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Community Corner

The Kennedys' Other Playground

New tales about our favorite royal family getting nutsy on Martha's Vineyard.

Snap quiz: Which of the Kennedys smoked three packs of cigarettes a day?

You might suppose it was red-faced, over-weight Ted who looked like the kind of fellow who’d puff away in the dark of his limo while his driver dashed into the Dairy Queen for two Blizzards (and a third one for himself.)

But no, it was Jackie O! Jackie who, as we’ve reported in this column, kayaked, swam, and cycled, only stopping to nibble carrot sticks and sip blueberry smoothies along the way to her yoga class. It came as a complete shock, then, when she died so relatively young, at the age of 64. Jackie O?! This paragon of healthy living?

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But no, in her final days, Jackie confided to her close friend, fashion designer Oleg Cassini, that she had smoked three packs a day for over forty years. If you’re going to inhale that many mini-stogies 24/7, you’ve got a pre-booked Appointment in Samara.

I learned all about Jackie's secret habit from reading a new book, “After Camelot” by J. Randy Taraborrelli. I found, to my gossip girl’s delight, that fresh tales abound of Kennedy mayhem and madcaps on Martha’s Vineyard.

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In Jackie’s final nicotine-laden years, she spent most of her time on her 375 acres in Aquinnah. How, we might ask, then, did she hide this questionable habit? Did she dash behind tool sheds and overgrown rosa rugosa and under her seat at the Vineyard Playhouse to inhale those forbidden blue streams of smoke?

It takes about three minutes to suck down a cigarette. Sixty ciggies amounts to an hour and a half a day, or, more explicitely, ninety completely wasted idiotic minutes. It puts a new twist on this famously elegant lady’s last seasons on this idyllic island.

It’s not unfair to say that Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’s final fashion statement to the world, and to Vineyarders in particular, is the following: Quit now!

Okay, moving on: Because Martha’s Vineyard Patch is a classy publication, and not for a moment do we ever go tabloidal, we’ll totally gloss over any of the new scuttlebutt to emerge about Ted Kennedy and that infamous bridge on Chappaquiddick, except to say . . . except to say that after the tragedy, Rose Kennedy scolded her son, “It was very stupid. You should have known better.”

Busted! Had he been a few years younger, she would have grounded him.

During the 1969 Edgartown Regatta that had brought young Senator Ted Kennedy to the island with disastrous results, his nephew and Ethel Kennedy’s son, Joseph Jr., arrived to cheer his uncle on. Accommodations being scarce during this High Prep sporting event, young Joe and a buddy of his searched high and low, finally securing a room for themselves at the quaint old Daggett House on North Water Street.

The two teens hurriedly unpacked their bags, then headed off to the races. Many hours later they returned with five more 17 year-olds in tow, having exercised their droigt de hospitality by inviting them to crash in their room.

The inn’s owner, Fred Chirgwin, learned of the double room now occupied as a septuplet. He knocked on the door and informed young Joe that his five extra guests would need to depart. The youngster, infuriated, hurled his sailing cap at Mr. Chirgwin, and shouted, “I’m a Kennedy! If a Kennedy rents a room, he can do whatever he likes with it!”

Oops. Well, no one expects 17 year-olds to enjoy a thorough grasp of good manners, and clearly neither Rose nor Ethel nor the Milton Academy had taken time to instill them, so Mr. Chirgwin taught R-E-S-P-E-C-T the old-fashioned way: He told all seven kids to hit the bricks.

For our final story, once again, Martha’s Vineyard played a role in shaping American’s political journey. In 1969 it was Ted Kennedy’s ill-advised response (or lack of) on Chappaquiddick that removed him from the ranks of future presidents.

Later in the 90s and early 2000s, Bill and Hillary Clinton during their Vineyard visits had become tight friends during with Ted, now a senator of some fifty years, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, new family doyenne and, along with Uncle Teddy, chief point person in Kennedy-backed politics.

And yet, in 2007, Caroline endorsed candidate Barack Obama as the democratic nominee over her homegirl Hillary.

Bill Clinton, war-horse of a politician that he was, took it on the chin. But Hillary and Chelsea were shattered. What happened to all the picnics, the parties, the waterskiing and sailing trips on Martha’s Vineyard? What about those dreadful weeks following the plane crash of JFK Jr. when Chelsea was Caroline’s constant companion in her time of need?

Well, as Teddy himself summed it up in a press conference, “With Barack Obama, we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay.”

He got that right.

It’s been a long haul for us Vineyarders with the Kennedys and now the Obamas who, it seems, may return this August for a new vacation here.

No doubt about it. This island is a king-maker.

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