a young, handsome man and what seemed like thousands of people cheering.  So I was fervent in my prayers that this Irish Catholic man would win.

Kennedy came close but didn’t get it.  Lucky for him or he would have been on the losing ticket.  But the exposure raised national awareness of this bright, photogenic young senator who would beat all odds to win the presidency four years later.

Many remember the Kennedy/Nixon debate in September 1960  for important reasons: it was the first televised debate and thereby forever changed how politicians are viewed and evaluated, and importantly it helped catapult Kennedy into the presidency. I remember it because I was there.  Well, sort of.  My brother Patrick was a student at Loyola University at the time.  Loyola was a just a few blocks from the CBS-TV station were the debate was held.  So excited were we as a family that an Irish Catholic was running for president that Patrick took my younger brother Jackie (then 11) and me (age 13) to Loyola with him that day so we could walk over to the station and maybe catch a glimpse of this exciting candidate . . one we considered our candidate.

As a thirteen year old the entire day was exciting for me.  Being in a college with my older brother and his friends was an out-of-this-world experience for a high school freshman.  But the best was when we got to the t.v. station and Jack Kennedy arrived in his shiny black car and Patrick pushed me through the crowd.  I remember his hard shove on my back, then hurling past bodies and landing pretty much in Jack Kennedy’s smiling face.   Well, I think he was smiling.  In my mind he was smiling a big beautiful smile.  In retrospect it may have been a grimace due to pain in his injured back.

Patrick also took my five-year old brother, Tommy, and me to Midway earlier that day to see Jack Kennedy when he landed.  That was even better as there weren’t may people there and it was in the days you could actually go onto the field.

Of course we all campaigned for Jack Kennedy, rejoiced when he won, and followed all that he did and achieved as president.  We were proud Americans and proud to be Irish Americans. Along with the rest of the country, we were devastated and wept when he was murdered.  But President Kennedy did more than make us proud to be Irish, he inspired us to do more for our country, to do more for others.  Patrick spent two years volunteering in Africa in the Peace Corp, which was started by Kennedy, and I served in VISTA (Volunteers In Service to America) another Kennedy program.

The era of “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” and the heightened awareness of civil rights shaped many of our lives back then.  When I left for VISTA my dad in all earnestness said to me, “I worked all my life to get you kids out of the ghetto, now all you want to do is to go back into it.”

The non-profit Kennedy organization I worked for developed low-cost, high-tech prosthetic devises for landline victims in developing countries.  So years later I still was working in social services.  But I wish my dad was alive to see me strolling with my husband across the Kennedy lawn, or walking along the sea-side with Jean Kennedy Smith or playing touch football with a Kennedy nephew.

Now I don’t consider any of that the highlight of my life.  It was unexpected and I enjoyed it, but far greater things have happened to me – – – including the happiness brought to me by my children and grandchildren, enjoying the company of my siblings as we age, and sharing life with the man I love.

But I do wish my dad was alive to see it.  He would have loved it!