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"In a rambling wood-frame house about an hour outside New York City, 14 women and girls (and one baby boy) gather for a Saturday afternoon photo shoot. It&amp;#x27;s a boisterous multi-ringed circus: Four girls whisper secrets and dance to Beyonc&amp;amp;eacute;, while three young women, 16 to 28, feed chocolate cake to their toddler cousins and an impossibly limber 30-year-old does pretzel-like yoga poses. In the midst of this activity, four adult sisters--they&amp;#x27;re the mothers of everyone else in the room--trade advice. &amp;quot;How does this look?&amp;quot; asks one of the sisters, of the outfit she&amp;#x27;s chosen for the shoot. &amp;quot;Really? Not great,&amp;quot; replies the eldest sibling--prompting the younger to dash to the wardrobe trailer to change. In this casual atmosphere, it&amp;#x27;s easy to forget that these 14 females are members of America&amp;#x27;s most famous political dynasty. They&amp;#x27;re the daughters and granddaughters of Robert F. Kennedy (he also had seven sons), who was assassinated 40 years ago this month during his historic campaign to win the Democratic nomination for president. His murder, by a lone gunman named Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles, came four and a half years after his brother President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas--and only eight weeks after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead on a motel balcony in Memphis. Youthful and passionate, &amp;quot;Bobby&amp;quot; embodied a fresh style of politics: He was an antipoverty and antiwar crusader, a voice for minorities--our first &amp;quot;rock star&amp;quot; candidate. &amp;quot;He would come home from campaigning with his fingers red and swollen because of people reaching up, almost desperate to touch him,&amp;quot; recalls his daughter Kerry Kennedy, 48, who has turned over her house for today&amp;#x27;s shoot. &amp;quot;Over the decades,&amp;quot; says Kerry, &amp;quot;people from all walks of life have told me, &amp;#x27;When your father died, so did my hope.&amp;#x27;&amp;quot; But hope hasn&amp;#x27;t died, of course. Bobby&amp;#x27;s daughters and granddaughters carry it forward with their activism, public service and determination to make the world a better place. In a rare group interview--&amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;ve never had so much of our family in one place, without men. There&amp;#x27;s a rare and unique energy in the air with so many of the women together,&amp;quot; says Kerry--Glamour talks to these amazing females. Collectively they&amp;#x27;ve lived through so much: unspeakable family pain, social upheaval, women&amp;#x27;s changing roles. How could they not have amassed priceless life lessons? Here, they share truths we can all live by. You can forgive even the worst in others Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, 56, is Bobby&amp;#x27;s eldest daughter. The former lieutenant governor of Maryland, she is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and author of Failing America&amp;#x27;s Faithful. Three weeks after my father died, I went to work on a Navajo reservation whose soaring teen suicide rate my father had been concerned about. I was 16; I was crying a lot. My mother wanted me to stay home--but he had taught me to turn my grief outward. When my uncle [John Kennedy] was killed, my father gave me a handwritten note that ended with this simple request: &amp;quot;Be kind to others and work for your country. Love, Daddy.&amp;quot; Grief gives you two choices. You can curse your fate and be angry. Or you can use that grief to reach out to others. Rory Kennedy, 39, is Bobby&amp;#x27;s daughter. She produces, writes and directs award-winning documentaries on social issues. I believe you need to confront pain and suffering in the hard times and that avoidance is not the way to go through life. My father was someone who didn&amp;#x27;t avoid difficulty. On the night that Martin Luther King was assassinated, he went into the African American community and talked about suffering: theirs, and his own after his brother&amp;#x27;s death. And even though I never knew my father [Ethel Kennedy was about three months pregnant with Rory when Bobby was assassinated] I learned that from him. For my film Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, I interviewed a man whose father had been tortured [to death] by our soldiers. I owed it to that grieving man not only to let myself feel devastated by what happened to his father but to communicate that devastation to others. Otherwise, his pain and suffering would have gone unnoticed by the world. Kerry Kennedy, 48, is Bobby&amp;#x27;s daughter. She is a human rights attorney and founder of the Center for Human Rights at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial. Kerry has written two books: Speak Truth to Power and Being Catholic Now. I&amp;#x27;ve learned powerful lessons about the nature of forgiveness from human rights defenders. For example, for the greater good of his country, Kofi Woods emerged from a torture chamber in Liberia to later defend the very men who had brutalized him. Those who suffer profoundly are granted profound wisdom. Forgiveness is a gift, and central to faith. