Forty years later there are still more questions than answers.
Why did Kennedy, then a 37-year-old married senator, leave the party with 29-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne? Why did he drive in the wrong direction, swerve off the bridge, fail to pull her body from the water, and take 10 hours to report the accident? Did a concussion blur his judgment? Might Kennedy have become president?
Recommended Stories
This much is certain: Kennedy’s fate and the nation’s history were altered by what happened on Chappaquiddick Island in the summer of 1969.
It was 40 years ago this summer that Kennedy, dry and sober, walked into the Edgartown Police station — across the channel from Chappaquiddick — and told police that he was the driver of the black Oldsmobile that had already been discovered upside down with Kopechne’s corpse inside.
Exactly what happened on the previous hot July night will probably never be known.
Kennedy said he left a party shortly before midnight to catch the final ferry to Martha’s Vineyard and drop off Kopechne, who didn’t feel well.
His story, which has never wavered, is that in darkness he turned the wrong way and veered off the unmarked bridge. He said the current prevented him from freeing Kopechne, despite numerous attempts, and a blow to the head contributed to his failure to immediately report the accident, behavior that he acknowledged was “indefensible.’’
His many doubters — pointing to Kopechne’s purse that she had left behind, Kennedy’s knowledge of the area, and his reputation for drinking and womanizing, assert that the senator was headed to the beach when he lost control of the car, and then spent the next 10 hours figuring out how to save his political career.
The incident put Kennedy’s presidential ambition on hold for a decade, and almost certainly cost him a chance at the office. He pled guilty of fleeing the scene of an accident and was given a two-month suspended sentence. It contributed to his ouster from the Senate’s No. 2 leadership position following the 1970 election, and marked him as a polarizing figure.
At the same time the developments freed him to focus on the Senate. No longer constrained in leadership or with presidential ambitions, he became chair of the Senate’s health subcommittee, and subsequently chairman of the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions committee. He grew old in an institution from which two of his brothers had launched presidential campaigns by the time they were barely 40. The anniversary now passes with little notice.
It is a crude measurement of the Kennedy’s accomplishments and the public’s ability to move on, but the incident that seemed destined to define him 40 years ago has over the years become an ever-smaller part of his biography.
