Mary's friends

[kerry]

I think Mary burned most of hers when she read them, and Robert finished the job. I think Robert's position was totally understandable, and it seems like Mary decided against a more public stance and didn't want most of it published. That said, I do think it does a disservice to Mary's reputation to have none of the letters (her correspondence with her husband or Robert) that might have put her in a better light around, and I believe those did exist. But Robert didn't have to make his decision based on that, and I think he had ample reason to not want to be dissected further. If Robert destroyed Tad's letters, I'd see it as being more to destroy something that was a painful and private memory to him than to hide anything. I think there's reason to suppose he never got to the point of writing a letter, but he wasn't terribly impaired. Mary let him talk to that reporter when they arrived back in America, so it doesn't seem like a big secret. There's a letter to David Davis where he kind of assesses Tad and appears to find him 'normal,' which could have been planted in the record, but that seems a stretch. David Davis described him as a "warmhearted youth" during his illness, not mentioning anything about him being special needs, and there are a few other people who remember Tad who didn't recall him as being so, either. No one described him as especially bright or accomplished, but he seems to have functioned in society.