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu told me: Forgiving doesn&amp;#x27;t mean turning yourself into a doormat.... It&amp;#x27;s like someone is sitting in a dank room...but outside the sun is shining.... Forgiveness is like opening the curtains...a chance for a new beginning. Cara Kennedy Cuomo, 13, is Kerry&amp;#x27;s daughter. In our school production of Speak Truth to Power [a play based on Kerry&amp;#x27;s book that&amp;#x27;s now touring the world], I portrayed Desmond Tutu talking about a town in South Africa where the police massacred innocent people. Later, the police asked for forgiveness and the townspeople welcomed them back into the community. It&amp;#x27;s amazing to think people can overcome their anger and loss, and inspiring to know they can all be nice to one another. Kathleen: We&amp;#x27;ve had other tragedies, and you try to learn from them. [In 1984 Kathleen&amp;#x27;s younger brother David died of a drug overdose at age 29. Another brother, Michael, died in a 1997 skiing accident when he was 39.] When David died we, like countless other families, learned the horrible ultimate lesson about the grip of addiction. It&amp;#x27;s not that we were unaware of it before, and it&amp;#x27;s not that we didn&amp;#x27;t try to help before--as much as we knew how in the early 1980s. I asked myself over and over again: What could I have done differently? How could I have been more effective? Here was this wonderful kid, this sweet, lovely, sensitive young man, lost to us. I&amp;#x27;ve worked with crime victims and seen families devastated by death. Every family suffers; we all struggle with how to transform that suffering into something that redeems those who are still alive. Channel your &amp;quot;mighty women&amp;quot; Kerry: Our family is full of she-roes. My great-great-grandmother Bridget Murphy took the boat over from Ireland in the nineteenth century, defied the rabid anti-Irish discrimination in Boston and opened a notions shop, running it while raising four children as a young widow. Our grandmother Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was fiercely engaged with life. Well into her nineties she was grilling us on world events and safety-pinning quotes from the newspaper to her sweater to help commit them to memory. And our mother, Ethel Skakel Kennedy--now there is a mighty woman! Raising 11 children took enormous reserves of energy and courage. Imagine: Your husband dies when you&amp;#x27;re pregnant with your eleventh child, but you forge on. Courtney Kennedy, 51, is Bobby&amp;#x27;s daughter and an activist for Irish rights and causes. She is currently developing a foundation to aid the Latino community. [After Bobby&amp;#x27;s death, Ethel] became the ultimate single mother. She was indomitable--both in raising the 11 of us and in keeping our father&amp;#x27;s work alive by starting the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial foundation. There&amp;#x27;s a motto I have on a needlepoint pillow that embodies who she is even today, at 80: &amp;quot;The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.&amp;quot; She&amp;#x27;s always doing it. She&amp;#x27;s at ease with farmworkers, captains of industries, presidents, coal miners, popes. She challenges others and herself with equal passion. No one can say no to Mummy. Rory: She was as fearless as our brothers! She would jump seven-foot fences on horseback and ski the most challenging trails and go out sailing in hurricanes. Don&amp;#x27;t be limited by anyone&amp;#x27;s expectations Kathleen: My father was attorney general; my uncle was president. Yet I didn&amp;#x27;t know a single woman attorney. My father took me hiking with Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, but there was no expectation that I could follow in their footsteps. The women I grew up around took care of their kids and did charity work. I went away to college [at Harvard]. Feminism changed everything. I am forever grateful to Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and all the other activists for this. Even if you have the most wonderful family--and mine was--the changing culture can open you to possibilities that your family can&amp;#x27;t. Rory: I&amp;#x27;m 17 years younger than Kathleen. I reaped the benefits of the women&amp;#x27;s movement. I never doubted women were as capable as men--I saw that capability in my sisters and my mother. Kerry, the sister closest in age to me, was so cool; she&amp;#x27;d come home from college with energy and confidence and drive me around in her Jeep, and I was in heaven. Sometimes Kathleen and I compare notes: the oldest and youngest girls during the years that being female in America changed so much. I&amp;#x27;m not sure who had it easier, but it certainly was different. Kathleen: Has my family changed? What do