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26
The assassination of JFK, the most powerful man in the world was the
shocking event which brought into the spotlight the fame and misfortune of the
Kennedy clan. By the time of Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963 the
family had already experienced their fair share of suffering.
In 1944 Joe Junior – the eldest son groomed by his father for the presidency
– died in a plane crash while serving in Britain. For years later Kathleen Kennedy,
married to a British aristocrat, died in another air crash in France, aged 28.
Another sister, Rosemary, had already been put in a mental home after a failed
lobotomy, ordered by her father himself. In 1963 a few months before the
assassination that shook the world, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, son of John and
Jacqueline, died just days after his premature birth.
Tragedy did not end with JFK’s assassination. Within 5 years Robert
Kennedy was shot and killed in a Los Angeles hotel after winning an important
political election, and Edward Kennedy’s plans to go into politics ended with
Chappaquiddick – a car accident where his companion, Mary-Jo Kopechne was
killed.
The burden of fame and misfortune passed on to the next generation. Their
accidents were all self-inflicted. Edward’s son Patrick was treated for drug
addiction and his nephew, WK Smith, was put on trial for rape. Of Robert’s sons,
David died in a hotel room of a drug overdose, another was involved in a car
accident that left a female passenger paralysed; and Michael was killed playing
ski football after he struck a tree.
Were all these misfortunes just cruel coincidence or was Joe Kennedy, the
son of a Catholic publican, under some kind of curse?
Some say that the Kennedys, stripped of their glamour and power, are just
normal dysfunctional American family – skiing accidents, drugs, illnesses, too
much money, too little self-discipline.
But if there is a curse then it has been especially harsh to Rory Kennedy,
Robert’s daughter. She was born after her father’s assassination. On New Year’s
Eve 1998, she held her brother as he lay dying on a Colorado ski slope. Then in
July 1999 on the 30
th
anniversary of Chappaquiddick, she was eagerly waiting for
the arrival of John, JKF’s son, with her family. They were gathered together for
Rory’s wedding. John decided to fly his own plane to the wedding, even though he
lacked experience and was limping from a paragliding accident. The plane never
turned up. The wedding was abandoned. The bodies of John, his young wife and
sister-in-law were found later by the US Coastguard. Fate had claimed its latest
victims.
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