How an Italian socialite went from counter-culture activism to owning Classic contenders
SPECIAL DAY: Eleanora Kennedy with trainer Ger Lyons after Panama Red won at Leopardstown on Irish Champions Weekend. A very successful business woman with varied international portfolios, she has taken an interest in horse racing through several Irish connections and the partnership she formed with Palm Beach jeweller Nicholas Varney saw them win three races from the five horses they own in 2021. Picture: Healy Racing
Most people are not one thing only but you would need a lot of labels and still not cover all the aspects of Eleanora Kennedy’s amazing life.
A Chanel-wearing New York socialite of Italian descent, the former Ms Baratelli married an Irish-American criminal defence attorney and embarked on a whirlwind of counter-culture activism, from agitating against the Vietnam War, defending IRA arms suppliers successfully and right up to the present day, campaigning against vile global scourge of human trafficking.
Her daughter Anna does much of the metaphorical heavy lifting now but Kennedy will fight for who she views as the downtrodden until she draws her last breath.
The link with Ireland grew through her late husband, who died in 2016, and among the glamorous residences they owned on the Upper West Side, Southampton (the Long Island town rather than the English one) and Palm Beach, is their Kerry stone cottage in picturesque Black Valley, a 20-minute drive beyond the Gap of Dunloe.
She counts Gerry Adams and Jim Bolger among her friends and has racehorses in training with Ger Lyons, Willie McCreery and Ross O’Sullivan, almost all of which are named after strains of marijuana, in a nod to more than 40 years of involvement with High Times magazine and activism against the drug’s prohibition.
The best of these speedsters, Panama Red, is in the care of Lyons and is among the favourites for Classic glory in 2022, having won the Listed Ingabelle Stakes as an unfurnished juvenile. Kennedy was at Leopardstown to lead Panama Red and Colin Keane into the parade ring on the opening day of Irish Champions Weekend on September 11. Even in a life as rich and eventful as hers and we will only scratch the surface here, it ranked highly.
Her only wish, as it is every day, is that Michael (“a legal wrecking ball” and “movie star handsome”) was around to see it. A short film, Radical Love, based on an interview with him just months before he died debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival and is now available to view on the New Yorker magazine website.
Right now, Oscar-winning, New York-based, Irish director, screenwriter and producer Terry George, who produced the scripts for In The Name Of The Father, The Boxer, Hart’s War, Some Mother’s Son, Hotel Rwanda, Reservation Road and The Shore and directed the last four named, is working on a dozen-episode programme of podcasts on Michael’s life and work and it seems only a matter of time before a feature-length film emerges.
“I had to give the filmmakers so much information, photos and history,” says Kennedy over a clear transatlantic line. “I went through the archives. The New York Public Library has all of Michael’s archives and it’s locked down for years, so I had to pull everything out and it was hard. I was filled with grief but I thought: ‘What the heck.’
I think it’s important to get the message out, especially with young people, that you can have an alternative to Wall Street or to finance and you can be an activist on any level and not live in a cave. You can do it. Service is everything, you’ll feel better about yourself.
From a background in fashion, Kennedy dove headlong into activism and if initially it was because it was what Michael did, it would never have endured more than half a century had it not become a passion. Such a passion that it often brought them at odds with the law. Keeping on the right side of what was legal never took precedence over the courage of their convictions, whether that was supporting the Weather Underground Organisation bombing the Pentagon in protest at US bombing of Hanoi, Black Panther Party militant action in pursuit of racial equality, or IRA bombings attempting to force a British withdrawal of Northern Ireland.
“We began with the anti-war movement, the horrible, illegal Vietnam War. We went on from there and we never stopped. Along the way there was just so much moral incompetence going on at every level in the United States, right up until the recent past, with our past president, whose name I won’t even say. (Michael represented Donald Trump’s ex-wife Ivana in the couple’s bitter divorce proceedings).
