Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Kennedy Curse, Part 2
51 Plays29 days ago
Welcome back to the Kennedy Curse. Today, we talk about how the Kennedy family ended up in Boston from Ireland and the first generation born in the United States.
Check out our YouTube channel, Fixate Today: Grey Matters
Sources (there's a lot):
Books: The Kennedy Curse by Edward Klein, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Katie Clifford Larson, The First Kennedys: The Humber Roots of an American Dynasty by Neal Thompson, After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family 1968 to the Present by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan, The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power by Garry Wills, Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
Media: Grey Gardens (1975 documentary), JFK (1991 film), Thirteen Days (2000 film), Murder in Greenwich (2002 television film), Bobby (2006 film), Grey Gardens (2006 musical), Grey Gardens (2009 film), Parkland (2013 film), 11.23.63 (2016 series), Jackie (2016 film), Chappaquiddick (2017 film), Cover-Up (2018 podcast), The RFK Tapes (2018 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episodes 400-405: JFK (2020 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episode Relaxed Fit: Marilyn Monroe & The President’s Aspirin (2020 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episode Side Stories: The Bullet in the Backseat (2023 podcast), Wine & Crime, Episode 366: Lobotomy Crimes (2024 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episode 1046: The Miseducation of Ed Larsen - JFK & Government Conspiracies (2025 podcast), United States of Kennedy (2025 podcast), Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder (2025 podcast), Wine & Crime, Episode 456: Family Curses (2026 podcast), Love Story (2026 series)
Websites: historyhit.com, Scientific America, CNN, PBS, CBS News, BBC, Autistic Self Advocacy Center, InStyle, Best Buddies International, All Things Interesting, USA Today, Today in Civil Liberties, Cambridge Dictionary, Kennedys and King, RJP Books, New York Post, Boston Magazine, Time, The Moth, Vanity Fair, Voices Center for Resilience, Reddit, Washington Association of Black Journalists, NPR, The Ringer, The Daily Express, The Harvard Crimson, Wikipedia
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Topic
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Fixate Today Gone Tomorrow. I'm Nikki and I'm here with my Aunt Joy. We are two neurodivergent ladies who obsess about various topics. Joy is autistic and I have ADHD and we are letting our hyper fixations fly.
00:00:14
Speaker
Today we are fixating on the Kennedy Curse. Music
00:00:27
Speaker
All right. It's kind of fun going back to history. yeah I actually really have been, well, we'll see with how many episodes I've written. I've really liked going into the historical stuff again. But seeing the parallels to what we... Yeah, yeah that's what I was going to say. Like, there's so much... What do they say? They say, history doesn't repeat itself. It's an echo of itself. Nice.
The Kennedy Family Timeline
00:00:50
Speaker
So last episode, we um walked through just kind of some of the big themes that we'll find as we're going through the Kennedy family's history. We didn't get to had made this like crazy big timeline, but I am going to and I'm saying this so I remember to do it. I'm going to make a a timeline and share it on our social media with all of that stuff, with the stuff we're going to touch on. Because it does get it it does get complicated. And also the names. I mean, especially in this one, some yeah with people named after others. The names, yeah. It gets a little hard to follow. Yeah. And then especially in these earlier episodes, because I'm going kind of chronologically as much as I can. at the end of some of them, there's just kind of a list of...
00:01:31
Speaker
like smaller stories that kind of our tragedy that touched the Kennedys that didn't really fit into the narrative, but couldn't be their own episode really because there's so there's not information. So especially, like I said, at the beginning of the series, there will be like, we'll get through the story that, ah you know, the notes we've done and I'll be like, OK, and here's some other things that happen.
00:01:54
Speaker
That sounds good.
Patrick Kennedy's Life in Ireland
00:01:55
Speaker
So today we are starting with the first generation Kennedys. This actually starts before the first generation, because I think when you're talking about people who have immigrated into the U.S., the first generation would be the generation that was born here, not...
