Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot
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Jackie knew that with the Chappaquiddick tragedy, the Kennedys’ chances of ever getting into the White House again were killed along with Mary Jo Kopechne. “Never will he be President now. Never,” Jackie told Roswell Gilpatric. “He would never allow it for himself, anyway. And now, with this tragedy, it’s over. We should just face it.”
After meeting with Ted and with Kennedy adviser Burke Marshall, Ethel would volunteer to call upon some influential people in Washington, the first being former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, to help with strategy. At Ethel’s urging, McNamara arrived quickly.
More “troops” were summoned from far and wide. Soon, an army of Jack’s loyalists (a court that was, at least to some extent, in exile and still dreaming of Washington) had descended upon Cape Cod. There were fifteen in all staying at Ted and Joan’s ten-room home on Squaw Island, and at Ethel’s, Jackie’s, and Rose’s homes in the compound as well.
“Mrs. Onassis was asked if they could use her home—the President’s home—as a headquarters, and she agreed,” recalls Rita Dallas. “She then became deeply involved in seeing to it that the meetings went smoothly. These men were all dear friends of hers, so she was a big part of what was being decided. However, she spent her time with them, not with the family. There were a lot of questions to be addressed.”
Most troubling was the fact that Kennedy had failed to report the accident for almost ten hours, choosing instead to return to the hotel in which he was staying in Edgartown and spend the night there before returning to Chappaquiddick and then going to the Edgartown police. Why had he waited so long? Of course, there was also speculation about Ted’s relationship with Mary Jo Kopechne. Had they been lovers?
These meetings were not about what had occurred as much as they were about what to do about it.
The first order of business was to have Joan Kennedy place what some aides referred to as “the call.” Prior to this time, Joan had been secreted away in a bedroom, concerned about her husband and anxious about whatever was being plotted downstairs. While Ethel and Jackie had been the involved, “important” Kennedy wives, busy discussing strategy with aides, Joan was thought of as the weak, fragile wife locked away upstairs. Now, though, she had a role to fill.
Joan was asked to telephone the Kopechnes to extend the Kennedy family’s condolences. Strategically it was decided that the way the Kopechnes felt about the Kennedys could make a huge difference in what they would seek from Ted. The Kopechnes had to be persuaded that the Kennedys were also grieving the loss of young Mary Jo, that they were a caring, sensitive family. In fact, Ted had already telephoned Mary Jo’s parents, Joseph and Gwen Kopechne, in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, to tell them personally the awful news about their daughter. However, Ted’s call did little to ingratiate him to the Kopechnes because he failed to mention that he had been driving the car or that he had even been in it.
“We must align ourselves with the Kopechnes,” Joan was told by one senior adviser. “And it starts with you, Mrs. Kennedy.”
The senior adviser, who would only speak off the record, remembered that Joan became incensed, lashing out at him in a manner uncharacteristic of her. “There’s a dead girl, and all you care about is how it looks? ” she said to him, angrily.
Joan sat motionless in front of the rotary telephone. A slip of paper with the Kopechnes’ number on it was slid across the table toward her. By now, Ted was standing at his wife’s side. “But what if they ask me questions?” Joan asked her husband. “What if they want details?”
“Well, you don’t have any details,” Ted said, speaking softly to placate her. “That’s not what this call is about, Joansie. Just be nice, be sympathetic… and get the hell off the line. Do you understand?”
As Ted dialed the phone, Joan seemed to choke the receiver in silent protest.
“Now just make the call, and maybe later I’ll take you to Mildred’s,” he told her, referring to a nearby restaurant, Mildred’s House of Chowder.
“Hello, Mrs. Kopechne?” Joan began when the connection was made. “Yes. Why, this is Joan Kennedy, Ted’s wife.”
As Ted listened to every word she said, Joan told the dead girl’s mother how terribly sorry she and “the whole Kennedy family” were about what had happened. “We have had tragedy in our own family, as you know,” Joan said, her voice small and miserable, “and so we empathize with you, and I am… I mean, we, are so, so sorry.”*
Ted patted her on the arm and walked away while his wife completed the brief call. As twilight deepened into darkness, a cool wind blew in from Nantucket Sound through an open window in the living room. Shivering, a pregnant Joan Kennedy hugged herself.
