Posted on 08/29/2009 3:09:07 PM PDT by ETL
Birth: Jul. 26, 1940
Death: Jul. 19, 1969
Teacher and Administrator, she is most remembered for her controversial death in an automobile accident with Senator Edward Kennedy; the resulting political scandal caused Kennedy to reverse his decision to run for the US Presidency. Born in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, she was the only child of insurance salesman Joseph and Gwen Kopechne. After graduating from Caldwell College, New Jersey, she taught at Montgomery Catholic High School in Montgomery, Alabama, and then moved to Washington DC to work as a secretary for Florida Senator George Smathers. Shortly afterwards, she went to work as a secretary for New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy following his election in 1964. After Senator Robert F. Kennedy's death in 1968, she moved to Matt Reese Associates, a Washington DC firm that helped politicians establish campaign headquarters, and it was there she met Senator Edward Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's younger brother.
On the evening of July 18, 1969, she attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island, near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, in honor of the "Boiler Room Girls," a name given to the six young women who had helped the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy during his presidential campaign, and who had closed up his files after his assassination in June 1968. All six of the women were single, and the six men in attendance were all married but present without their wives, and the attendees gathered for a late night party at the Lawrence Cottage, rented by Joe Gargan for the occasion.
Late that evening (the exact time is in dispute), Kennedy offered to drive Kopechne back to her hotel at the Katama Shores Motor Inn in Edgartown, and later claimed that he mistakenly took a wrong, right turn onto Dyke Road, a dirt road leading to a beach about a mile down the road, instead of turning left onto the paved Chappaquiddick Road leading to the ferryboat which they would need to use to go to Kopechne's motel.
A half-mile down Dyke Road, Kennedy drove off the side of the Dyke Bridge, and the car overturned into Poucha Pond. Kennedy got out of the overturned car, but Kopechne failed to exit the car and died. Kopechne's body was recovered later that morning; the diver reporting that Kopechne had positioned herself near the back seat wheel well where an air pocket had formed, and had apparently suffocated rather than drowned. Her parents ruled out an autopsy, so the cause of death was never officially determined.
Senator Kennedy later pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury, for which he received a two-month suspended sentence and one year probation. Kopechne's death and Kennedy's failure to properly deal with the accident, along with numerous discrepancies in his account of what happened, damaged his reputation and is regarded by many as the major reason that he decided to cancel his run for the presidency in 1972 and subsequent years.
Kopechne's funeral was held on July 22, 1969, at St. Vincent's Roman Catholic Church in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, and she was buried in the parish cemetery there.
(bio by: Kit and Morgan Benson)
Burial:
Saint Vincents Cemetery
Larksville
Luzerne County
Pennsylvania, USA
The new family tombstone, erected after the death of Mary Jo's mother in December, 2007.
Added by: Geoff Wilson, 9/04/2008
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=4569
It was 10 hours after the accident that Kennedy contacted the police.
It was 2 hours after the body was recovered that Kennedy contacted the police.
What did he say in his ‘confession’?
“When I fully realized what had happened this morning,” he wrote, “I immediately contacted the police.”
Her liberalism cost her everything.
Bump
Some "lion" he was.
If you took Kennedy's name out of this narrative, and substituted some nobody's, the story wouldn't reflect any less poorly on that individual. It really stinks.
Yes, Johnson was. I just watched War Stories with Oliver North and how we got into Vietnam, and the whole Gulf of Tonkin lie...I have total refueled hatred for that b@st@rd. I hope he is enjoying the fires of hell.
I am sorry, I don't understand. Can you give me a link or an example of his faith in Christ?
Thanks.
The critical info was the police officer who reported Kennedy’s car in that vicinity at about 12:45 AM. The car went into the water shortly thereafter.
Kennedy himself then checked in with the Hotel owner at 2:25 AM. He complained about guests making loud noise.
He didn’t mention a need to call police or anyone else and he was in dry clothing.
With estimates of 5 hours that she survived in that car, even at 2:25 AM she could have been rescued if the man had simply opened his mouth.
no not MAD...National Lampoon
Heaven has "abortion", though. But not for babies; only for adults.
Thanks again! Listening to it now. Sounds like it will be very interesting. I hadn’t checked the earlier one.
Kennedy = one cold, blackhearted individual.
Agreed.
Think about it. For 10 hours, every second of every hour, in his mind, he had to think something .... About 3,600 times, in his mind, he had to say “Screw her, let her rot. I need to save my career and keep my fat ass out of jail. I can do this, I'm a kennedy.”
That would explain why there wasn't an open door or smashed window in the car that she could have attempted to swim out of, assuming she wasn't knocked out or much too drunk to snap to attention. I had always wondered about that. If the car had an early version of power door locks, they might not have been able to operate under water.
What is even more strange to me is that there was also a 'Polish' Pope working with Reagan to tear down that 'iron curtain'. Now why would Teddy work against his own church?
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