Christmas 1983: Ski instructor Dick Dorworth was 44 years old and teaching for the Sun Valley Ski School. Instructors were allowed to teach groups of four at the most, but Dorworth wound up with 10 or so members of the Kennedy family. Leading the group was Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who died at age 77 late Tuesday from brain cancer.
Kennedy made his mark on America as a politician and a towering figure in the Democratic Party, but Dorworth simply met the man. And in one brief moment alone with the powerful politician, Dorworth caught a glimpse of something more, a vulnerability. And it's something he has never forgotten, even now at age 70.
Kennedy often vacationed in the Wood River Valley, and shined here as a man devoted to family and as a skilled skier.
"The Kennedys were all decent to excellent skiers," Dorworth said, "especially Ted Jr., who had lost a leg to cancer. He was an excellent one-legged skier."
In 1973, Ted Jr. had been diagnosed with cancer in his right leg at age 12. It was to be amputated the same day that Ted's niece, Kathleen—the eldest child of Robert Kennedy—was to be married. Kennedy stayed at the hospital until his son went into the operating room, and then rushed to give his niece away at the wedding ceremony. After walking her down the aisle, he rushed back to the hospital to be there when his son came out of the operating room.
After the death of his brothers, John and Robert, Kennedy took on the role of surrogate father to their 13 children.
On the slopes, Ted Kennedy definitely stood out within the entire Kennedy clan for that reason, Dorworth said. But Dorworth didn't interact much with Kennedy during the family's many runs down Bald Mountain.
"We didn't talk much," he said. "He was there to ski and have fun, and I didn't want to bother him."
According to Sun Valley musician Bob Maccarillo, that's how most locals treated celebrities like the Kennedys. The Maccarillo Trio—consisting of him, his brother and his father—performed their jazz music in Sun Valley from 1965-71, and saw much of the Kennedys.
"They were regulars," he said. "We played for Robert before he was killed. And we got to know Ted because he used to come alone."
Like Dorworth's interaction with Ted Kennedy, Maccarillo never talked with him much.
"He used to always ask us to play 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,'" Maccarillo said. "That was his favorite song."
Even though Maccarillo and Dorworth were only acquaintances of Kennedy, they each shared an intimate moment alone with the senator at tough times in his life.
Maccarillo's moment with Ted Kennedy happened just months after Robert Kennedy's assassination. Following one of the trio's shows in the winter of 1968, Ted Kennedy walked backstage to tell Maccarillo and his family how much he had enjoyed the show.
"At that time, he appeared kind of lonely," he said. "You could see the pain in his eyes. He'd been through several tragedies. He used to come to our shows a lot, always alone. That's how we got to know Ted."
Several months prior, on June 5, Robert had been assassinated. John F. Kennedy had been assassinated five years before that.
After Kennedy gave his praises to the trio, he handed each of them a $5 bill, Maccarillo said.
"Every time I'd see him after that, I just really admired him," Maccarillo said.
Maccarillo's brother, Joe, never spent his $5 bill but kept it in his wallet for years, sometimes pulling it out to tell the story of when he met Ted Kennedy.
"It's just something that always meant something to us," Maccarrillo said. "Maybe it wasn't something to him, but it was to us."
For Dorworth, it began at the Roundhouse restaurant, located midway up Baldy. During lunch with the entire Kennedy family, Kennedy asked Dorworth to ski down with him, alone. They could then return to pick up the rest of the group.
"'Of course,' I said, 'Of course,'" Dorworth said.
The two took a leisurely run down Roundhouse Slope and Olympic Lane. The air was cold, probably about zero degrees. Dry snow was slowly falling to the white surface of Baldy, and Dorworth skied about 20 feet ahead of Kennedy, classic instructor style. All was well until Dorworth was within a hundred yards of Olympic Lane's end.
The trailing senator fell down. Dorworth stopped about 30 feet down the mountain to wait.
"He obviously wasn't hurt," Dorworth said of Kennedy, who was 51 at the time. "He had fallen down before and had always gotten up by himself."
But Kennedy didn't move.
Dorworth asked if he was all right, and Kennedy replied, "Yes."
"I waited, and he still didn't move," Dorworth said.
After a while, Kennedy asked if Dorworth could come up and help him.
Dorworth snapped off his skis and walked up, discovering that Kennedy was breathing heavily and pouring sweat. Kennedy wasn't even wearing a hat, he said.
"It was freezing out," Dorworth said. "He shouldn't have been sweating. My first thought was, 'He's having a heart attack.'"
His second thought wasn't what you'd expect, he said. It wasn't, "What can I do?" or "I need to get this man help." Those came to mind third or fourth.
All Dorworth could think about was Kennedy's brothers.
"Everyone from my generation remembers where they were when John and Robert died 20 and 15 years earlier," he said.
Dorworth stood on the slope looking down on Kennedy lying in the snow. All he could think was, "I don't want to be associated with the last remaining brother's death, or the cause of it."
"I very much did not want to be there when Ted Kennedy died," he said. "At the time, that thought seemed pretty weird to me. In retrospect, I think it's what many people would think."
To Dorworth's relief, his dread didn't come to fruition. Kennedy's breathing leveled out, and he rose to his feet without help. The two finished skiing to River Run, and Dorworth walked Kennedy to the Sun Valley bus, where he got on and left.
Two days later, Kennedy checked into Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., and was treated for exhaustion and other unspecified ailments.
After walking Kennedy onto the bus, Dorworth rode the lift back to Roundhouse, overwhelmed by a sense of concern for Kennedy's health and relief that his second thought hadn't come true.
Trevon Milliard: trevon@mtexpress.com
Ethel Kennedy, Robert Kennedy’s wife, and Ted Kennedy visit with skiers at the Roundhouse on Bald Mountain in 1965.
Photo courtesy of Sun Valley Resort
