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Michael was Mummy’s favorite. But no one was jealous of her love for him because he was everybody else’s favorite too. Michael was a peacemaker. A family friend once made the observation that if Michael entered a room where a fight was about to break out, he would have a calming effect that would avert the conflict. As for himself, he never lost his temper and he never got flustered. Everyone who knew Michael eventually remarked on his extraordinary capacity to function in perfect calm amid chaos, whether it was dinner with 10 screaming siblings, paddling a kayak through the most ferocious white water or bringing a sailboat home through a gale. Most remarkably, he had the ability to inspire a similar composure in others.
Max told me last night that whenever he was going to do something scary and he could convince Michael to join him, all his fear would disappear. I felt the same way when jumping from the 80-foot-high bridge over the Bio-Bio in Chile or sailing in a hurricane off Maine or following him on first descents of the Caroni in Venezuela, the Atrato in Columbia or the Great Whale in Quebec, or on the familiar rapids of the Kennebec where he started his white-water guide company when he was still a teen. If Michael was coming, we all felt safe. Michael’s attitude about the rocks, the waves and the weather was always "We’ll deal with it." And he always did.
He was the greatest athlete of our generation. Timmy Shriver, a spectacular athlete, told me that Michael was so gifted that at one point he stopped being jealous and reconciled himself to admiring him. For a man who would spend so much of his life at home in the water, it was appropriate that Michael was born with webbed feet. He always regretted that our mother had his toes surgically corrected. He felt the webbing might have propelled him to the level of an Olympic swimmer.
From Michael’s earlier days, my brother David and I worked diligently to hone his native athletic talents. Each day after school we played "combat" on the grounds of Hickory Hill, hunting down and pummeling one another with hand grenades made of black walnuts. We erected walls of hay bales and urged Michael to run into them at full speed to toughen him. We encouraged him to leap from the barn roof. We were constantly building obstacle courses and timing him with stopwatches. His speed was legendary. He could run circles around any of us in football, and I never saw him beaten in a sprint even when he raced two NFL fullbacks on Grandma’s lawn. Once, during a river trip in Columbia, South America, he ran down a thief who had snatched a watch from a fellow rafter in Medellin. The thief, who had a two-block head start and was fast himself, was astonished by Michael’s speed.
He could master any sport-- squash, windsurfing, snowboarding, paddle tennis, golf in days. Last year he entered a charity bike race on a borrowed bicycle and came in first against a field that included professional cyclists. We was a champion ski jumper in high school. He routinely leapt into the water from the 80-foot mark at Moxie Falls. He could jump over a car, do a standing back flip and all kinds of headstands and handstands.
More than once, his athletic ability saved his life. A skidding car threatened to crush him against another vehicle on an icy Boston street. Michael vaulted vertically, landing with a foot on each car before the crash, then surfed down Boylston Street.
In all my life I’ve never seen anyone ski as beautifully as Michael. He had the quick feet of a professional mogul skier, and a fluid movement as I’ve ever seen on any skier. Bob Beattie, who coached the U.S. Olympic team, once said the Michael was the best natural skier he had ever seen. He was completely at ease in the air and on every terrain. So many of us had the experience of holding our breath when Michael entered a glade at high velocity after a 40- or 50-foot jump, and watching relieved as he’d float out of the forest through a mogul field at impossible speed-- as graceful as flowing water. He always landed on his feet. He never got hurt.
I loved to watch him ski. It was breathtaking. He was beautiful. I never felt jealous of Michael, only proud because he was as generous and modest as he was gifted.
Those qualities, and his kindness and patience, made him a magnet for new friendships. He put enormous effort into friendship. He had so many great friends and they stayed with him all his life, and he flourished in their company. They were wonderful people and they loved him deeply. I’d rather have 39 years with the friendships he had then 390 years with the run-of-the-mill kind available to most of us. His way of challenging people around him to do their best made his friendships interesting and lasting. He was always looking for new experiences and always embarking on new adventures fearlessly, which is, I think, what God wanted Michael to do.
