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Such moments are rare, and probably always will be. Ethel Skakel Kennedy has been idle for hardly a minute in her life. Even as a child, says her brother Jim, her emotional makeup was "total reaction. The only time she rested, she rested from exhaustion." She was born in Chicago, the sixth of seven children (three boys, four girls). After her father moved his business, the multimillion-dollar Great Lakes Carbon Corp., to New York, the family lived briefly in suburban Larchmont and then on a 16-acre estate in Greenwich, Conn.
Mama at Work
George Skakel was a self-made former railway clerk who never forgot his humble origins, and used to caution the family, "We could all be thrown out on the street tomorrow." He usually appeared on the estate in old clothes, and got a great kick out of being mistaken for the gardener. Mother was Ann Brannack, a huge (200 Ibs. plus), cheery, moonfaced Irishwoman who relished a joke even more than her husband did—except perhaps when Joey the ram, the family's pet goat, butted her through a glass door. Mrs. Skakel was in dead earnest about only one thing —her religion—and her earnestness there was more than a match for George Skakel's casual Protestantism. She saw to it that all the children were enrolled in parochial schools and, from the age of four onward, went to Mass daily.
Otherwise, a raffish, indulgent and hyperactive atmosphere prevailed in the Skakel household. There were servants, a swimming pool, riding horses, a 35-ft. yawl and another smaller sailboat (significantly named, by Ethel, Sink or Swim). The house was always crammed with the children's schoolmates and other visitors, and it was not unusual for 25 people to gather at the Skakels' dinner table.
Though never scholarly, Ethel always got on well at school. "She had enough drawbacks," says Brother Jim, "not to be envied, and she excelled enough to be honored." Athletics were her particular forte. Swimming, skiing, horsemanship—Ethel won competitions in them all, though she doesn't much like to talk about it now. "They were all country-club teams," she says, "and that sounds so trivial in this day and age."
There was nothing trivial—then or now—about Ethel's devotion to her religion. At one point, she thought seriously of becoming a nun (to which Bobby quipped: "I'll compete with anyone, but how can I compete with God?"). Her sisters recall her sitting on a horse backstage at Madison Square Garden, waiting to go on, frowning intently at a book. In accordance with her sodality pledges, she was finishing up her half-hour's spiritual reading for the day.