Rose-Colored Glasses

By Ruth Mehrtens Galvin

TIMES TO REMEMBER

by ROSE FITZGERALD KENNEDY 536 pages. Doubleday. $12.50.

"There's no baloney with Grandma," Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy's grandson Christopher Lawford observes toward the end of this book. Christopher's young cousin, John F. Kennedy Jr., explains: Rose likes you to learn a lot, and she gives you plenty of cake.

Both boys are right--partly. There is quite a bit of baloney in Grandma's book, but along with such things as an especially treacly view of her husband's disposition and career that all but the most ardent Kennedy fans will find hard to swallow, the reader is offered much nourishment. He learns a good deal, for example, about the frail, "funny little boy" who became President; about J.F.K.'s older sister Rosemary, who was retarded from birth; about that conscientious younger brother Bob; about the hard work that marriage demands--even from the very rich.

Mrs. Kennedy does not mind actually saying that life is no bowl of cherries. She believes that those with privilege must help those without. She refrains, however, from pushing her own ideas on the reader--yes, even where religion is concerned. The dominant tone is joy and a total rejection of self-pity. "Nobody's ever going to feel sorry for me," Rose murmured to Jacqueline Kennedy after Joe's death.

The book, which Rose has been working on for years, is long and fragmented. It was organized and edited by former LIFE Writer Robert Coughlan, who used old diaries and notes plus new taped interviews. But it successfully assembles a whole woman out of many parts--the politician's daughter; the devout young girl; the social butterfly; the wife of an intolerant, driving man; not to mention that shadowed figure that has fleetingly presented itself to the public in recent years. All of these images are united in a portrait not merely of Mrs. Kennedy but of the ingredients of motherhood as she sees them. God, she believes, has special work for each of us to do, and there is not a moment to waste.

Rose Fitzgerald was schooled by her mother in solitude, thrift and order, though there was always money for cooks and nursemaids, for the trips and the couturier clothes that she loved. Once married, she never questioned her husband's long absences from home or his judgment--except once. That was over the boys' schooling. She favored a Catholic education, but Joe wanted his sons prepared for a broader, more catholic world. He turned out to be right, she says, and from then on, "if Joe said it was so, for me it was so."

The Kennedys raised their family in an America where there was also little doubt that life would be better for each new generation. While Joe Kennedy steamrollered his way to the top in business, Rose took over a big household and a litany of commands to the group: wear your sweater, learn your Latin, get your shoes off the dining-room table, "take Rosemary along"--to tennis, swimming, dancing. Rose passes on some fairly obvious household hints (kids love creamed chicken) and child-rearing methods (be tough with the eldest child because the others will imitate him). Among the devices that she worked out was a system of pinning messages to her dress to remind her of things to be done for the children. Messages and all, the question remains, why did Rose Kennedy have such success as a mother? She does not discuss the question or offer an answer. But the book and the life it obliquely reflects leave no doubt at all: absolute faith in the value and importance of being a mother, in her children, and the greatest gift --faith in God. After reading her book, even the veriest agnostic, the most doubting parent, cannot help being somewhat awed by the glow, and value, of that gift. It is clear, though, that one of the crucial contradictions of the Kennedy clan may have been a belief that Rose's gentle ideals sometimes could be achieved only through the harsh methods practiced by Father Joe. Ruth Mehrens Golvin

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