Legacy - Who Tells Our Story After We Die?

This week’s show is about legacy, the way in which we are remembered after our deaths. Legacy goes beyond possessions to include the impact we leave on people, communities, and the world. After we die, what is communicated about our legacy is left up to other people. We can only hope that they will be kind. https://bit.ly/3BRyobY

In This Episode:

• 04:50 - Recipe-Jackie Kennedy Onasis’ Casserole Marie Blanche
• 06:03 - Remembering Ethel Skakel Kennedy
• 10:14 - Who Curates Our Legacy Story?
• 26:02 - Robert Kennedy's Funeral Train
• 35:58 - Outro

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 4:50 Recipe: Jackie Kennedy Onasis’ Casserole Marie Blanche
• 6:03 Remembering Ethel Skakel Kennedy
• 10:14 Who Curates Our Legacy Story?
• 26:02 Robert Kennedy's Funeral Train
• 35:58 Outro

Transcript

Legacy-Who-Tells-Our-Story-After-We-Die

This podcast does not provide medical or legal advice. Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording. Hello and welcome to Everyone Dies, the podcast where we talk about serious illness, death, dying and bereavement.

I'm Marianne Matzo, a nurse practitioner, and I use my experience from working as a nurse for 46 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life. And I'm Charlie Navarette, an actor in New York City, and here to offer an every-person viewpoint to our podcast. We are here because we both believe that the more you know, the better prepared you will be to make difficult end-of-life decisions.

So welcome to this week's show. Please relax, get yourself a glass of apple cider and a healthy snack, and thank you for spending the next hour with Charlie and me as we talk about legacy, the story that gets told about us when we die. Our legacy is the lasting impact we leave on others and the accomplishments and contributions that people remember long after our death.

Our legacy will outlive us, whether it's through our family, our professional work, our mentorship, or our community involvement. Like the BBC, we see our shows offering entertainment, enlightenment, and education and divide that into three halves to address each of these goals. Our main topic is in the second half, so feel free to fast-forward to that chit-chat freeze-out.

In the first half, Charlie has our recipe of the week and talks about Ethel Skakel Kennedy's death. In the second half, I'm going to talk about legacies and how they're made. And in our third half, Charlie has a story about Robert F. Kennedy's funeral train.

So, Charlie, how are you on this fine fall day? Well, you know, Marianne, I'm fine. This is, you know, what came out a couple of days ago I read is that 100-year-old former President Jimmy Carter, you know, Mr. Carter wished to live long enough to cast his ballot for the 2024 presidential election. Well, wish granted.

I was so pleased to see that. Now, I guess he can die a happy man at 100. Right? He made both milestones he wanted.

And, you know, and speaking of Mr. Carter, remember the old SNL Saturday Night Live sketch where Dan Aykroyd would pretend he was Jimmy Carter? So, there's a new movie out called SNL, it's Saturday Night Live, and it's about 90 minutes leading up to the first episode. You know, and each episode lasted 90 minutes. You know, I live in New York.

I was not here at that time. But it was just really interesting to see, you know, pieces of New York like that. And just the technology they had to put together that first show was, you know, almost prehistoric compared to everything they do now.

Yeah, it was just interesting to see that. And I don't think I saw the first episode, but I know either the second or third episodes, I was at someone's house. And, you know, we're all just, it was a Saturday night, so I'm sure we were all sitting around with our books open studying.

And the show came on. And it was just so funny. We had never seen anything like that before.

I think I'd seen a couple of clips of Sid Caesar's show of shows back from the 50s. But of course, this was before the internet. But it was just so unusual and very funny.

Yeah, nothing mainstream that people had been used to, but it really resonated. So, it was just nice to see that movie. I saw it was the 50th anniversary this year of SNL.

