That was because my walls and bookcases were filled with what another nephew Patrick dubbed my “Camelot Clutter.”
What some might call my Kennedy addiction may have begun on March 17, 1946 when Congressman John F. Kennedy dropped by a post-parade party at 87 Farragut Road, the grand Hopkins house opposite the aquarium.
My Uncle Eddie was the chief marshal that year of the parade that always began at 1 Andrew Square in front of P.J. Connelly’s.
Yes, P.J. was another uncle and his tavern there was where “Knocko” McCormack (brother of John, the future Speaker of the House of Representatives) rode his horse through all three doors. South Boston was where my grandparents (the Hurleys from Cork; the Connellys from Mayo) came, as did the McCormacks, the Kennedys (to East Boston) and the Fitzgeralds (to the North End) to seek a better life for themselves and their children.
Fast forward to the Boston Garden on Election Eve in 1960. That’s where I bought my “If I Were 21 I’d Vote for Kennedy” button and held up, with several Regis classmates, a sheet that read: “Put a New John in the White House.”
We did. And a year later, I interviewed for my college newspaper his kid brother Ted who was preparing to run for Jack’s Senate seat.
Just back from what was called a “fact-finding trip to Africa,” Ted dazzled me more with his charm than with his facts. And after pointing at my button, I told him I’d be turning 21 in February of 1962, the same month he turned 30, and would indeed vote for him, which I did in the primary (that he beat Eddie McCormack caused great pain to my Aunt Anna Joyce who claimed her mother was the midwife at his birth) but not in November because I had entered the convent that September and somehow forgot to request an absentee ballot.
As a graduate student at BC in the fall of 1964, my support, so my brothers Jack and Joe teased me, was crucial to Ted getting elected to his first full Senate term by 74 percent of the vote. Six years later, with Chappaquiddick still a hot topic, that percentage dropped 12 points.
By now teaching at Boston State, which is not far from the Mission Church where Ted’s funeral Mass took place, Dr. Gerry Burke (his uncle was Congressman Jim Burke) and I established an Irish Studies program and a student-run Celtic Club.
Often we would invite politicians like Ted Kennedy and poets like Seamus Heaney to address our students.
Now more active in Irish organizations and freelancing for several papers, I would get to hear Ted talk about the issues that most concerned him.
Not enough “bright and shining moments” occurred in the ’70s and ’80s, for both this country and Ireland in general and Boston and the Kennedys in particular.
In the midst of the anti-busing crisis, Ted addressed a contentious crowd in South Boston in front of P.J. Connelly’s which my father took over after his brother’s death.
I still can hear the sadness in my dad’s voice when he told me what a woman shouted to Ted: “Send your one-legged b…… to Southie.”
And a few years later how horrified I was when at an election rally I stood beside him when he was doused with ketchup by anti-abortion activists who held pickle jars that supposedly contained fetuses. In instances like these, and there were many, Ted always carried on.
With the opening of the Kennedy Library in 1979, I had more opportunities to cover Ted. At Faneuil Hall on Nov. 7, of that year. when he announced his candidacy for the presidency, I raised my hand to ask if he would consider choosing a woman as his running mate.
Before I did, someone, likely an aide, asked what I intended to ask. I told him, and his response was: “J.C. lady, don’t ask Teddy anything about women.”
Not daunted, I again raised my hand and, after having spotted Chicago’s mayor Jane Byrne in the front row, asked if he would “consider having a qualified woman like Jane Byrne on his ticket.”
Ted’s ebullient answer and the crowd’s enthusiastic response soon vanished, for the next question came from a national tabloid reporter who questioned Joan’s (she and their daughter Kara also were on the stage) struggle with sobriety. I do not recall what, or if, Ted answered.
When the Irish Echo launched a Boston edition in 1981, I got to cover Ted at both work and play.
Whether at cookouts and parties in Hyannisport (especially on March 17 and July 22, his mother’s birthday) or at events at his brother’s library in Dorchester, he always would answer my questions.
And that’s when he began referring to me as “the woman who wants England out of Ireland.”
Yes, I was annoyed when he accepted that honorary knighthood last Spring.
My favorite “Teddy memory” occurred at the Irish festival at Stonehill College on June 13, 1992.
With the music of the Chieftains in the background, I took a photo of Ted and Vicki Reggie with Stonehill’s president Bartley MacPhaidin and Boston’s Irish Consul General at the time, Liam Cunniff and his wife Frances.
A few weeks later, Vicki became the senator’s wife and the last, and best, chapter of his life began.
Maureen Connelly was for many years the author of the Echo’s Celtic Clippings weekly column.