Kennedy Wives: Triumph and Tragedy in America's Most Public Family by David Batcher Amber Hunt, David Batcher Page A
Authors: David Batcher Amber Hunt, David Batcher
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these industrialists and moguls. You’d be the only child in the meeting, and it made a difference with those people. It impressed them and made the meeting a personal, beautiful thing, in their eyes.”
As fun-loving a scene as it appeared, “the parties literally every day” had devastating effects, Rushton said:
I was 10 years old when we moved to the house on Larchmont. Dad was establishing his company in New York, so my parents had parties,parties, parties. That’s when Dad started drinking. Dad’s alcoholism hit him when we were in Larchmont because of all those parties and all of the drinking that went on. . . . And that’s when we started drinking.
Ann loved the Larchmont home for more than the parties. She loved that it was right across the street from the Dominican Day School, a private academy founded by Sister Rose Alma. Ann enrolled then five-year-old Ethel in kindergarten there, and her brothers and sisters in their respective grades. Rose Alma attempted to provide children from families like the Skakels with order and discipline—the exact opposite of what they were getting at home. George and Ann weren’t much for imposing rules on their brood; they traveled so much that Georgeann had earned the nickname “the little mother,” and she often was burdened with watching over the younger six children alone.
The Skakels stayed in the Larchmont mansion for about two years, settling briefly in another huge house a few miles north in a small town called Rye. The boys enrolled in Canterbury, a monastic Catholic boarding school across the border in Connecticut, and, like a young John F. Kennedy before them, hated it and its impossible rules. Jack, who received “poor” and “fair” assessments in his Latin, science, and religion classes, asked to transfer to another school; the rowdy Skakel boys were asked to leave.
Eventually, the clan headed a few miles north to Greenwich, Connecticut. There, George bought a twenty-five-room mansion that he got for a bargain because of the struggling economy. The three-story brick home had belonged to Zalmon Simmons, one of the richest men in town —impressive status in one of the richest towns in the country. Simmons, who had made his fortune developing the country’s first mass-produced mattresses, had built the home on a 164-acre estate known as Rambleside that became famous for its elm trees, azaleas, and countless iris bulbs. The mansion interior “featured hand-painted chinoiserie wallpaper, black marble floors with inlaid copper, and a study paneled with pine that had been stripped from a venerable mansion in London.” The library measured almost sixty feet long and had a black marble fireplace, teak floors,recessed bookcases, Corinthian columns, and bay windows that looked out on grounds of stately elms and boxwoods. Inside the main house were six double bedrooms, three staff bedrooms, two single bedrooms, a master suite with its own sitting room and fireplace, a glass-enclosed sleeping porch, a billiard room, six baths, and a playroom for the children. Outside the main house, there was a guesthouse, a teahouse, two servants’ houses, a stable for horses, and a garage built for six cars.
After Simmons died in 1934, during the Great Depression, his wife began selling off the estate in chunks. The mansion sat idle for a while, as most people in the midst of the economic downturn simply couldn’t afford such a luxurious home. But then, most people weren’t George Skakel. He paid Simmons’s widow less than $160,000 for a ten-acre chunk of the estate that included the main house. For another forty thousand dollars, George got all the Simmonses’ furnishings, too. After George moved his family in, he added a seventy-five-foot swimming pool to the property.
There, the wild parties would continue. The children would play football on the lawn and set off firecrackers during dinner. Fully dressed guests would end up drenched in the pool. Ann would
As fun-loving a scene as it appeared, “the parties literally every day” had devastating effects, Rushton said:
I was 10 years old when we moved to the house on Larchmont. Dad was establishing his company in New York, so my parents had parties,parties, parties. That’s when Dad started drinking. Dad’s alcoholism hit him when we were in Larchmont because of all those parties and all of the drinking that went on. . . . And that’s when we started drinking.
Ann loved the Larchmont home for more than the parties. She loved that it was right across the street from the Dominican Day School, a private academy founded by Sister Rose Alma. Ann enrolled then five-year-old Ethel in kindergarten there, and her brothers and sisters in their respective grades. Rose Alma attempted to provide children from families like the Skakels with order and discipline—the exact opposite of what they were getting at home. George and Ann weren’t much for imposing rules on their brood; they traveled so much that Georgeann had earned the nickname “the little mother,” and she often was burdened with watching over the younger six children alone.
The Skakels stayed in the Larchmont mansion for about two years, settling briefly in another huge house a few miles north in a small town called Rye. The boys enrolled in Canterbury, a monastic Catholic boarding school across the border in Connecticut, and, like a young John F. Kennedy before them, hated it and its impossible rules. Jack, who received “poor” and “fair” assessments in his Latin, science, and religion classes, asked to transfer to another school; the rowdy Skakel boys were asked to leave.
Eventually, the clan headed a few miles north to Greenwich, Connecticut. There, George bought a twenty-five-room mansion that he got for a bargain because of the struggling economy. The three-story brick home had belonged to Zalmon Simmons, one of the richest men in town —impressive status in one of the richest towns in the country. Simmons, who had made his fortune developing the country’s first mass-produced mattresses, had built the home on a 164-acre estate known as Rambleside that became famous for its elm trees, azaleas, and countless iris bulbs. The mansion interior “featured hand-painted chinoiserie wallpaper, black marble floors with inlaid copper, and a study paneled with pine that had been stripped from a venerable mansion in London.” The library measured almost sixty feet long and had a black marble fireplace, teak floors,recessed bookcases, Corinthian columns, and bay windows that looked out on grounds of stately elms and boxwoods. Inside the main house were six double bedrooms, three staff bedrooms, two single bedrooms, a master suite with its own sitting room and fireplace, a glass-enclosed sleeping porch, a billiard room, six baths, and a playroom for the children. Outside the main house, there was a guesthouse, a teahouse, two servants’ houses, a stable for horses, and a garage built for six cars.
After Simmons died in 1934, during the Great Depression, his wife began selling off the estate in chunks. The mansion sat idle for a while, as most people in the midst of the economic downturn simply couldn’t afford such a luxurious home. But then, most people weren’t George Skakel. He paid Simmons’s widow less than $160,000 for a ten-acre chunk of the estate that included the main house. For another forty thousand dollars, George got all the Simmonses’ furnishings, too. After George moved his family in, he added a seventy-five-foot swimming pool to the property.
There, the wild parties would continue. The children would play football on the lawn and set off firecrackers during dinner. Fully dressed guests would end up drenched in the pool. Ann would
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