Part of the attraction of being his friend was the things you would learn whenever you were with him. He was the best teacher I knew-- high praise coming from the elder brother who is a law professor. He seemed to know how to do anything, from fixing a boat to cooking bacon and French toast for 36 over a campfire. He could analyze a stretch of white water better than anyone I have ever met. He could recite ballad poetry for hours, out-juggle a circus clown, dance on his hunches like a Cossack, identify the constellations. Mostly he taught people how to have fun. He invented a game to fit any available tools. If you had a piece of rope or a small ball or a couple of spoons, Michael could invent a game. He had mastered all sorts of gymnastic tricks and he taught these to others, especially his children. He was such a wonderful father to his children, and to every child he met. He was a pied piper. I loved to leave my kids with him, because they’d come home with new tricks and with some of Michael’s send of adventure and his enthusiasm for life.
With his gifts, he could have done anything. He gave his life to the poor, but he was never self-righteous. As with everything, he made the giving fun. Because he was clever and competent, he also made it profitable.
He had great humor. I doubt that I ever went 10 minutes with Michael without laughing. Sometimes it got him in trouble. At age 15 he went to Argentina with his cousin Steve Smith for the summer to ski, at a time when there was a kidnapping epidemic. Soon after arriving, they sent Mummy a telegram: "We are holding Michael and Stevie capitive, will accept no ransom." It was signed "Ten love-hungry Argentine women." Mummy never got to the signature line. She called the State Department, which sent an airborne commando force to Buenos Aires before realizing it was a joke.
Michael was great at laughing at himself. A few weeks ago, he ran into a friend. The friend urged Michael to call a mutual pal who, he said, was having a very bad year. Michael looked at him incredulously. "HE’S having a bad year?" They laughed for 10 minutes.
I was so proud of him this past year. He handled the chaos with characteristic calm. The personal issues with which he struggled were not about malice or greed. They were about humanity and passion. His transgressions were the kind that Christ taught us are the first and easiest to forgive. Those of us who know the truth know that so much of what Michael suffered over the last year was unfair, and yet every indignity was endured in dignified silence.
Michael shouldered his burden with typical grace. He stayed sober. He refused to run away. He dealt with adversity better than anyone I’ve ever known. And he never stopped having fun. He disciplined himself to do something fun each day; even during the darkest times he would laugh with his brothers and sisters on the phone. He told a friend who marveled at his aplomb, "You just have to walk through it and try to be a good father, and ultimately the bad times will pass." The best measure of character is not the behavior that brings us to a crisis but the manner in which we face it. Each of us can only hope that when our turn comes we face our own crisis as valiantly.
Michael’s friends can take comfort that because he did his penance here on earth, he went straight to heaven and now sits with my father and David and Lem and Jack and Kick and Joe and Grandma and Grandpa, almost certainly laughing and waiting to greet the rest of us as we arrive.
I was so lucky to spend three days with him before he died. He looked handsome and was skiing beautifully, as always. Citizens Energy had had a spectacularly successful year under his leadership. He was filled with hope. He died, three years sober, on a 40° day under a blue sky in the company of his children, his family, and friend he loved. The lifts were closed. They had Ajax Mountain to themselves. He had skied there for 35 years; to him it was heaven on earth. And he loved that football game. He caught the ball, turned to a friend and said his final words: "This is really great!" The last thing he saw was his children. The next thing he saw was God.
Michael was beautiful. Chris Bartle, Michael’s friend, told me that our capacity for grief cannot contain the suffering we felt when he died. God had given us such a magical person, with so many extraordinary gifts, that no single person could know more than a small fraction of his value. So many people loved him. For my part, I believe that the best proof that God loves our family is that He gave us Michael for 39 wonderful years.
A Eulogy for Michael
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.