America’s renowned Kennedy
family consists of the descendants of Joseph
Patrick Kennedy – prominent Irish-American businessman and politician – and
Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald. Believers
of the Curse say misfortune began with the Kennedy’s eldest daughter Rosemary, a shy child who scored poorly
on IQ tests, diagnosed with "moderate mental retardation." In 1941, 23 year-old Rosemary received an
ill-advised lobotomy as treatment
for mood issues, leaving her
incontinent, infantile, incomprehensible, and institutionalized until her death
in 2005.
Tragedy struck again in 1944, when Joseph Jr. (their first-born son) was killed in action during World War II. A month later Kathleen Kennedy’s husband William Cavendish, heir to the Duke of Devonshire, was also shot down four short months after they married. Four years later, Kathleen and her new beau Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam died in a plane crash over France.
Meanwhile, the remaining Kennedy sons were rising steadily
in the political realm; though John was most successful, he and wife Jacqueline Bouvier suffered through the birth of a stillborn daughter in 1956, and
lost their newborn son shortly before JFK’s assassination. A year later, Senator
Ted Kennedy was critically wounded
in a plane crash that killed one of his aides and the pilot. Though Ted
recovered, he soon became the only surviving Kennedy son after his brother Bobby was assassinated in Los Angeles following a presidential
primary victory.
Ted’s own presidential aspirations were dashed after 1969’s Chappaquiddick incident, when he accidentally drove his car off a
bridge in Martha’s Vineyard, killing his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne. Scandal quickly ensued, as Ted had been drinking,
was with a woman, and waited over ten hours to report what happened. This sad
event was mirrored in Joseph P. Kennedy
II’s (Bobby’s oldest son) 1973 car crash that paralyzed his
brother David’s girlfriend, Pam Kelley. In that same year, Ted’s 12 year-old grandson Ted Jr. lost much of his right leg to
bone cancer.
The following decades presented several more sad scandals
for the Kennedy’s, starting in 1984 when
David Kennedy (Bobby’s fourth
child) died of a drug overdose in Palm
Beach. In 1997, his brother Michael fatally hit a tree while
playing ski-football; a few years later, JFK
Jr. died after crashing his light aircraft on Martha’s Vineyard.
This history of calamity proves the Kennedy curse for its
many believers, yet skeptics find tragedy inevitable given the family’s large
size and notoriety; the risky, public nature of political and military service;
and simple recklessness. If these defining factors are to blame for the family’s
misfortune, perhaps the Kennedy’s aren’t a successful family with a famous curse,
but a family cursed by fame and success.
