Family of David J Kennedy and America Smith Kennedy
A Sad Familiarity
Legacy of Untimely Death Continues
Past Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Author
Friday, January 2, 1998;
Page A04
At that place was a terrible familiarity nearly the death of Michael Kennedy on a ski slope in Aspen on New year's day's Eve, a tragic ending to a difficult year for a family unit at present defined most as much by suffering and scandal equally by its accomplishments.
Michael Kennedy's death on a mountainside at age 39 is only the latest in what has been a decades-long roster of pain and anguish for the Kennedys, a list that includes ii assassinations, one death in gainsay in World State of war Two, another by a drug overdose in 1984, and a celebrated rape trial that ended in acquittal.
Throughout, the Kennedys have carried on a delivery to public service that has helped make them the closest thing this state has had to a majestic family, one whose triumphs and tragedies take made them larger than life to ordinary Americans.
"They've had more power, more money, more than tragedy, more adversity," historian Michael Beschloss said yesterday. "About on a Shakespearean level. . . . There is just an uncanny corporeality of tragedy in this family unit."
No novelist could have written the last chapter of the Kennedy saga of 1997, a year that saw the family reputation tarnished by revelations that Michael had carried on an matter with a family babysitter, allegedly beginning when she was 14. The uproar in Massachusetts helped atomic number 82 his brother, Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Mass.), to abandon his plans to run for governor in 1998. It acquired cousin John F. Kennedy Jr. to write in his political mag George that Joe, who had sought an disparateness of his 12-twelvemonth marriage that produced 2 children, and Michael were "affiche boys for bad behavior."
And so came publication of Seymour Hersh's "The Dark Side of Camelot," a bark-off portrait of the sexual and other peccadilloes of President John F. Kennedy. So in the waning hours of the year, Michael slammed into a tree while skiing in Aspen with other members of his family unit and was pronounced dead soon afterward in the hospital.
"Those of us who knew Michael and worked with Michael feel non simply terrible nearly his loss, only the fact that he's likely to exist remembered non very much for the things that he did that were really quite extraordinary," said Robert Shrum, a Democratic political consultant who worked for Michael's uncle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). "There was a lot of talent and a lot of caring. That'south not going to exist remembered as I believe it should exist."
The reactions to Michael Kennedy's death yesterday were almost universal in pointing out how much suffering the Kennedys have endured over the years. "I don't know anyone who can friction match the sort of continuum of sadness this family unit has had," Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said. "And peradventure that's the price you pay for great glories."
"Even every bit a cracking critic, you want to bury your face in your easily and shake your head," said Kevin Sowyrda, a Republican political annotator in Massachusetts. "Nosotros don't know what to make of another Kennedy death. Nosotros almost expect it now."
 Joseph P. Kennedy in a 1941 photo with his flying teacher. (File Photograph) |  |
Subsequently came the bump-off of President Kennedy in 1963 in Dallas. 5 years afterward that, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Los Angeles moments after accepting victory in the California Autonomous presidential principal.
The following year, their blood brother the senator, Edward, drove his car off a narrow bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts. He survived, but his aide Mary Jo Kopechne was killed.
The 1980s and 1990s brought new problems to a new generation of Kennedys. Robert Kennedy's son David died of a drug overdose in 1984. William Kennedy Smith was charged with rape at the family dwelling in Palm Beach, Fla., simply was acquitted by a jury in 1991. Then last jump came reports about Michael's prior relationship with a teenage babysitter.
Michael's own life seemed a metaphor for the family unit, combining service and scandal.
He was the middle of eleven children and was only 10 years former when his begetter was assassinated in 1968. He worked with his brother Joe at a nonprofit free energy company in Massachusetts and helped plant Cease Handgun Violence. In 1994 he managed his uncle'southward reelection campaign in what became the nearly challenging race of Edward Kennedy'due south career. Michael also wrestled with alcoholism and sexual habit.
"He was smart, focused and had a real energy and intensity to him," said Charlie Bakery, a Democratic political consultant who was a friend of Michael's. "He had a real commitment, a real love and respect for public service."
It is that sense of duty that has helped sustain the Kennedys through their difficulties. 3 Kennedys however serve in Congress and some other, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, is the lieutenant governor of Maryland. The family continues to brand its mark in the public loonshit.
"They have an overwhelming sense of a standing commitment to public service, through all the trials and tribulations of their lives," said Thaelia Tsongas Schlesinger, a Massachusetts Democrat and sister of the tardily senator Paul Tsongas. "Their family brought a lot of us into this arena. They set up a standard and they continue to exercise that in many ways."
Historian Beschloss said that, for a new generation of Americans that barely remembers John or Robert Kennedy, the personal problems of the younger Kennedys take done every bit much to define the family's image as their public contributions.
From an outsize version of the Camelot mystique of the 1960s has come a different prototype in the late 1990s. "The currency is devalued from what it was in the 1960s," Beschloss said.
Yet Michael Kennedy's death is a reminder that tragedy continues to stalk this privileged family unit.
Shrum said the events of and so many years accept bred "a certain stoic quality" into the family that has helped it comport on in the face of so many bug. Said Massachusetts Democratic consultant Mary Anne Marsh, "Information technology's more than you would wait any family unit to bear."
Special contributor Pamela Ferdinand in Boston contributed to this report.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Visitor
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