U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy arrives for a meeting of the Democratic Caucus on Capitol Hill in Washington in this November 17, 2008 photo. Edward Kennedy died at the family home on Cape Cod.
Ted Kennedy died just two weeks after his sister, Eunice Shriver
, passed away at the age of 88. Gravely ill, he did not attend the funeral in Cape Cod.
The last of the storied band of brothers whose triumphs and tragedies dominated a generation of American politics, has died after losing a battle with brain cancer.
His weaknesses and the long shadow of Chappaquiddick, were an obstacle that even his strengths couldn't overcome. But his failure to get to the presidency opened the way to the true fulfillment of his gifts, which was to become one of the greatest legislators in American history.
Everyone assumed that the presidency would someday be his for the asking. But it was only a moment. On July 18, 1969, Kennedy hosted a reunion for six women who had worked at the center of Bobby's presidential campaign. The gathering took place in a rented cottage on Chappaquiddick Island, just off Martha's Vineyard. Around 11:15 that night, Kennedy asked his driver for the keys to his Oldsmobile so that he could leave the party with Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, a former aide to his brother. According to testimony he gave later at a judge's inquest, he took a wrong turn onto an unlit dirt road and then across a small, unrailed wooden bridge. His car went over the side of the bridge and landed upside down in the water. Kennedy managed to escape. Kopechne did not.
There are questions about Chappaquiddick that have never been closed. Where was Kennedy going with Kopechne at that late hour? (At the inquest in January, he claimed that he was taking her back to her hotel in Edgartown.) Why did he wait until the following morning, 10 hours later, to report the accident to the police? (He said it was because he had been in a state of shock and confusion.) Was the real reason for delaying the report that at the time of the accident he was drunk? (He insisted he was not.) At the inquest, he testified that after escaping from the car, he dived back into the water seven or eight times in a vain attempt to free Kopechne. Then he made the mile-and-a-half walk back to the cottage, where the party was still underway, collected two male friends and returned with them to the car, where they also attempted to free Kopechne. When that proved impossible, Kennedy decided to return to his hotel across the water in Edgartown. But instead of summoning the night ferry, he chose to swim 500 feet across the bay.
The inquest concluded that Kennedy had lied when he said he was taking Kopechne back to Edgartown. It also ruled that his "negligent driving" appeared to have contributed to her death. By the time the inquest was complete, Kennedy had already entered a guilty plea to leaving the scene of an accident and received a two-month suspended sentence. But it would be truer to say he was sentenced to life under the cloud of Chappaquiddick.
Had it not been for that night, he almost certainly would have been a candidate for the
Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. He stayed on the sidelines that year and in 1976 as well, even though in the aftermath of
Watergate, that looked to be a winning year for the Democrats.
