PEOPLE The Kennedys: Jack & Jackie and Bobby & Ethel

By The Editors of PEOPLE

Fifty years after Bobby Kennedy's assassination, the mystique endures. Celebrate the Kennedys' legacy in this commemorative edition, PEOPLE The Kennedys.

• Language: English
• Publisher: People
• Release date: May 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781547843114

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FAMILY ALBUM

Kennedy Memories

Patriarch Joseph Sr. set the tone: In times of triumph as in times of need, Jack, Bobby and their seven siblings drew strength from their common bond

FIRST DOWN Uncle Jack literally passed on the family passion for football to his nephew Bobby Jr. as RFK looked on at Hickory Hill.

HOMECOMING The grown-up Kennedy kids reunited in a 1952 family photo. From left: Jean, Pat, Bobby, Jack and Eunice.

AFTER DARK Bobby and Ethel were guests at a dinner given by then Sen. Jack Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, at their Georgetown, D.C., townhouse in 1957.

You work hard all day, and then you like to be with a few friends. At least that's the way Jack operated, and it's the way I like to live too

—Jacqueline Kennedy

HANDS FULL He was a fully engaged father, recalls Kerry Kennedy of her dad, Bobby, seen here with Ethel and 7 of their 11 children at their house in the family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass.

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S BOYS AND GIRLS The President of the United States and his many children, nieces and nephews in Hyannis Port on Aug. 3, 1963: from left, Kathleen Kennedy (holding her brother Christopher), Edward Jr., Joseph II, Kara, Robert Jr., David, Caroline, Michael, Courtney, Kerry, Bobby Shriver (holding his brother Timothy), Maria Shriver, Steve Smith Jr., Willie Smith, siblings Christopher, Victoria, Sidney and Robin Lawford and, in the foreground, John Jr.

He’d always come out in the garden of their school during recess and clap his hands, and all the little [kids] would come running

—Jacqueline Kennedy

Boys to Men

How a handsome charmer and his ‘runty’ brother found common ground and set off to fulfill the dreams of their dominating dad

DISTANT BROTHERS Bobby (following photo) was 12 in 1937, when 20-year-old Jack (above, with Dunker) toured Europe with a pal.

Even among Boston’s upper crust, the Kennedys were a breed apart. Joseph, the paterfamilias, was one of the richest men in the nation, and his wife, Rose, the favorite daughter of the city’s first Irish-Catholic mayor. They frequented all the right bastions of privilege—Harvard, the Somerset Club, the resorts of Cape Cod and Palm Beach. But unlike the city’s old-money Brahmins, who aped the manners of British nobility, the grinning, athletic Kennedys embodied a forward-looking spirit of American exceptionalism. The castle or the outhouse, Joe liked to say, nothing in between.

Joe and Rose settled down in a large colonial-style house in the suburb of Brookline. They ultimately had nine children—four boys and five girls—each with a distinct personality, but most of them intensely competitive, often in hard-fought touch-football games that became a family trademark. Joe Sr. had big expectations for his sons, above all firstborn Joe Jr.—who was tall, fearless and a born leader; and Jack, the quick-witted, Hollywood-handsome second son who didn’t seem to have to try. The patriarch dismissed Bobby—eight years younger than Jack, shorter and less gifted athletically than his older siblings—as the runt of the litter. The toothy youngster decorated his bedroom with cutout pictures of U.S. Presidents and pored over his large collection of stamps. I was pretty quiet most of the time, he told writer Jack Newfield years later. And I didn’t mind being alone. An altar boy, he practiced over and over the words of the Latin mass; of all the kids and especially