00:02:13
Speaker
The parents who moved here. Okay, yes. So we're starting back in Ireland. We're starting back in Ireland. We are starting with the parents who then led to the first generation.
00:02:25
Speaker
We will have all of our sources listed in the show notes because there are too many. So let's get into it. We're going to talk about Patrick and Bridget Kennedy.
00:02:36
Speaker
Patrick Kennedy was born in Ireland in 1823. The idea of curses started off immediately because Patrick's father, also Patrick,
00:02:48
Speaker
was very superstitious and he believed in true curses. And it seems like that was a that was a major theme throughout Ireland in those days, especially with the Catholics. Yeah. And the attitudes that England thrust upon those in Ireland yeah as being a lower than class and that being part of the curt like the curse of Yeah.
00:03:16
Speaker
The Irish brought the curb curse at bad luck, things like that. um That was kind of something that, you know, we always talk about the luck of the Irish on St. Patrick's Day and stuff. And it's like, well, maybe maybe that's actually comes from the idea that was put upon them of the opposite.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah. The old English and the unlock of the Irish. So Patrick's mother's name was Mary Joanna. She was, it was said, very inauthentic with her emotions. So immediately we've got this repetition of kind of cold mothers starting off right off the top. Patrick craved warmth and protection, but felt emotionally cheated by his mother.
00:03:56
Speaker
He also hated to feel embarrassed. And that made him kind of seek power and control in situations. And he would decry any sort of weakness. And he got this kind of from his mom.
00:04:09
Speaker
And to the point where, like, he presented himself very strong, stood upright, because that was his way of showing the world his strength. through outside appearance. Yeah, definitely.
00:04:24
Speaker
So when he was in his early 20s, he had agreed to an arranged marriage to the daughter of a seemingly financially secure local family.
00:04:35
Speaker
When he kind of met with the family and agreed to meet the daughter and and to the arranged marriage, while he was at their house, this family had a farm that was full of animals.
00:04:47
Speaker
So they get married And they consummated the marriage. And as soon as that happened, suddenly all the animals that had been on that farm were gone. So it turns out the family of this woman had borrowed farm animals to trick Patrick into believing that they were actually wealthy. To be fair, Patrick was not wealthy. He was or no had had nothing to inherit. He was the youngest son. So he was was not in line to inherit at all. and That's why actually at the time he was working as an apprentice cooper um at a local business.
00:05:24
Speaker
Yeah. Bottling? What do they call it? Local? I say i don't even know. but but He was making barrels. Yeah. And and coffins. Yes. And coffins. um so So he did not
Immigration Journey to the U.S.
00:05:34
Speaker
come for money. So I i feel like it was a little bit of double crossing both ways. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:05:41
Speaker
But the problem Patrick now faced was that he was facing debtor's prison because he had borrowed a large sum of money. believing that he was about to come into a fortune with this marriage.
00:05:52
Speaker
No record of this marriage has been found, um likely because the Catholic Church had it annulled, probably under like fraud or something. Also, the Catholics were just sort of thought as second rate citizens. And so records were not kept as much um ah for the Catholics versus the Protestants. I think so.
00:06:12
Speaker
We're doing great. I didn't look enough about Irish history. Oh, goodness. Well, after that whole debacle, Patrick met and fell in love with a young woman named Bridget Murphy.
00:06:25
Speaker
And this was real. Like, this was true. This wasn't an arrangement. This was they actually met. They fell deeply in love pretty quickly. And he ended up purchasing tickets to the United States for himself, Bridget and her parents.
