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CRC Blog On RoseMarie
Terenzio’s
Fairy Tale Interrupted: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss
Fairy Tale Interrupted: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss
“Once Upon A Time”
I
love to read anything about the Kennedys – because it makes me feel a stronger
connection with my mother who passed away on New Year’s Eve 2003. She was fascinated with Kennedys. In fact when President Kennedy was
assassinated she and her best friend Sandy, who now lives somewhere in Australia,
attended church night services where they walked down the aisle and prayed in
the pulpit, dedicating their lives to God to live and look as much like First
Lady Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy as possible. Of course, naturally, my mother outgrew this
commitment and fortunately God did not take her seriously. She married my father in June of 1966 and
went on to have three children my older sister, my brother eight years my
junior, and myself.
My mother passed on her love of the
Kennedys to me, and, when I was 12 years old, gave me my first ever People
Magazine with John F Kennedy Jr. and his older sister Caroline Kennedy
on the cover. I still have that magazine
and thought it is tattered and well read – it is only of sentimental value –
something that reminds me of my mom so much more important than my fascination
with the Kennedys; the Kennedys just a
way to connect with my mother.
On January 24, 2012, Gallery Books
published RoseMarie Terenzio’s memoir Fairy Tale Interrupted: A Memoir of Life, Love, And Loss with
book design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco; Design by Janet Perr; Front Cover
Photograph by Evan Agostini/Getty Images; and Back cover photo by Christian
Lucidi.
Gallery Books Web Page
Link
Gallery Books Facebook
Link
RoseMarie Terenzio’s
Memoir Web Link
RoseMarie Terenzio’s
Public Relations Web Link
RoseMarie Terenzio’s
Facebook Link
Facebook Link
Janet Perr Web Page
Janet Perr Facebook Link
Evan Agostini Web Page
Evan Agostini Facebook
Page
After I read Rosemarie Terenzio’s book I am
convinced that she and I both walked in the same shoes – thinking it a fairy tale
to be a part of the Kennedy mystique; only to realize in the end that it is our
roots, our own family, that make us the valuable individuals we are.
Rosemarie’s fairy tale begins when, once upon a time, Rosemarie Terenzio is
born in January of 1966, to an Italian and Catholic couple, Anthony and Marion Terenzio,
who were blue-collar hard workers. Her
father Anthony was a staunch Republican who did not think highly of Democrats,
especially the Kennedy family. Anthony
owned several businesses that never seemed to prosper; nonetheless, he was a
hard worker and loved his daughters.
RoseMarie’s mother Marion worked at least two
jobs to put food on the table for RoseMarie and her three older sisters: Anita, Andrea, and Amy. The family of six had plenty of love, plenty
of affection, plenty of emotion, and plenty of dedication but they never seemed
to have plenty of money.
One of RoseMarie’s first memories is when she is
six years old on Christmas day, running to the kitchen where her mother was
seated drinking black coffee and smoking Kool cigarettes. The little girl was holding her baby doll she
received for Christmas, telling her mother that she was bored because she
didn’t get enough fun gifts. Her mother responded by snatching the doll,
slamming it against the wall, and then throwing the mangled body at her six-year-old
daughter who was crying.
Another memory was when her mother cleaned her
room but within two days daughter RoseMarie made a cyclone mess of her
room. Her mother came in, and gathered
everything on the floor, tossed it into her doll’s crib, and then opened the
window and dumped the contents on the family’s front porch.
But nothing could rile her mother’s Sicilian
temper to the boiling point than when she was protecting her daughters, particularly
her youngest child RoseMarie. The
priests made it a rule that in order for children to get their report cards
they had to be up to date on their payments for the St. Dominic’s Catholic
school, where RoseMarie attended as a third grader. RoseMarie described her parents as never
having two dimes to rub together. So when
report cards were due RoseMarie came home empty handed and was crying at the
kitchen table. Her mother asked her what
was wrong and RoseMarie told her. Marion
called the Bishop to explain the situation and asked him to change their policy
and he refused. Two days later on a
Sunday, the Bishop greeted Marion and her four daughters at Catholic Mass.
“Bishop, you can kiss my ass before
I’ll kiss that ring.”
My report card was waiting for me
at school on Monday morning.
RoseMarie recognized that yes her mom had
a temper, and yes she inherited her temper from her mom but her temper became
her asset enabling her along with good Italian hard work to achieve her dreams
of education and working as a junior-level publicist at a midtown PR company
and then finally landing a job with the Manhattan pubic relations firm, PR/NY
owned by Michael J. Berman (Below).
Soon she would meet Michael J. Berman’s
future partner John F Kennedy Jr. in what would be a frustrating meeting. She
buzzed in a man she did not recognize but each time she entered the code they
would reach for the knob at the same time, making her have to do the code all
over again. Finally after numerous times
she expressed her frustration with him.
“Sorry,” came the
muted reply.
One again I entered
the code and was finally able to open the door,
Rosemarie had enough
respect to know she was rude to John F Kennedy Jr. but that is where it
ended. As she writes in Fairy
Tale Interrupted, there were two kinds of people – those who obsessed
over the Kennedys and those who did not.
And she was of the later. So her
view of JFK Jr. was not that complimentary and in fact was a view of
frustration. And her frustration only
increased when days later she walked into her cozy little office to find John
and another man placing all of her possessions into a cardboard box, along with
her picture of celebrity idol and crush Howard Stern removed from her office
wall.
“Well , it’s not
okay.”
“We can figure this
out.” John said.
“Figure this out? Clearly we’re not figuring out anything, because
you have already packed everything
up!”
“I’m sure we can find
some sort of solution.”
“I don’t know why you
need an office, anyway. You don’t even
have a job.”
“Michael!”
“Maybe you get away
with this everywhere else you go, but not here.”
“Michael!”
RoseMarie learns from her boss Michael J. Berman
that she still has a job but must move to a different office along with a
retort that she could have been arrested in some states for the way she talked
to John. RoseMarie could care less. In fact she was furious and decided to do
what her mother would do with that very silent and dangerous Sicilian
temper: ignore John.
For weeks John would come to the office
and say good morning specifically to her and she would ignore him In fact when she first noticed him she would
immediately pick up the phone and act like she was talking to someone until he
disappeared from her compete view. After
a month John tried a different approach.
He was standing in
the doorway giving me the finger. I
burst out laughing. He finally got me.
And RoseMarie got John; and he began calling her
Rosie, a name that no one except family members ever called her. Soon John would become her boss in what would
be called Random Ventures, the offices of George Magazine; where Rosie
utilized her precious Sicilian temper to protect him, to defend him, to help
him become organized which was a miraculous feat, and to do all the duties she
needed to do in order for him to succeed and make George a success, to make
his private life a success, one of which was for him to marry Carolyn Bessette in
secret without the press knowing.
But in the end RoseMarie realizes that all along
she has always been a princess, especially when her father Anthony tells her
how proud and impressed he is with her.
But death soon comes like a thief in the night
taking away the brother she never had; leaving her in a fit of depression,
spinning out of control. Soon she finds
herself surrounded by death at every turn and nothing seems to pull her out
until she reads a letter from her mother, telling her how proud she is of
her. Only then does she realize she has
and will always be a princess – not based on the Kennedy mystique, being John
F. Kennedy Jr.’s personal assistant but based on who she is, an Italian
Princess with a Sicilian Temper that got her where she is today.
And she’s been flying high and in clear blue
skies ever since.
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