Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne
Aug 26th, 2009 | 125 responses
Every person’s life is like a kaleidoscope. Some pick up another’s life, hold it to the light and all the glass chips fall this way or that. And the person sighting through the cylinder puts it down and turns away, saying they’ve seen it all, when in fact, they’ve only seen one facet, one pattern in another’s life. Thus some remember only one thing or two about the life of another long lived.
But there are other ways to see most of a life in depth, that is, to keep turning the kaleidoscope, letting the glass shards open and reveal, shade and hide, depending on the turn of the scope. Adding up all the patterns, keeping the sum of the brilliant and the dark turns: that’s a view in depth of the life of another.
I’d just lay out a few turns of the kaleidoscope of Ted Kennedy’s life here, a lost story:
Some of the glass shards part, and we see in paradoxically jeweled light that Ted Kennedy was born to a brutally ambitious father, Joe Kennedy, and his mother Rose, was a good Catholic girl, demure and subservient to her wealthy, bellowing husband.
Joe Kennedy true to his obsessive nature, kept his wife pregnant for most of sixteen years, she giving birth, not including miscarriages, to nine children in that time. Ted was the youngest born in 1932.
Ted would be eventually groomed and glossed, and also pressed to follow his father’s example… the ill and clearcut way the older Kennedy conducted himself politically and personally: teaching his male children that Kennedys’ get what they want when they want it how they want it for no other reason that they want it… and it is alright to use most any means to get it.
Another father, with different values, might have pressed an entire set of young Kennedy male offspring, to grow far more seated in heart and soul and clearcut ethics, far sooner.
As a young man, Ted, sent to the top school, Harvard, got kicked out for cheating. He was readmitted, but though some might say he cheated because of laziness, it may also be that his lack of studying and rousting about was his finger flapping in the face of his immensely overbearing father… yet Ted may have tried to fake the grade still fearing his old man.
Ted had reason to fear his father. Being the youngest child in the family, Ted was close to his sisters, and was doted on by Rosemary who was 14 years old when he was born. They laughed together and delighted in each other, and yet when Rosemary began displaying too wild a behavior by her father’s lights… showing interest in sex and sensuality… being too wild for her father’s hyper hypocritical tastes– he himself rumored to have many affairs–
Ted at age 9 witnessed his father dispose of his sister Rosemary as though she were a block of cordwood.
Joe Kennedy secretly arranged that his daughter Rosemary, age 22, to be forced bodily from their home, and incarcerated in a mental institution where Joe signed papers that were not his to sign, as his daughter was of legal age…
the papers the pater familias of the Kennedy clan signed were to ok a surgeon to slice into his daughter Rosemary’s brain through her eyelids, performing a lobotomy. This selfsame so-called “surgeon” would later be hounded from the medical profession for his butchery of human beings. But the good doctor at that time (1941), met Joe Kennedy’s needs.
Afterward, Rosemary no longer had sexual being. She also could not speak and could not hold her urine or her bowels for the rest of her life. She suddenly had the IQ of a child under seven. She had previously been, by all accounts, a bright, normal, willful, beautiful young woman, not retarded, not mentally ill. But to cover his egregious sin, Joe Kennedy spread the rumor over and over that Rosemary had always been ‘retarded.’
Women were a dime a dozen in his world, and Rosemary was shut away in diapers and babbling and out of sight, out of mind.
Joe Kennedy allowed no one to defy him without using all power at his disposal to destroy individuals. He was a bully and a boor. What he couldn’t get through power, he took by underhanded force… and then tried to cover his tracks, buying silence, or eliminating talkers.
To Joe, women were seen as Catholic scapulars, or as servants, or as good time girls. He carried and taught to his sons the old madonna/ whore split. A whore was to be used. A madonna was to be perpetually impregnated within marriage.
But a daughter, a woman, threatening his carefully built image, that was another story. For Joe, is was within his purview as a male to utterly harm a girl and leave her as good as dead.
Thus Joe Kennedy set hideous, puerile and murderous examples for his boys. And I believe, imprinted them, as well as intimidated and horrified them, when they were young… and yet evilly offered them riches and position as they became older… if they would just cover for and remain loyal to their corrupt father. He would be their Boston Machiavelli.
Thus he burnished and protected the family image at all costs. Except, in all his slit-eyed plans, all his prancing and smokers and under the table deals, all his pretense and vulgar displays of wealth and power, he never set in place examples of heart for others… Joe’s hope for his boys centered on eliciting in them and from them, chips off the old block, that is, greed and lust for power.