And I'm thinking to myself, I've watched those first shows, and I can remember like sitting in the little TV room that we had with my friend Gary from high school watching Saturday Night Live. And it's like, that was 50 years ago? I mean, it was like, wasn't it like last week? It's so strange. Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, it feels like, you know, a week or two ago. So, we're going to begin this week with our recipe, Jackie Kennedy Onassis's casserole, Marie Blanc. She served this simple and easy-to-make casserole at a White House private dinner on March 15, 1961, in honor of Prince and Princess Radiswell, who were her brother-in-law and sister.

Jackie was a woman with exquisite taste. So, if she loved this casserole, well, that's all the information we need. This isn't a heavy casserole or one that relies on a ton of layered ingredients for flavor.

Rather, it's a delightfully easy casserole to make, with just a few simple ingredients. Comforting and classic in its simplicity. Everyone at your next funeral lunch will be wowed by your classy contribution to the table.

Uh, Julia, what do you have to say about this? Oh, bon appétit. No, Julia was on the show. I'm sorry, Julia.

I would have introduced you. Oh, it's okay. On October 3, 2024, Ethel Skakel Kennedy, the widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who raised their 11 children after he was assassinated and remained dedicated to social causes and the family's legacy for decades afterwards, died after a stroke the previous week.

She was 96. Ethel Skakel was born on April 11, 1928. She was the sixth of seven children of businessman George Skakel, who went from earning $8 a week as a railroad clerk in Chicago to founding the Great Lakes Carbon Corporation.

Ethel was just five when her devoutly Catholic and progressively wealthier family moved to East Greenwich, Connecticut and settled in a lakefront mansion of 31 rooms. Vanity Fair described her as pixie-ish and petite, but also a tomboy, athletic, and intensely competitive. Her introduction to Bobby Kennedy came when she was 17.

It was through Jean, one of Bobby's sisters and Ethel's fellow student, and later her roommate, at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in Purchase, New York. Jean invited her on a family ski trip where Ethel found Bobby by a roaring fire. We made a bet right away about who would get down the mountain faster, Ethel admitted.

She married Bobby on June 17, 1950. Ethel gave birth to their first child, Kathleen, a year later. Her daughter Rory said in all her mother was pregnant for 99 months of her life.

After her brother-in-law's assassination in 1963, Ethel became the family's strongest advocate for Bobby's ongoing political career. He was elected to the U.S. Senate the following fall, and with Ethel at his side, made his own run for presidency four years later. His fatal shooting in June of 1968 devastated the nation.

Whatever grieving she did in private, a steadfast Ethel rode the eight-hour funeral train seated next to the coffin, as onlookers by the tens of thousands paid their respects. Ethel Kennedy, who would never again marry, focused her life on raising her 11 children and advocacy work. Rory Kennedy, a filmmaker who was born six months after her father's assassination, during his 1968 run for the presidency, convinced Ethel to take part in a 2012 biographical documentary for HBO titled Ethel.

Gentle as Rory's questions were, her mother flinched when asked about the night of Bobby's assassination. Talk about something else, she said at last, her voice husky. Along with nine surviving children, she leaves 34 grandchildren and 24 great grandchildren.

Rest in peace, Mrs. Kennedy. Thank you for your service to this great nation, and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. Please go to our webpage for this week's recipe for Jackie Kennedy Anastas' casserole, Marie Blanc, and additional resources for this program.

Everyone Dies is offered at no cost, but is not free to produce. Please contribute what you can. Your tax-deductible gift will go directly to supporting our non-profit journalism, so that we can remain accessible to everyone.

You can also donate at www.everyonedies.org, that's every, the number one, dies.org, or at our site on Patreon, www.patreon.com, and search for Everyone Dies. Marianne? Thank you, Charlie. In the play Hamilton, Aaron Burr sings in the song, The World Was Wide Enough, these words, history obliterates in every picture it paints.

What he's talking about is legacy, the way in which we're remembered after our deaths. According to the dictionary, a legacy refers to something handed down by a predecessor, often in the form of an inheritance. In Hamilton, it's described as planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.

