WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C3
nate compared to the average
American, but to think I’m a trust
fund kid — so not true!”
To wnsend, the daughter of for-
mer Maryland lieutenant governor
Kathleen Kennedy To wnsend,
went on to say that she worked at
Bruegger’s Bagels and Dunkin’ Do-
nuts in college — and like many
idealistic young people, she ques-
tioned how she’d make a career in
public service with law school
loans to repay. “ It’s u p to us to find a
way to keep doing good while going
into our chosen careers,” she said.
Kennedy McKean i s now e xecu-
tive director of Georgetown Uni-
versity’s Global Health Initiatives
and has publicly accused her un-
cle, R FK J r., of s preading misinfor-
mation on vaccines.
On Monday, Saoirse’s funeral
brought family members from
91-year-old Ethel Kennedy on
down to small children, unnamed
in photographers’ captions. Sao-
irse was buried outside a small
white church in Hyannis Port,
next to her aunt Mary Richardson
Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s second wife,
who died by suicide in 2012 —
another life snapped short in the
family tree.
[email protected]
[email protected]sister, Christina, w as romantically
linked to Cyrus’s brother.
Two of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s
children work in entertainment.
Robert “Bobby” Kennedy III is an
actor, writer and producer. Kath-
leen “Kick” Kennedy is a television
and stage actor who appeared in
“Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Gossip
Girl” and “The Newsroom.” (She’s
named after her great-aunt Kath-
leen Kennedy, JFK’s younger sis-
ter, who became a widow at 2 4 and
died in a plane crash at a ge 2 8.)
The Kennedy n ame may be syn-
onymous with affluence, but the
family’s net worth has dwindled.
According to Newsweek, Joseph P.
Kennedy Sr. was worth an
estimated $400 million when he
died in 1969 (or $2.8 billion in
2019 dollars). By 2017, the top
30 members of the Kennedy fam-
ily were worth an estimated
$1.2 billion combined, according
to Forbes magazine.
“People think, because I’m a
Kennedy, I’m extremely wealthy
and don’t flaunt it. Ha!” Maeve
To wnsend — who is now married
and goes b y Maeve Kennedy McK-
ean — told Glamour in 2008. “I
have a great name, but by the t ime
you get to the fourth generation,
the money’s run out. We’re fortu-did write that her father was the
Te rminator.
When Schwarzenegger talks
about her childhood in interviews,
her go-to word is “normal”: “My
parents raised the four of us kidsto have a very normal upbringing
and a normal childhood,” s he told
People.
Schwarzenegger married actor
Chris Pratt in June, further solidi-
fying her Hollywood connections.
Her brother Patrick dated Miley
Cyrus in 2015, around the same
time tabloids reported that herloid regulars such as Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.’s daughter Kyra Ken-
nedy, whose fashion shoots and
nightclub adventures have been
chronicled in Harpers Bazaar and
the New York Times. Her brother
Conor is sometimes described in
gossip magazines as a Kennedy
second and Ta ylor Swift’s e x first.
Of John F. Kennedy’s three
grandchildren — all by his daugh-
ter, Caroline — Rose Schlossberg
went into acting while her jour-
nalist sister, Ta tiana, is on tour
promoting an upcoming book on
climate change. Both appear re-
luctant to use the family moniker
to promote their work.
But their brother, Jack Schloss-
berg, is not. During the 2016 elec-
tion he wrote left-wing op-eds for
Politico and T he Washington Post,
introduced in both a s the late pres-
ident’s g randson.
Other branches of the family
have merged with other rich-and-
famous clans. Katherine
Schwarzenegger is the grand-
daughter of JFK’s sister Eunice
Kennedy Shriver, and the daugh-
ter of Maria Shriver and Arnold
Schwarzenegger. When she intro-
duced herself in her 2010 book,
“Rock What You’ve Got,” s he didn’t
mention her old family name. SheSaoirse became vice president
of College Democrats at Boston
College and “found great joy in
volunteer work, working along-
side indigenous communities to
build schools in Mexico,” her aunt
Kerry Kennedy posted on Insta-
gram.
