Jerry Oppenheimer is a New York Times bestselling author whose books include Ethel 'The Other Mrs. Kennedy'. Ethel Skakel Kennedy, An American Drama of Power, Privilege, and Politics.
For decades the sprawling historic estate across the Potomac River known as Hickory Hill was the home of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, his sprightly wife, Ethel, and their brood of ten raucous children.
That number would grow to 11 when Ethel gave birth to Rory, six months after RFK's assassination.
And it was in the wake of that murder, while on the presidential campaign trail in June 1968, life for his widow Ethel took a dark and often violent turn.
Ethel, who died last Thursday at 96, never remarried and was considered more Kennedy than any Kennedy. As a staunch Roman Catholic, she believed that her beloved husband Joe was in heaven and that she would one day join him.
For those who were her servants and assistants – even her sons, and especially recent presidential candidate Bobby Jr. – Hickory Hill was privately known as 'Horror Hill', as documented in my biography of Ethel 'The Other Mrs. Kennedy'.
Staff members, many on the record, revealed that Ethel 'had a deep reservoir of uncontrolled anger. [She was] always annoyed, exasperated and infuriated, [both] emotionally and physically'.
They unveiled that 'Hickory Hill had become a disturbing and troublesome place because of the widow's strange behavior and moods.'
According to their experiences – assaulted by Ethel's 'sudden onslaughts of denigrating comments and criticisms – they often 'consulted doctors and psychiatrists with real and imagined stomach problems', and one was said to have required 'life saving' hospitalization.
In one of the more shocking incidents, Bobby's one-time brother-in-law, the actor Peter Lawford, was visiting on a rare occasion.
Sitting in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee and chatting with Ethel, he idly watched as a newly hired black maid went about her job. She was picking up various scraps of paper, including notes Sen. Kennedy had jotted years earlier that Ethel had never bothered to sort away.
The maid was heading toward the trash can 'when Ethel, standing by the kitchen door watching, saw that she was about to toss the trash'.
As Lawford later recounted, 'Ethel screeched, 'What are you doing?' The frightened maid, 'I'm throwing this away, Mrs. Kennedy,' and Ethel said, 'You stupid [N word], don't you know what you're doing?
'You're destroying history, Get out of my sight. You're fired!'
The woman fled in shock.
On his return to California, disgusted by what he had witnessed, Lawford told his new wife, Patricia.
'Peter was very upset. He had been very much into the civil rights movement, and he hated what Ethel had said. He felt for the woman who was dismissed by Ethel that very day.
'Over the years he had seen a lot of self-righteous behavior in Ethel,' Patricia said.
To others I interviewed about the shocking incident and her use of the N word, it seemed incomprehensible that Ethel, who counted Coretta King, Rafer Johnson and Cesar Chavez among her friends, would shout a racial epithet. Especially not in light of RFK's public stance on race and her devotion to his philosophies.
One of Ethel's trusted assistants, Noelle Fell, told me that she never heard her boss use the slur, 'but she would say things like 'Those black people are stupid.
'I really don't think she liked blacks or Hispanics. She couldn't stand it if they couldn't speak English well or understand it. Ethel would say something once and she didn't like to repeat herself'.
Once leaving to go on trip, Ethel had asked one of the maids to bring her a jar of face cream...and it had to be right away. Misunderstanding, she brought sanitary napkins.
According to Noelle Fell, who was in the room, furious Ethel screamed 'that's not what I asked for', and hit her in the face,
'She just slapped her.'
The maid ran out in tears, followed by Fell who told her, 'She should never have slapped you. Let me talk to her,' but the injured woman was adamant and said, 'I'm never going to work here again no one has ever slapped me.'
The woman stormed out of the hose, and Fell raced upstairs to confront Ethel, who 'was still furious. When she got in bad moods, she didn't jump out of them.'
There was other bizarre behavior, such as infuriating public servants.
When she was ticketed for pulling into a no parking spot, Ethel raced back to her convertible and tore up the ticket in front of the shocked officer.
When she got home, she was 'ranting and raving' that she wasn't going to pay the fine. The angry Kennedy widow was given a summons to appear in court.
She never showed, pleaded not guilty, was convicted and fined $31.25.
When her mother-in-law, Rose, the Kennedy matriarch was told what happened, she responded, 'there was always some kind of problem with Ethel.'
On another occasion, she refused to pay a cab driver a $12 fare claiming he ripped her off, and when he complained in broken English she hauled off and slapped him in the face.
'The poor man was flabbergasted,' according to an eyewitness. 'She hurt him. His face was red, his mouth was open.' An assistant stepped in and paid the fare, but Ethel 'was furious when I told her I paid him,' the assistant recalled.
According to my sources, most of the people who came to work for Ethel were 'charmed' initially, by the Kennedy mystique.
But, as one noted: 'nce the employee realized what they had gotten themselves into, many were willing to sacrifice their self-respect and their health just to have a little taste of what remained of Camelot.'
There was another downside to working at Hickory Hill – the odor.
When the kids were still young, the interior of the house became a smelly mess and even an eyesore because of the multitude of pets that roamed freely, urinating and defecating on the furnishings.
Dogs defecated under the dining room table, one of Ethel's assistants recalled. 'No one would dare say anything to Mrs. Kennedy, who would try to cover up the mess with her foot.
'But everyone could smell it. I'd think, oh, my God.'
A rug – a gift from the Shah of Iran – was so covered with urine that it had to be tossed in the basement.
'There was even poop from the turtle Carruthers on the rugs,' recalled a frequent visitor. Bobby Jr had brought the giant turtle home with him from a trip to Kenya.
When the turtle died he put it into cryonic suspension in a basement fridge in the hope of bringing it back to life at some future date.