The New England Edition - GANT HOME

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. or “Bobby” as he is
known to his friends, loves the water. It’s a
very personal love that is rooted in a magical
childhood growing up in Hyannisport,
Massachusetts on the shores of Nantucket
Sound. Here, among historic clapboard
houses, boardwalks and beaches Bobby
and his six energetic children now share
their own home.
The Kennedys moved to Hyannisport in the
1920s when Bobby’s grandfather Joseph P.
Kennedy purchased a rambling beachfront
home. “Grandpa’s house” was soon surrounded
by the homes of his children including
Bobby’s father’s, Attorney General
Robert Kennedy and his uncle’s President
John F. Kennedy, in a tight compound.
Other Kennedy relatives also moved into a
slightly more scattered orbit around Joseph
Kennedy’s gabled clapboard summerhouse
and the tiny seaside village.
Bobby spent each summer on Cape Cod
at the family compound where he and his
29 cousins enjoyed a daily regimen of athletic
training and outdoor activities. Each
day the families would sail to the nearby
islands with the children skippering their
own tiny sailboats and the grownups leading
the fl otilla in the family’s 26-foot Wianno
Senior. They would picnic there and fi sh
for sand sharks, scup, fl ounder, puffers and
sea robins; gather hermit crabs, periwinkles
and scallops, or dig for the tasty steamers.
gant home in hyannisport
After sailing they would play baseball on
the fi eld behind John F. Kennedy’s summer
White House or touch football below Joseph
Kennedy’s veranda on the sprawling green
lawn bordered by sawgrass and white sand
beaches that stretch into the sparkling sea.
Hyannisport was a paradise for Bobby. Surrounded
by his family he indulged his obsession
with the natural world.
Nothing much has changed in Hyannisport
in the 50 years since it served as the
summer White House but today Bobby’s six
children have 85 cousins to play with, all of
them enjoying the same close relationship
with nature and the sea. Each day they
ride their bikes to the tidal inlets at Calmus
Beach to crab, or to the salt marshes
at nearby Squaw Island to catch fi ddler
crabs, killifi sh, and mumichugs. They dipnet
for painted turtles and baby catfi sh on
Anderson’s Pond, and seine for eels, shiners,
skipjacks and Atlantic needle fi sh that hide
in the Sargasso weed on the shores that
bracket the harbor.
Bobby’s home is a virtual hotel. His siblings,
cousins and dozens of young cousins
from the 4th generation assemble each
night with weekend guests and stray kids
from across the village after outdoor games
of baseball, football and capture-the-fl ag.
As head of the household, he cooks a giant
barbecue, as thirty bicycles lie resting on
the front lawn.
Bobby’s classic New England cedar shingle
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