‘Same Compassion for the Underprivileged’ : Many Kennedy Children Carry On Family Tradition of Public Service

When an assassin took Robert F. Kennedy’s life 20 years ago, robbing the nation of a rising leader, he also stole the father from 11 children--the oldest 16, the youngest not yet born.

Although drugs and other personal tragedies have torn at some of their lives, destroying one, many of the children of Robert and Ethel Kennedy have gone on to embrace their father’s ideals and pick up his torch of public service.

“This is how they’re dealing with” their father’s death, said David F. Powers, curator at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston and a longtime Kennedy family friend.

“They think (public service) is the way. They have the same compassion for the underprivileged that their father had. . . . They care.”

The Kennedy children remember their father for his dedication to the country, his sense of discipline, his love for life.

“I remember when my uncle (President John F. Kennedy) died, one of the family rituals was discussing current events, and we often had to write something about what was taking place on the front pages of the papers,” recalled Michael Kennedy, 30, the sixth of the RFK children.

“I remember my father turning to my older siblings and telling them to write down the significance of this event on the United States and history. That must have taken a tremendous amount of self-discipline for such a personal event. Yet we always had--going skiing, rafting--just so many fun times as well.

“Thinking about raising my own family, these are the thoughts that go through your mind,” said Michael, who with his wife, Victoria, a daughter of sports commentator Frank Gifford, has three children.

His sisters and brothers are: Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, 36; Joseph P. Kennedy III, 35; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 34; Courtney Kennedy Ruhe, 31; Kerry Kennedy, 28; Christopher Kennedy, 24; Max Kennedy, 23; Douglas Kennedy, 21; and Rory Kennedy, 19. David Kennedy was 28 when he died in 1984.

Oil Company to Aid Poor

Michael, who like his father attended Harvard and the University of Virginia Law School, runs Citizens Energy Corp., the nonprofit oil company started by brother Joe to help the poor get low-cost heat.

“Growing up in my family, it was clear that you had to give something back, not only to your family and your community, but your country. Whether that came directly from my father, or as much from my mother, I guess it’s a basic Christian attitude,” Michael said.

He took over Citizens Energy after Joe two years ago won the Massachusetts congressional seat once held by their uncle Jack and their grandfather. Michael was a fund-raiser for the campaign.

Rep. Kennedy has been asked by his mother to deliver the eulogy at a memorial Mass on Monday at RFK’s grave site at Arlington National Cemetery, said aide Chuck McDermott. Kennedy refused repeated requests for an interview. He and his wife, Sheila Rauch, have twins.

Ethel Kennedy presides over the family estate, Hickory Hill, in this Washington suburb and has organized memorials. She generally prefers to have her children speak for the family.

Kathleen, a Maryland lawyer, said her father “believed that politics is an honorable profession, and I think that’s why so many of his children are interested in politics. He believed that we should each do our best. He had a sense of justice and injustice, and if things were wrong one should not just sit idly by, but do something about it.”

She said she will likely run for office again after her 1986 congressional defeat to a Republican incumbent. Meanwhile, she directs a community service program for high school students at the Maryland Department of Education. Chairwoman of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation, she is married to Prof. David Townsend and they have three children.

Kerry Kennedy, a Boston College Law School graduate, was field director of her brother’s 1986 campaign. Earlier this year, she created the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights at the foundation to work on projects with the winners of the foundation’s annual human rights awards.

“It is a way,” she said, “of carrying forth the ideals of the winners and the ways that they shared my father’s vision,” which she described as one of “love and compassion and justice.”

The center sent a delegation to South Korea earlier this year to meet with human rights leaders and government officials. Among other planned projects are a series of medical clinics in Poland.

Believed in Action

“My father believed in action,” Kerry said.

She is leaving her position as treasurer of her brother’s campaign to Courtney Kennedy Ruhe, who lives in Manhattan with her husband of eight years, David Ruhe.

Not all of Robert Kennedy’s children have entered public service, and some have been crushed by tragedy.

The slaying of RFK “totally devastated the family” but struck the oldest boys the hardest, said David Horowitz, co-author of “The Kennedys: An American Drama.”

In April, 1984, an overdose of painkillers, tranquilizers and cocaine killed David Kennedy, who some say was alone in a hotel room watching news reports the night his father was gunned down June 5, 1968.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pleaded guilty to heroin possession in 1983, received a two-year suspended sentence and spent time in a drug treatment center.

Today, he is an environmental law attorney in New York and is teaching at Pace University. Kennedy and his wife of six years, Emily Black, also a lawyer, have two children. A foundation spokeswoman said he was not granting interviews.

Some of the clan were just infants or preschoolers when their father was killed.

Christopher Kennedy worked on his brother’s campaign. The Boston College graduate last year married Sheila Berner and is working at the family-owned Merchandise Mart in Chicago.

Max Kennedy is about to graduate from Harvard as a history major.

Douglas Kennedy, who has completed his sophomore year at Boston College, has been involved in homeless issues, working with activist Mitch Snyder.

Rory Kennedy, a Brown University freshman who was born six months after the assassination, has worked with Kerry on the human rights center.