The 'Runt' Of The Family

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By Newsweek Editors

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Within his own family, Bobby Kennedy was described, with some derision, as his mother's "pet." To be allied with mother Rose was to be at the wrong end of the table in the Kennedy household. At family dinners, while father Joe argued politics with his favored elder sons, Joe Jr. and Jack (switching sides from time to time to keep the debate alive), Bobby, the third son and seventh child, sat quiet and apart with the younger girls and little brother Teddy. Rose worried that RFK might turn out "puny and girlish." Joe Sr. seems to have written him off. Joseph Kennedy wanted his sons to conquer the Protestant establishment but owe loyalty to no one save the family. There was no room in this plan for a sweet momma's boy. Lem Billings, JFK's roommate at boarding school, remarked to Joe Sr. that Bobby was "the most generous little boy." Joe Sr. gruffly replied, "I don't know where he got that." The only similarity between father and son Billings could discern was in their eyes, a kind of icy pale blue.

The Kennedy household was full of laughter, but it was often at someone else's expense. The older children learned to give as good as they got. As a little boy, Bobby was not quick. He suffered in awkward silence or turned his humor on himself. Bobby was, in his father's description, the "runt" of the family. He was not only slower and smaller than his brothers, he looked afraid. He lacked the jaunty, glowing air of a young Kennedy. His siblings cut him no slack. Teased hard, Bobby would look crushed. Rose would console him. "You're my favorite," she would say, in a half-kidding tone. A friend once asked Eunice how the Kennedy brood was doing. All very well, except for Bobby, came the reply. He was "hopeless" and would "never amount to anything." Many years later, Robert Kennedy seemed to have felt the same way about himself. He told one writer, "What I remember most vividly growing up was going to a lot of different schools, always having to make new friends, and that I was very awkward. I dropped things and fell down all the time... And I was pretty quiet most of the time. And I didn't mind being alone."

At his Catholic boarding school, where he was known as "Mrs. Kennedy's little boy Bobby," RFK was a poor-to-mediocre student, a dogged but uncoordinated athlete, and "didn't invite friends," recalled a roommate. Mostly, he stood out for his religiosity. He liked to play the role of altar boy, helping to re-enact the drama of Christ's Last Supper, in support of more blessed and worthy men.

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