The Kennedy Brothers: The Rise and Fall of Jack and Bobby Read Online Free

a jagged, windswept 65-degree slope. Whittaker, went first, using both his ice ax and crampons to scale the face of the mountain. At the top of the steep slope, he slammed the shaft of his ice ax deep into the snowpack, wrapped and tied his nylon rope around its neck, and bent over the top of the ax with his 200-pound frame to hold it in place. 23
    Kennedy, with Whittaker’s rope tied around his waist, was next. He was about 60 feet below Whittaker; beneath Bobby, 6,000-feet down, was the Lowell Glacier. The fact that Bobby had insisted on carrying what everyone else was — a 45-pound pack — didn’t help.
    “You’re on belay,” Whittaker yelled down. “Now you climb!”
    Kennedy hesitated a moment. Then he struck his ax into the snowpack, gouged a hole for his foot with one crampon as he had been instructed, and hauled himself up a couple of feet. He repeated the procedure again and again. As he talked Kennedy up the slope, Whittaker pulled up the slack in the rope. “Remember to breathe,” Whittaker shouted down to Bobby, who was now panting heavily. “You’re doing fine. Keep it up.”
    When Kennedy finally pulled himself over the face, Whittaker pointed out the 150-mile vista, with the bright sun sparkling against the pinnacles, ice falls, and rock cliffs. “What do you think of it?” he asked Bobby. “I don’t want to look at anything,” Bobby said. “I just want to stay right here.” Face drawn, head splitting from the thin air, Kennedy waited until the other climbers joined them. Whittaker then told Bobby to go first to the summit of the never-before-scaled peak. Bobby slowly made his way up the 20-degree spine toward the summit, planting one foot on one side of the ridge and one on the other.
    Whittaker watched him make the final steps. Bobby reached back over his shoulder into his backpack and pulled out a pole around which the Kennedy family flag was wrapped. He jammed it into the snow and made the sign of the cross. He stood there a long time, head bowed, watching the flag whip in the wind. Whittaker moved up to him and gave Kennedy a hug. “You did a tremendous job,” he told Bobby. “Your brother would be proud of you.”
    It was the first time Bobby had ever scaled a mountain. His preparation, he said, was to run up the stairs in his Hickory Hill home and shout, “Help!” Between the lines of his and Whittaker’s published accounts of their five-day ascent of Mount Kennedy, one senses his fright. He had never been a man with sangfroid — only daring. Skiing at a breakneck pace down expert slopes, shooting Colorado rapids in a kayak, or setting off in a rainstorm at night into an unknown tributary in the Amazon were Bobby’s dares with death. Dancing along the edge, he could feel the pulse of life.
    The scene in late August 1967 off the coast of Maine was typical. No sooner had Bobby’s rented pate-blue yawl pulled out of the harbor of Camden on a three-day sailing venture with friends, than he stripped off his clothes and plunged into near-freezing swells for a swim. Bobby’s cruises always seemed to have a madcap quality to them. He never charted a course before setting off, often getting lost miles off the coast in open sea. Friends who knew nothing about sailing usually served as crew. Kay Evans, the wife of journalist Rowland Evans, remembered being unable to sleep one night out of pure fright. 24 She came on deck at 3 or 4 A.M. to find Bobby’s friend Dean Markham at the helm. Asked what his course was, Markham could only reply, “I’m steering just a little bit left of the moon.” Michael Forrestal remembered coming upon the Kennedy boat in Muscle Ridge, off Rockland, Maine. “It seemed as if there were a circus on board. There were not only a great many people on the boat, some in costume, but also a menagerie of animals.” Kennedy shouted across the water at Forrestal’s perfectly crewed boat: “I’ll bet you rather wish you’d never met us, Forrestal.” On that