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  Sons of Camelot July 25, 2004 Reporter :Lesley Stahl, CBS America  In 1963, America was in love with the Kennedys, particularly their young president John F. Kennedy Jnr. He was a breath of fresh air in the White House, after the Eisenhower years. He had a young family, a beautiful, intelligent wife and a sense of humour that he flashed at myriad media conferences.Plus, he had brother Robert, a tough-talking, syndicated crime-busting, civil rights-oriented Attorney-General willing to take on the teamsters of Jimmy Hoffa, the mafia and the Ku Klux Klan, and another brother, Ted, the junior senator from Massachusetts destined to follow in his big brother's footsteps. Then tragedy struck for the Kennedys, and America, on November 22, 1963, when John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Right afterwards, Bobby Kennedy wrote to his eldest son, Joseph Kennedy: "You have a responsibility now. President Kennedy is dead and you have the responsibility to go on and carry through this legacy." It was a letter from the new patriarch to the whole family. Robert Kennedy took up that mantle himself, and was on the verge of winning the Democratic presidential nomination when he, too, was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan after the California primary in June of 1968. Bobby Kennedy was one of the few white men in America, who could walk the streets of the black communities in New York and Newark and Detroit and Chicago and Memphis, after the assassination of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jnr in April 1968. To many Americans, his loss in a racially-divided nation was a greater tragedy than the death of his brother five years earlier. To his family, the death of Robert Kennedy put more pressure on them to live up to his legacy. But his second son, Robert Kennedy Jnr, who was 14 when his father died, said he doesn't feel any responsibility just because he's a Kennedy: "Celebrity, like wealth, is a currency. You can either spend it doing something that is self-indulgent, which I don't think in the long run is fulfilling. Or you can spend it doing something that benefits your community and leaves something behind that you're proud of."  However, four of Robert Kennedy's sons developed problems with substance abuse. By 1983, young Bobby had become a successful young lawyer and a heroin addict. He was busted with heroin on a plane in South Dakota. The next year his younger brother David died in Florida from a drug overdose.He turned to his love for the environment, and is now one of America's leading environmental activists, married with six children, as well as running a law clinic at New York's Pace University. Robert's younger brother, Max, lives in Los Angeles, and is committed to various political and philanthropic causes. He's a recovering alcoholic and hasn't had a drink since he was 20. In 1997, Max Kennedy compiled a book of his father's favourite quotes and writings: "It was at times painful, because I felt his absence again. It was a process of getting to know a man whom I really had barely known." And later that same year, tragedy struck the family again, when his brother Michael Kennedy died in a ski accident in Colorado. Max dedicated his book to his brother, the second he had lost: "I loved and love both of my brothers more than I could ever explain. And miss them every day. Every day." Lesley Stahl also talks to the Shriver branch of the Kennedy family. Eunice, JFK's younger sister, married Sargent Shriver, who ran for vice president in 1972, and for president in 1976 — and he did a few other things, as his daughter, Maria Shriver, former television reporter and present First Lady of California, explains. "He did the Peace Corps, the Job Corps, Head Start, legal services for the poor, foster grandparents, neighbourhood health services. He started all of those," says Maria Shriver. "I'm so hopeful that people will understand the Shriver legacy, not as much as the Kennedy legacy, because it doesn't have the same sex appeal. But it's a solid legacy."  The Shrivers have the same kind of dedication to public service as the Kennedys. Bobby Shriver, at 49, is the oldest of the five Shriver children. He's a record producer and has teamed up with rock superstar Bono to raise billions of dollars for Third World debt relief and the AIDS crisis in Africa. His younger brother, Tim Shriver, 44, runs the Special Olympics. Tim's youngest brother, Anthony, began a mentoring program 15 years ago, called Best Buddies, inspired by his aunt Rosemary, JFK's severely disabled sister, now 85.And, of course, there's Maria Shriver. "Who knows who might run for office?" asks her brother Bobby. "You know, Maria Shriver might run for office. How'd you like to run against Maria Shriver?" It's ultimately loyalty that has sustained the Kennedy legacy. "All the tragedies in my family have left me with a sense that you can carry on," says Tim Shriver. "At the end of the day we are a family." The Kennedy sons say they are trying to stay true to the words of their ancestors. "My grandfather used to say this: fight as hard as you can for what's right, and then let God take care of the results," says Bobby Kennedy Jnr. "I have to make it to the end of my life without stopping fighting, you know? I have to die with my boots on. And I know I'm going to do that." For more on this story and the Kennedy legacy, click on this CBS News web page. |
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