Dynastic Overdrive

MICHAEL KNOX BE RAN

AFTER Eleanor Roosevelt’s funeral at Hyde Park in 1962, the mourners gathered at her son John’s house. Arthur Schlesinger—who had flown up from Washington with President and Mrs. Kennedy to attend the service—later recalled the scene. “Thinking of the young Roosevelts,” Schlesinger wrote, “lost suddenly in middle age, and of the young Kennedys, so sure and purposeful, one perceived an historic contrast, a dynastic change, like the Plantagenets giving way to the Yorks.”