MY OPINION ESSAYS
What the Kennedy Family and What the Kennedy Center Mean to Me
History often feels like a museum exhibit—sterile, untouchable, and locked behind velvet ropes. But in 2006, after evacuating the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina, I found myself living on Winslow Court in Brookline, Massachusetts. Just around the corner, at 83 Beals Street, stood the birthplace of John F. Kennedy. Walking past that house, noticing its modest scale and its distinct avocado-green exterior, a strange sense of familiarity settled over me. My childhood home had been avocado green, too. My family certainly wasn't wealthy or grand, but looking at that house, the Kennedys ceased to be political ghosts. They became real people.
Like the Kennedys, I was born into a house shaped by sudden, unexpected grief. My father died young, before I was even born, leaving a pregnant, grieving mother to raise my two older siblings alone while working. Growing up, I was the only person in our home who had never known him, navigating a shifting dimension of reality where his absence was a constant presence. The childhood chaos that follows that kind of tragedy is intense. For me, making art wasn't a choice or a casual hobby; it was an innate, compulsory mechanism to find order in the static, to soothe something broken, and to survive.
Many artists understand this gravity. A striking number of creators come from military backgrounds or early childhood trauma, using their disciplines to process what cannot be spoken. In my own life, I found a deep, authentic comfort in the words of Rose Kennedy: "I tell myself that God gave my children many gifts – spirit, beauty, intelligence, the capacity to make friends and to inspire respect. There was only one gift he held back – length of life." When you intimately understand grief and the total absence of earthly justice, you recognize that this wasn't some shallow, Pollyanna game of forced positivity. She meant it. It was a profound acknowledgement that while we do not get everything we want in this life, we must remain fiercely grateful for the gifts we are given.
That grounded, human resilience ran through the Kennedy women. I am often reminded of a letter Jacqueline Kennedy wrote to an Irish priest, reflecting dryly, "I don't think Jack's mother is too bright — and she would rather say a rosary than read a book." There is a sharp truth in that. You can consume all the academic literature in the world, but books cannot grant the steady, weathering peace of the rosary. The Marian promises do not guarantee a life devoid of hardship; they offer the grace and quiet strength to survive the storm.
Mothers matter, and their legacies shape our visual landscapes. Driven by curiosity, I once looked up Jacqueline's mother and discovered her name was Janet Norton Lee. The revelation blew my mind. My family surname is Lee, and we carry a strict tradition of "J" names and French names. Under the vast umbrella of "we aren't related, but thanks for the memories," the connection made the family feel entirely ordinary, bound by the same quiet traditions and messy realities as anyone else. They had good luck and bad luck, did good things and bad things.
When I look at the political figures currently attempting to dismantle their legacy, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I don't see statesmanship. I see a familiar neighborhood bully we used to call Robby Bobby. He was the kind of guy who cut the sleeves off his t-shirts, lifting weights with his garage door wide open to aggressively display a twisted, cluttered mess from a broken house. Watching that loud display, I remember feeling glad we didn't have that kind of chaos on public view at my house—mostly because we didn't even have a garage.
That crude, open-garage style of bullying is precisely what is targeting the Kennedy Center today. The Center is no makeshift, hastily assembled roadside museum. It is a towering repository of fine art, housing delicate, historic diplomatic gifts from every corner of the globe. For decades, it has served a dual purpose: safeguarding the absolute pinnacle of established fine art while simultaneously opening its doors to the raw, emerging creators of tomorrow.
For a broke artist visiting Washington, D.C., the Millennium Stage was a sanctuary. Launched with a federal mandate to keep the arts democratic, it was entirely free and entirely unaligned with any political agenda. On that stage, I watched comedians, dancers, singers, and instrumentalists from every nationality, religion, and genre imaginable. It belonged to everyone.
My favorite exhibition there was a collection of Pablo Picasso’s pottery. I had never seen his ceramics before, and I was struck by how delightfully raw, honest, and childlike the work was. It was art made simply because it felt good to make, completely detached from corporate curation or political posturing. The Millennium Stage protected that exact kind of raw, human honesty. It proved that a national cultural space could be grand without being exclusionary.
Using an independent living memorial as a political pawn or an execution target is bizarre and small-minded. Stripping the public of a non-partisan sanctuary, threatening its structure, and attempting to stamp a personal political brand onto a monument of national unity is a profound betrayal of the public trust. The Kennedy Center was built to show that America values the soul of its creators above the noise of its politicians. To lose such a magnificent, accessible facility to petty political leverage is not just a loss for artists—it is a fundamental loss of freedom for all of America.
Posted on: September 18, 2026