Recalling Mary Jo Kopechne

PLYMOUTH – Mary Jo Kopechne was much more than a victim at a bridge.

She was a central figure in the events that led to the end of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s presidential aspirations.

She was one of a few women known as the “Boiler Room Girls” who helped Sen. Bobby Kennedy become a front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president in 1968. She helped write his speeches and was involved in high-level campaign strategy.

She was an intelligent, capable, fun-loving young woman who also liked the ocean, roller coasters and medium-rare burgers.

Kopechne was buried 40 years ago today from a small church in Plymouth, and the circumstances surrounding her death live on in books, magazines and newspapers.

But the person that Kopechne was has never really been talked about, and her first cousin says it’s time people got to know her.

“Mary Jo was delightful,” said Georgetta Potoski, Kopechne’s first cousin. “She had a great sense of humor, yet she was very shy. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about her.”

Potoski was two years younger than Kopechne, who would have turned 69 years old this Friday, and when they were younger the cousins spent a lot of time together.

Potoski’s mother and Kopechne’s mother were sisters. Potoski said she spent many summers at the Kopechne home in East Orange, N.J.

“She was serious about her work and her career and trying to make a difference in the world,” Potoski recalled. “She was very interested in politics; Gwen and Joe (Mary Jo’s parents) were often invited to the Kennedy homes. Mary Jo was once asked to be the governess to the Kennedy children, but she turned it down.”

Potoski said Kopechne earned a degree in education from Caldwell College in New Jersey and worked at an all-black school in Alabama during the height of the civil rights movement.

“She was not a party girl,” Potoski said. “She loved roller coasters and amusement parks. She liked to have fun.”

Potoski said Mary Jo had to have butter, not margarine, and her hamburgers had to be medium rare. She said her cousin was a very faithful person, never missing Sunday Mass.

Standing in her living room in Plymouth, Potoski looked at an oil portrait of Kopechne painted by a friend.

“It was done shortly before she died,” Potoski said. “Look at that smile. It’s a shame that she’s dead longer than she was alive.”

On July 18, 1969, after leaving a cocktail party with Sen. Ted Kennedy, Kopechne, 28, drowned when Kennedy’s car plunged off Dyke Bridge into a tidal pond on Chappaquiddick Island, Mass.

Fateful party

Kopechne had attended the party on Chappaquiddick Island, off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, held in honor of the “Boiler Room Girls.” It was the fourth such reunion of the six campaign workers for Sen. Bobby Kennedy.

According to reports, Kopechne left the party at 11:15 p.m. with Ted Kennedy, who offered to drive her to catch the last ferry back to Edgartown, where she was staying. Kennedy told police he made a wrong turn on the way and came upon a narrow, unlit bridge without guardrails.

The senator drove his 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 off the bridge and it landed on its roof in the water. Kennedy got out and swam to shore, leaving Kopechne in the car, where she later died.

Printed reports of the incident say Kennedy failed to report the incident to the authorities until the next day when the car and Kopechne’s body were found.

Kennedy attended Kopechne’s funeral July 22, 1969, at St. Vincent’s Roman Catholic Church in Plymouth. His wife, Joan, and Bobby Kennedy’s widow, Ethel, also attended. Sen. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated a year earlier in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after giving a victory speech following his win in the California Democratic presidential primary.

Kopechne was buried in the parish cemetery on the side of Larksville Mountain. Her parents are also buried there.

A week after the funeral, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury and received a two-month suspended sentence. He went on national television to say he was not driving under the influence of alcohol and that he did not engage in any immoral conduct with Kopechne.

At the time of the accident, Kennedy was 37, married and serving his second term as U.S. senator from Massachusetts.

Tom Baldino, political science professor at Wilkes University, said Chappaquiddick all but ended Kennedy’s chances of becoming president of the United States.

“Chappaquiddick raised serious doubts about Kennedy’s maturity and judgment,” Baldino said. “Aside from the fact that he was with a younger woman not his wife, he had been drinking and he left her in the car after the crash. Few people would vote to entrust such a person with the responsibilities of the president.”

Attempts Tuesday to extract a comment from Sen. Kennedy were unsuccessful. Calls to his press office in Washington, D.C., were answered, but Kennedy did not issue a statement on the 40th anniversary of his visit to Plymouth for Kopechne’s burial.

Kaelan Richards, Kennedy’s deputy press secretary, said the office received a message from The Times Leader that was received by an office intern.

“We will not offer a comment,” Richards said. Asked if Sen. Kennedy would be offering a comment, she said, “We handle things here in the press office. Thanks for calling.”

Familiar with bridge

Vance Packard lives near Thornhurst and his family has had a house on Chappaquiddick Island since the early 1950s. Packard said he performed some repair work on Dyke Bridge in the late ’50s. When his parents bought their house on the island, Packard said, there were 74 homes there. He said there are 400 to 500 houses on the small island today.

Packard, 67, said he has driven over Dyke Bridge “a million times” and he knows it intimately. He said he wasn’t on the island when Kopechne was killed, but he has heard many stories speculating about what happened that July 1969 night.

“People wondered what happened,” he said. “They wondered how Kennedy could have swum across Edgartown Harbor; most people would have stolen a row boat to get across.”

Packard said the house where the cocktail party was held is still there. He said new owners have let shrubs and trees grow in front of the house, making it barely visible from the road.

Packard knows the island and its people well. In his mid-teens, he published a newspaper – The Chappy Chatter – that printed newsy items about the island.

Packard said the post-Chappaquiddick years have seen a gradual erosion of the memory of the tragedy.

“The truth of the matter is that most people there have put it in the backs of their minds,” he said. “Many of them vaguely remember the event. And for what it’s worth, Kennedy still carries the island by a landslide whenever he runs. They don’t seem to hold the incident against him.”

‘Overwhelming sadness’

Raymond “Chiefie” Jenkins was on the Plymouth Borough police force and he worked the Kopechne funeral. He was at the Kielty Funeral Home and later at St. Vincent’s Church on the day of the burial.

“I remember it was a day a lot like today,” Jenkins said Tuesday in his Plymouth home. “There were a lot of people there, but they all behaved and showed respect for the family.”

Marie Shevock of Plymouth attended the Mass. She said the church was packed for the solemn occasion.

“I remember the overwhelming feeling of sadness,” Shevock said. “Sadness for this beautiful, young woman who was taken from her family at such a young age.”

Potoski said she is spending her summer scanning letters the Kopechnes received from thousands of people and family photos. She wants to preserve them for posterity, she said.