Mary Jo Kopechne

Mary Jo Kopechne

Mary Jo Kopechne was a schoolteacher, secretary, and political campaign worker, who was killed one night forty years ago, in an automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island at Martha's Vineyard. The driver, a prominent United States senator, claimed to have made several attempts to save her, but did not report the accident until the next morning, when the car and the body were found. The senator pleaded guilty to "leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury." He received a two month suspended sentence. The Kopechne family has never commented publicly on the incident.

The senator went on to a distinguished career in politics, but for a failed attempt at nomination to run for the Presidency. He died early this morning, after a long battle with cancer. The woman who was never able to live as full or as long a life as he, and whose family received little if any justice, can finally rest in peace.

May God have mercy on that senator. May God have mercy on us all.

Chappaquiddick

Chappaquiddick

The “Chappaquiddick incident” refers to circumstances surrounding the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign worker for the assassinated U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York. On July 18, 1969, Ted Kennedy attended a party on Chappaquiddick, a small island connected via ferry to the town of Edgartown on the adjoining larger island of Martha’s Vineyard.

The party was a reunion for a group of six women, including Kopechne, known as the “boiler-room girls”,who had served in his brother Robert’s 1968 presidential campaign. Also present were Joseph Gargan (Ted Kennedy’s cousin), Paul Markham (a school friend of Gargan’s who would become United States Attorney for Massachusetts under the patronage of the Kennedys), Charles Tretter (an attorney), Raymond La Rosa and John Crimmins (Ted Kennedy’s part-time driver). Kennedy was also competing in the Edgartown Yacht Club Regatta, a sailing competition which was taking place over several days.

Kopechne’s dead body was discovered inside an overturned car belonging to Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy of Massachusetts under water in a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. After the body was found, Kennedy gave a statement to police saying that on the previous night he had taken a wrong turn and accidentally driven his car off a bridge into the water. He pled guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury, and received a suspended sentence. The incident became a national scandal, and may have affected the Senator’s decision not to run for President in 1972.

Ted Kennedy quotes

Ted Kennedy quotes

Ted Kennedy became a Democratic Massachusetts senator in 1962 In his words, as in life, he was a politician unafraid to address issues in a direct and occasionally controversial manner. * "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die" - addressing the Democratic National Convention after pulling out of the presidential race, August 1980.

* "Frankly, I don't mind not being president. I just mind that someone else is" - at Washington Gridiron Club dinner, March 1986. * "Well, here I don't go again" - on not running for president in 1988. * "Ulster is becoming Britain's Vietnam" - on The Troubles in Northern Ireland, October 1971 * "My brother need not be idealised or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it" - eulogy for brother Robert Kennedy, June 1968.

* "I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately" - during a televised statement after he pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident in regards to the Chappaquiddick incident, July 1969 * "What we have in the United States is not so much a health-care system as a disease-care system" - on health care reform for which he campaigned throughout his life, 1994 * "With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion. With Barack Obama we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay" - endorsing Barack Obama for president, January 2008.