WilliamM

My third grade teacher was an "old maid," but she was also an excellent teacher. Just before we moved from a relatively small New England town, I learned she had become vice principal of a large elementary school. Well earned. I was so happy for her.

"Family" does not mean just children. It also includes aunts, uncles, grandparents, siblings, first cousins (in no particular order). Few of my parents' many siblings could afford as many children as George and Barbara Bush.

I completely agree about your first paragraph.

George and Barbara Bush decided to marry at a young age because of the Second World War. A personal choice.

Comment: Does she really believe her father was right about the U.S. not entering World War ll? Family loyalty totally misplaced READ Parade Magazine Jean Kennedy Smith on Her Memoir and the Kennedys She's Loved and Lost FEBRUARY 7, 2017 – 8:00 AM – 0 COMMENTS 15 By DOTSON RADER The Kennedy clan in 1939 (Courtesy of the Kennedy family) Jean Kennedy Smith, the last surviving Kennedy of her generation, has written a beautiful new memoir, The Nine of Us. It is the story of growing up in an American family that changed the world. She writes of the values and events that molded the amazing Kennedy siblings, among them Jack, who became president; U.S. senators Bobby and Ted; Eunice, who founded the Special Olympics; and Pat, a national advocate for the literary arts. Jean, a diplomat like her father, was U.S. ambassador to Ireland for President Clinton and helped bring peace to Northern Ireland. Now widowed after a long marriage to businessmanStephen Smith, Jean is mother to four children, two adopted, and actively supports Very Special Arts (VSA), an organization she started in 1974 to support people with disabilities. Jean’s older sister Rosemary was born mentally disabled and underwent a devastating lobotomy. For her work on behalf of VSA, Jean was honored by President Obama with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. Jean Kennedy Smith lives in an elegant duplex apartment on Manhattan’s East Side. It was there that Parade visited her on a cold afternoon. Over tea sandwiches and fruit salad in her living room, she talked about her extraordinary life and the Kennedys she’s loved and lost. Why did you write your book, The Nine of Us? I felt that my parents had been overlooked in all the biographies about my brothers. They didn’t give enough attention to my whole family, particularly my parents, and why we were all part of the deal. I tried to explain in The Nine of Us how we grew up with politics. At meals we talked about what was in the newspaper. We talked politics non-stop! Campaigning for our brothers was a part of our lives. Do you think most families have serious conversations like that today? I got a very nice letter the other day from a father about how he can’t get in a conversation with his son, who’s always playing a video game. “My son just talks to his computer. Nobody sits down and has an intelligent conversation with their family anymore.” I think it’s accepted as a part of everybody’s life now. People bring their cell phones to dinner. Well, it’s the world now. In your book, the world seems very far away until your father becomes ambassador to England in 1938. That brought it close. Dad was very much against the war. That was why President Roosevelt didn’t like him. My father said, “We should stay out of this. It’s a mess. Why should Americans go in there, across the sea, and for what?” Do you think your father was right about not going to war? Yes, I do.

I doubt that many people disagree with a balance in life, but remember Mrs. Bush was speaking to a graduating college class. It was something you tell students. Who knows if she really believed it?

If Barbara Bush had not dropped out of Smith after one year to marry George H. W. Bush, she may have been more aware of the world and history. I understand it was wartime, and it seemed the right decision then.

Jean Kennedy Smith, the last of Joe and Rose Kennedy's children. She may not live there in the winter when Cape Cod is off-season.