National Post (National Edition)
The battle over a Kennedy urn
LATEST OWNER OF HOME RELUCTANT TO PART WITH PLANTER DESPITE CONTRACT
When the family of Robert Kennedy in 2009 decided to sell its famed “Hickory Hill” estate in McLean, Va., the late senator’s widow, Ethel Kennedy, told each of her children to pick one item from the property to take with them. Daughter Kerry Kennedy picked a four-foot-high urn planter from the front yard as a family heirloom to be relocated to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Mass.
When the Kennedys moved out in the spring of 2010, the new owner resisted giving up the urn, Kerry Kennedy said. He suggested that he would be willing to part with it in 10 years and put the agreement in writing and signed it. Kerry Kennedy said she was willing to wait because she was moving to New York City and didn’t have room for it.
Ten years later, Kennedy is living in Hyannis Port and asked Hickory Hill owner Alan Dabbiere for the urn. And though Dabbiere wrote to her in 2010 that in 10 years “you are free to take the urn,” he is now refusing, Kennedy said. So Kennedy sued Dabbiere on Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., for breach of contract.
“It belonged to the people who are so important to me,” Kerry Kennedy said Friday. “I’m going to put it in Hyannis Port, where my children live, my mother lives, all of my family comes every summer, so they can have this connection to our family’s history.”
Dabbiere said he initially agreed to relinquish the urn under the mistaken belief that it had been brought to Hickory Hill by Jackie Kennedy in the 1950s and was part of her family’s history. When he learned that the urn was there long before the Kennedys purchased the property, Dabbiere said, “As a steward of the property’s long and rich history it is my belief the urn should stay with the property.”
Hickory Hill, built on about 5.6 acres in 1870, has nine bedrooms and 11 baths, a tennis court and a pool, and is designated as a National Historic Landmark. It was bought in 1955 by thenSen. John Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, but in 1957 they swapped homes with Robert and Ethel Kennedy, then building what would become a family with 11 children.
John Kennedy had purchased the home from the estate of recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who also served as a prosecutor during the Nuremberg war-crimes trials. Jackson also claimed the urn as private property, a letter from 1941 shows. That means it is not a permanent part of Hickory Hill, said Kerry Kennedy, a lawyer and longtime human rights activist who is the head of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization.
Kerry Kennedy, 60, is the seventh of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s children, born in 1959 and raised at Hickory Hill. She was married to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for 15 years and they have three daughters.
Hickory Hill became a renowned gathering spot for politicians, authors and cultural icons, both before and after Robert Kennedy’s assassination in June 1968. It also was the place where Kerry Kennedy said she “learned my uncle had been killed,” when she was a fouryear-old, and “cried in when my father was killed.” She said it was “where I learned to play football, the kitchen I learned to bake in ... the tree I planted when I started my first day of work on human rights.”
Dabbiere, 58, is the chairman of OneWatch and formerly led AirWatch, both companies that manage privacy and security for the computers and mobile devices of both government agencies and private organizations.
Dabbiere bought the home in 2009 for $8.25 million, according to Fairfax real estate records. Before the sale, according to the lawsuit, “Ethel Kennedy gave all ownership rights and title to the urn that was located at Hickory Hill to her daughter, plaintiff Kerry Kennedy.”
“Kerry,” Dabbiere wrote in an email dated June 16, 2010, “the purpose of this email is to memorize (sic) our conversation that the Urn in the front of Hickory Hill will remain as your property and we give up any rights to it conveying with the property and in exchange you agree that the Urn will stay in its current place for 10 years from today’s date — June 16th, 2010. At that time, you are free to take the urn.”
Kennedy said she began contacting Dabbiere in May of this year and told him, “Please, don’t go back on your word. Return my urn. He told me to hire a lawyer.”
The suit filed Friday includes a 1964 photo of the Kennedy family, then with eight children, with the urn in the background. The suit estimates that the urn is worth more than $75,000, the minimum needed to file a federal claim.
“I believe this is a personal matter between me and Kerry,” Dabbiere said in an email Saturday.
Dabbiere added, “I recently confirmed that the urn had been on the property long before the Kennedy family purchased the home through a photo from the (Justice Robert) Jackson Library. When I discovered this I contacted Kerry with these facts.” He said the urn should stay at Hickory Hill.
Kennedy responded: “Given Mr. Dabbiere’s extensive changes to the exterior of Hickory Hill, including removing dozens of old trees and adding an entire new wing to the home, his claim that retaining the urn is consistent with stewardship of Hickory Hill’s history is unconvincing.”
IT BELONGED TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SO IMPORTANT TO ME. I’M GOING TO PUT IT IN HYANNIS PORT, WHERE … ALL OF MY FAMILY COMES EVERY SUMMER, SO THEY CAN HAVE THIS CONNECTION TO OUR FAMILY’S HISTORY. — KERRY KENNEDY