Forty years ago Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy (D-MA) attended a funeral for a 28-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Her death is eerily unremarked, mostly unremembered today, at least in mainstream media. Yet the story left untold is the tragic stuff of a Joseph Conrad novel.
As a date in history, July 18 is not particularly noteworthy. Not much happened on that date since the Brits and tempestuous storms decimated the Spanish Armada in 1588.
On July 18, 1969, Mary Jo Kopechne drowned in an overturned, submerged Oldsmobile in a back channel off Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. The anniversary of her death is not much noticed these days by the perennially left-leaning mainstream media. It is as if it never happened.
Nor did the fortieth anniversary of Mary Jo's funeral July 22 draw attention from news media, still into covering Michael Jackson. Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy attended the 1969 funeral with his then-wife Joan, under the glaring eyes of Mary Jo's parents, Joe and Gwen Kopechne, their family and friends, in Plymouth, Pennsylvania.
(Coincidentally, it was the birthday of Kennedy's mother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1890-1995. She turned 79 that day.)
The Chappaquiddick incident gets short shrift today, but changed the life of, and the life's ambition of, the last of Joseph and Rose Kennedy's sons. It deep-sixed a realistic run at the presidency by a third Kennedy son. In that, it might have changed history.
It all goes back to one tragic moment, a God-awful lapse, when the morally deficient man who would become known as "lion of the Senate" drove the death car on July 18 to a watery grave for Mary Joe Kopechne. The occasion was a reunion party on Chappaquiddick Island for staff members of his late brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
Mary Jo had been a a secretary and assistant speech writer for "Bobby." On the night of the reunion party of "Bobby's Boiler Room Girls," at near midnight, Kennedy, without explanation, offered to drive Kopechne to catch the last ferry to the mainland, forsaking his own chauffeur's offer to drive her. (Why has never been explained.) Then he made a bad turn off the guard rail-less Dike Bridge into dark history.
What precisely happened will never be fully known. Kennedy's reticence then and since amounts to a cover-up, almost mockery of public interest. ("Shock," he claimed, caused him to blackout, clouding all recall. It is an excuse for all the ages.) Kennedy did not inform the police of the incident until nine hours after the tragic event, also never explained by the boy who hired others to take college tests for himself.
This tragic event on July 18, 1969, exposed for all time a Lord Jim-like character's selfish, self-indulgent, unfit-to-lead, cowardly nature. The event dogged Ted Kennedy down through the years, and will be a shoo-in for mention in his obituary.
Mary Jo's modest parents were devastated by the loss of their only child. They viscerally hated Kennedy for being responsible for their profound loss. Such a loss of one's child is never "natural;" kids bury their parents, not the other way around.
Sober legal minds say manslaughter might well have been charged. But then, he was a Kennedy. Special provisions for the rich and politically famous? Scott Johnson of the estimable blog Power Line recycles an observation from an attorney friend who has painstakingly studied the incident:
Manslaughter might have been forgiven if Kennedy hadn't decided to evade responsibility for the accident and cover it up by failing to report it, trying to co-opt one of his aides to cop to being the driver, and then leaving them to try and fix it for him for over seven hours.
Worse, Mary Jo Kopechne, whose drowned body was found in a position trying to eke out the last molecules of air within the submerged car, was left to drown by the self-involved Senator who chose not to seek immediate help.
Kennedy's only crime, then, in the palsy-walsy Massachusetts judicial system, where the inquest was "secret," was to be found guilty merely of leaving the scene of an accident. Oh yes, and having his driver's license temporarily lifted, this man who was normally chauffeured. Slaps on the wrist. Did family, power, lawyerly privilege, dollars and position have anything to do about that? Is this why the public is cynical about "the law"? (See also, OJ Simpson.)
It must help to have friends in high places. Johnson's lawyer friend suggests reading Leo Damore's excellent book, Senatorial Privilege, for an examination of this American tragedy. Johnson himself observes that Kennedy "styled himself an opponent of wealth and privilege, but his career is a tribute to their power when wielded by a man of the Left."
Suffering from inoperable brain cancer, Kennedy on the Q.T. visited Kopechne's grave last Thanksgiving. It was the first time since that 1969 funeral at which he was the focus of daggers and if-looks-could-kill glances. Only National Inquirer latched on to the story of his graveside visit. Note its typically self-serving lead and the revealing quote of an anonymous "family source:"
The ENQUIRER reports exclusively that Ted Kennedy, dying of brain cancer, made a secret visit to the grave of Mary Jo Kopechne . . . Ted made a special trip to visit the parish cemetery of St. Vincent's Roman Catholic Church in Plymouth, Pa., where Mary Jo was buried July 22, 1969.
[Author's note: Her grave is marked by a rectangular monument simply inscribed "Mary Jo, 1940 - 1969."]
"Ted knows his days are numbered and has been wrestling with making this difficult trip," a family source told The ENQUIRER. "While Mary Jo's parents were alive, because of the bad blood that existed, Ted avoided going."
It is Joseph Conrad's turbulent epic novel, Lord Jim, all over again, after the storm-tossed shipwreck, Jim on the run from his past, striving to redeem himself, to expiate his sins, by an eve-of-death visit to the grave of someone who died on his watch, gasping for air to maintain a grip on dear life, a memory most horrible to survivors.
Redemption is not easy, especially after pitiful denials and a well-crafted PR-like, thoroughly incredible TV speech by Kennedy, in the aftermath. His "explanations" are bereft of logic, rather self-serving. Amazingly, voters in the Bay State gave him a resounding 62% of the vote the very next year, telling us something about them.
One wonders if Kennedy can come fully to terms with, his desperate Lord Jim-like experience, absent repentance, for causing the death of another human being. At the least, her name will be forever linked with his in look-back history when the story is finally, fully told, perhaps even a subject of film noir – likely titled, let's see now, "Death at Chappaquiddick"?
This "Lion of the Senate" more properly known as Ted, The Hero of Chappaquiddick, Kennedy showed the cowardly colors that were reinforced throughout his lifetime. Funny thing about those that never worked for their money they almost to a man (stretching this description in Kennedy's case) espouse fascism/socialism. Now, in his dying days, the cowardly lion of the senate wants to ruin the US health care system and drop it to the 3rd world level enjoyed by our European friends. When he loses his bout with cancer it will be very difficult to mourn for him.
There's an error in the article.
MaryJo Kopechne (That's how her name is spelled on her tombstone.) didn't drown. She died of asphyxiation, with her head in an air bubble in the back seat of the overturned Oldsmobile. In other words, she lived more than long enough for the Conscience of the Senate to have run to the nearby house with the porch light on and telephone for help, and for the necessary help to arrive. It would have taken about 20 minutes. Estimates are that she lived as long as several hours, in pitch darkness, total silence, in the upside-down Oldsmobile with doors sealed shut by mud, waiting, waiting, waiting.
The date listed for Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy's death is incorrect, she lived from 1890-1995, not till 1973 as stated above.
While there is no film or documentary that I know of, unfortunately, there IS a book titled: Death At Chappaquiddick, by Richard L. and Thomas L. Tedrow (a retired attorney father and his son). First published in 1976, this is an excellent and thorough investigation of what really happened on the night of July 18-19, 1969, and the obstruction of justice afterward. I urge anyone with an interest in this topic to read it. ISBN: 0-916054-28-4