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More than any other Kennedy, Ethel has always been obsessed with athletics. Even today, a simple game becomes a do-or-die competition. Last summer, nearly six months into her pregnancy, she was bounding around the tennis court at Hyannisport, playing doubles with Mountaineer Jim Whittaker against Columnist Art Buchwald and Singer Andy Williams. Ethel's team lost. Furious with frustration, she knelt on the court and banged her head on the surface. Next morning, in a rematch, she blasted a forehand across the net at Buchwald so hard that it hit him on the cheek before he could even lift his racket. After that, Ethel's side ran away with the set, 6-0.
Even in the last few months before the baby came, when Ethel was confined to bed by a complication in the pregnancy (it was to be her fifth caesarean), she remained active. She continued to see visitors, oversee the children's activities, keep up with her responsibilities as a member of the board of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Corporation, and make plans for "the foundation," the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial. She also supervised the publication details of Bobby's book Thirteen Days, right down to selecting the kind of paper to be used and vetoing some of the advertising because it stressed Bobby's role in the Cuban missile crisis at the expense of Jack Kennedy's.
All memorial projects have top priority. Two months ago, she made a rare public appearance to attend the unveiling of a commemorative bust of Bobby at the Justice Department. Last month she traveled to New Hampshire's Waterville Valley ski resort for the World Cup competition, which was dedicated to Bobby. She has worked diligently at home on a nationwide series of fund-raising dinners organized to pay off the $3,500,000 debt remaining from Bobby's presidential campaign.
So far, the fund-raising activities have paid off $2,000,000 (including a settlement on an $85,000 bill from the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where Bobby was killed); Democratic Party resources will take care of most of the rest. Though Ethel will never be less than a wealthy woman, the burdens of being sole head of a large family have nicked into her personal fortune as well. "Ethel spends pretty freely," says a friend, "but now she's going to have to watch it." Accordingly, she has quietly disposed of some family stock, sold a few paintings and trimmed the payroll at Hickory Hill.
Nevertheless, she still has a household staff, counting volunteers and part-time workers, that numbers around nine. While she does not exactly take this cushion for granted, she occasionally presumes on it. Her tendency to be unaware of how other people live makes her seem demanding at times. She can ask her women friends to help with mail or join in welcoming somebody home from Zambia and fail to understand why they cannot run right over. Yet, as those friends are quick to point out, she is never as demanding of others as she is of herself.
No Time to Pause