Over coffee and pastries, Kennedy relived his triumphs and tragedies

Sen. Edward Kennedy and James Young were strangers in 2004, but over the next few years, the Massachusetts Democrat would relive the triumphs and tragedies of his life for the University of Virginia professor.

Throughout 30 interviews of two and a half to three hours each, the late senator spoke in candid, intimate settings with Young, director of the Edward Kennedy Oral History Project at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Kennedy attended UVA from 1956 to 1958 before he began assisting in his brother’s presidential campaign.

The topics discussed — the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, the death of passenger Mary Jo Kopechne in the infamous Chappaquiddick automobile incident of 1969, the failed presidential campaign of 1980 — came well before Kennedy’s recollections in his True Compass memoirs, which were published this month.

Young said Kennedy stated he eventually wanted to write an autobiography, but first wanted to conduct an oral-history interview project. Young told The Hill of a remarkable series of interview sittings conducted over four years at Kennedy’s homes in Georgetown and Hyannis Port — sometimes followed by sailing trips.

“He told me, ‘Let the book come later, let’s do an oral history now,’ ” Young said. “He wanted this to be a job for history. He said, ‘This is not about me, it’s about the history of my time, and the real history of the Senate.’ ”

Kennedy bypassed his brother’s presidential library to choose the University of Virginia for the project. Kennedy’s brother, the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, gave his own oral history in 1964 to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Yet Young said Edward Kennedy seemed to relish the idea of an institution that had fewer ties to the family and would be more objective.

Young first met the senator at his office in the Russell Senate building five years ago.

“He chose someone with whom he had no connections,” Young said. “He was very serious about this, about doing something that wasn’t a celebration of him or about nostalgia.”

Over the four years of interviews, Kennedy wore casual clothes in the living rooms of his homes and never once protested Young’s ground rules for interviews: no restrictions on questions, questioners or topics.

“He didn’t want any control over the questions asked or over the people who asked,” Young said. “He felt the Senate wasn’t well-understood and had changed over the years. He wanted one of the points of the project to be about education and encouraging people to think about how laws are actually made.”

Most interviews were intimate, with only Young and Kennedy, or an occasional assistant, or the senator’s wife, Victoria, or his two Portuguese water dogs. Occasionally, Kennedy would sip coffee and eat pastries during the sessions. Young said Kennedy never drank alcohol during the interviews.

Kennedy didn’t flinch at any question, Young said, and often became emotional when discussing his family.

Young’s last interview with Kennedy was in March of 2008 — two months before the diagnosis of the brain cancer that eventually led to his death last month.

Overall, Young said nearly 1,700 to 1,800 hours of audio recordings were compiled for the project, which is still ongoing. A total of about 170 people are being interviewed as part of the university’s effort, many of whom were Kennedy’s political rivals.

“He specified that,” Young said. “He said, ‘You can’t get the story straight for history if you just talk to one side.’ We’re talking to opponents, colleagues, House figures, the executive branch, people from his Massachusetts days, campaign aides, aides from his presidential campaign, activists, former staffers, advisers, family members, public figures abroad and people from North Ireland.”

There were few tense moments during the sessions, Young said, with the only failures coming when Kennedy simply couldn’t remember details of a bygone legislative effort. The two men would review each interview at its conclusion and decide the topic of the next day, with the process starting chronologically but subsequently becoming issue-oriented.

Young said he proceeded carefully, without knowing Kennedy well, and decided not to raise the most controversial topics until late in the process, when the two men had built up a rapport. Kennedy was a vibrant comedian in private, with a proficiency for accents and imitations of presidents and other public figures. The senator also spoke in painful detail about his more intimate tragedies, such as the 1964 airplane crash that nearly took his life and claimed the lives of two others.

Through it all, Young said, the project required a particular effort of Kennedy.

“This type of oral history project is not usual for public figures, and he really hadn’t been interviewed in this way very often,” Young said. “His absolute rule was to be prepared. It was hard to begin, and he was not an easy person to interview. But he’s a wonderful storyteller, and things developed. It took a lot of trust and a lot of talking.”

Under the rules set by the Oral History Project, the unedited versions of the audio recordings are sealed for the next 50 years. Young said since the project isn’t scheduled to end until late 2010, the executor of Kennedy’s estate will have to approve the release of the transcripts or recordings. Young said he is confident the Kennedy family will agree to the release of the materials, and that he hopes to secure approval to release the transcripts soon.

During the interviews, Young said Kennedy warmed to the idea of launching his autobiography, which he started in 2007.

“He had copies of all the interview transcripts, and he used them for the book,” Young said. “He told me that having talked about these things from a historical point of view, rather than a blow-by-blow perspective, it helped him to look back for his memoirs. The project really has much more in it than was in the book. Of course, none of us anticipated that he would die during the process. But he was prepared. He had done his homework.”

This article was amended on Sept. 22 at 3:12 p.m.