Tom Jackman wrote a great piece in the Washington Post on August 2, 2020, Daughter of RFK seeks family heirloom from “Hickory Hill,’ but current owner won’t give it up. Ethel Kennedy, after deciding to sell the estate, told each of her children that they could pick one item from the estate and take it with them.
Kerry Kennedy decided that she wanted a rather large urn planter that adorned the front yard. She eventually planned to move the planter to their famed Hyannis Port compound in Mass.
The new owner refused to let her have it when he took ownership. They both eventually signed an agreement that she could remove the heirloom in 10 years.
Kennedy returned 10 years later and the owner refused to abide by their agreement. He argued that the urn planter had been there prior to the Kennedys and “As a steward of the property’s long and rich history it is my belief the urn should stay with the property.”
Kerry Kennedy, obviously upset by the owner’s decision, decided to sue the owner for breach of contract.
I immediately made a connection between this story and an event that occurred when I was in my mid twenties. I was in my third year of medical school and did a psychiatry rotation in a community hospital. I purposely chose this site because one of my mother’s close friends worked there as a psychologist.
I had connected with him after I happened to see his wife at a dry cleaning store that they owned. Despite the 20 years that had gone by, we recognized each other immediately. This led to an emotional dinner where they filled in a lot of details about my parents and their lives before they died.
My mother was buried at a cemetery very close to their house. They hosted the reception afterward and I can recall running around their house as a child would, not really able to comprehend why I was there.
At our dinner the husband told me he worked at this psychiatric hospital which led me to seek him out when I got there. We eventually had lunch together and it somehow came up that he had one of my mother’s paintings in his house.
At the time, the only possessions that I had of my mother’s consisted of photo albums and some slides of her paintings. So I asked him for the painting and he said NO.
I was devastated. I just started bawling, uncontrollably. I had to leave the restaurant and couldn’t even return to my hospital rotation for a few days. I couldn’t comprehend why he would deny something that would have so much meaning to me.
The rest of my psychiatric rotation was a mess. It was just this deep dark hole I couldn’t escape from.
On the last day of my rotation, he brought me into his office and handed me the painting.
The painting now sits in my living room, a constant reminder of my mother and the short time I had with her. Not all the memories are happy but they are all uniquely mine and that is priceless.
I hope the urn planter finds its way to Hyannis Port where it belongs.
Childhood lost 