But legacy extends beyond material possessions to include the impact we leave on people, communities, and the world. To define legacy is to reflect on the lasting impressions and contributions that shape the future long after we die. Just like we have no control about what happens to the frog collection that you've been curating for the last 50 years, you have no control over who and how your story is told.

And after death, your story is really all that's left. I mean, what's left other than the memories we helped make during our lives? What is our ultimate legacy beyond the things we create and the words that we leave behind? Famous people have someone, or many someones, to manage their legacy. I remember going on a tour of Graceland, Elvis Presley's home, about 20 years ago, and walking through the area that had his costumes display.

I thought they were pretty cool, but I found myself looking at his costumes like, where are the ones where he was heavier? And they weren't there. If you never knew about his career and just looked at the display, you could say he was a slim, hip, hunk-a-hunk of burnin' love. But the curators presented the memory that they wanted the visitor to have.

They were in charge of that aspect of his legacy. But most of us are just regular people. We don't have curators for our legacy.

Or do we? Our legacy is built during our lives, and so it's our children, spouse, siblings, neighbors, friends, students, nieces and nephews, or colleagues who are our curators. While our legacy might add up to something monumental one day, it will be built from the smallest blocks. And while we think that we might know what might be a part of our legacy, we really don't know what might be dug up and shared after our death that may clash with our curated legacy.

For example, I was in the first grade when President Kennedy was shot. I remember the details of that experience far better than what I just walked in the room to get. I just finished Maureen Callahan's book, Ask Not, The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed.

I don't have enough time in this podcast to tell you the aspects of the story in that book that I had no idea about. It was one of the saddest and appalling groupings of stories I've read. But one section of the book was about the planning of JFK's funeral and how tightly manipulated and managed it was by Jackie.

Let me read you just some pieces of what Callahan wrote. Jackie threw herself into planning Jack's funeral. What she wanted would normally take weeks to execute.

She made it happen within hours. Jack's casket would be drawn by a riderless horse out of the White House and down Pennsylvania Avenue on the same caisson that carried Frank Eleanor Roosevelt. Jack would be buried at Arlington, their lost babies disinterred and buried alongside him.

An eternal flame lighted their graves. That idea had come to her from visiting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. The flowers, Jackie said, were to be simple, nothing overwrought, but purples or gold and for God's sake, no wreaths on the grave.

Her great friend, Bunny Mellon, the famous horticulturist who helped Jackie design the White House Rose Garden, was put in charge of that. Jackie would lead the funeral procession, walking the quarter mile from the White House to the church behind Jack's flag-draped casket. The Secret Service was alarmed.

Jackie was a target now. No one knew if the assassination was part of a larger national threat. The United States cannot put foreign heads of states or dignitaries in harm's way.

Fine, Jackie said. She was walking with Jack. She would do it alone if it came to that.

And she was pretty sure it wouldn't. And no fat Cadillacs either, she said. Too ugly.

Everything was to be sleek and geometric, clean and purposeful. Jackie had her eyes not just toward history, but iconography. The young widow standing with her fatherless children, normally so shielded from the public but the North Portico of the White House, leading the nation in the funeral march, clutching the folded American flag at her husband's grave, lighting the eternal flame.

Their two-year-old son, his father's namesake, stepping forward and paying tribute with a salute. Her husband's death could not be in vain. His funeral would be the first step in consecrating his memory as she saw fit.

This wasn't only about history. This was to enshrine their marriage, her love for him and his for her, as sacred and true. She demanded pomp and pageantry.

She was going to transform the country's trauma, the violent death of a young president, into something regal and majestic. One week after the assassination and the day after Thanksgiving, Life magazine already had on the stands its JFK memorial issue. Jackie, in retreat at the Kennedy compound, summoned the author, Theodore White.

She had reached White by phone that morning in New York City, co-called him as he sat in a dentist's chair. He couldn't get to the cake fast enough. The interview started with Jackie saying, What shall I say? Jackie asked him softly.

What can I do for you? Jackie already knew everything she would and would not say. How do you want him remembered? White asked. One thing kept going through my mind, she said.

