Kennedy Curse

The Kennedy tragedies,^[1][2][3] colloquially called the Kennedy Curse, is a term sometimes used to describe a series of tragedies involving members of the Kennedy family. Some have called the continual misfortune of the Kennedy family a curse.^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]} Several members of the family have died from unnatural causes, most notably brothers John and Robert, who were assassinated by gunshots in 1963 and 1968, and John, Jr., who was killed in an airplane crash along with his wife and sister-in-law in 1999.

The existence of such a curse has been disputed by others who have claimed that many of the tragedies have been caused by preventable reckless choices like driving drunk or flying an airplane in unsafe conditions, that others are the natural result of events likely to occur in such a large family like cancer or pregnancy miscarriage, and that the notion of a curse is a media creation.^[9][10]

Chronology

Believers in the curse generally cite the following core events as evidence of the family's misfortunes:

• 1941 – Rosemary Kennedy was believed to be mentally retarded. However, some sources have claimed she was suffering from mental illness, such as depression. Because of her increasingly violent and severe mood swings, Joe Kennedy arranged in secret for her to undergo a lobotomy. The surgery impaired her cognitive abilities even more, and as a result, she remained institutionalized until her death in 2005.^{[4][5][6][11]}
• August 12, 1944 – Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. is killed in action in a mid-air aircraft explosion over eastern England while flying a hazardous mission during World War II.^[4][5][6]
• May 13, 1948 – Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington is killed in a plane crash in France along with her companion Peter Wentworth-FitzWilliam, 8th Earl FitzWilliam.^[4][5][6]
• August 23, 1956 – Jacqueline Kennedy gives birth to her stillborn daughter, Arabella Kennedy.^[6] (Although the daughter was unnamed and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to her parents with a marker reading "Daughter", later reports indicated that the Kennedys had intended to name her Arabella.)^[12]
• August 9, 1963 – Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, born six weeks premature, dies two days after his birth.^[4][6][11]
• November 22, 1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas.^[4][5][6]
• June 19, 1964 – U.S. Senator from Massachusetts Edward "Ted" Kennedy is involved in a plane crash in which one of his aides and the pilot were killed. He was pulled from the wreckage by fellow senator Birch E. Bayh II (D-Ind.) and spent weeks in a hospital recovering from a broken back, a punctured lung, broken ribs, and internal bleeding.^[4][5]
• June 6, 1968 – Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles immediately following his victory in the California Democratic presidential primary.^[4][5][6]
• July 18, 1969 – In the Chappaquiddick incident, a car driven by Ted Kennedy goes off a bridge on Martha's Vineyard, eventually drowning his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne.^[4][5][6][7] In his July 25 televised statement, Kennedy stated that on the night of the incident he wondered "whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys."^[13][14]
• August 13, 1973 – Joseph P. Kennedy II is the driver in a car accident that leaves one passenger, Pam Kelley, permanently paralyzed.^[4][6][11]
• November 17, 1973 – Edward "Ted" Kennedy, Jr. loses a portion of his right leg due to bone cancer at the age of 12.^[1][2]
• April 25, 1984 – David Kennedy dies from a Demerol and cocaine overdose in a Palm Beach, Florida hotel room.^{[4][5][6][11]}
• 1991 - William Kennedy Smith is tried for rape, and is acquitted of all charges.^[1][2][3][4]
• December 31, 1997 – Michael Kennedy is killed in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado.^{[1][4][5][6][11]}
• July 16, 1999 – John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife, and sister-in-law were killed when the Piper Saratoga light aircraft Kennedy was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. Their ashes were scattered at sea from the Navy ship USS Briscoe a week later.^[4][5][6]

References