“As I became older, I transformed myself from getting beaten up activist-wise and demonstrations, to working at the United Nations against human trafficking. That was much later on. I sent my daughter to the jungles of Africa to work on it. When you get to a certain point you just don’t want to get a billy club over the head anymore.”
Kennedy argues that in America at least, the reduction in activism is an unfortunate consequence of the very welcome abolition of the army draft. That impacted upon every family and so exercised them. People can pretend they don’t know about human trafficking.
“Michael and I were special assistants to the president of the United Nations for two years. And we did it that his priority would be human trafficking. It’s nobody’s priority, it’s just an uncomfortable dinner conversation. You can talk about drugs and talk about murder but bring up slavery and human trafficking and people just get turned off.
“But it is the second most profitable crime in the world. First is drugs and weapons and then it’s human trafficking, huge business. If they arrest 10 of them, a thousand more traffickers are waiting in line to take their place. It has to get more focus. It’s unconscionable.”
As her husband “stormed through courtrooms from California to New York for almost 40 years... he was there for the radical left, conscious objectors, Black Panthers, porn stars, Irish rebels, Sicilian godfathers, Native Americans”, it was securing an acquittal of five men charged with plotting to smuggle weapons to the IRA in a Brooklyn federal court in 1982 that obviously made most impact on these shores.
“What he considered his greatest legal triumph, with five elderly Irish immigrants who were caught up... This was an FBI sting to supply guns.
But these guys were so proud and they openly admitted it, in front of the whole court that they were gun runners. How did we win it!
“We were very careful with our jury selecting. That was my part of all of his cases, I chose the jury. They thought, ‘We have a slam-dunk case’, but they didn’t realise Michael Kennedy was coming along. He persuaded that jury that those five Irishmen were actually in league with the CIA, who orchestrated the arms sale because the government was secretly playing both sides of the conflict in Ireland and you know, they have been doing that for years. So they got them all acquitted, all of them. It was brilliant.”
She recalls the celebrations in a Queen’s ballroom afterwards, where the party went on long into the night to the soundtrack of uilleann pipes. And Michael was introduced as “one of our own, all the way from the Black Valley. We lived on Fifth Avenue! God, I love the Irish.”
Central to any cause the Kennedys took on was believing in it. And this was a case in point. Introducing the possibility of a CIA link was all about muddying the waters enough to secure the acquittal.
“They worked with Noraid, the Irish Northern Aid committee. They were guilty as sin of doing it but what the hell. One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.”
Having previously visited the IRA hunger strikers in The Maze, they had become friendly with Gerry Adams and worked with him and Martin McGuinness on the peace process for a while. Eleanora fears that Brexit could well prompt a return of the Troubles, particularly if the physical infrastructure of the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland returns.
“I don’t think I will live to see the day for a United Ireland but we sure worked hard for it,” she says.
The tone doesn’t stay downbeat for long and you get the sense that positivity is the default mode. Yet when Michael died, there was a huge void. Horse racing provided some welcome joy and an avenue for her energy that did not involve trying to change the world.
While on a trip to Vienna four years ago she met Palm Beach jeweller Nicholas Varney, who owns Shannongrove House, just outside Pallaskenry in Limerick. Varney had horses on his farm and plenty of contacts in Ireland. He suggested they get a horse together and the operation has grown to the extent that three of their five horses won five races in 2021.
“He knew everything, I knew nothing. But you know what I had? Intuition. And that’s because I chose Michael’s juries all my life and that’s all based on intuition. Nicholas had the intellect and the experience and I had the intuition.
“First of all, we named all of the horses in respect for Michael because Michael was very involved in the legalisation of cannabis over the years. All of our horses, which I’m sure they don’t know in Ireland, they’re named after strains of cannabis. So, Panama Red and Kush and White Widow… it’s very funny. When I hear the announcers go, ‘And Panama Red is coming…’”
A mischievous cackle cascades down the phone.