you think? I&amp;#x27;m campaigning for Hillary. So are Kerry and Bobby [environmental lawyer and activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.], but the rest of them are backing the guy! Rory: I&amp;#x27;m backing Obama even though he is not a woman. [Laughs.] He is simply the best candidate for the job. While I would love to see a woman become president, this is not a time when we can afford to vote on gender politics. But I do have a great deal of respect for Hillary. Work hard, play hard Kat (Katherine) Townsend, 24, and her sisters, Maeve, Meaghan and Kerry Townsend, are Kathleen&amp;#x27;s daughters. Kat is an artist and recent graduate of Georgetown University. We four Townsend girls competed about everything. Maeve Townsend, 28, is getting her master&amp;#x27;s degree at Georgetown University&amp;#x27;s School of Foreign Service. Grades. Sports. Who could be loudest at the dinner table... Kat: Who could do the most back bends. Who could fit the most marshmallows in her mouth! Maeve: When I was my sister Kerry&amp;#x27;s age, 16, I wasn&amp;#x27;t thinking of college--I was thinking of boys. Kerry has her priorities straight: She&amp;#x27;s a great student, a star soccer player, she has perfect pitch, and she is a wonderful actress. Kerry Townsend, 16, is a high school junior. I think [my being so mature is] because Mom was lieutenant governor when I was little, so she wasn&amp;#x27;t around like she was for my sisters. I became responsible early; I started making my own lunch in kindergarten. I loved having a mom in politics. It was tough when she lost [her race for governor of Maryland, in 2002]. I was [thinking], &amp;quot;How can Mom lose?!&amp;quot; I definitely grew up with girl power. Fall madly--yes, madly--in love Courtney: We&amp;#x27;re an Irish Catholic family. We&amp;#x27;re proud of our Irishness. The first time we visited Ireland, when I was 11, I felt like I&amp;#x27;d come home. In 1990 I met Paul Michael Hill, a Northern Irish freedom fighter who, three months earlier, had been released from 15 years in an English prison--more than four years in solitary confinement--for a bombing he didn&amp;#x27;t commit. [In 2005 former Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized to Hill for his wrongful imprisonment.] Paul and I fell in love at first sight. On the surface we may have seemed different: He&amp;#x27;s from a working-class background and he&amp;#x27;d spent his adult life, from 19 to 35, imprisoned. But we both had our Irishness, our love of family--and our love of justice. He was determined to help others who were wrongfully convicted, which he&amp;#x27;s been doing since his release. We married in 1993 and had Saoirse. Saoirse Kennedy Hill, 11, is Courtney&amp;#x27;s daughter. It&amp;#x27;s great to have such a fabulous and unusual name. My friends comment on it all the time, and even my teachers stumble on it or say, &amp;quot;How do you pronounce it?&amp;quot; [It&amp;#x27;s pronounced SEER-sha.] I love that my name means &amp;quot;freedom&amp;quot; in Gaelic. Kathleen: Love gives you the adrenaline to take risks. [When I was in college] I had a crush on my English professor, David Townsend, but he didn&amp;#x27;t seem interested. Teachers weren&amp;#x27;t supposed to fraternize with their students, and besides, he had a girlfriend. He&amp;#x27;d assigned the class Mark Twain&amp;#x27;s Life on the Mississippi, so I suggested that, after the semester was up, he and I build a raft and float down the Mississippi. We built a 12- by 24-foot raft and traveled 500 miles on it, and by the end of the trip, we were in love. We married a year and a half later. Maeve: Four years ago, while I was working in Senator Dianne Feinstein&amp;#x27;s San Diego office, I met a UC Berkeley lit major named Dave McKean, who was kind, brilliant and hilarious. He went off to the Far East to teach English just when I was moving to Washington. At the end of his school year, I bought a plane ticket to China, and we traveled through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. You really get to know each other when you both have food poisoning in Cambodia. Now I&amp;#x27;m at Georgetown, getting both a law degree and international relations M.A., he&amp;#x27;s at American U. law school, and we are head over heels in love. Like Brangelina, we sometimes sign our letters &amp;quot;Maevid.