Andrew Goldman

It offered sailing lessons, tennis, and a huge dining room overlooking the Sound.

Homeowners were nearly assured membership, but they did need to be sponsored.

At a cocktail party not long after moving in, the Moxleys met the recent widower who lived in the massive spread just around the corner on Otter Rock Drive with a swimming pool and tennis courts and countless rowdy kids.

Rush Skakel was his name.

He was a rotund man, jokey, friendly, goofy, the type to sometimes greet friends with belly bumps, and hardly gave off a corporate vibe, even though he was the chairman of Great Lakes Carbon Corporation, one of the most valuable private companies in America.

Rush was remarkably solicitous to his new neighbor.

He seemed, and in fact was, the type to be a tad too eager to be liked by all.

Rush didn't hesitate to offer to sponsor David Moxley's membership of the club.

This gesture was typical.

Rush also invited the Moxleys to his family's private ski resort in Wyndham, New York, and almost certainly, based on his usual habits, suggested the family should join him on the company plane to go see the Atlanta Braves play.

Rush was a part owner of the team.

But his social bona fides were even loftier.

He had friends in high places.

Despite the Skakels being a rock-ribbed Republican family, Rush was close personal friends with Hugh Carey, the Democratic governor of New York.

And although Rush certainly wouldn't have mentioned it right away himself, everyone in Belhaven knew that back in 1950, Rush's older sister Ethel had married Robert F. Kennedy right there in town at St.

Mary's on Greenwich Avenue.

Rush had been an usher.

JFK, then a congressman from Boston, Bobby's best man.

Patriarch Joe Kennedy famously used his considerable riches to fund his family's political ambitions.

Some would even say he bought the White House for his son Jack.