Sargent Appeals to Ted
The problem of course was what it always was—Ted Kennedy’s selfish nature. He really didn’t care about Sargent’s Shriver’s ambition, he was concerned with his own. He couldn’t help it. That’s just who he was, and those who knew him well understood that a major part of his—indeed, of any successful politician’s—psychology was his ego, his absolute belief that he had the right answers, the solution to important problems. “It comes with the territory,” was how Sargent Shriver put it. On August 19, 1968, though, Ted finally buckled under family pressure to telephone Sargent Shriver in Paris.
According to what Sargent would later recall of his conversation with Ted, he started off by reminding Ted that never once had he ever asked him or anyone else in the Kennedy family for any favors. All he had ever asked for was a chance to implement the important projects in which he was interested, all for the good of the country and to the credit of JFK’s and LBJ’s administrations. Therefore, he could not understand why Stephen Smith or anyone else in the family was so intent on attacking him. Ted conceded that many Kennedy supporters and family members were still angry at Shriver because they felt he could have done more to help with Bobby’s campaign. Ted reminded Sarge that his acceptance of LBJ’s offer to be ambassador to France at precisely the same time Bobby was getting ready to run for office did not ingratiate him to anyone in the family. Be that as it may, Sargent responded, all he was now asking for was for Ted’s neutrality, even though he would have of course preferred Ted’s total support of the Humphrey-Shriver ticket. Instead, Sarge was asking him for much less: He simply didn’t want Ted to speak out against him. Could Ted offer him at least that much? Maddeningly for Sarge, Ted had to admit that he really wasn’t sure. He would have to think about it. He did allow, though, that he would at least talk to Stephen Smith and ask him to stop bad-mouthing Shriver to others. That was pretty much the gist of the conversation Sargent had with Ted on that August night, at least according to Shriver’s notes. It was disappointing at best and certainly not much for Sargent to feel good about in terms of Ted’s or the Kennedy family’s support of his political ambitions.
Three days later, on August 21, Ted gave his first speech since Bobby’s death. “There is no safety in hiding,” he intoned. “Like my brothers before me, I pick up a fallen standard. Sustained by the memory of our priceless years together, I shall try to carry forward that special commitment to justice, to excellence, and to courage that distinguished their lives.” He said that he intended to return to the Senate, but would not run for office. In other words, he had no intention of being Humphrey’s vice presidential running mate. “Each of us must take a direct and personal part in solving the great problems of this country,” he said. “Each of us must do his individual part to end the suffering, feed the hungry, heal the sick, to strengthen and renew the national spirit.”
A week later, on August 29, 1968, Hubert Humphrey made it official. He was going with Maine senator Edmund Muskie as his running mate.
In the end, Humphrey and Muskie would lose the race to Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Ted had been afraid that Nixon might get elected if Bobby ran and lost, and that’s exactly what happened even with Bobby’s death. To this day, many political pundits believe that Humphrey might have won the presidency had he had Sargent Shriver at his side and the Kennedy family’s blessing of the union. If so, who knows how that might have affected history? One can’t help but wonder what the world might be like today had there never been a Watergate.
Of course, Sargent and Eunice Shriver were both greatly disappointed by what happened in 1968. Typically, though, Sargent decided to focus on his work and resist the temptation to become bitter.
“In politics,” Sargent Shriver—ever the diplomat—concluded, “when men are playing for such stakes, you can’t count on personal ties and shouldn’t take these things personally.” He hoped he would have another chance at political office—though even he had to admit that it seemed that the odds were starting to stack against him. As far as Ted Kennedy was concerned, all of this political melodrama involving his brother-in-law and his sister was just a blip on his radar screen. It didn’t seem to matter to him at all. And soon he would have even more reason to be distracted.