&amp;quot; He just asked me to marry him! Do well by doing good Maeve: People think, because I&amp;#x27;m a Kennedy, I&amp;#x27;m extremely wealthy and don&amp;#x27;t flaunt it. Ha! I have a great name, but by the time you get to the fourth generation, the money&amp;#x27;s run out. We&amp;#x27;re fortunate compared to the average American, but to think I&amp;#x27;m a trust fund kid--so not true! Though my parents paid my tuition, I worked through Boston College at Bruegger&amp;#x27;s Bagels and Dunkin&amp;#x27; Donuts. There&amp;#x27;s no question that I want to go into public service, but my friends and I talk a lot about the question, How can you go into public service with debts like the ones we&amp;#x27;re racking up? I&amp;#x27;ll be leaving law school with $150,000 in student loans to repay. Human rights jobs have starting salaries of $35,000. It&amp;#x27;s up to us to find a way to keep doing good while going into our chosen careers. One way is volunteerism. I&amp;#x27;m on the board of Nest, a foundation that supports women artisans in developing countries through microcredit loans. Kat: I do photography, sketching, painting. I&amp;#x27;m the &amp;quot;free spirit&amp;quot; among us sisters--and the only redhead! I didn&amp;#x27;t do college consecutively; I took a few years off to work in architecture and see if I wanted that to be my focus. In high school I had part-time jobs. I waitressed at a coffee shop so I could meet a wider variety of people than I would normally; I loved the experience. I&amp;#x27;m planning to go into a field called communications infrastructure, to help people in developing countries get Internet and mobile phone access. It has the potential to do a lot of good--and keeps me in touch with my inner geek. Meaghan Townsend, 30, Kathleen&amp;#x27;s daughter, teaches yoga in Los Angeles. I went to Harvard, figuring I&amp;#x27;d go into law, medicine or business. But on a trip to L.A., I started taking yoga. People in my family achieved great things; yoga wasn&amp;#x27;t a &amp;quot;real career.&amp;quot; Besides, it was &amp;quot;crunchy&amp;quot;--you om&amp;#x27;d. But I saw how it helps people succeed in their lives. I didn&amp;#x27;t smile for five years; but with yoga, smiles start spreading. If someone&amp;#x27;s angry, you can deal with it. Yoga is empowering; you think, If I can hold Warrior Two for two minutes, I can do anything. I&amp;#x27;ve been a yoga instructor for over five years. There&amp;#x27;s a line of George Bernard Shaw&amp;#x27;s that my grandfather [often quoted]: &amp;quot;You see things and you say, &amp;#x27;Why?&amp;#x27; But I dream things that never were and I say, &amp;#x27;Why not?&amp;#x27;&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;m starting a foundation to bring yoga--with hip-hop music--to inner-city neighborhoods. And in honor of my grandfather, and because it so fits how I tumbled into my life&amp;#x27;s work, I named it Why Not Yoga? Learn from the past--and believe in the future Maeve: What a time this is! With this election, we have history-making candidates, and when people turn 18 now, they&amp;#x27;re so excited! Poor Kerry...she&amp;#x27;s bummed that she&amp;#x27;s only 16 and can&amp;#x27;t vote yet. Rory: There are so many role models out there in the world for our daughters. In my industry--documentary filmmaking--it seems like most of the executives are women. And that&amp;#x27;s just one industry. Maybe it&amp;#x27;s fitting that in this next generation of our family there are so many girls. My sisters and I were outnumbered [by the boys] seven to four, but of our kids, the girls outnumber the boys 22 to 10. When my siblings and I played football, you&amp;#x27;d have to fight to get the ball--and you&amp;#x27;d better not drop it, or else. With my daughters and nieces and nephews, it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Oh, you dropped the ball; that&amp;#x27;s OK. Maybe next time you&amp;#x27;ll catch it.&amp;quot; Having all those girls changed the tone. And you know what, they catch the ball just as much as my brothers did. Mariah Kennedy Cuomo, 13, is Kerry Kennedy&amp;#x27;s daughter and the twin of Cara Kennedy Cuomo. In school we were taught that slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, so I was shocked when I learned that a man named Lucas Benitez has [during the past dozen years] freed more than 1,000 people from slavery in the tomato fields of Florida and South Carolina. He described how farm laborers are exploited. When I bite down on a tomato, I think about what hard work and strength it has taken to provide a five-second snack for someone like me. Michaela Kennedy Cuomo, 10, is Kerry Kennedy&amp;#x27;s daughter. She is the sister of Mariah and Cara. My grandfather said that &amp;quot;each person can change a small portion of events.&amp;quot; I made a scrapbook about his life for a fourth-grade assignment. We only had to make eight pages, but I made 27. Kathleen: My daughters have taught me so much. Meaghan, for example, through her yoga, has shown me the importance of slowing down and enjoying right now. Each generation pulls from their past and creates the future, and I think the twenty-first century is going to be the century for women. I can&amp;#x27;t wait to see what these committed, passionate women--my daughters and my nieces--are going to do. Kerry: With our daughters, I feel I&amp;#x27;m catching a glimpse of the future, and the world looks more just and peaceful. Senior contributing editor Sheila Weller is the author of the book Girls Like Us, about three groundbreaking music icons: Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell and Carole King."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2008/05/bobby-kennedy-daughters/2>