LOL!
I wonder if teddy hiccup will ever take responsibility for this, oh hell, never mind, wth am I thinking? LMAO!
Decisions ... decisions - Mary Jo's life or your political career?
If you had it to do over, I'm sure you'd make the same decision.
Happy anniversary, Slimeball!
Great work! It would be much more powerful if some DC area Freepers were to visit his office and serenade the senator and his staff!
8:55 AM
- Satisfied that he had made a thorough observation of the accident scene, Farrar pulled the body of Mary Jo Kopechne out through the open window. The maneuver was complicated by the victim's hunched posture and outstretched arms made inflexible by rigor mortis.
-As he removed the body from the Senator's car, Farrar observed that it was "about one-quarter positively buoyant. There was still a little air left in her."
- Farrar tied the safety line around the victim, and brought her to the surface. The difficult recovery had taken him 10 minutes. In all, it took John Farrar 30 minutes from the time he got the call until he recovered the body from the accident car.
- Farrar repeatedly expressed the opinion that Mary Jo Kopechne had lived for some time underwater by breathing a bubble of trapped air, and that she could have been saved if rescue personnel had been promptly called to the scene. He had equipment to administer air to a trapped person directly or to augment an air pocket inside a submerged automobile.
- "There was a great possibility that we could have saved Mary Jo's life," Farrar said. "There would have been an airlock in the car - there always is in such submersions - that would have kept her alive. If we had been called, I would have reached the scene in 45 minutes. I say 45 minutes because it was dark. ( The daylight recovery had taken 30 minutes ). The lack of light might have caused a delay of 15 minutes."
- Three days before the Kennedy accident, The Boston Herald Traveler had run a story about a New Hampshire woman who had spent five hours in a submerged automobile. Amazed to find the driver unconscious but alive, police rushed the victim to a hospital where she was given respiration and treated for immersion. Doctors said an air bubble trapped inside the car had saved her life.
I'm still scanninf the MSM headlines to see if there is a story about this anniversary. I can't help but believe the MSM wants it's readership to be aware of this momentous date. (sarcasm off)
I still wonder why anyone from Mary Jo's family hasn't spoken out about this. Yes, I realize it's been thirty-six years, but nevertheless...
There's always been something evil about that man. He has no soul.
Teddy's remarks regaring the death of Mary Jo:
(broadcast nationally from Joseph P. Kennedy's home on 25 July 1969)
My fellow citizens:
I have requested this opportunity to talk to the people of Massachusetts about the tragedy which happened last Friday evening. This morning I entered a plea of guilty to the charge of leaving the scene of an accident. Prior to my appearance in court it would have been improper for me to comment on these matters. But tonight I am free to tell you what happened and to say what it means to me.
On the weekend of July 18, I was on Martha's Vineyard Island participating with my nephew, Joe Kennedy -- as for thirty years my family has participated -- in the annual Edgartown Sailing Regatta. Only reasons of health prevented my wife from accompanying me.
On Chappaquiddick Island, off Martha's Vineyard, I attended, on Friday evening, July 18, a cook-out, I had encouraged and helped sponsor for devoted group of Kennedy campaign secretaries. When I left the party, around 11:15 P.M., I was accompanied by one of these girls, Miss Mary Jo Kopechne. Mary J was one of the most devoted members of the staff of Senator Robert Kennedy. She worked for him for four years and was broken up over his death. For this reason, and because she was such a gentle, kind, and idealistic person, all of us tried to help her feel that she still had a home with the Kennedy family.
There is not truth, not truth whatever, to the widely circulated suspicions of immoral conduct that have been leveled at my behavior and hers regarding that evening. There has never been a private relationship between us of any kind. I know of nothing in Mary Jo's conduct on that or nay other occasion -- the same is true of the other girls at that party -- that would lend any substance to such ugly speculation about their character.
Nor was I driving under the influence of liquor.
Little over one mile away, the car that I was driving on the unlit road went of a narrow bridge which had no guard rails and was built on a left angle to the road. The car overturned in a deep pond and immediately filled with water. I remember thinking as the cold water rushed in around my head that I was for certain drowning. Then water entered my lungs and I actual felt the sensation of drowning. But somehow I struggled to the surface alive.
I made immediate and repeated efforts to save Mary Jo be diving into strong and murky current, but succeeded only in increasing my state of utter exhaustion and alarm. My conduct and conversations during the next several hours, to the extent that I can remember them, make no sense to me at all.
Although my doctors informed me that I suffered a cerebral concussion, as well as shock, I do not seek to escape responsibility for my actions by placing the blame either in the physical, emotional trauma brought on by the accident, or on anyone else. I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the policy immediately.
