Rose Kennedy: Another Profile in Courage

Maria Shriver is doing “a little remembrance about Grandma” this weekend on NBC’s “Sunday Today” show. Grandma is the extraordinary Rose Kennedy, matriarch of the American political dynasty, who will be 100 years old on July 22.

And Shriver, her 34-year-old granddaughter, doesn’t need press credentials to get into the family compound at Hyannisport, Mass., where a celebration will be held Sunday kicking off the centennial birthday week.

Well known in her own right as an NBC correspondent, and married to film star Arnold Schwarzenegger--who’s also heading East for the birthday bash--Shriver put together a touching and amusing piece about Mrs. Kennedy for the morning “Sunday Today” series, which will be broadcast at 7 a.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39.

We hear the forceful matriarch saying firmly after the assassinations of her sons, President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who was killed as he sought election to the White House, that she was “not going to be vanquished.” We also see her, in a light moment, as a feisty and thoroughly unawed mother who brings down the house by upstaging Robert in a public appearance.

“I think she’s slightly embarrassed but thrilled because people are making a fuss over her birthday,” Shriver, who is based at NBC’s Burbank studios and lives in Pacific Palisades, said before flying to Massachusetts today.

“The theme of the party is 100 years of progress in the field of mental retardation. My aunt Rosemary (one of Mrs. Kennedy’s children, now in her 70s) is retarded. They’re giving out awards to people who’ve made a difference in retardation.”

In addition to the prepared piece about her grandmother, which she wrote, Shriver said, “I’ll be doing a live wraparound--I’ll talk a little bit about the day’s events and progress in retardation. And then my mother (Eunice Shriver, another Kennedy daughter) and I are going to do a little remembrance about Grandma for like five minutes. And I’ll do several minutes at the top of the hour.”

Shriver said that the master of ceremonies for the Sunday party will be Robert MacNeil of PBS’ “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour”--and “all the family’s gonna be there.” Asked about Schwarzenegger’s relationship with Rose Kennedy, Shriver laughed and said:

“She’s great with Arnold. When I first brought Arnold to Hyannisport, which is now 13 years ago, we would take walks, the three of us. And she’d speak to him in German and ask him about the operas in Austria and Salzburg and all that sort of stuff--probably subjects that I don’t think he was that keen to discuss.

“But the biggest piece of advice she ever gave me was: Don’t ever worry about who anybody else thinks you should marry or be with--just follow your heart. That’s the way she married and that’s the way she conducted her life. And for me it was always solid advice.”

Snippets of the “Sunday Today” piece are taken from an audiotape that Shriver made of a conversation with her grandmother in the living room of the Kennedy home in Palm Beach, Fla., when the matriarch was 92. And in one brief, funny exchange, Mrs. Kennedy questions the accomplishments of her grandchildren.

“It was hysterical,” Shriver recalls as she elaborates on what is left out of the TV piece. “When I said, ‘Well, aren’t you proud of your grandchildren?,’ she said, ‘Well, I don’t know. Have they accomplished anything?’ And then I started naming them and she goes, ‘Well, I don’t know why so many of them are in law school. Does the country really need that many more lawyers?’ ”

Although Shriver had cut out a major name for herself on TV, she says her grandmother thought there were more important things than that, too:

“When I was anchoring ‘Sunday Today’ and doing a show every week until I got pregnant, she would watch all the time. And I would say, ‘I’m doing this,’ and she’d say, ‘That’s very nice--but are you happy?’ She was always less concerned about my work and more concerned about my own personal happiness.

“Grandma isn’t the kind of person who’s flabbergasted by what you’re doing professionally, but always wants to know, ‘How is your life?’ To me, that was always a great credit to her because everybody else talks to you about your job all the time, and she talks about your life.”

What makes a happy life also seems to be on Shriver’s mind more these days since giving birth to her daughter, Katherine, half a year ago:

“I was anchoring ‘Sunday Today’ for the last couple of years and also (NBC’s) weekend nightly news, and I gave them up in April so I wouldn’t have to travel. I was going back and forth to New York every week for the last four years. So I got some sanity while I was on my maternity leave and said, ‘Enough already.’

“What I’m doing for NBC now is developing this new (untitled) prime-time magazine show, which is scheduled to debut Aug. 14 and ideally will air every two months. I’m the anchor and reporter; it’s about people out there on the cutting edge--unpredictable and unconventional--in all fields, and it’s supposed to be announced Tuesday. And in two weeks I’m going to substitute for Tom Brokaw. So I’m doing those kinds of things.”

And if her new series is a hit and is scheduled more often? Half-joking, she said: “I hope not. But you never know. As they say to me, I’m the only person in television trying to get off the air, or get on the air less.”

She doesn’t know what she wants to do next--”Everything interests me, and television wants to pigeonhole you.” She’s not even sure if she wants to stay in television.

“I really don’t know. I mean, if you’d asked me that seven months ago, I would have said, ‘Absolutely.’ At the moment, I just want to bring up a good kid. Kids really need focus and influence. I was blessed with parents that did that and do it still, full-time. And when I had my child, I just said to myself, ‘I’m not gonna get another chance at this kid’s life.’ And what do I want--just to see myself on camera every week?

“I’m really glad because I’m there to see the teeth come in, the crawling. I know her sleeping patterns. I take her on all my shoots. I want her to be the most important part of my life. My career was for the past 13 years. And now it’s not. And that’s OK, too. That’s fine.”