PART FOUR
Ted
“Sick with Grief”
It was just after midnight on the morning of July 19, 1969, when Jackie Kennedy Onassis received a collect telephone call from Ted Kennedy. When the call came, she was on the isle of Skorpios with her husband, Aristotle Onassis, her children, and Pat’s daughter Victoria Lawford. He was in serious trouble, he told her. He—indeed, the entire family—needed her. He was vague—something about a girl being killed in an automobile accident while he had been driving. The more questions Jackie asked, the more evasive Ted was with his answers. It didn’t sound good, though. Jackie believed in Ted. He had always been an ally to her, having been there as a surrogate father for her children, and for Ethel’s too. Jackie thought of Ted as dependable, trustworthy. He had also recently negotiated her marital deal with Onassis, and she appreciated it very much. Therefore, when he asked her to come home, of course she could not turn him down.
With Bobby Kennedy gone, the Kennedys had quickly turned to his younger brother, Ted, with the hope that he might be the family’s father confessor, the keeper of the flame, the one who would guarantee that the notion of Camelot would somehow endure. But America was no Camelot by the summer of 1969. The country was still reeling from Bobby’s senseless death, and also from the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. In fact, a deep sense of loss and hopelessness was still felt by many people who were trying to deal with the loss of JFK years earlier. The Vietnam War continued unabated; there seemed no end in sight. Truly, it was a calamitous time in the nation’s history. It was thought by many Americans that perhaps Edward Moore Kennedy—Ted—might be the man to unify the country. Certainly his recent years in the Senate proved to many that he understood the problems the country faced and that he was willing—even felt obligated—to do something about them. However, he was now in trouble and the entire family was being summoned to meet at the Hyannis Port compound.
Ethel Kennedy had been attending a Special Olympics function at the University of Connecticut when her mother-in-law, Rose, called her on the morning of July 19, 1969. She quickly made it to Hyannis Port, dropped off a box of trophies and T-shirts at her home next door, and then sprinted over to Rose’s. “Mother, whatever Teddy has done, I am sure he had a very good reason for it,” she told Rose, according to what Rose would later recall to her secretary, Barbara Gibson. “Let’s just wait and see what it is. I’m sure it’s not so bad.” Rose, who was just a couple of days short of her seventy-ninth birthday, didn’t know how to respond. All she knew was that Ted had told her not to go to a charity bazaar at her church, St. Francis Xavier, for fear that she would be ambushed there by reporters. He said he would explain everything to her later.
Arriving after Ethel was Ted’s wife, Joan, from Boston. Slim and gorgeous, her hair falling in a soft tumble to her shoulders, she seemed somehow unsteady on her feet. Six weeks pregnant, she looked so unwell, in fact, that Rose insisted she sit down immediately. “Do you know what happened?” Rose asked her. Joan said she only knew what Ted had hurriedly told her on the phone. “He said he had been driving a girl somewhere and that he drove off a bridge,” Joan said, according to her later recollection. “And he said that the passenger had drowned. He told me, ‘I tried to save her, Joansie. But I couldn’t. She’s dead.’ ” At that, both Ethel and Rose just stood in place gaping at Joan, not knowing how to respond.
Finally, Ted arrived. “He was so unlike himself, it was hard to believe he was my son,” Rose later recalled. “His usual positive attitude, which he displayed so clearly at other times of difficulty, had vanished. He was disturbed, confused and deeply distracted, and sick with grief.”
“Where’s Dad?” Ted wanted to know. Be
fore he could do or say anything else—even to his own mother—Ted felt he had to see his ailing father. It had always been Joseph’s opinion of him that most mattered. Joseph’s nurse, Rita Dallas, recalled Ted as having been “drawn and downcast” when he went to his father’s bedside upstairs. Sitting next to his dad, he held Joseph’s hand and, according to Rita, said, “Dad, I’m in some trouble. There’s been an accident and you’re going to hear all sorts of things about me from now on. Terrible things. But, Dad, I want you to know that they’re not true. It was an accident. I’m telling you the truth, Dad, it was an accident.” Ted then told his father what had happened. Paralyzed from a recent stroke, all Joseph could do was nod, squeeze his son’s hand, and shed a tear. After he left Joseph’s bedside, Ted pulled Rose, Ethel, and Joan into another room. There, he told them a terrible story.
