When Sargent Shriver married into the Kennedy clan, he and his in-laws embarked upon a lifelong tug of war.
Once, at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, one of Shriver's sons fell down and burst into tears. Bobby Kennedy chided the child, saying, "Kennedys don't cry." Shriver lifted the boy and cooed, "That's OK, you can cry. You're a Shriver."
At first considered too kind and gentle (i.e., weak) to be a "real" Kennedy, Shriver soon won the family's trust and admiration, then spent much of his adult life helping them achieve their goals: putting Jack in the White House, establishing the Peace Corps and, along the way, ignoring his own political aspirations whenever his conflicted with theirs (which they almost always did).
By marrying Eunice Kennedy in 1953, Shriver set himself upon a seesaw that would lift him to unimagined heights as a public servant -- a man who changed millions of lives around the world for the better. But the marriage also ensured that decades of accomplishments would go unheralded. One year older than John F. Kennedy, Shriver's prime time coincided with that of both Jack and Bobby. Kennedy patriarch Joe made it clear that the only limelight destined for sons-in-law was that which reflected off his sons. And so, for more than 50 years, Shriver has been mistakenly thought of as a kind of genial, hard-working but not exactly pivotal fixture in the New Frontier.
In his later life, Shriver decided to rectify the record. Just a few years before being diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer's disease, he selected Scott Stossel, a young and relatively unknown magazine writer, as his official biographer. Stossel's book, "Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver" (Smithsonian Books), comes out Wednesday. It is the author's first book, and the first biography of Sargent Shriver.
Stossel was 27 and Shriver was 81 when the older man phoned the younger one out of the blue and asked for a meeting. He was seeking a young, talented, independent thinker to help write the story of his life, he said. Not a fusty retrospective, but something relevant for his grandchildren's generation, and generations beyond. Stossel's first question (to himself, of course) was: Who would want to read it?
That was seven years ago, when the writer knew no more than anyone else about Shriver. After recording 60 hours of Shriver's recollections, he that realized the project was not just worthwhile but essential -- that it could shed new light on the past and offer inspiration for the future. And that if he didn't do it, it might never get done.
