Mary Jo Kopechne (July 26, 1940 – July 18, 1969) was an American secretary and political campaign specialist who drowned as a result of an accident on Chappaquiddick Island while a passenger in a car being driven by United States Senator Ted Kennedy.
Life
Kopechne, born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,[1] was the only child of insurance salesman Joseph Kopechne and his wife, Gwen.[1] She was of Polish-American heritage.[2] The family moved to Berkeley Heights, New Jersey when she was an infant.[1] She attended parochial schools growing up.[3]
After graduating with a degree in business administration from Caldwell College for Women in New Jersey in 1962,[1][4] Kopechne moved to Montgomery, Alabama, to teach for a year at the Mission of St. Jude[1] as part of the Civil Rights Movement.[5] In 1963, she moved to Washington, D.C., to work as secretary to Florida Senator George Smathers.[1] Kopechne joined New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy's secretarial staff following his election in 1964.[1] There she worked as a secretary to the senator's speechwriters and as a legal secretary to one of his legal advisers.[1] Kopechne was a loyal and tireless worker for Robert Kennedy, once in March 1967 staying up all night at his Hickory Hill home to type a major speech against the Vietnam War as the senator and his aides such as Ted Sorenson made last-minute changes to it.[3][6][7]
During the 1968 U.S. presidential election, she helped with the wording of Robert Kennedy's March 1968 speech announcing his candidacy.[3] During his campaign, she worked as one of the "Boiler Room Girls", an affectionate name given to six young women who worked from a hot, loud, central, and windowless location in Kennedy's Washington campaign headquarters.[3][6][8][2] They were vital in tracking and compiling data and intelligence on how Democratic delegates from various states were intending to vote; Kopechne's responsibilities included Pennsylvania.[6][8] Kopechne and the other staffers were politically savvy,[8] and were chosen for their clear heads and ability to work long hours under pressure on sensitive matters.[2] They talked daily with field managers and also served as conduits for policy statements being distributed to strategically located newspapers.[8]
Kopechne was devastated by the June 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy, and, after briefly working on the Kennedy proxy campaign of George McGovern, could not return to work on Capitol Hill, saying "I just feel Bobby's presence everywhere. I can't go back because it will never be the same again."[6][2] But as her father later said, "Politics was her life,"[6] and in December 1968 she used her expertise to gain a job with Matt Reese Associates, a Washington, D.C., firm that helped establish campaign headquarters and field offices for politicians and was one of the first political consulting firms.[1][5][9] By mid-1969 she had completed work for a mayoral campaign in Jersey City, New Jersey.[2] She was on her way to a successful professional career.[10]
Kopechne lived in the Georgetown neighborhood with three other women.[1] She was a fan of the Boston Red Sox and of fellow Polish-American Carl Yastrzemski.[2] She was a devout Roman Catholic with a demure, serious, "convent school" demeanor, rarely drank much, and had no reputation for extramarital activities with men.[9][2][10]
Death
On July 18, 1969, Kopechne attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island, off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, held in honor of the Boiler Room Girls. It was the fourth such reunion of the Robert Kennedy campaign workers.[11]
Kopechne reportedly left the party at 11:15 p.m. with Robert's brother Ted Kennedy, after he — according to his own account — offered to drive her to catch the last ferry back to Edgartown, where she was staying.[6] She did not tell her close friends at the party that she was leaving and she left her purse and keys behind.[6]
Kennedy drove the 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 off a narrow, unlit bridge without guardrails that was not on the route to Edgartown.[6] It landed in Poucha Pond and overturned in the water.[6] Kennedy extricated himself from the vehicle and survived, but Kopechne did not.[6]
Kennedy failed to report the incident to the authorities until the car and Kopechne's body were discovered the next morning.[6] Kopechne's parents said that they learned of their daughter's death from Ted Kennedy himself[1] before he reported his involvement to the authorities, but that they learned Kennedy had been the driver only from wire press releases some time later.[4]
A funeral for Kopechne was held on July 22, 1969, at St. Vincent's Roman Catholic Church in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, attended by Kennedy.[12] She is buried in the parish cemetery on the side of Larksville Mountain.
A week after the incident, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury. He received a two month suspended sentence.[6] On a national television broadcast that night, Kennedy later said he was not driving under the influence of alcohol nor had he engaged in any immoral conduct with Kopechne.[6]
The Chappaquiddick incident and the death of Kopechne became grist for at least fifteen books, as well as a fictionalized treatment by Joyce Carol Oates. Questions remained about Kennedy's timeline of events that night, about his actions after the incident, and the quality of the investigation and whether official deference was given to a powerful politician and family.[13] The events surrounding Kopechne's death damaged Kennedy's reputation and are regarded as a major reason that he was never able to mount a successful campaign for President of the United States.[14] Kennedy expressed remorse over his role in her death in his posthumously-published memoir, True Compass.[15]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k McFadden, Robert D. (July 20, 1969). "Victim Drawn to Politics". The New York Times. http://select.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F50D15FD3C5C137A93C2AB178CD85F4D8685F9.
- ^ a b c d e f g Canellos, Peter (2009). Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy. Simon and Schuster. pp. 148–150. ISBN 1439138176.
- ^ a b c d Oppenheimer, Jerry (1995). The Other Mrs. Kennedy (4th ed.). Macmillan Books. p. 504. ISBN 0312956002.
- ^ a b Damore, Leo (1988). Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-Up. Washington: Regnery Gateway. pp. 58–59. ISBN 0-89526-564-8.
- ^ a b Kappel, Kenneth R. (1989). Chappaquiddick Revealed: What Really Happened. New York: Shapolsky Publishers. p. 16. ISBN 0-944007-64-3.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Russell, Jenna (February 17, 2009). "Chapter 3: Chappaquiddick: Conflicted ambitions, then, Chappaquiddick". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/02/17/chapter_3_chappaquiddick/.
- ^ Kappel, Chappaquiddick Revealed, p. 189.
- ^ a b c d Damore, Senatorial Privilege, pp. 118–119.
- ^ a b Clymer, Adam (1999). Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography. New York: Wm. Morrow & Company. pp. 144–145. ISBN 0-688-14285-0.
- ^ a b Leamer, Laurence (2004). Sons of Camelot: The Fate of an American Dynasty. Wm. Morrow & Company. pp. 124–125. ISBN 0-06-620965-X.
- ^ Damore, Senatorial Privilege, p. 154.
- ^ Clymer, Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography, p. 150.
- ^ Clymer, Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography, pp. 152–154.
- ^ Barone, Michael; Cohen, Richard E. (2008). The Almanac of American Politics. Washington: National Journal Group. p. 792. ISBN 0-89234-116-0.
- ^ "Kennedy memoir reveals remorse over Chappaquiddick". The Detroit News. Associated Press. September 9, 2009. http://www.detnews.com/article/20090909/NATION/909090342/1020/NATION/Kennedy-memoir-reveals-remorse-over-Chappaquiddick.
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