The line from the musical comedy. He kept saying to Bobby, I've got to talk to somebody. I've got to see somebody.

I want to say this one thing. This line from this musical comedy has been almost an obsession. At night before going to bed, we had an old Victrola.

He'd play a couple of records. I'd get out of bed at night and play it for him when it's so cold getting out of bed. It was a song he loved.

He loved Camelot. It was the song he loved most at the end. It's the last record, the last side of Camelot.

Sad Camelot. Don't let it be forgot that for one shining moment, there was Camelot. White knew that this was patently untrue.

Everyone who knew Jack Kennedy did. This was not a man who was given to poetry or romance or middle-brow Broadway musicals, much less someone who employed such a heavy-handed metaphor. Jack Kennedy wasn't the kind of husband who was home at night with his wife, let alone sharing the same bed and cozying up to the Victrola.

At midnight, Jackie showed White to the maid's room, where he set to work on his first draft. Life was holding the presses for Jackie's exclusive, literally at a cost of $30,000 an hour. When he was done, White handed Jackie his draft.

She began cutting mercilessly, cutting out passages. This was the deal. Life got the exclusive if she got the final edit.

Sometime close to 2 a.m., White called his editors in New York and dictated the final draft from her kitchen. Jackie stood over him to ensure that her version, word for word, would be the published one. She was right to do so.

She listened as White pushed back tensely, his editors calling the Camelot stuff overwrought, untrue, laughable. Jackie looked at White and shook her head back and forth. It was her version or nothing.

And so, as her first draft of history won out, the very last line, the kicker, written in her own backslanted cursive, for one brief shining moment, there was Camelot. That fairy tale would captivate America for decades to come, and at the cost of many more women. What, in hindsight, had she wrought? So, according to Maureen Callahan, the Camelot legacy was crafted by Jackie to have the story told and remembered the way she wanted.

And that legacy persists to this day. Jackie saw the importance of leaving a meaningful legacy and taking control of our own stories. In fact, the Kennedy Family Crest is inscribed with the French phrase, A C'est La Fin, meaning, Consider the End.

Do you think about how you want to be remembered and who has the power to shape that narrative? Does it prompt you to reflect on your own life and the story that you are creating through your actions and choices? The curators of our legacy story is about the differences that we make in the world and to honor us. These stories focus on why the person died and what message may become of it. Mothers Against Drunk Drivers was founded on such a story.

Laws, medical practice, societal norms have been changed by traffic stories being told. Individuals have taken different paths in life after hearing the stories of our loved ones. There's a lot of power in these stories, and the grief toolbox writes that there are some things to keep in mind when planning to tell them either verbally or in writing, and these include, first, to make the message simple and directly related to your story.

Try not to cloud the message with many details that pull people's attention away. Second, anger has a part in grief, but not in trying to make a point. It's easy to dismiss someone who's angry.

The message is not being listened to because the anger is in the way. If you're looking for things to change anger, bitterness and blame will not help. Which reminds me of a obituary I recently saw.

It featured an extremely unattractive picture of the deceased with the words, Florence, quote, Flo Harrelson, 65, formerly of Chelsea, died on February 22nd, 2024, without family by her side due to burnt bridges and a wake of destruction left in her path. Florence did not want an obituary or anyone, including family, to know she died. That's because even in death, she wanted those she terrorized to still be living in fear, looking over their shoulders.

So this is not so much an obituary, but more of a public service announcement. This was written by Flo's 47-year-old daughter, Christina Novak, who hadn't spoken to her mom in a decade and said in an interview with People magazine that she only discovered what had happened after a discussion with a friend about how things were too quiet lately. She googled her mother's name and a death notice with a crematorium popped up.

I messaged my aunt, her identical twin, and I'm like, did mom die? And she was like, I don't know, Novak said. After some digging, I discovered it was her. Some people are like, why even say anything? She's dead.