00:06:39
Speaker
And most likely he used the money from that big loan he had taken from the first marriage to pay for the tickets. So he kind of escaped debtor's prison by just fleeing the country. And it was a fairly large, was like $80, I think, approximately. Yeah, it was pretty In that range for the ticket. So it was definitely not the amount of money he would normally have per his position in life. Yeah. And he also recognized that he had to leave Ireland because it was the fourth winter in a row that the potato crops had been destroyed. And I think he recognized that there was no way that, number one, he was going to be able to repay that loan in Ireland. And number two, that he was going to become financially stable if he stayed. And to this extent that the landlords were encouraging people to emigrate, to leave, so that they could reuse that land
00:07:40
Speaker
um raise cattle, which were more profitable. So there was, there was a lot of encouragement yeah to leave the the country at that point. And a lot of, you know, like brochures and, and that encouraging, you know, what, what a great life you would have in the, in the U S and that, I think that also was part of it. Also, it wasn't necessarily looked upon as um a great,
00:08:07
Speaker
accomplishment it was a little bit more of a failure in Ireland um they just seem like it seems like there's a lot of negativity going on yeah yeah it's almost like you're giving up if you leave right right which is it's a little bit sad but I mean at the same time this potato famine people were starving and yeah yeah and if you had the means to to save your own life and possibly your family's, then yeah yeah. Or to endozzle it.
00:08:36
Speaker
Or. i mean, that fair. Well, he and Bridget married once they arrived in Boston in 1849.
00:08:48
Speaker
so Let's pivot slightly. Let's talk about the Irish in Boston. The Irish were largely resented by native Bostonians. They were mocked for their speech, economic status, and social behavior.
00:09:03
Speaker
And life was pretty difficult in the U.S. in Boston for them. This included clashes between Catholics and Protestants that happened because Catholics were viewed much lower.
00:09:15
Speaker
And I don't know if it's like, what's the chicken or the egg? If it's the Irish and they happen to be Catholic or if it's the Catholic who are Irish, you know, but the Irishness and Catholicism made anyone who immigrated a lower class.
00:09:30
Speaker
And this seemed to have taken Patrick by surprise. He did not realize that he was going to have to face the same societal challenges as much yeah in America. Yeah.
00:09:44
Speaker
Patrick kind of lucked out. He pretty quickly found work at the Daniel Francis Copperage and Brass Foundry making beer barrels. Boston was widely known as a whiskey town, so his skills in brass and cooperage would always be in demand. He would never not have work with those skills. And here's the first time we're starting to see the family trend of making money, the Kennedy money through through alcohol. Starts back then. Yeah.
00:10:12
Speaker
Bridget found work as a housekeeper, which was very common for Irish women. In fact, the name Bridget was so common for Irish women that housekeepers in Boston were often referred to by the homeowners as my Bridget instead of like my maid or whatever. It was always my Bridget. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:33
Speaker
The couple would go on to have five children. They had a son who died, three daughters, and another son. John Francis Kennedy died in 1855 when he was 20 months old.
00:10:47
Speaker
It is believed that he fell ill with an intestinal disorder, likely from tainted food or spoiled milk. Because life was so difficult in Boston, Patrick and Bridget were always worried about the safety of their kids.
00:11:01
Speaker
It was ongoing, especially after losing their first. However, three years later, on November 22nd, 1858, Patrick died of tuberculosis at just the age of 35.
00:11:16
Speaker
So within nine years, he left Ireland, immigrated to the U.S., had nine kids?
Bridget Kennedy's Success in Boston
00:11:25
Speaker
No, five. He had five kids and got married.
00:11:31
Speaker
interestingly hit the day he died is 105 years before the day of jfk's assassination that's another weird thing we're gonna see there's a lot of corresponding dates that really there's no explanation it's just weird and coincidental i don't know the couple's youngest child patrick so we've got a third patrick already we're 15 minutes in and we've got three patricks he was only 10 months old when his father died Bridget never remarried, but she learned how to behave in society to get herself ahead. It seemed like she knew how to play the game. She might not have liked the game, but she knew what she had to do to ah get approval in society for who she was.
00:12:16
Speaker
She also on her own opened a grocery store of sorts, as well as becoming a hairdresser. And I think Being a hairdresser and seeing the higher society ladies um gave her the desire to raise herself to be part of that class.