Ethel to the Rescue
Thirty-nine-year-old Ethel Kennedy had always been politically savvy, ambitious, and determined. Throughout the years, she would do anything it would take to help the Kennedy family—her family—achieve whatever it had set its collective mind to in terms of public service and power. However, like Jackie, she was not a naïve woman. Mary Jo Kopechne’s death was a crushing blow to Ethel’s morale in that she—like just about everyone else—immediately seemed to recognize that it would mark the end of an era for the Kennedys. Or, as she put it during one family meeting with top advisers, “There’s no way out of this. This is it. Jack and Bobby are rolling over in their graves.”
However, her dismay aside, Ethel had always proved herself to be capable in times of crisis, and during this one she would do her best to keep the Kennedy machinery in proper tune. In fact, she had the entire weekend organized like a two-ring circus.
On the one hand, Ethel was summoning Democratic party spin doctors to chisel out the “family’s position” on the tragedy. On the other, she was organizing a series of casual sporting events at the compound, ostensibly to keep everyone’s mind off the tragedy that had befallen them. One moment drafting a statement for the press, the next hunting down a badminton birdie, even a minor medical emergency didn’t slow her down. Her fourteen-year-old son David broke an arm while playing football, and it was Ethel who examined it, then dispatched a few family members to the hospital with him.
While her actions were seen by many as further evidence of Ethel’s strong will and commitment, others viewed them more skeptically. Her ability to compartmentalize her efforts on that weekend seemed more than just deft managerial talent, but a total disregard for any true emotional attachment to the events that had brought about the situation.
After Joan’s phone call, and because it was known that the grieving Kopechnes were devoutly Catholic, it was decided that Ethel should telephone them to talk about their shared religious convictions. This, even more than the call from Joan, seemed a blatant manipulation. Ethel was the “religious one,” it was reasoned, and the public knew as much from press interviews with her in the past. The memory of her televised grief during Bobby’s funeral was still fresh in the minds of most Americans and, it was hoped, in the minds of the Kopechnes. It was thought that Ethel would be able to appeal to the Kopechnes on a deep, very personal level. So while Joan may have been the family’s reluctant personal emissary, Ethel would be the Kennedys’ loyal spiritual ambassador.
“God has a plan for all of us,” Ethel told Gwen Kopechne during her telephone conversation with her. “And I just wanted to let you know that Mary Jo is in her rightful place in heaven.”
Before Ethel knew what was happening, Mrs. Kopechne was consoling her over Bobby’s death. However, Ethel didn’t want to be swayed from her purpose. She went back to the subject at hand: Mary Jo’s passing. “Please, let us pay for the funeral,” Ethel offered. “The Kennedy family would like to do that, if you’ll let us.”
The offer was politely rejected. When Ethel was told that the funeral would take place in Plymouth, a coal-mining town in northern Pennsylvania, she said, “Ted, Joan, and other members of the family, of course, will be there.” It hadn’t been an easy call for Ethel, even though she made it seem as if it had been. As soon as she hung up, a t
iredness seemed to come over her like a high wave from the crashing Sound. “I have to go lay down,” she told Robert McNamara, wearily. “This is too much for me.”
Later that evening, after resting, Ethel wrote a tribute to Mary Jo that would be released to the press. “Mary Jo was a sweet, wonderful girl,” she said in the forty-word release. “She worked for Bobby for four years and was in the boiler room [the phone room used for delegate counts]. She often came out to the house, and she was the one who stayed up all night typing Bobby’s speech on Vietnam. She was a wonderful person.” Ethel’s comments served only to anger some members of the media, however, because they didn’t mention the fact that an accident had occurred or that Ted had been involved. “It wasn’t supposed to be a press release,” Ethel said in its defense. “They were just my little thoughts.”
Then, in what seemed like another strategic public relations move, Wendell Pigman, a former employer of Mary Jo’s, issued a statement that compared Ethel and Mary Jo favorably, saying that Mary Jo “was like Ethel in that she would grimace if anyone said anything dirty or tasteless. You can spot people who are swingers and she [Mary Jo] was not one of them.” It was as if Mary Jo’s reputation as having been puritanical was now being exploited in order to help clean up the mess at hand.
