If only the walls inside the Kennedy summer compound could talk
nypost.com“White House by the Sea: A Century of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port,” (Scribner).“It is the heart of the Kennedy Compound suspended somewhere between the past and the present.”The house would soon be expanded by Joe Kennedy — a movie producer, political wheeler-dealer, purported Prohibition rum runner, and future U.S.
ambassador to Great Britain — into a stately mansion of 21 rooms, including 12 bedrooms, a steam room, and even a basement theater.And then a tall fence went up — a privacy stockade affair that kept out peering eyes.
According to Storey, Rose had no interest in entertaining or socializing with the neighbors, who viewed the Kennedys as “new-money Irish.”Instead, the family closed ranks to share their lives over summers and holidays for more than one hundred years, sailing, playing touch football — which they made a virtual national sport — and where board games were played and analyzed along with political schemes.
The adults drank “creamy daiquiris,” the patriarch’s favorite mix.It’s here that First Lady Jackie Kennedy taught other Kennedys to dance the Twist, the Chubby Checker hit and craze that began in the early years of her husband Jack’s ill-fated presidency.
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