00:12:37
Speaker
And it also gave her kind of the glimpse of how she would need to behave, you know, how she would um fit in, how she can help herself if behave. Sounds bad. It sounds like a child, but like how she could kind of ingratiate herself, what the upper class, how they, but how they acted in society, how they, you know, spoke and held themselves and those things. So she kind of probably got the really like firsthand glimpse of, okay, this is what I got to do and I'll do it. Yeah. That's very important. Yeah.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yep. So Bridget, right after Patrick died, she began working at a local shop to support the family. But as you said, she was able to eventually purchase the shop and take it over. And so it was just it was a little local kind of grocery store.
00:13:22
Speaker
But she did sell whiskey, which was probably what kept the family afloat. again, can't be understated how much alcohol played a role in this community. And a lot of that is because of the shame that was put upon the Irish and and alcohol being a way to cope with that shame. yeah and And actually like drinking being something a like a subsidy for actually eating rather than eating and also became like a male bonding um experience. So the tolerance to to drinking and and how one carried themselves in the bars was was very integral and how um the Irish at that time were
00:14:09
Speaker
living as Well, we should say Irish irish men. Yes. Yeah. So she did. i mean, it was it was wise of her to take advantage of that um and to and, again, to see that, foresee like how she could make money and succeed. Yeah, absolutely. She was very insightful.
00:14:28
Speaker
She's very insightful. She might be one of my favorite Kennedys. She might be my favorite Kennedy. So what's wild at this time, like she, as both a woman and an immigrant, wasn't allowed to vote and she became a successful business owner.
00:14:44
Speaker
on her own. She also recognized that her daughters would face all the same challenges. Her daughters were not going to, unless they, they kind of had the wherewithal she did. I don't think this was about doubting them. I think it was recognizing their place in society. She kind of recognized her daughters would deal with the same things. And so all of her expectations, all of her hopes were placed on her only surviving son, Patrick.
00:15:10
Speaker
On December 1888, Bridget suffered a stroke and died at the age of 67. She died 30 years after her husband, and she was actually able to leave her children and estate, which I think male or female was a huge deal to be able to do at that time, especially for the Irish.
00:15:33
Speaker
Her desire had always been to set her children up for better lives,
PJ Kennedy's Political Influence
00:15:37
Speaker
but she had kind of gone above and beyond that. She had been able to save her husband Patrick's family farm back in Ireland.
00:15:46
Speaker
The family would make payments over 80 years before completely owning the property, but she was the able to like make that down payment to save the farm. That's unbelievable. Yeah. yeah just like Despite their struggles that they were sending money regularly yeah back to Ireland for and and for I mean, not just to pay for the farm, but also for the cause of Irish freedom in general. Yeah. And that I think is another Kennedy trait we'll see is um the dedication to family.
00:16:19
Speaker
And they're very stubborn. So I can see how like generations would be like, we're paying off this farm. It took 80 years, but none of them were like, let's give it up and sell it.
00:16:30
Speaker
All right. So now we are officially at the first generation. We are going to talk about PJ Kennedy and John F. Fitzgerald. And we'll talk about how he gets his killer nickname, Honey Fitzgerald.
00:16:43
Speaker
PJ is Patrick, thes they ah Bridget's son, which is very helpful that you can change patrick another Patrick to a PJ.
00:16:55
Speaker
Patrick Joseph Kennedy was only seven when his mother first opened the shop. He was not ambitious and he was chronically truant as a child, but was very charming.
00:17:06
Speaker
And Bridget knew she had to protect him from getting himself into trouble. Another Kennedy trait. But bringing in the charming factor, I think, is is yeah is important.
00:17:17
Speaker
We have the ambition, and now we have the charm coming together. Yep. So PJ would go on to help his mother at the shop. I'm pretty sure she forced him. And then he ended up as an adult getting a job at the East Boston Docks.
00:17:32
Speaker
He went on to work as a brass finisher and then a bartender and then a bar owner. he kind of did the same steps that his mother did of being able to purchase the establishment he was working.
00:17:45
Speaker
Now at this time, The anti-drinking movement had really begun in the US. s I don't know. I don't think we're in. We're definitely not in prohibition. I don't believe yet. But it was kind of ramping up.