Novak said that as she points out, sometimes it's only when a person is no longer alive that someone has got the power to say something. These are words to remember. Once we die, our legacy curators can do anything they want.

Anything. Which may be the best argument of all to make things right with people before you die. While we're alive, we should try to live our best lives and do our best to live that story and know that when we die, we let go of the story and let time take care of the rest and hope that it'll be good.

Charlie, have you ever thought about what legacy you want to leave? You know what, Marianne? No, I haven't much. I do like, I'm not sure how to describe this. I do like the direction I've taken, especially with our podcast.

And really, I mean, this podcast exists because of you and your long work and history of helping people and explaining things and educating hundreds of students. But it's just that. You follow a path and sometimes a path will take you in a different direction, but you can't always control what's going to happen.

But if you just follow that path and trust it, for lack of a better way to say it, the old Star Wars things about use of force, Luke. Yeah, I mean, it's inside of you. You know that you just trust yourself and move forward, but not so much to serve yourself, but to serve others.

That's the closest thing I've come to a legacy. In our third half, Robert F. Kennedy was a New York senator and presidential candidate in 1968. While campaigning for president, he was shot on June 5th and died at the age of 42.

As reported by Steve Gillen for the History Channel, the family decided to hold a funeral at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, followed by a burial at Arlington National Cemetery the same day, which raised the main practical question of how they would get the thousands of mourners from New York to Washington. The train seemed the only logical choice to take his body from New York's Penn Station to Washington D.C.'s Union Station. Before airplanes and the interstate highway system, the train was an important aspect of the burial proceedings for our nation's leaders.

Over a century earlier, a train took the body of Abraham Lincoln from Washington to his Springfield, Illinois home. Other deceased presidents who, like Woody Guthrie, hit the rails for the last time, Ulysses S. Grant, James Garfield, William McKinley, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower. Planners needed to negotiate with Penn Central to put together enough train cars.

Eventually, the railroad arranged for two locomotives to pull the 21 mismatched cars. They loaded the bar car, I miss bar cars, with plenty of alcohol and ordered extra first-class meals so the guests could dine on steaks, hamburgers, and cheesecake. Well, I imagine olives too.

The last five cars were reserved for family members and close friends. The senator's satin-lined casket in the rearmost car was in a special observation car with picture windows on each side. To make sure people lining the tracks could view the casket, the family requested it be placed on red velvet chairs and selected a rotating honor guard to stand at the head and foot for 15-minute intervals.

R.K.'s body was flown to New York for a requiem mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral on the morning of June 8, attended by about 2,000 people, including President Lyndon Johnson. Afterward, about 700 invited guests boarded 30 buses for the short trip to Penn Station, where they were screened by the secret service before being allowed to enter the train. You could tell the story of Robert Kennedy by telling the story of the people on this train, family friend Bill Walton told the journalist Jean Stein.

It came from all parts of R.K.'s life. In addition to campaign aides and advisors, his extended family was present, including Jackie Kennedy and her two children, John and Caroline, who joined dozens of other Kennedy kids running through the cars and rolling on the floor. At one point, seven-year-old John Jr.'s stepped out on the open platform and, apparently not knowing how to respond to the crowds, started blessing them as if he were the Pope.

As they exited from the tunnel under the Hudson River into northern New Jersey, the passengers got their first glimpse of the massive crowds gathered to view the train. On the river beside the train tracks, passengers saw a Little Red Harbor boat with the crew standing at attention on the deck, saluting as a train passed. The name of the boat was John F. Kennedy.

In the marshlands of northern Jersey, workers stood atop trucks with their hands placed over their hearts. One man knelt in prayer by the trackside. The organizers and Penn Central did not anticipate the outpouring of emotion that resulted in yet another tragedy.

In Elizabeth, New Jersey, two locals, Antoinette Cervini and John Curia, joined the crowd spilling out onto the tracks. By the time Curia saw a northbound train coming from the opposite direction, it was too late. He tried to pull Severini, who was holding her three-year-old grandchild in her arms, out of the way.

