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The key man in the day-to-day management of the Kennedy fortune is Thomas J. Walsh, 45, an accountant and tax expert who has been employed by the family since the 1950s. In the hands of skillful men like Walsh, the heirs have no real cause for money worries. There will continue to be, in Joe Kennedy's terse public accounting, "enough." But enough for what? Surely enough to support generations of Kennedys in comfort. But when it comes to maintaining their political ascendancy and using money as effectively as the founder, the future is shadowed by doubt.
The Human Dimension
The singular strength of Joe Kennedy's wealth, as he applied it to satisfying his own and his children's ambitions, was its concentration and independence. He had no firm or board of directors to whom he owed an accounting. Awed associates watched as he closed business deals by writing checks totaling millions of dollars. Now the managers and trustees are bound to spend money cautiously. The interests of grandchildren must be protected. It will not be so easy to plow millions into a particular political cause.
One day not many years ago, an enormously successful businessman who had built a corporation from scratch reflected on the career of his friend Joe Kennedy: "Joe was a pure capitalist, not the Wall Street kind. The Wall Street establishment has a bias on the bull side. Joe didn't. He never took responsibility for building or running anything. But he had money sense. He knew what to use his money for—how to have fun with it. Joe bought all those houses. He made all those movies. He understood about buying himself positions in government—London, for example. And he knew how to use money to push his children along as fast as they could be pushed. Yes, he knew what money was for."
That human dimension is now gone. In the third generation, so critical in the history of great American fortunes, that absence may reduce the Kennedys to a family of nice rich people related to a former President.