The Curse of The Kennedys

The Kennedy family are one of the most famous dynasties in the world. They have been blessed with everything – money, good looks, power and fame – but cursed by misfortune.

When Joe Kennedy, father of the president of the USA, was made an ambassador to Britain in 1938, he prophetically remarked of his large family, ‘My wife and I have given nine hostages to fortune.’ Like a character from Greek tragedy, he lived to regret his remarks. Two of Joe’s hostages were assassinated; two more died in air crashes; the ambitions of a fifth were ended by a death scandal and a sixth was sent to a mental institution.

The assassination of JFK, the most powerful man in the world was the shocking event which brought into the spotlight the fame and misfortune of the Kennedy clan. By the time of Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963 the family had already experienced their fair share of suffering.

In 1944 Joe Junior – the eldest son groomed by his father for the presidency – died in a plane crash while serving in Britain. For years later Kathleen Kennedy, married to a British aristocrat, died in another air crash in France, aged 28. Another sister, Rosemary, had already been put in a mental home after a failed lobotomy, ordered by her father himself. In 1963 a few months before the assassination that shook the world, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, son of John and Jacqueline, died just days after his premature birth.

Tragedy did not end with JFK’s assassination. Within 5 years Robert Kennedy was shot and killed in a Los Angeles hotel after winning an important political election, and Edward Kennedy’s plans to go into politics ended with Chappaquiddick – a car accident where his companion, Mary-Jo Kopechne was killed.

The burden of fame and misfortune passed on to the next generation. Their accidents were all self-inflicted. Edward’s son Patrick was treated for drug addiction and his nephew, WK Smith, was put on trial for rape. Of Robert’s sons, David died in a hotel room of a drug overdose, another was involved in a car accident that left a female passenger paralysed; and Michael was killed playing ski football after he struck a tree.

Were all these misfortunes just cruel coincidence or was Joe Kennedy, the son of a Catholic publican, under some kind of curse?

Some say that the Kennedys, stripped of their glamour and power, are just normal dysfunctional American family – skiing accidents, drugs, illnesses, too much money, too little self-discipline.

But if there is a curse then it has been especially harsh to Rory Kennedy, Robert’s daughter. She was born after her father’s assassination. On New Year’s Eve 1998, she held her brother as he lay dying on a Colorado ski slope. Then in July 1999 on the 30^th anniversary of Chappaquiddick, she was eagerly waiting for the arrival of John, JKF’s son, with her family. They were gathered together for Rory’s wedding. John decided to fly his own plane to the wedding, even though he lacked experience and was limping from a paragliding accident. The plane never turned up. The wedding was abandoned. The bodies of John, his young wife and sister-in-law were found later by the US Coastguard. Fate had claimed its latest victims.