As the family has grown larger,
members of Saoirse’s generation
have become harder f or the p ublic
to pinpoint. In a 2008 speech at a
Barack Obama rally, the then-28-
year-old Matt Kennedy joked
about the peculiar obscurity of
being k nown as a “Kennedy g uy.”
Matt, who would go on to work
for the Obama administration,
told the crowd that he once disap-
pointed a man who “stood a little
perplexed and said, ‘Well darn it, I
thought the important Kennedy
was c oming.’ ”
Matt’s twin brother, Joe Ken-
nedy III, is the most politically
successful of his generation — a
Democratic congressman from
Massachusetts since 2012.
Other Kennedy grandchildren
have branched out into a wide set
of careers a nd l ifestyles that might
describe any other old-money
American family — but with a
tendency to attract gossip.
There are the partyers and tab-sources told the New York Times
was an apparent overdose, trag-
edy has hit her generation.
The public is still fascinated by
this dynasty. But what does it
mean to be a fourth-generation
Kennedy? There are more than
30 great-grandchildren descend-
ed from Joseph P. K ennedy Sr. and
Rose Kennedy, the Boston Globe
counted. Most don’t even have
Wikipedia pages. The family is so
large that it’s possible for mem-
bers to go u nnoticed a s a Kennedy
until t ragedy strikes, g ossip erupts
or someone runs f or office.
The family history of both grief
and greatness still hovers over
Saoirse and her cousins. But like
the h azy images around that firep-
it, t heir lives are hard to make out.
Saoirse (pronounced “SIR-
shuh”) was born 2 9 years after her
grandfather Robert F. Kennedy
was assassinated during his 1968
presidential campaign. Her dad is
Paul Hill, an Irishman who was
wrongly imprisoned for 15 years
after confessing to Irish Republi-
can Army bombings he didn’t
commit. He married Courtney
Kennedy shortly after his 1993 re-
lease, and by the time Saoirse was
in elementary school, the family
had m oved from the United States
to a small town in Ireland. “They
want Saoirse brought up in an
environment that is less manic”
than the United States, a reporter
wrote in the Scottish newspaper
the Herald in 2 002.
But t he Kennedy legacy and the
public mania it i nspired waited for
her on the other side of the Atlan-
tic.
When Saoirse was 10, on vaca-
tion at the same Massachusetts
compound where she died, she
told a neighbor that two men in a
van had offered her a ride, which
she refused without further inci-
dent. Within hours, police officers
were patrolling Hyannis Port and
People magazine had a headline
about the “abduction attempt.”
“Like her mother, she tried to
stay out of the public eye,” s aid J.
Randy Taraborrelli, who wrote
“The Kennedy Heirs,” among sev-
eral books about the family. But
“they can’t escape the name.”
Nor can they seem to escape
another aspect of the Kennedy
legacy — the repeating cycles of
grief, substance issues a nd mental
illness. David Kennedy, s on of RFK
and o ne of S aoirse’s uncles, d ied in
1984 of a drug overdose.
“What I think people don’t k now
is that the fourth generation has
been affected by watching their
parents, their aunts and their un-
cles deal with so much trauma in
their lives,” Taraborrelli said.
“When your parents are over-
whelmingly sad all the time, there’s
something that’s obviously going
to be passed down to the kids.”
Identifying the cause of mental
illness can be complicated — but
in her senior year at Deerfield
Academy in Western Massachu-
setts, Saoirse opened up about h er
struggle with depression, which
she said took root in middle
school. “Although I was mostly a
happy child, I suffered bouts of
deep sadness that felt like a heavy
boulder on my chest,” Saoirse
wrote in an essay for the student
newspaper, adding that during
these difficult periods she would
isolate herself in her room, “pull-
ing away from my relationships
and g iving up on schoolwork.”
Saoirse describes a time some-
one she knew and loved “broke
serious sexual boundaries with
me,” she wrote. “I did the worst
thing a victim can do, and I pre-
tended it hadn’t happened. This
all became too much, and I at-
tempted to take my o wn life.”