00:17:57
Speaker
And PJ himself was not a drinker, but in the same way he recognized the value of owning a bar at this time. And some ah you know something like the anti-drinking movement can actually backfire and drive drive people to to the bars more.
00:18:18
Speaker
Or at least probably reduce the number of bars in the area so that those who were still in business and thriving could... Yeah. And he was he was really liked in the community. he He was empathetic and outgoing and generous and he seemed like gregarious and just everybody everybody liked him. So his positive reputation in the community opened the door to him for a looking into local politics.
00:18:44
Speaker
Eventually, he would sell the bar and let his liquor license expire to kind of explore a possible political career. His political awakening came during Ireland's fight for freedom. He recognized that Boston was full of Irish voters and he was going to get elected pretty quickly. And he was, he was elected to his first political office at the age of 24. And he would actually go on to pretty fast repurchase his bar once he realized the link between politics and liquor.
00:19:18
Speaker
Voters would talk about politics at bars. And being this likable, gregarious gentleman, he knew a lot of people. People liked him. He was the kind of guy who would stop on the streets and and chat with everyone.
00:19:34
Speaker
In that way, maybe a little bit of ah an Alec Murdoch, if you will. Yeah. But I think was actually kind. ah True. it was Yes. it Yes. Yeah. It was more of a true heart. Yes. So he he figured if he repurchased the bar...
00:19:51
Speaker
He's ingratiated right into those big political conversations that were happening. He met his wife, Mary Augusta Hickey, in 1887. She was very supporting and doting.
00:20:03
Speaker
ah Historians have called her, quote, very firm and very severe and, quote, the power behind the throne. And she was really the polar opposite of his warm, doting, loving, caring mother. She was much more focused on his ambition. So she loved him. You know, she supported him in every way. But it was there was things to be gained by supporting him, I think. But still that the strength of the woman, which we go on to see. oh yeah.
00:20:35
Speaker
Their son, Joseph Patrick, was born on September 1888.
00:20:41
Speaker
And they decided to switch the order of the names because Joseph would avoid more of the anti-Irish sentiments than the name Patrick. And and it makes it easier. so He's really like, it it helps us. They knew what they were doing.
00:20:56
Speaker
They had another son, Francis, who was born in 1891, but he died just before his first birthday. Mary responded by throwing everything she had into raising Joe.
00:21:07
Speaker
And two months after Francis's death, they had a daughter named Mary Loretta. But Joe became their golden boy. 1893, meant a gentleman named John f Fitzgerald.
00:21:21
Speaker
Now, John went by the nickname and what we will be calling him going forward, Honey Fitz, because of his propensity for dipping his fingers into sugar barrels and licking them clean.
00:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, his father also owned a shop and a pub. Yep. Was a little bit more successful, I believe. Yes, a little more well-known, a little bit more established. hence the Hence the barrels of sugar. Yes, yes. So as we kind of already talked about, ah pubs were...
00:21:51
Speaker
really a central meeting place for the Irish in Boston. And that kind of created this link of like alcoholism and drinking as a means of bonding with other men.
00:22:02
Speaker
But this coupled with Catholic guilt, we're going to talk a lot about Catholic guilt, over drinking too much and the guilt of drinking too much. Put that together, it expressed in anger from a lot of Irish men. Which again, we could see it as a theme throughout.
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah. Much of his history. Yeah.
Joe Kennedy's Legacy and Partnership
00:22:21
Speaker
Side note, we are born. We were both of us were born Catholic. Yes. I no longer am. I don't know. web I don't know what you. I still consider myself Catholic, but but not not very much practicing one.
00:22:34
Speaker
That guilt doesn't go away when you leave the religion. But still enjoy the alcohol. Yeah, right. I don't feel bad about it. So PJ found Honey Fitz absolutely insufferable.
00:22:49
Speaker
The men would be both political allies and rivals for their entire career span. They had this, like, they drove each other crazy, but they had respected each other.