Instead of looking directly for a telephone after lying exhausted in the grass for an undetermined time, I walked back to the cottage where the party was being held and requested the help of two friends, my cousin, Joseph Gargan and Phil Markham, and directed them to return immediately to the scene with me -- this was sometime after midnight -- in order to undertake a new effort to dive down and locate Miss Kopechne. Their strenuous efforts, undertaken at some risk to their own lives also proved futile.
All kinds of scrambled thoughts -- all of them confused, some of them irrational, many of them which I cannot recall, and some of which I would not have seriously entertained under normal circumstances -- went through my mind during this period. They were reflected in the various inexplicable, inconsistent, and inconclusive things I said and did, including such questions as whether the girl might still be alive somewhere out of that immediate area, whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys, whether there was some justifiable reason for me to doubt what has happened and to delay my report, whether somehow the awful weight of this incredible incident might, in some way, pass from my shoulders. I was overcome, I'm frank to say, by a jumble of emotions, grief, fear, doubt, exhaustion, panic, confusion and shock.
Instructing Gargan and Markham not to alarm Mary Jo's friends that night, I had them take me to the ferry crossing. The ferry having shut down for the night, I suddenly jumped into the water and impulsively swam across, nearly drowning once again in the effort, and returned to my hotel about 2 A.M. and collapsed in my room.
I remember going out at one point and saying something to the room clerk.
In the morning, with my mind somewhat more lucid, I made an effort to call a family legal advisor, Burke Marshall, from a public telephone on the Chappaquiddick side of the ferry and belatedly reported the accident to the Martha's Vineyard police.
Today, as I mentioned, I felt morally obligated to plead guilty to the charge of leaving the scene of an accident. No words on my part can possibly express the terrible pain and suffering I feel over this tragic incident. This last week has been an agonizing one for me and for the members of my family, and the grief we feel over the loss of a wonderful friend will remain with us the rest of our lives.
These events, the publicity, innuendo, and whispers which have surrounded them and my admission of guilt this morning raises the question in my mind of whether my standing among the people of my state has been so impaired that I should resign my seat in the United States Senate. If at any time the citizens of Massachusetts should lack confidence in their Senator's character or his ability, with or without justification, he could not in my opinion adequately perform his duty and should not continue in office.
The people of this State, the State which sent John Quincy Adams, and Daniel Webster, and Charles Sumner, and Henry Cabot Lodge, and John Kennedy to the United States Senate are entitled to representation in that body by men who inspire their utmost confidence. For this reason, I would understand full well why some might think it right for me to resign. For me this will be a difficult decision to make.
It has been seven years since my first election to the Senate. You and I share many memories -- some of them have been glorious, some have been very sad. The opportunity to work with you and serve Massachusetts has made my life worthwhile.
And so I ask you tonight, the people of Massachusetts, to think this through with me. In facing this decision, I seek your advice and opinion. In making it, I seek your prayers -- for this is a decision that I will have finally to make on my own.
It has been written a man does what he must in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles, and dangers, and pressures, and that is the basis of human morality. Whatever may be the sacrifices he faces, if he follows his conscience -- the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow man -- each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of the past courage cannot supply courage itself. For this, each man must look into his own soul.
I pray that I can have the courage to make the right decision. Whatever is decided and whatever the future holds for me, I hope that I shall have been able to put this most recent tragedy behind me and make some further contribution to our state and mankind, whether it be in public or private life.
Thank you and good night.
Research Note: Published version of this speech appeared in the New York times, July 26, 1969, p.10. This version was taken from Halford Ross Ryan (Ed.), American Rhetoric from Roosevelt to Reagan, published in 1987 by Waveland Press: Prospect Heights, IL.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/tedkennedychappaquiddick.htm
- The Senator was silent during these discussions, but it was clear to Gargan that he did not want to report the accident at this time.
- Kennedy began expressing alternate ideas about the situation:
- "Why couldn't Mary Jo have been driving the car? Why couldn't she have let me off, and driven to the ferry herself and made a wrong turn?"
- Kennedy asked to be brought back to the cottage to establish the story. After a while he would leave.
- Kennedy suggested that when he was back at the Shiretown Inn, Gargan could "discover" the accident and report to police that Mary Jo had been alone in the car.
- Gargan vigorously rejected the idea. "None of us knew Mary Jo very well," he said,"and we had no idea if she could drive a car, or even owned a license. And besides," he reminded Kennedy, "You told me you were driving!"
The DU postings I have seen that mention Teddys one man swim party have been few. I have seen "36 YEARS AGO!!" in 24 point font, bolded and worded in a get over kind of way. I have also seen one poster who attempted to explain that all the good (WTF!?!) that he has done since then makes up for it.
Do it! Do it!
Good job, Doug. It's a very sad story that needs to be remembered. It's a powerful indictment of the voters of Massachusetts that that man is a United States Senator. They just don't care.
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