In time, as we witnessed, one of Joe’s sons, Ted, at age 37 would drive off the Dike Bridge late one night. A young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, age 28, one of several “Boiler Room Girls” (girls who worked on Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign the year before) who’d held a party that night, was in Ted’s car. Ted Kennedy made it to shore. Miss Kopechne did not. Ted Kennedy did not report the accident until the next day.
Some say he had a concussion and wasn’t thinking clearly. Others say he was drunk and out of his mind. Others say the unthinkable: that he did not value a human life. That he tried to cover up.
We may not know which one it was, or which two, or all four– or more. What we do know is that the ill trajectory for harming an innocent was laid down in spades in Ted’s young life by an exemplar father who was supposed to instill life-sparing and life-endorsing in his boys …instead of a careless regard for life… especially the lives of women, be they wives, mistresses, girlfriends, daughters, women one found attractive. For some observors and historians, the life’s end of Marilyn Monroe rings a similar bell.
Are the sins of the father the sins of the sons? I dont think we know for sure. It seems that sometimes hell is on earth for some— and I think of Ted Kennedy’s ‘cant face myself in the mirror’ for a long time after Miss Kopechne’s death… but also the prior hellacious loss of Rosemary… and the loss of a dear older brother in war… and also the harrowing of Ted’s soul after his two brothers were murdered. The lessons, the opportunities to become human and humane at last, came one after the other, relentlessly.
… and even more so of how ancient Ted Kennedy suddenly became on the small boat, his face collapsed into itself, his shoulders gone all ‘old man’… as he grimly sailed out to recover John-John’s body and the bodies of two others of the young from the tragic small plane crash in the ocean at niight… his nephew John, son of Jackie and JFK, who so promised in good looks and youth, in vitality and smarts… to maybe bring back the Kennedy political sheen… now the last charismatic male Kennedy of that generation was dead too. Also, literally, dead in the water. Like Mary Jo.
We who are religious are taught that all will be judged not with fury but with fairness when they die. Whatever was not learned on earth, some say, will be learned in heaven, or in a stopping and resting place on the way there. It’s said too that one receives credit for learning on earth from one’s abject suffering, no matter what crassness or separation from the God of Life and Love, preceded it.
So may it be for Ted Kennedy, having now left this world at age 77. So may rest continue for Mary Jo Kopechne who would be, had she lived, 68 years old this day.
Resquient In Pace, both souls.
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CODA: Photo toptext: the Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, 1969
125 Responses to “Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne”
For those who choose to do a little more fact checking before posting, I might suggest this as what seems to be a fairly well documented (sources cited) summation of the incident.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaquiddick_inc…
The same questions arise and the same chill runs up my spine as it did 40 years ago when I read this summary.
Arlington used to be the estate of Robert E. Lee prior to the Civil War. NOT just war veterans and those who died in combat are buried there. Section 21, also known as the Nurses Section, is the area of Arlington National Cemetery where many nurses are buried. The Nurses Memorial is located there. In the cemetery, there is a Confederate section with graves of soldiers of the Confederate States of America and a Confederate Memorial. In Section 27, there are buried more than 3,800 former slaves, called “Contrabands” during the Civil War. Their headstones are designated with the word “Civilian” or “Citizen”. btw… for the “disgrace” statement, that would be untrue. Arlington is to be a memorial for those now dead who served this nation. Ted did serve this nation, both in the Army and in the U.S. Senate, so his burial in Arlington would be appropriate.
dear Sparrow; hydra was once, like cerberus also a multi-body part being, protector of guardian of the gate to the underworld, keeping out mortals who were only curious or who merely wanted to exploit the powers there. In later mythos, hydra, became 'humanized' in the stories, carrying one immortal bloodline and all rest merely mortal… and in the decline to 'humanization' hydra was said to have poisonous blood, bite and breath. The hero who cut off the hydras' heads, cauterized them with the poison from the hydras own blood and thus felled the hydra. What hydra was meant to be, as guardian of respectful entry into underworld, devolved into hydra as human failings… the solution to which is to sever and poison such failings with the very poison leaking from them. A rather homeopathic remedy in some sense. Poison shot back to poison.
dr.e
OK KEN…guess you looked up one article..made a personal memory recall..and then decided to try and discredit any information that I have posted…put the vodka and tonic down for a minute and read the “well documented” accounts of the incident…(I am assuming…you were not there at the scene either.)
There were also doubts about the way Kopechne died. Dr. Donald Mills of Edgartown, wrote on the death certificate: “death by drowning”. However, Gene Frieh, the undertaker, told reporters that death “was due to suffocation rather than drowning”. John Farrar, the diver who removed Kopechne from the car, claimed she was “too buoyant to be full of water”. It is assumed that she died from drowning, although her parents filed a petition preventing an autopsy.