Chappaquiddick
It all started on the evening of July 18, 1969, just as the Apollo crew was about to realize President Kennedy’s dream of exploration of the moon. Ted, who was thirty-seven, was taking part in the Edgartown Regatta off Martha’s Vineyard. Participating in the event, which was sponsored by the Edgartown Yacht Club, was a longtime tradition, and two Kennedy boats, the Resolute and the Victura, were entered in these 1969 races. Ted also thought that the weekend’s activities would provide a good reason to reunite some of the girls who had worked for Bobby’s campaign, affectionately known as the Boiler Room Girls because of the difficult backroom work they did for Kennedy. Therefore, after the Kennedy boats raced in the regatta, a party was held at a cottage near the beach on Chappaquiddick, a small island just off Martha’s Vineyard. Kennedy cousin Joe Gargan made all of the arrangements.
At least for part of his childhood, Joe Gargan was raised by Joe and Rose Kennedy after his mother, Rose’s sister, died, and he always had one chief responsibility. “I was to look after Ted and make sure he didn’t get into trouble,” he recalled. Rose Kennedy had decreed it so, that’s how it always was, and that’s how it remained, even though Joe was now a successful lawyer and also vice president of a Hyannis bank.
Present at the party were Gargan, Ted Kennedy, Paul Markham (a lawyer and former U.S. attorney for Massachusetts), and some other male friends of Ted’s. The Boiler Room Girls were all present too—six women in all, including Mary Jo Kopechne. All but one of the men had wives; the women were not married.
At some point after 11 p.m., Ted left the party with twenty-eight-year-old blonde and blue-eyed Mary Jo, a former teacher and more recently a secretary for Senator George Smathers, as well as for Bobby Kennedy. She was also a devout Catholic. Ted later explained that his intention was to give Mary Jo a ride to the ferry headed back to Edgartown, where she was staying. Was there something more to it? Of course, only the two of them would know, but Mary Jo was not necessarily Ted’s type. She was plain and wholesome, whereas Ted usually went after the blonde bombshell type. Not only that, but he didn’t even know her last name when he offered to drive her to the ferry. Of course, it’s likely that Ted had many an assignation with women over the years whose last names were unknown to him, but people who knew him best seem confident that Mary Jo was not one of them. After Ted asked for the keys to a black 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont, he and Mary Jo took off to meet the moment that would forever change both their destinies. Somehow, Ted lost his way. He later said that he made a wrong turn and, before he knew what was happening, had driven off a wooden bridge with no guardrail. The car plunged into the Poucha Pond, seven feet of cold, cloudy water. Ted escaped. Mary Jo was not as lucky.
Ted would later testify that he had dived into the water seven or eight times in hopes of finding Mary Jo, but to no avail. Dazed and disoriented, he then walked back to the cottage where the party had been taking place. Then he, Joe Gargan, and Paul Markham—both attorneys—returned to the scene of the accident. “We got there and I’m standing there looking at this Oldsmobile submerged under the water,” Joe Gargan would recall many years later, “and I thought to myself, holy shit! If Mary Jo is in that car, she’s dead for sure. And I thought to myself, goddamn it, everything is about to change in this very minute. Kennedy family history is being altered this very second. I was very conscious of it, and very afraid of it, as well. I quickly stripped off all of my clothes and I was standing there naked and shivering and I said to myself, this is it, Joe. You gotta do this. I took a deep breath and dove in. Paul did the same.” In fact, the two men dived into the water several times in an effort to rescue Mary Jo, but to no avail. “I couldn’t see a thing, it was so dark,” said Gargan. “I was feeling my way, holding my breath, just trying to find her down there, but… nothing.” By this time, Ted was in tears and hysterical. “I’m diving into the water,” Gargan recalled, “and meanwhile I see Ted on the side of the road on his back, his hands behind his head and his knees up, and he’s wailing, and crying, ‘What’s going to happen to me now? What am I going to do now?’ ” Once out of the water and dressed again, Gargan and Markham insisted that Ted report the accident to the authorities. “You have to report it now,” Joe told him. “I mean it, Ted. Right now.” Ted hesitated. So much was obviously at stake, it was as if he didn’t know how to proceed. “I don’t know what to do,” he cried in a low voice raw with agony. “This can’t be true. None of this can be true.”
