Family Plots: A Kennedy Reader, Part Deux
24th November 2023
Sixty years ago this week, on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was gunned down, but the family’s political odyssey did not end there. JFK’s brother Robert F. Kennedy, who had served as attorney general, made a run for the White House but on June 5, 1968, but Jordanian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan shot RFK dead. That raised expectations for Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy.
In July of 1969, the “boiler room girls,” who had worked for Bobby Kennedy, gathered at Chappaquiddick Island for a drunken bash with Ted and his handlers. Ted took Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, for a ride in his cavernous 1967 Oldsmobile, but not to talk campaign strategy. The Massachusetts Democrat drove off a bridge, escaped the sunken vehicle, and abandoned Kopechne, who died by drowning.