Here is your wiki findings….informative but not complete…
The medical examiner, Dr Donald Mills, was satisfied that the cause of death was accidental drowning. He signed a death certificate to that effect and released Kopechne's body to her family without ordering an autopsy.[24] Later, on September 18, District Attorney Dinis attempted to secure an exhumation of Kopechne's body in order to perform a belated autopsy,[25] citing blood found on Kopechne's skirt and in her mouth and nose “which may or may not be consistent with death by drowning”.[26] The reported discovery of the blood was made when her clothes were turned over to authorities by the funeral director.[27]
A Pennsylvania court under Judge Bernard Brominski held a hearing on the request on October 20–21.[25] The request was opposed by Kopechne's parents.[25] Eventually Judge Brominski ruled against the exhumation on December 10, saying that there was “no evidence” that “anything other than drowning had caused the death of Mary Jo Kopechne”.[28]
Furthermore…
Here is some MORE checking for you KEN….in case you are too busy making judgment on others statements WITHOUT researching for yourself…
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=cP0NAAAAIB…
http://www.boston.com/news/specials/kennedy/day…
if you would like additional “well documented” items, let me know…I'll provide them for you…
[...] with reverence post: click there Tags: daughter, kennedy, kennedy s, kopechne, mary, [...]
As for some theories…this one probably makes the most sense of all….at least in my opinion.
Here is what happened according to Robert Cutler's (You the Jury – 1974) analysis of the evidence. The Group ( a political power group explained in the book) hired several men and at least one woman to be at Chappaquiddick during the weekend of the yacht race and the planned party on the island. They ambushed Ted and Mary Jo after they left the cottage and knocked Ted out with blows to his head and body. They took the unconscious or semi-conscious Kennedy to Martha's Vineyard and deposited him in his hotel room. Another group took Mary Jo to the bridge in Ted's car, force fed her with a knock out potion of alcoholic beverage, placed her in the back seat, and caused the car to accelerate off the side of the bridge into the water. They broke the windows on one side of the car to insure the entry of water; then they watched the car until they were sure Mary Jo would not escape.
Mary Jo actually regained consciousness and pushed her way to the top of the car (which was actually the bottom of the car – it had landed on its roof) and died from asphyxiation. The group with Teddy revived him early in the morning and let him know he had a problem. Possibly they told him that Mary Jo had been kidnapped. They told him his children would be killed if he told anyone what had happened and that he would hear from them. On Chappaquiddick, the other group made contact with Markham and Gargan, Ted's cousin and lawyer. They told both men that Mary Jo was at the bottom of the river and that Ted would have to make up a story about it, not revealing the existence of the group. One of the men resembled Ted and his voice sounded something like Ted's. Markham and Gargan were instructed to go the the Vineyard on the morning ferry, tell Ted where Mary Jo was, and come back to the island to wait for a phone call at a pay station near the ferry on the Chappaquiddick side.
The two men did as they were told and Ted found out what had happened to Mary Jo that morning. The three men returned to the pay phone and received their instructions to concoct a story about the “accident” and to report it to the police. The threat against Ted's children was repeated at that time.
Ted, Markham and Gargan went right away to police chief Arena's office on the Vineyard where Ted reported the so-called “accident.” Almost at the same time scuba diver John Farror was pulling Mary Jo out of the water, since two boys who had gone fishing earlier that morning had spotted the car and reported it.
Ted called together a small coterie of friends and advisors including family lawyer Burke Marshall, Robert MacNamara, Ted Sorenson, and others. They met on Squaw Island near the Kennedy compound at Hyannisport for three days. At the end of that time they had manufactured the story which Ted told on TV, and later at the inquest. Bob Cutler calls the story, “the shroud.” Even the most cursory examination of the story shows it was full of holes and an impossible explanation of what happened. Ted's claim that he made the wrong turn down the dirt road toward the bridge by mistake is an obvious lie. His claim that he swam the channel back to Martha's Vineyard is not believable. His description of how he got out of the car under water and then dove down to try to rescue Mary Jo is impossible. Markham and Gargan's claims that they kept diving after Mary Jo are also unbelievable.
The evidence for the Cutler scenario is substantial. It begins with the marks on the bridge and the position of the car in the water. The marks show that the car was standing still on the bridge and then accelerated off the edge, moving at a much higher speed than Kennedy claimed. The distance the car travelled in the air also confirms this. The damage to the car on two sides and on top plus the damage to the windshield and the rear view mirror stanchion prove that some of the damage had to have been inflicted before the car left the bridge.