00:23:01
Speaker
Both men would enjoy the benefits of corrupt systems around them, but managed to avoid direct involvement in anything. It's almost like some sketchy things are happening, but I'm getting a little cash from it. So, like, I just will turn a blind eye to stuff going on.
00:23:18
Speaker
They're staying on the perimeter, but benefiting. So there's what I got. I got to go back to Honey Fitz just a little bit. So they would they said, you know, he was a charming and witty. um And okay my favorite, they said he walked with the the the light step of a leprechaun, which is how I always. and just It's such a visual picture that I can. Yeah.
00:23:44
Speaker
Yes. It does seem like as they got older, PJ kind of became more serious and was like annoyed by Honey Fitz antics. Honey Fitz was known as a womanizer throughout his life.
00:23:57
Speaker
In 1913, political enemy introduced him to a sex worker named Elizabeth Ryan, who went by the name Toodles. His daughter, Rose, was 23 years old at the time.
00:24:08
Speaker
And that was the same age as Toodles. Theme said history repeats. Yep. Tootles was socially inferior, but he was very attracted to her. So they went on to have a full blown affair.
00:24:21
Speaker
A letter was sent to Honey Fitz's wife, Josie, that said if he didn't withdraw for whatever political campaign he was running at the time, the affair would be exposed. Josie begged him to withdraw, but he decided to call the blackmailers bluff.
00:24:37
Speaker
Coincidentally, at the same time, three days later, Honey Fitz nearly died falling down a flight of stairs, then flipping over a railing and falling another 20 feet while he was doing his job as a home inspector. This guy.
00:24:50
Speaker
So after the injury, the political enemy stepped up the intimidation tactics and announced he would I don't even know who the person is, but he somehow announced that he would he was going to embark on a lecture circuit about toodles and like exposing this affair.
00:25:08
Speaker
And with this, between the injury and the blackmail, Honey Fitz withdrew from this election. In 1910, PJ retired from politics, setting his oldest son Joe up to take over the family.
00:25:20
Speaker
Joe was smart, ambitious, and entrepreneurial from a young age. So Joe met his wife Rose through Honey Fitz. They met as small children and fell in love as teenagers. And their relationship actually helped Honey Fitz's political career until the Tootles scandal.
00:25:39
Speaker
You're seeing these two like political rivals, kids fall in love. They got married very young. I think Joe was like barely out of teenage-dom when they married and Rose might have been like 19. They started having kids pretty quickly. We'll talk about, we'll get into their history a little bit more in the next episode. But PJ and Mary loved being grandparents. It seemed like being a grandmother softened Mary.
00:26:05
Speaker
However, Mary died at the age of 65 from stomach cancer.
Conclusion and Reflection on Themes
00:26:11
Speaker
To deal with the grief, PJ ended up taking his two daughters to tour Europe to just, I don't know, for a bereavement trip to get away from it all. And they both met men in Europe and got married really quick and I think stayed in Europe. Which shows the wealth they had um achieved by this point.
00:26:31
Speaker
Yeah, really, really does. So this nowadays doesn't seem terribly... groundbreaking But back then, this was kind of astonishing that PJ saw all of his grandchildren survive from being babies.
00:26:46
Speaker
He didn't have to see his kids experience losing one of their children. He was able to every grandchild of his. able to survive and that was just incredible for him who had lost i believe at least one child pj was diagnosed with heart issues and degenerative liver disease and died on may 18th 1929 and honey fits gave his eulogy so it again rivals yet friends yeah i imagine once
00:27:18
Speaker
Joe and Rose started having grandkids, their grandchildren. They maybe, maybe a bit of a hatchet got buried once they were retired and, uh, you know, uh, PJ lost his wife and all those things. I imagine it had to be a bond. Yeah.
00:27:34
Speaker
Bit of a reconciliation. So ah before we go on, I'm guessing this is going to be one of the shorter Kennedy episodes because there's not a ton of information that far back about them. The other ones are going to go a bit more in depth.