Mary Jo’s Funeral
Monday morning dawned bleak and humid. “Joan doesn’t want to attend the funeral?” Rose asked Ted over breakfast. “Why, she must. She has no choice. She’s the wife!”
It’s not known how much Rose knew about Joan’s emotional distress at this time, or whether or not she was aware of Joan’s drinking. Previously, she would not accept that her daughter-in-law had a problem. But in a few years it would be so clear even Rose wouldn’t be able to ignore it. She would handle Joan’s alcoholism by trying to keep Joan so busy during visits to Hyannis Port that she wouldn’t have time to drink. Once, according to Barbara Gibson, she put Joan to work sorting through hundreds of old books looking for valuable signed editions. Another time, she had her inspecting all the lampshades in the house. “It was as if she figured Joan wouldn’t drink if she had something else to do,” says Gibson.
In fact, Rose Kennedy was usually kind to Joan, though it was apparently difficult for her to empathize with or even understand her daughter-in-law’s problems. “She certainly knew that Joan was in a bad marriage and it bothered her,” says Barbara Gibson. “She was unhappy about the fact that Joan and Ted had separate bedrooms, for instance. When she stayed with them, she realized that Joan would sleep late just so that she wouldn’t have to have anything to do with Ted. But she, too, had a bad marriage, and she suffered through it as best she could. To Rose’s thinking, a woman simply put up with marital problems, which she didn’t really think of as problems, anyway, if the trade-off was worth it. The money, the power, the glamour, the status of being a Kennedy should have been worth it to Joan to just accept the drawbacks, as far as Rose was concerned. Rose used to say, ‘She has it all. She’s beautiful, has a handsome husband, wonderful children, a wonderful home… why is she always so sad? I simply do not understand it. Please, someone, explain it to me.’ ”
Throughout the ordeal of Chappaquiddick, Joan made herself available to her husband for support and encouragement—or at least as much as he would allow her to do so. On some days the two would spend hours walking on the beach arm in arm, not saying much. Then when he would suddenly turn on her or lash out at her, she would once again feel the great divide between them.
As much as she may have wanted to be supportive of Ted during what promised to be an emotionally difficult day, Joan Kennedy was concerned that she would not be able to maintain her composure at Mary Jo Kopechne’s funeral in Pennsylvania. She was also concerned about the effect of such stress on her pregnancy. After suffering two previous miscarriages, she worried about the child she was now carrying.
“She knew she had difficulty holding a baby in early pregnancy,” explained her nurse, Luella Hennessey. “And so, this time, she was being very, very careful. She rested a lot each day, stayed close to the house, gave up tennis and swimming and other sports that required exercise, exercised only by walking. She wanted this baby very much.”
When Joan attempted to discuss her anxiety about attending the funeral with Ted, he was completely unresponsive. When prodded for a reaction, he would walk out onto the deserted beach that stretched in front of the house. He would be gone for hours, leaving Joan to agonize over whether or not he had drowned himself, only adding to her stress. If Joan did not want to attend the funeral, that seemed to be fine with Ted. He was in his own world of misery, and he probably would not miss her in the least, she may have thought.
Rose and Ethel felt strongly, however, that it was Joan’s familial responsibility, and her political one as well, to be at her husband’s side at such an important, public event. Both women tried to reason with Joan and convince her to go, but were not successful. In the end, Rose felt that Jackie would be able to make the difference, and so she asked her to speak to Joan. Observers recall Rose’s hands shaking badly as she reached for a glass of orange juice and said, “If Jackie can’t convince her to go, no one can.”
In a scene reminiscent of their heart-to-heart walk along the beach of Hyannis Port on the day of Jack’s election, Jackie and Joan took a stroll on the sand of Nantucket Sound—this time, not followed by Secret Service agents. There, Jackie and Joan had what is believed to be their only private conversation about Ted and Mary Jo Kopechne. What they said remains unknown; one witness recalls seeing, from afar, Jackie tenderly touch Joan’s cheek. However, by the time they returned, Joan had decided to attend the funeral.
