Posted on 09/03/2009 6:06:25 PM PDT by steven33442
WASHINGTON – Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said in a new book that he was not romantically involved with young Mary Jo Kopechne and that he never escaped the despair he felt after she died in the 1969 car crash that has been seared into the national consciousness as "Chappaquiddick." He acknowledged that he enjoyed women and drink — sometimes too much so — but said reports of wild Kennedy excesses were exaggerated. Yet it was the specter of Chappaquiddick that Edward Kennedy, the youngest brother, never could shake. "That night on Chappaquiddick Island ended in a horrible tragedy that haunts me every day of my life," Kennedy wrote in a memoir, "True Compass," to be published posthumously on Sept. 14. The Massachusetts senator died last week at 77 following a yearlong battle with brain cancer. Kennedy said his Catholic faith helped sustain him as he wrestled with guilt over the events of July 18, 1969, when he drove a car off a bridge into a pond on the tiny island. His own anguish, he said, paled in comparison with the suffering endured by Kopechne's family.
Amid the regrets, Kennedy asserted his zest for what he considered to be the good life, but he mocked the exaggerated reports of his personal excesses. "I have enjoyed the company of women," he wrote. Kennedy drove off a bridge into a pond. He swam to safety, leaving Kopechne in the car. Kopechne, 28, a former worker with Robert Kennedy's campaign, was found dead in the submerged car's back seat 10 hours later. Kennedy, then 37, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and got a suspended sentence and probation.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
...She (Mary Joe K.) was in Green Oldsmobile, taking Dictation.
11pm @ night....right. 
...just how many drinks...errr...a bottle(s) of Scotch Whiskey before 10:30am, every morning?
I sell books as a side-line. That book has REMAINDER MARK written all over it, LOL!
Trust me. Any books written by Liberals go straight to CLEARANCE.
Books by true Conservatives (No RINOS!!) hold their value no matter how hard the liberals in the bookstores try to hide them in the back of the store. :)
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
It isn’t Mary Jo who is waiting with a whole flock of bats.
Maybe some of those boiler room girls, supposed friends of Mary Jo, at the party that night will have enough guts tocome forward and tell the truth about what happened. Kennedy can’t do anything to hurt them now if they do.
“Her parents ruled out an autopsy, so the cause of death was never officially determined.”
Wonder what THAT cost the Kennedy family?
I can’t even imagine “selling out” my daughter that way, but those were different times...
Little surprise! Ted Kennedy makes a lame and feeble attempt
at rewriting history - from the grave, no less.
Sorry Ted, didn’t believe you when you were living; not about to start believing you now.
I think he may be technically telling the truth on this one. He probably never had a chance to have sex with her, because the car never made it to the secluded beach on the other side of that bridge, where he obviously intended to “make his move”.
Although rumors in MA still say she was with his (Kennedy), child.
5.56mm
Tell me, will his book be available in audio?
That!!! Well said...
Lyin King indeed.
His living spokesperson:
http://hotairpundit.blogspot.com/2009/08/grandaughter-of-jfk-flips-off-someone.html
Kennedy lives!
An autopsy also may have revealed if the cause of death was drowning or suffocation. The diver on the scene said she had positioned herself where an air pocket would have developed, and therefore was probably alive for an hour or more after the crash.
Lying sack of crap!
I clearly remember Mary Jo’s mother shortly after the accident talk about the fact that her daughter had a boy friend. She gave the impression that their friendship was leading to an engagement.
Does anyone remember the boy friend ever coming forward and talking about Mary Jo?
Everybody, I’m going to indulge in a parallel-universe scenario. For just a few minutes.
On that July night in 1969 (I remember the real headlines well, BTW) Kennedy’s car crashes into Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island. He escapes to the surface, then runs to the nearest house with lights on and frantically bangs on the door. The surprised occupants immediately telephone the police with a request for a SCUBA rescue squad. Less than an hour after the crash, Mary Jo Kopechne is pulled from the sunken car, gasping, frightened, but very much alive.
Later, during a routine physical exam, it is found that she is in fact pregnant. A chagrined Kennedy admits to the affair and declares he will provide for the unmarried Mary Jo and her child when it is born. He asks both his wife Joan and the Catholic Church for forgiveness.
Question: would this outcome have doomed Kennedy’s chances for the Presidency as much as the real outcome did?
Thoughts?
You are on to something here. He really didn’t have “an affair” with Mary Jo Kopechne because she had died in the lake before he had had the opportunity to bed her.
Kennedy is technically telling the truth, I guess.
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