After that suicide attempt, Sao-
irse took medical leave, eventually
graduating in 2 016.
“She’s remembered as being ex-
tremely bright and kind,” said Da-
vid Thiel, assistant head of school
for strategy and planning at Deer-
field A cademy.
“Saoirse was a real hero in our
family for having spoken out
about these challenges she faced
and inviting her peers to also
speak out,” Ted’s son Patrick J.
Kennedy — a mental health advo-
cate and former congressman —
told NBC News.
KENNEDY FROM C1
Fa me and tragedy for another generation of Kennedys
BY PEGGY MCGLONEWashington’s transit agency
has reversed its decision to reject
the advertising campaign for the
Phillips Collection’s ambitious
summer e xhibition, “The Warmth
of Other Suns: Stories of Global
Displacement.”
The Washington Metropolitan
Area Transit Authority (WMATA)
this spring rejected the ad cam-
paign for the 11-week exhibition, a
sprawling show that examines
global migration. Metro cited
guidelines that prohibit adver-
tisements “intended to influence
members of the public regarding
an issue on which there are vary-
ing opinions” and those “intend-
ed to influence public policy.”
Dani Levinas, the chairman of
the Phillips Collection’s board,
questioned the decision in an op-
ed in The Washington Post three
weeks ago.
“This exhibition, with no spe-
cific political point of view or
policy stance, strives to illumi-
nate the humanitarian crisis,”
Levinas wrote.
Neither the rejection nor thereversal decision came with an
explanation, Levinas said Mon-
day.
“When this happened original-
ly I was upset and concerned
about the way they made the deci-
sion,” he said. “They just quoted
the regulation and said you vio-
late it. We didn’t agree. There was
no transparency, n o conversation.
“It’s hard to understand why
they did it, and now why they
changed their mind.”
A WMATA spokesman de-
clined to elaborate. “We are un-
able to comment on deliberativeprocess matters,” spokesman Ian
Jannetta wrote in an email.
In 2015, the transit agency ad-
opted guidelines that banned
issue-oriented advertisements, as
well as those related to religion
and politics. The ban has been
subject of several lawsuits, in-
cluding one brought by the Arch-
diocese of Washington. Last sum-
mer, the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia Circuit
ruled in favor of Metro over the
archdiocese.
“The Warmth of Other Suns” is
midway through its run at theDupont Circle museum, and fea-
tures three floors of galleries
showcasing sculptures, photo-
graphs, video art and paintings by
75 artists, many of whom are refu-
gees or have been displaced by
war, persecution, climate change
and other factors. The artwork
reflecting current crises is on view
alongside pieces by such artists as
Jacob Lawrence, Dorothea Lange
and Diego Rivera.
Levinas said the exhibition is
an educational exercise, rather
than a political one.
“It’s about artists showing thesuffering of people, and the sacri-
fice they make in doing it,” he said.
It’s unclear whether advertise-
ments for the exhibit will appear
on Metro platforms or on the
sides of buses because the mu-
seum has allotted its advertising
funds for the show, including for
ads with Capital Bikeshare, Levi-
nas said. But the museum will
continue to work with the transit
agency, he added.
“It’s a good way to advertise,” h e
said, “but they have to be more
open.”
[email protected]Metro reverses decision to ban ads for art exhibition on the migrant crisis
HILLERY SMITH GARRISON/ASSOCIATED PRESSMANDEL NGAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES PHILLIP FARAONE/GETTY IMAGES
TOP: In 2 000, Robert F. Kennedy’s granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill places a white rose at the Eternal Flame, President John F. Kennedy’s gravesite, at Arlington.
ABOVE LEFT: Rep. Joe Kennedy III. ABOVE RIGHT: Christina Schwarzenegger, Maria Shriver, Patrick Schwarzenegger and Katherine Schwarzenegger in 201 8.“When your parents
are overwhelmingly
sad all the time,
there’s something
that’s obviously going
to be passed down
to the kids.”
J. Randy Taraborrelli, author of “The
Kennedy Heirs”