“Whereas Rose might have expected Jackie to convince Joan to go to the funeral, that’s not what happened,” said a friend of Joan’s at the time from Boston. “Jackie felt that if Joan didn’t want to go, she shouldn’t go. They discussed it calmly, and Jackie said she wasn’t sure Joan owed it to Ted to go. However, she did feel that, if only for the sake of public relations, Joan might want to consider it. ‘I’ve never been one to care how things look,’ she told her, fibbing, ‘but it will really look bad if you’re not there.’ Later, according to what Joan once told me, Jackie added, ‘In the end, they’ve always been bastards, haven’t they, these Kennedy men? Nothing has changed, I suppose.’ ”
According to Joan Braden, Jackie also suggested that Joan consider psychiatric help. “It wasn’t as if Joan hadn’t already thought of it,” said Braden. “But Jackie was the first to mention it to her, and tell her that there was no stigma attached to it. Joan said she would consider it.”
So Joan would accompany her husband to Plymouth. Ethel, too, would go to the funeral as the widow of Bobby, Mary Jo’s former employer. Jackie, however, would stay behind in Hyannis Port. Wisely, she realized that her presence at the Kopechne memorial would cause sheer chaos and turn it into a bigger media event than what was already promised by its circumstances. No doubt, she also did not wish to be so closely associated with the ensuing scandal. The other Kennedy women, and their husbands, would also not attend the funeral.
On the humid Tuesday after the drowning, Ted, Joan, Ethel, a phalanx of aides and friends, as well as cousin Joe Gargan, headed to Pennsylvania for Mary Jo Kopechne’s funeral. Joan seemed to be in a trance, never looking anywhere but straight ahead. Ted seemed dazed while Ethel, true to her nature, seemed almost cheery.
The funeral Mass took place at St. Vincent’s church in Plymouth. It was a mad scene, with Kennedy fans and supporters, along with reporters and photographers, all converging upon the church. Outside, a woman stood in the crowd of onlookers holding up a sign that said “Kennedy for President, 1972.” Of course, the eyes of most of the seven hundred mourners were on the Kennedys.
After the service, Joan and Ethel flanked Ted as the three walked down the aisle and exited the church. Outside, the Kennedys were greeted by a throng of photographers; flashbulbs went off and reporters began shouting questions.
Of Joan, Bernie Flynn, a detective lieutenant who worked on the Chappaquiddick case, recalled, “To me she was just this shadow of a woman who showed up when her husband did, always following behind him, just sort of there, but not really there. I never saw her talk to anyone. I never saw her smile. I never saw her cry. I don’t know what kind of relationship she had with Ted Kennedy, but I can tell you that it looked to me like she hated his guts. I remember once he was answering some questions from me, and she said something like, ‘Ted, don’t forget to tell him,’ and the guy gave her a look like he was about to smack her. She drew back as if she truly feared him. It was a tense moment. At the funeral, she was almost as dead as Mary Jo, I thought.”
Ted Asks for Forgiveness
After Mary Jo Kopechne’s funeral, there was a lack of information coming out of the Hyannis Port Compound. Upon landing at the Hyannis airport, Kennedy was confronted by NBC newswoman Liz Trotter who repeatedly asked when he would be releasing a statement. Kennedy refused to answer. Instead, he hurried into a white car and, with Joan at the wheel, sped off, leaving shouting reporters and desperate photographers in their wake. The next day, a Kennedy aide made a threatening telephone call to NBC, demanding that Trotter be removed from the story. “It was raw power reaching out,” Trotter remembered, years later. “I thought, ‘Gee, there’s not even a velvet glove on this. It was just naked. Lay off. Take a fall. Throw the fight.’ ”
Eventually, Ted Kennedy’s legal team offered a deal, and the authorities accepted it. Three days after the funeral, on Friday morning, July 25, Ted appeared at the courthouse in Edgartown and, with Joan at his side, pleaded guilty to the relatively minor charge of leaving the scene of an accident. Kennedy was sentenced by Judge James Boyle to two months at the House of Corrections at Barnstable and a year’s probation. The sentence was suspended, as was his driver’s license, for a year.