The Durable Matriarch

Throughout the Kennedy saga of success and tragedy, Rose Kennedy, matriarch of the family, has endured with an equanimity that has amazed outsiders and inspired her children. Last week, in the only interview she has given since the latest travail began, she told TIME Correspondent Hays Gorey of her beliefs and expectations.

THIS is a good life," Rose Kennedy begins. "God does not send us a cross any heavier than we can bear." With the reputation of her only surviving son tarnished, with his presidential potential dimmed if not extinguished, Mrs. Kennedy weighs the newest cross and finds it tolerable: "How you cope is the important thing, not the events themselves." She continues: "Teddy has been so magnificent under a tremendous strain which people don't know about. He has been overly conscientious about his father and about me and about Ethel--in addition to his own obligations. He has been so faithful in caring about us all. It has really been unfair --the burden."

She recalls that all the men in her life--father, husband, sons --have regarded politics "as a worthy ambition and honorable profession," and she clearly has not given up her hopes for her surviving son's political future. With conviction, she says: "I'm sure Ted can rise above all this."

Mrs. Kennedy keeps turning the conversation away from her own family's grief to that of Mary Jo Kopechne's parents. Their agony reminds her of the Euripides tragedy, The Trojan Women. "It is fundamentally unnatural for an older person to have to bury a younger one," she explains.

She speaks from cruel memory.

Rose Kennedy has lost four of her nine children in violence: John and Robert assassinated, Joseph Jr. killed in World War II, Kathleen dead in a plane crash. Another daughter, Rosemary, is mentally retarded and Joseph Sr., now 80, has been incapacitated for eight years by a stroke. She reserves much of her time for her ailing husband, who is now no longer able to come downstairs.

Even in-laws have seemed doomed. Kathleen's British husband was killed in combat, and Ethel Kennedy's parents and brother died in plane crashes. What has sustained Rose Kennedy through all this is her Roman Catholic belief and her literal, intense faith in God. She believes that He has a grand design, that people must accept personal tragedy in their lives as part of the eternal mystery.

Mrs. Kennedy also believes in returning to normalcy as soon as possible, as she demonstrated again last week. In the first few days following the accident, she gave up her usual visit to 7 a.m. Mass at St. Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis, and a priest came to the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport instead. She also passed up her daily round of golf and canceled an appearance at a church bazaar when Ted suggested that she do so.

After a few days she returned to her vigorous regimen: early morning Mass, a noontime swim in her pool or in Nantucket Sound, and a solitary afternoon of golf on the back nine of the Hyannisport Club. In between, she devotes time to her heavy correspondence, her work in behalf of the mentally retarded, and reading. She has received books on Greek history from Jackie Onassis, and an invitation to go on to Greece on her forthcoming visit to Paris to see her daughter Eunice and her son-in-law, U.S. Ambassador Sargent Shriver.

Rose Kennedy's birthday on July 22 fell on the same day as Mary Jo's funeral, and the informal family dinner was held a few days later. In the rush of recent publicity, some reports gave her age as 80. She complains that a woman in her position can never keep her age a secret. But she wants the record straight. She is "only 79."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.