The blood on the back and on the sleeves of Mary Jo's blouse proves that a wound was inflicted before she left the bridge. The alcohol in her bloodstream proves she was drugged, since all witnesses testified she never drank and did not drink that night. The fact that she was in the back seat when her body was recovered indicates that is where she was when the car hit the water. There was no way she could have dived downward against the inrushing water and moved from the front to the back seat underneath the upside-down seat back.
The wounds on the back of Ted Kennedy's skull, those just above his ear and the large bump on the top indicate he was knocked out. His actions at the hotel the next morning show he was not aware of Mary Jo's death until Markham and Gargan arrived. The trip to the pay phone on Chappaquiddick can only be explained by his receiving a call there, not making one. There were plenty of pay phones in or near Ted's hotel if he needed to make a private call. The tides in the channel and the direction in which Ted claimed he swam do not match. In addition it would have been a superhuman feat to have made it across the channel (as proven by several professionals who subsequently tried it).
Deputy Sheriff Christopher Look's testimony, coupled with the testimony of Ray LaRosa and two Lyons girls, proves that there were two people in Ted's car with Mary Jo at 12:45 pm. The three party members walking along the road south toward the cottage confirmed the time that Mr. Look drove by. He stopped to ask if they needed a ride. Look says that just prior to that he encountered Ted's car parked facing north at the juncture of the main road and the dirt road. It was on a short extension of the north-south section of the road junction to the north of the “T”. He says he saw a man driving, a woman in the seat beside him, and what he thought was another woman lying on the back seat. He remembered a portion of the license plate which matched Ted's car, as did the description of the car. Markham, Gargan and Ted's driver's testimony show that someone they talked to in the pitch black night sounded like Ted and was about his height and build.
Thank you for providing me with information that I was not aware of prior to my post. I based my assumptions, like most here did, without many details to the event, just heresay and speculation. If those were indeed the details in the medical examiners record then the likelyhood of her struggling to survive are pretty high. However, I didn't select the name “devilsadvocate87″ to complacentely agree so allow me to present this scenario. If she was unconciuous and unbuckled in the front seat, as I threw out as a “possiblity”, when the car sank nose first and the murky waters filled the cab couldn't her own bouyancy float her from the front seat to the back? A bouyant object will float toward the surface and in this case the “surface” was located in the rear of the Oldsmobile's cabin.
Once again, I am not Democrat or Republican nor am I conservative or liberal. I honestly think the Senator should have served time solely based on the admission of heavy drinking being a contributing factor to this accident. If anyone else was drinking and driving and had been involved in an accident that resulted in the death of another human being, they would be locked up. However, even that admission may not have been enough to warrant a stiff sentence as some of the laws and penalties of the day were very different and in some instances a mere slap on the wrist by comparison to todays standards, especially as it pertained to the wealthy and priveledged.
I bear no ill will towards the man, nor do I hold him in high esteem as some here do. Furthermore, I have to agree with your statement had this been one of my four daughters I might not be so open-minded, but the fact that it wasn't allows me some room to be objective and not let emotion cloud my thought process to the different possibilities surrounding the circumstances of her last few moments. Perhaps one of my possibilities may have occured that dark cold night and maybe, just maybe, God let this unfortunate soul enter in to his eternal kingdom blissfully unaware of her passing. We can only hope…just a thought.
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Actually, I was agreeing with you that some verification of the “facts”
needs to be done. That is why I posted the link…as I knew it made mention
of a lot of conflicting information which was in conflict with some of the
reports that I had read prior to posting.
Ok, after reflection and cooler headed thinking, I agree….I allowed my political views, which are a complete 180 from Ted's to interfere with my thinking…..plus, I think, a wee nip or two too much of Makers Mark last night……I hereby back off and stand corrected…..
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Makers Mark…fine selection indeed…wish I had been there to enjoy the toast.
I can relate to conflicting reports, and in this case…it appears all the parties involved with the incident are intentionally making it so. It is sad that a young woman in her prime had to lose her life in the ordeal, and no matter what the actual facts are…that will not change. btw…I do have a tendency to be a little heated (and some humor with sarcasm) with my thoughts, so hope no offense was taken…none was meant.
couldn't agree more…bravo!
[...] Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne (themoderatevoice.com) [...]
[...] Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne (themoderatevoice.com) [...]