“I just gave Ger another one. I bought one and named it – are you sitting down Daragh? I named it Maui Waui. That was a very big strain. I don’t know how old you are but that the original hippies had that one.”
Kennedy and Varney began a partnership called, appropriately, Against All Odds and utilise Amanda Skeffington, David Spratt of Gaelic Bloodstock and former jockey and successful pinhooker, Katie Walsh as their agents at the sales. Walsh is currently tasked with sourcing a grey filly but at the time of our pre-Christmas chat, the pair had 12 horses in training, all bar one in Ireland.
“I have the luck of the Irish. I was in Deauville with a friend about two months ago and wanted to buy a horse so that I could race in Paris. Amanda Skeffington came and I bought a beautiful horse. And I am naming her Chocolope, which is a very good strain of cannabis in the ‘80s. Then I had to get a trainer in France. I love Ireland but I didn’t want to ship her to Ireland. Lo and behold, there is a young man named Tim Donworth, he is Irish (training in France). He said, ‘I would love to train your horse,’ and I said, ‘You’re hired.’
“And guess what? He has an Italian girlfriend, so it was perfect. These things all mean something to me. But it’s a family for me now. I was absolutely on the ground (when Michael died). And this came. I would not want to pass this life without this experience. I am so passionate. When you are passionate you are passionate. I don’t have Michael and there will never be another man who remotely can fill in his shoes. But I have become friends with all of the trainers and their families, the jockeys, they have embraced me.”
Panama Red surprised Lyons with the manner of her Irish Champions Weekend triumph, given that the daughter of Showcasing and Lawman out of Allegation had yet to develop into her considerable frame as a two-year-old. With normal winter growth, she should be considerably better in 2022.
“Ger said, ‘We may come in third if we are lucky.’ I said, ‘Fine,’ and when that horse won, I sobbed, and my partner called, he was in New York, and we cried. When we win, we cry. We always cry. I went out and Ger said, ‘You’ve gotta lead the horse in’, and I thought he meant I had to ride the horse. I got so nervous, this huge racehorse. He said ‘No, just grab the bit, you go in and hold onto your hat!’ Ger was amazing, and his wife (Lynne) and John Fitzgerald. I have a family over there that are so good to me, Ross and Katie, and Willie McCreery. I’m so happy about it all.”
Like so much in her life, she knows Jim Bolger because of Michael.
“When my husband was dying, he said, ‘When you go back to the cottage,’ and I said, ‘Oh I’ll never go back to Ireland as long as I live’ (as it would be too painful a reminder of him not being with her). He said, ‘No, you go back, there’s one person I want you to meet, who you have never met.’ He said the name Jim Bolger, it meant nothing. Then once I got into this and I went over for five days to meet all of the trainers. The name came up. I said, ‘Jim Bolger, Jim Bolger, I want to meet him.’ Well it’s not that easy to meet him! But I was determined because if my husband said it, there was a reason.
"He clearly is the racing great in Ireland. Every one of his apprentices have all been successful. He’s my hero.
And what he has done with the whole (doping in racing claims), he’s handled that so well, to be able, to be righteous and courageous and yet not be a snitch.
It’s not his responsibility (to name names), he said it’s happening, it should be investigated. He shouldn’t have to do that but to be so righteous and courageous and take risks the way he did, it’s wonderful. I love him for that reason. I respect him enormously. And the union he has with his wife (Jackie), they own the horses together. It reminds me of the union with Michael.
“Our politics are similar, clearly. When I found out he named Mac Swiney after Terence MacSwiney the hunger striker, oh that did it, I fell in love with him. I’ve got a crush on him, I told Jackie. I have got a crush on Jim Bolger, no question. He is the racing great for me. He took me to meet Poetic Flare. Oh my goodness, what a horse; beautiful. What a thrill that was.”
With Panama Red and the rest of her growing band of hash-honouring horses, those thrills may just keep coming. And Eleonora Kennedy will continue to have an influence on the world.
- Radical Love can be viewed here
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