| MA Host of Irish Gatherings in Palm
Beach, Florida
 In
February, Kingsley Aikins, Chief Executive of the American Ireland Fund,
and Mike Gibbons, President of the Ireland-U.S. Council for Commerce &
Industry, hosted a week of Ireland-related events in Palm Beach, Florida.
Invited members and guests came from across the U.S. and Ireland for
parties, golf, sailing, tours, shopping and conviviality as well as the
all-important networking opportunities around charities and business.
The highlight of the week was a visit to several sumptuous homes of fellow
members, who extended true Irish hospitality.
“Palm Beach is a pretty natty place for such an old stuffed shirt,”
said my friend, Irish photographer James Higgins, a dedicated fashion
plate whom I bumped into at Don Fiore’s popular consignment menswear
shop on North County Road, a few steps from famed Worth Avenue. Store
owner Fiore, a James Joyce enthusiast and former San Francisco tug captain
who keeps a bottle of Bourbon on hand for his favorite customers, reminded
us that Palm Beach is home to the alpha and the omega, in people and in
taste. “As old Joe Kennedy was fond of saying,” said Fiore,
“there are many phonies in Palm Beach, but they’re the top
phonies.’”
Palm Beach is a town in all its glory during the four-month stretch of
parties known simply as “The Season.” Those of us who attended
the Irish gathering were permitted a rare glimpse behind the towering
hedges, the manicured lawns, and the stately facades of the grand estates.
This was unprecedented access into these guarded retreats where, according
to current estimates, 25 percent of the wealth of the United States is
owned. John Loring, design director of Tiffany’s and author of Tiffany’s
Palm Beach, says “Beginning with Henry Morison Flagler, the Standard
Oil, East Coast railroad, and real estate mogul who settled the island
in 1892, Palm Beach has been a haven to the proposition that all men are
created free to amass great fortunes and spend them as conspicuously as
possible.”
In the early days the locals’ fortunes came from steel mills, coal
mines,
railroads, banking, and newspapers. Today the fortunes of Palm Beach’s
residents
come from diverse sources, including the Internet, real estate, media,
cosmetics, entertainment and fashion. Ice cream’s Ben Cohen has
a house right next to his partner Jerry Greenfield, both just a few doors
down from Celine Dion, separated by Rupert Murdoch. You get the picture.
The Breakers remains the premier hotel in Palm Beach. Always the place
to see and be seen, surprisingly the legendary resort still commands a
lively young crowd. On my way through the lobby to the 16th Annual Emerald
Isle Dinner Dance honoring Boston’s Barbara and Jim Cleary, I bumped
into Jean Kennedy Smith, former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, with daughter
Amanda. We made small talk before JKS left for a birthday party in her
honor. What I didn’t say was that earlier that day a group of us
had the privilege of a private tour of La Guerida, her family’s
former winter home for nearly three-quarters of a century, generally considered
the most fascinating home in Palm Beach. Our tour guide was 87-year-old
Leo Racine, a lifelong aide to Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, who continues
to manage the property for the current owners, Marianne and John Castle.
Besides the extensive restoration, the biggest change here is that the
house is no longer in Democrat hands.
La Guerida, which means “spoils of war,” was named by its
original owners, the Wanamakers of Philadelphia, for whom the house was
built in the early 1930s by famed architect Addison Mizner. The six-bedroom
home was sold in 1933 to Joseph Kennedy for $120,000. Over the years his
family installed a swimming pool and tennis courts on the two-acre oceanfront
property, which still holds mythic status in Palm Beach.
Joseph Kennedy’s house became the “Winter White House”
of the Kennedy administration, where the young president and his aides
planned the New Frontier. La Guerida represented all the energy of youthful
enthusiasm that ended so abruptly in Dallas on November 22, 1963 –
only a few days after the President and Mrs. Kennedy left Palm Beach together
for the last time.
The official Kennedy days in Palm Beach ended quietly in 2003, when La
Guerida was sold to the Castles. “For the Kennedys, it was time
to move on,” said Racine. “With the death of Rose Kennedy,
the house seemed more a part of history than a home.” To walk through
the house is a kind of sacred journey that goes beyond history into the
heart of a remarkable family. A careful renovation preserved the wood-paneled
family room where the young president chose his cabinet. The bedroom of
the older boys, Joe and John, is next to the room shared by the younger
brothers Bobby and Teddy; across the hall are the girls’ rooms,
today one peach, and the other pink. In the corner is the bedroom where
Joe Kennedy sat for many years, a silent stroke victim, with just an ocean
view to soothe his soul. Like all true homes it is a temple of memories
both beautiful and damned.
My stroll through La Guerida had taken an Irish turn into a sad pilgrimage,
far from the frivolity of the Irish gathering. Who expected such intensity?
There is hope for Palm Beach after all.
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