“I did not respect him and was never fooled into thinking he was some kind of grand statesman. He wasn't. I am happy to finally be rid of the far left and poisonous influence of the Kennedy family in national politics. This was one dysfunctional family and simply not worthy of the adulation from the American public. In fact, there are plenty of examples of odious Kennedy's romping across the scene – just Google the family and you'll find all kinds of bad behavior.”
I've quoted the meat and potatoes of what I agree with most in your post. VERY well said sir, and may vigilant Americans now focus their eyes on the likes of the horrid, leftist surrenderist appeasing cowards, with the same effite, elitist arrogance that the afforementioned Kennedy person had: To wit: Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Disgusting disgraces and shit stains on the white briefs of politics and public policy.
I find this whole conversation here very disturbing. I guess many of the people commenting on this stream are qualified to be the judge and jury of other people's transgressions. Not only are some expert in our judicial system and its failings they are also qualified to play God and to condemn others to hell. I think the comments posted here say more about the people making the comments than they do about Senator Kennedy. May he rest in peace and God bless him for a lifetime devoted to the redemption of his human frailties, sins, crimes, and everything else he may have committed.
Good?
Rest in Peace Mary Jo and Senator Kennedy, inextricably linked for eternity. You leave behind us mere mortals to judge your tragedy and reassure ourselves that we will continue our lives of exemplary behavior, continued prayers for your souls and activism that will solve this injustice for future generations. San
I can understand why many of the people posting on here have such a negative view of the late Senator. Personally, I feel that he did a lot of good in his life, but am not convinced that that “makes up” for the death of a young woman, or if anything ever could. I guess I take the view that he did some things that were better, and at least one thing that was far worse, than anything most of us will ever do, but I can understand why others may not share that view. What I cannot understand is how anyone with an ounce of decency (or for that matter, sanity) can declare definitively that someone had no soul, or that they hope another human being is “burning in hell.”
Sen. Kennedy's justified position as a moral leader will forever exhume his role in the Senate. Pres. Obama with V.P. Biden and Sec'y. Sebellius will attain the health plan named after him.His self-admitted shame hangs over his legacy. As Dr. Albert Ellis observes in ” The Myth of Self-Esteem,” most of us are none great heroes or great villains.. Read this book and also Dr. Robert Price's ” The Reason- Driven Life,” to fathom how to be a better you! The senator was no hater as Ellis would so commend and he followed reason in his politics and sometimes in his personal life. He, on the whole , was a worthy role model. May his detractors practice perspective!
One thing of note about JFK and Senator Kennedy is that despite their wealth and despite being raised by a power monger father they were both Democrats and championed the disadvantaged. This is not the same as a yearly donation to a charity but a lifetime of work at least in the Senator's case. Perhaps they both were driven to ameliorate the sins of the father at least in business. As for their treatment of women it's strange that they did somehow avenge the treatment of their sister Rosemary. Or did they and I don't know what it was. Like “Rachel” said about burning in hell..I think that is best left to the divine. San
don't forget about JFK, BOBBY, and Schrivers visit to Marilyn Monroe very shortly before her death !!!!
What about redemption? I continually marvel at how many Christians today ignore the actual teachings of Jesus. As I recall, you could sin and redeem yourself…The one thing I know about Ted Kennedy is that he was a staunch supporter of the poor and disenfranchised – the core of Jesus' teachings. He upheld this as a goal steadfastly even though he didn't have to…he was able to do so because he was rich enough to fund his own campaigns and guaranteed re-election year after year – enabling him to vote his conscience rather than the will of corporate America. So, ask yourselves, what have you done for the poor? Are you, like most Americans, happy to have your foot in the face of your fellow man, just to get ahead? Our empire is ending because Americans today no longer work towards common goals to better one another..but instead only work toward ends that benefit themselves. No empire can support itself with this philosophy. Farewell to one politician who felt that the whole was more important than the “me,me, me”.
What about redemption? I continually marvel at how many Christians today ignore the actual teachings of Jesus. As I recall, you could sin and redeem yourself…The one thing I know about Ted Kennedy is that he was a staunch supporter of the poor and disenfranchised – the core of Jesus' teachings. He upheld this as a goal steadfastly even though he didn't have to…he was able to do so because he was rich enough to fund his own campaigns and guaranteed re-election year after year – enabling him to vote his conscience rather than the will of corporate America. So, ask yourselves, what have you done for the poor? Are you, like most Americans, happy to have your foot in the face of your fellow man, just to get ahead? Our empire is ending because Americans today no longer work towards common goals to better one another..but instead only work toward ends that benefit themselves. No empire can support itself with this philosophy. Farewell to one politician who felt that the whole was more important than the “me,me, me”.
…a bit like George W's awall.