Severini tossed her grandchild to strangers at the platform as she and Curia were crushed under the train's wheels. Reporters on the train learned about the accident but refrained from mentioning it to grieving members of the Kennedy clan. The Kennedy organizers made emergency calls to Penn Central, insisting the train would not move from the Elizabeth station until they received a guarantee that such an accident would not happen again.

In response, the railroad canceled all northbound trains and sent a pilot train as a security measure to provide warning that the Kennedy procession was approaching. RFK's funeral train continued to pass through small stations, clusters of towns, and big urban centers. In New Brunswick, a lone bugler stood on the station platform, sounding taps.

In rural areas, girls flocked to the railroad on horseback and boys looked down from trees. Outside Philadelphia, a junior high school band played America the Beautiful. At the Philadelphia train station, onlookers linked arms and sang the Glory, Glory, Hallelujah chorus of the Civil War anthem, Battle Hymn of the Republic, one of RFK's favorite songs.

By the time they reached Philadelphia, the train passengers had started walking around, greeting old friends, exchanging baby pictures. There was always that ludicrous mixture of heartbreak and how to get your sandwiches. Observe colonist Joseph Alsop.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was struck by the mixture of grief and hilarious reminiscence. Many of those on board had been involved with the Kennedy family for decades. They had already buried one brother.

Now, five years later, another's limitless promise had been extinguished. I think perhaps one of the saddest aspects of the funeral train was that an awful lot of people felt there was nowhere to go. Recall author and activist Michael Harrington.

According to Roger Hillsman, who served in the State Department under President Kennedy, all the conversations eventually led to one urgent question. What the hell was one nation going to do now? Looking out the window, journalist Neufeld witnessed tens of thousands of poor blacks already bereft from the loss of Martin Luther King, weeping and waving goodbye on one side of the railroad tracks. And alongside those black mourners were tens of thousands of almost poor whites on the other side of the train, waving American flags, standing at attention, hands over their hearts, tears running down their faces.

A few family members, including Edward Kennedy, stood on the back platform greeting the crowds. Ethel remained alone, dressed starkly in black, with a veil covering her face, hunched over, her head resting against the casket and her hands grasping rosary beads. It was the only moment, Carter Burden said, that I saw her cry.

The trip lasted for eight hours, twice as long as expected, because more than one million people had gathered along the tracks and in stations to honor RFK. It was a microcosm of America on a summer Saturday afternoon, working people, businessmen, housewives, Boy Scouts, American legionnaires. Little leaguers stopped their games to rush to the tracks, some saluting while others placed their baseball caps over their hearts.

Signs floated above the crowd. God help you. RFK, RIP.

Bless RFK, the most common one read. Bye, Bobby. Charlie, that's really interesting.

Do you remember that funeral train? No, do you? I completely forgot about it until I was reading Ethel's obituary, and it's like, what train? And then I asked David, who's five years older than me, because I was, what was I, 11 or whatever, and I said, do you remember the train? And he's like, no. So I'm thinking, were we like so traumatized with these people being killed that we blocked it, or? Because I went back and read about it, and it's like, I don't remember this at all. I can tell you everything about JFK's funeral, but I don't remember the train and all of this stuff happening.

I just couldn't figure out why I couldn't remember it. Well, that's it for this week's episode. Stay tuned for the continuing saga of Everyone Dies, and thank you for listening.

This is Charlie Navarette, and from writer and audiovisual artist Tilsa Otto, let's try this. If you're dead, blink twice. I promise the second time will be incredible.

And I'm Marianne Matzo, and we'll see you next week. Remember, every day is a gift. This podcast does not provide medical advice.

All discussion on this podcast, such as treatments, dosages, outcomes, charts, patient profiles, advice, messages, and any other discussion are for informational purposes only, and are not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. Always seek the advice of your primary care practitioner or other qualified health providers with any questions that you may have regarding your health. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard from this podcast.

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