Robert F. Kennedy’s children have spent their entire lives trying to add their stamp to their assassinated father’s legacy. They made public service history, followed in his footsteps in Congress and contributed to an Oscar-nominated documentary. Like their relatives born in the generation after Camelot, some have struggled to shake off the tinge of tragedy and scandal that continues to hang over the famous family.
Robert F. Kennedy’s namesake saw every element of this trip.
The first Kennedy to run for president in decades, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing so without his family’s well-documented loyalty. Instead, some of his siblings begged him to drop out of school. For years, they have worried, increasingly publicly, that it is eroding the foundation of why the nation reveres them so much.
The son of the future President Kennedy.
Born into a privileged environment in 1954, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. grew up between Massachusetts and the suburbs of Virginia. He developed an early interest in the outdoors, an affinity aided by the menagerie of animals kept at Hickory Hill, the family mansion in McLean, Virginia. He was the third of 11 eventual children born to RFK and Ethel Kennedy.
He was sleeping in his dormitory at Georgetown Preparatory School on June 5, 1968, when a priest woke him up. He was not told what was happening, only that a ride would soon take him back to Hickory Hill. At the family home, he was told that his father had been shot the night before. He, Kathleen and Joseph P. II took Vice President Hubert Humphery’s plane, eager to be at their father’s side.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. later served as pallbearer at his father’s funeral, joined by astronaut John Glenn and former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was one of the pallbearers at his father’s funeral. Archives by Michael Ochs/Getty Images
The 14-year-old never returned to Georgetown Prep, which now counts two Supreme Court justices and several legislators among its influential alumni. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bounced between three private schools before graduating from high school.
At New York’s Millbrook School, he briefly kept a lion cub given to him by former “Tonight Show” host Jack Paar. Kennedy was forced to find a new home for the animal, aptly named Mtoto Mbaya, “Boy Boy” in Swahili, after a series of incidents, including when he bit the butt of the school zookeeper, according to “Robert F. Kennedy Jr..” and the Dark Side of the Dream,” an unauthorized 2015 biography. It wasn’t the animal that got him kicked out.
Kennedy had begun using drugs and not just marijuana, according to the 2015 book. Officials increasingly feared liability if another Kennedy died on their watch. Years later, Kennedy would tell Oprah that the source of his drug problems didn’t really matter. He viewed his problems as more of a product of the 1960s. Whatever the reason, his drug use would land him in repeated trouble with the law.
Kennedy graduated from Harvard, but drug use continued to take a toll on him.
After graduating from high school, Kennedy attended Harvard, the alma mater of his father, uncle and grandfather. Like JFK, RFK Jr. would see his senior thesis turned into a book. Unfortunately for him, critics reacted harshly to the book about federal judge Frank M. Johnson Jr., whose decisions played a major role in the civil rights movement.
After briefly attending the London School of Economics, Kennedy graduated from the University of Virginia Law School. In Charlottesville, Kennedy met his first wife, Emily Black. Their wedding in Bloomington, Indiana, Black’s hometown, received international coverage as the Midwest joined the nation’s largest political family. The couple had two children together.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s marriage to Emily Black, his law school classmate, received international attention. Press Images/Getty Images
He filed for divorce in 1994 in the Dominican Republic, taking advantage of a local law that allows foreigners to file for divorce there and potentially trying to avoid media attention.
In March 1982, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, whom JFK had previously appointed to run the notorious Southern District of New York, hired RFK Jr. as an assistant district attorney. The famous son’s first brush with politics in New York, the state his father represented in the U.S. Senate, did not go well. Kennedy struggled to pass the bar exam. He resigned in July 1983.
A few months later, Kennedy would spark his biggest legal scandal. While he was on his way to receive treatment in South Dakota for his addiction, another passenger found him sick in a plane bathroom. Local authorities later discovered a small amount of heroin in his belongings. He faces up to two years in prison, according to the New York Times. Kennedy was sentenced to probation and community service.
Kennedy found a new defender after his lowest moment.
Kennedy’s lowest moment led to his greatest reinvention. As part of his community service, he worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council and was later connected with the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association. Robert Boyle, founder of the New York environmental group, began mentoring Kennedy. The organization had already won significant legal victories, but Kennedy’s star power would help it reach new heights.
He was so committed to his new career that in 1994 he married Mary Richardson, a longtime friend of his sister Kerry Kennedy, aboard a ship on the Hudson River.
Robert F. Kennedy became a star for his environmental advocacy. L. Busacca/Getty Images
But her relationship with Boyle did not last. His mentor later recalled that he was not really enthusiastic about the celebrities Kennedy soon brought to the organization’s board of directors. He also became angered by his former protégé’s other actions, particularly Kennedy’s decision to hire a scientist named William Wegner. Kennedy defended the hiring of Wegner, who had served time in federal prison, saying giving him a second chance was the right thing to do. Boyle was furious given that Wegener had been convicted for his ties to a bird smuggling ring. Boyle and seven other officials later resigned from the Riverkeeper board in protest.
“I think he’s a despicable person,” Boyle told Kennedy’s unauthorized biographer in 2014. Boyle’s children recently told the Washington Post that his father couldn’t even stand to look at the Hudson anymore because it was too much of a reminder of Kennedy’s betrayal.
As for Kennedy, his environmental advocacy became the foundation of his fame. In 1999, Time Magazine named Kennedy one of its “Planetary Heroes” as part of a series of reports on prominent environmentalists.
While becoming famous, Kennedy began to notice problems with his voice. He recently told the Los Angeles Times that he was 42 when he first noticed the problem. Kennedy was later diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological condition that affects the muscles of the voice box.
In 2010, Kennedy filed for divorce from Richardson, the mother of four of his six children. Two years later, she committed suicide at the couple’s former estate in Bedford.
After years as an environmentalist, Kennedy became the face of anti-vaccine advocacy.
After decades of environmental advocacy, Kennedy was preparing to take his most controversial turn. In her story, mothers began approaching her at events wondering if vaccines had affected their children.
In 2005, Kennedy wrote an article for Salon and Rolling Stone that is now seen as making him a major player in spreading vaccine skepticism. Despite his claims of a major conspiracy surrounding a mercury-based preservative that had already been “removed from all childhood vaccines except some variants of the flu vaccine in 2001,” according to STAT. Within days, Salon, which published the article online, published five corrections. In 2011, the site decided to remove the article entirely.
In 2014, Kennedy married actress Cheryl Hines, best known for her co-starring role in the Larry David-directed “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
A year later, Kennedy joined the Global Health Defense Fund. He continued his involvement with Riverkeeper, but his anti-vaccine advocacy overwhelmed his public persona.
Kennedy’s name fueled his rise in the movement, which relied on the credibility of his environmentalism and famous family. In turn, the now presidential candidate began tinkering with what the Associated Press would later consider “an anti-vaccine juggernaut” that he deployed when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived.
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