The three men got into Joe Gargan’s car and headed toward the Edgartown Ferry slip, all the while discussing how to proceed. “It was like we were sleepwalking,” Joe Gargan would recall. “It was hard to know how to process it.” It was especially hard, one might imagine, with Ted trying to find ways around culpability.
Obviously, a person can react in any number of ways to a situation such as this one. Some would own up to their responsibility, their moral code simply not allowing them to act in any other way. Others might make a different choice and do anything they could think of just to get out of trouble. Of course, the reasons for that choice can’t be painted with a wide brushstroke without generalizing. In Ted’s particular case, he was a man who had lived a life of privilege and entitlement and was fairly used to things going his way. This rapidly unfolding situation at Chappaquiddick seriously threatened the world he had created for himself. In short, he was terrified of losing everything. Therefore, seeing his life crumbling before him, he went into “fix-it” mode rather than taking responsibility for his action. While it’s obvious that this wasn’t the best choice, maybe it’s understandable in its human fallibility, at least as a first impulse. But then again, Ted Kennedy was never a man easily understood.
Perhaps one of his closest friends, David Burke, put it best when he said, “I saw Ted through his happiest of times and I saw him through his saddest, but to say that even I had his fullest trust would be to overstate our relationship. When one of your brothers was the slain president of the United States and your other brother the slain attorney general and you come from a family with as many eyes on them as the Kennedys, you tend to not be very trusting by nature. You don’t always know who is going to be the one to give that interview that will betray you. So you hold back with everyone, which is what I think Ted often did. You don’t show your emotions. One memory comes to mind: I went with Ted to Vietnam in 1968. He was on the chair of the subcommittee of refugees and also acting as a sort of minister of Bobby’s. It was really a fact-finding mission. A group of us went to all sorts of hospitals, medical facilities, and refugee camps and saw the most horrible things, men who had been terribly, terribly wounded in the war. Children, too. Many children. It was difficult for any of us to keep from crying. But Ted never cried. He would just walk away rather than betray his true feelings. That was Ted. Therefore, for anyone to say he truly understood him or the way his thought process worked would be a leap. In many ways, Ted Kennedy was unknowable, and that was by understandable design.”
If Burke’s assessment of Ted Kennedy’s personality is accurate, and there’s little doubt that it is, then it’s even more remarkable—and out of character—for Ted to have acted in such
a dramatic fashion at the scene of the Chappaquiddick accident. If anything, it would suggest that he truly was in shock and not in his right mind.
“So, look, what if Mary Jo had been driving alone?” Ted posed as a theory to Gargan and Markham. “And what if she just went off the road? No one needs to know I had been in the car. No one saw us drive off, so that could work! We could say that!” Moreover, Ted even came up with the scenario that Gargan and Markham take him back to the party so that he could make an appearance there and tell everyone present that Mary Jo had his car and that he was now going to leave with his cousin, thereby creating an alibi. When the two refused to participate in that charade, Ted asked them to report the accident as if they had come upon it and just not mention that Ted had anything to do with it. The two men flatly refused. Ted had a few other scenarios in mind, but stopped short of asking the men—Joe in particular—to take the blame. “We couldn’t have stayed friends if he’d gone that far,” Joe Gargan would say years later. Still, Ted was furious with him and Markham for not being more helpful. After all, maybe Markham had an excuse not to be cooperative, but as far as Ted was concerned, Gargan didn’t. His mandate had always been to take care of Ted, and now he was failing miserably at that task. “Screw you guys, then,” Ted said once the car had reached the slip. “Thanks for nothing. Now, screw you!”
“But Ted, you have to report this thing now,” Joe Gargan said. “Promise me that you will call the police, promise me!”
“I’ll take care of it,” Ted said angrily. “Just don’t worry about it. I’ll do it.”
After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family--1968 to the Present Page 11