This one is for her. I am currently reading Ted Kennedy: A Life by John Farrell. It's a serious yet very readable book. While it's sympathetic, it's balanced. That means Chappaquiddick is explored in detail and unsparingly.
Chappaquiddick continues to break my heart not because of what it meant to Kennedy's career or Camelot. It haunts me because of Mary Jo Kopechne. Even now, decades later, she's "the dead girl."* "The blonde in the backseat." The implication is that she was a party girl or groupie, looking to lay a powerful man.
It's not true.
There is no evidence that she and Ted Kennedy had a physical relationship. None. Zip. Zilch.
But here are 13 facts about the serious young woman who, by dying one week shy of her 29th birthday, made her way into American history.
1. Mary Jo was the only child of Gwen and Joseph Kopechne. Her mom was a homemaker, her dad an insurance salesman.
2. She was a Red Sox fan and her favorite player was Carl Yastrzemski.
3. Though naturally shy, she participated in high school musicals because she loved to dance.
4. After high school she intended to become a career secretary so she studied business administration New Jersey’s Caldwell College for Women (Class of '62).
5. But she was moved by JFK’s admonition to “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” So she instead explored ways to participate in the Civil Rights Movement.
6. First she moved to Montgomery, AL, where she used what she learned at Caldwell to teach typing and shorthand at an inner city high school to help the girls get jobs after graduation.
7. Then she moved to Washington DC, where she took a position in Sen. George Smathers’ office. While he had a reputation as a rake, she became known for her reserve. The standing joke was that she was the secretary hired to actually type and take dictation.
8. She didn’t drink or party with her coworkers but did play catcher on the Smathers softball team.
9. When Robert Kennedy became a Senator in 1965, she took a job in his office. She considered herself on-call 24/7. Ethel Kennedy recalled her husband bringing Mary Jo home so they could continue working overnight as he revised a Senate floor speech on Vietnam. She also occasionally babysat Robert and Ethel’s youngest children.
10. She threw herself into RFK’s 1968 Presidential campaign, becoming one of the six “Boiler Room Girls.” They were political operatives, not secretaries, as they would later dismissively be described in the press. They were in constant communication with regional Kennedy campaign offices, advising and notating the ground game. At the end of the day, they reported directly to Bobby and his campaign manager.
11. When Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, she was devastated. She lost the best job she could imagine in the worst way possible. She was eager to leave Washington DC.
12. She joined the Southern Political Education and Action Committee, concentrating on registering African-American voters in Florida.
13. In July 1969, 13 months after RFK's death, she went to Martha's Vineyard. She told friends she was looking forward to a “Boiler Girls” reunion and hoped to play touch football. She said she'd be back to work on Tuesday.
RIP, Miss Kopechne.
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*Farrell's book treats her with respect, I'm happy to say.
