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by Val Ellicott
Staff Writer
In the privileged world of the Kennedys, good food,
cold cocktails and loyal servants are always close at hand.
Kennedy employees who testified last month about
life at 1095 N. Ocean Blvd. offered a detailed glimpse of a relaxed
but well-ordered household that balances attendance at Sunday Mass
with a traditional pitcher of daiquiris at lunch.
Their statements provided no insights into
activities at the estate during the pre-dawn hours of March 30, when
a Jupiter woman says William Kennedy Smith raped her near the
estate's swimming pool.
And they frustrated a state prosecutor's efforts to
determine whether a Kennedy family guest misled police who tried to
contact Sen. Ted Kennedy at the estate the day after the alleged rape.
But they did reveal the recipe for eggs a la Lee
and the family's practice of keeping a cold chicken on hand for
late-night snacking.
"They order a chicken there every night so
they can come in and cut it and eat it and have a bit of salad,"
Nellie McGrail, the cook at the Palm Beach estate, told Assistant
State Attorney Moira Lasch on May 7.
McGrail and other servants are a mainstay of the
Kennedy lifestyle.
"Each part of the family comes in with usually
a different maid," Dennis Spear, the caretaker at the Palm Beach
estate, testified. " And sometimes parts of the family bring
their own cooks with them."
Jean Kennedy Smith brought her cook, Bridget
Sullivan, to assist McGrail over Easter weekend. Sullivan has worked
for the Smiths for 28 years. Like McGrail and Spear, she is Catholic.
The Kennedys also hired a temporary maid, Jean Saba, to handle
serving and cleaning duties.
Family servants cook, clean, wake the Kennedys and
their guests in time to catch flights and ferry people to and from
the airport. And they never forget their place.
"A good servant wouldn't tell anyone what was
happening in the house, " McGrail told Lasch. "They keep it
to themselves."
LATE-NIGHT MISSIONS
Servants also are expected to remain on call for
the occasional late- night mission of mercy.
When a woman Patrick Kennedy had met at a bar
needed a ride from the estate back to her hotel at 3:30 a.m. March
27, Patrick volunteered Spear. The caretaker put his bicycle into the
woman's rental car, drove her to the Ocean Grand, and rode the 10
miles back to the estate.
The Kennedy lifestyle is relaxed, informal and
grounded on small but important rituals, according to the statements
released last week.
Lunch is always served on a patio on the east side
of the house. Dinner is always served in a courtyard on the west
side. And daiquiris are a midday must.
"Always. Always at lunch," Saba told
Lasch. "It's a family tradition."
Saba, who worked for the Kennedys for three weeks,
contradicted the notion-- popular in the weeks after the Jupiter
woman told police she had been raped-- that the family hosts
bacchanals at their Palm Beach estate.
"They have always been very dignified,"
Saba said. "The whole family is very, very quiet and very kind."
The servants also testified that the Kennedys and
their guests all made it to church on Easter. Sen. Kennedy and
Patrick Kennedy waited for the noon Mass, according to McGrail. They
stopped first at Chuck and Harold's, a Palm Beach restaurant and bar,
and ordered drinks, bar records show.
Saba and Sullivan both answered to McGrail, who has
cooked for the Kennedys for 20 years in Palm Beach and Hyannis and is
a close friend of Rose Kennedy's.
"The reason they keep me around is because the
kids like to see me there," McGrail told Lasch. "They say,
`If you're here, we think grandma' s here.' "
Large parts of McGrail's statement read like The
Joy of Cooking.
During her 75 minutes of testimony, she led Lasch
on a mouth-watering culinary retrospective that lingered lovingly
over lunches of crab meat thermidor and lobster salad and dinners
that featured pompano, zucchini au gratin, filet mignon, broccoli
hollandaise and chocolate mousse.
McGrail recalled down to the last detail everything
the Kennedys and their guests ate during Easter weekend and before.
"It was fish all Lent week," McGrail
said. "Nobody could eat meat. It wasn't allowed in the house."
EGGS, BACON AND MUFFINS
She also told Lasch that:
* The Kennedys' Palm Beach house isn't air-conditioned.
"They don't like it," McGrail said.
* Patrick Kennedy always has three scrambled eggs,
half a pound of bacon and three English muffins for breakfast, but it
doesn't show.
"You'd think he never ate a meal in his
life," McGrail said.
* One of Sen. Kennedy's breakfast choices is eggs a
la Lee-- a poached egg, ham and mushroom sauce on an English muffin.
"It's supposed to be General Lee's
favorite," McGrail told Lasch.
* The bedrooms in the Kennedy house have different
names-- the President' s Room, the Ambassador's Room, the Ocean
Room-- and each family member has a favorite.
"They all designate the room they like,"
McGrail said.
McGrail said Easter weekend at the estate was
unremarkable except for a brief visit Sunday by two police officers
investigating the alleged rape.
"Do you know, it was one of the quietest
weekends we ever had in our life?" she told Lasch.
*Kennedy Smith case
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