If Mary Jo Kopechne were alive today, she'd be 78 years old. Not old old, by today's standards. But who knows what she might have accomplished — or helped accomplish — in politics, had she not drowned in Ted Kennedy's car in July 1969?
Edward M. Kennedy is 10 years dead now. His Senate seat is held by Elizabeth Warren, and most of the 50th-anniversary coverage of summer 1969 has gone to the moon landing, which happened to take place at the same time that Kennedy drove his car off that bridge near Edgartown, Massachusetts. But we cats remember Chappaquiddick, and the nightly-news coverage that accompanied it, very well — although not quite the same way that we "remember" it now.
Back then, it was all about Ted Kennedy. Now, we can't stop thinking about the young woman who didn't make it out of the car.
We cats were not Ted Kennedy partisans. We worked for President Carter in 1980, and will never forget or forgive Kennedy's wounding primary challenge that year. It's amazing to us that he was able to run for President at all after the death of Mary Jo. But in later years, he partially redeemed himself with his illustrious Senate career. If — in the wake of that — we ever tried to excuse Chappaquiddick or dismiss the memory of the young woman whose death Kennedy caused, we'd like to apologize.
Forgive us, Mary Jo. Jimmy Carter would have gotten you home safe. In fact, if you had been working for Jimmy Carter, you never would have been in that car in the first place. We cats HISS.
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