00:27:46
Speaker
But there were quite a few just like tangential family tragedies during this timeline that we're talking about the first generation. So I'm going to go through those chronologically and just give a little bit of info about these things. um In 1873, Josie Hannon was present at the age of eight when her four-year-old sister Elizabeth and Elizabeth's friend died by drowning. She was supposed to be watching the girls while they were swimming.
00:28:17
Speaker
Trust the eight-year-old to watch two four-year-olds, but you know, it's the 1800s. Josie was Honey Fitt's future wife and Rose's mother. In 1879, Rosanna Fitzgerald, who was Honey Fitz's mother, had a stroke while pregnant with her 13th child and died when Honey Fitz was 15.
00:28:40
Speaker
Honey Fitz's father Thomas sent him away to medical school thinking... ah Kind of like he couldn't forgive himself for his wife dying and was like using his son to kind of atone for his perceived personal sins.
00:28:57
Speaker
Like, well, my wife died. I'm going to have my son become a doctor and save lives. Didn't pan out that way. Turns out he didn't want to be a doctor. But there's the thing of like parents putting their expectations on their kids that, again, will become a theme. So he did begin medical school but dropped out. Yeah.
00:29:14
Speaker
Yeah. In 1881, Michael Hannon died at the age of 21 of alcoholism. He was one of Rose's uncles. In 1885, Honey Fitz's father, Thomas Fitzgerald, died at the age of 62, which was the point that kind of left Honey Fitz as the head of the family.
00:29:36
Speaker
In 1888, Jimmy Hannon, another one of Rose's uncles, died of alcoholism at the age of 25 after he was fired from his job as a postmaster.
00:29:47
Speaker
In 1890, John Edmund Hannon, another one of Rose's uncles, had his leg mangled in a train accident at the age of 13.
00:29:59
Speaker
He would have to have his leg amputated without the use of ether, which was like gas used for operations at the time. So he, yeah, probably felt every little bit of that amputation.
00:30:13
Speaker
This one will come into play later because there is another there's another Kennedy who had to have a leg amputated. So when we get into Ted Kennedy's history, his son had bone cancer and had to have his leg amputated as well.
00:30:28
Speaker
And finally, 1905, a close Kennedy relative I couldn't find more information about how they were related than that. But regardless, his name's Lawrence Kane, died from heat exhaustion while working.
00:30:43
Speaker
So you can see as we go through these, i mean, some of them are just... normal, expected, natural deaths. um And then some are come on, brought on by personal choices or more the daring nature that we see throughout um the family's history. Yeah. And some were like, like from heat exhaustion, it's just kind of shows the times.
00:31:09
Speaker
Yeah. You know, the other thing to keep in mind when we're talking about a curse of a family is how huge this family is. And it's like, are you cursed? Are you just a huge family that are losing people? Yeah.
00:31:25
Speaker
Cherry picking some. some significant stories or significant events that stand out. Yeah. Cause I think if you look at the history of any family,
00:31:36
Speaker
It would could potentially look cursed. Well, you you know, they all die in the end. Exactly. That too. Okay. So I think we're going to wrap up. That is the first generation. Next week, we're going to talk about Joe and Rose and their courtship and their marriage and then their children who include the next generation that we really will get into very deeply, which includes like JFK and RFK. and So yes, we think of the we think of the curse as beginning with Joe, but I think what we've seen is the ah like quote unquote curse may have began with this previous generation or even a couple generations back. Yeah, I did i like this i wasn't even going to go back this far, but in one of the books I read, like one of the very first ones, it was
00:32:29
Speaker
It said how the family, even in Ireland, believed in curses. And then i was like, all right, I'm going to talk about them because it goes that far. Plus, we begin to see the themes of alcohol being involved in their lives, religion, their Catholicism, and, you know, just being Irish and the prejudice toward the Irish. So we start seeing those themes building at this point. All right. Well, i think we'll close out here. We'll see you guys next week. Thanks for joining us.
00:33:01
Speaker
Take care.