A friend who lives on Martha’s Vineyard chastised me for questioning Ted Kennedy’s beatification. “Everyone on Martha’s Vineyard knows the real story about Chappaquiddick,” this lifelong Democrat said. “He was with a married woman in the front seat and had no idea that Mary Jo had crawled into the back seat and fell asleep. His evasiveness after the accident was to protect the reputation of the married woman. Ted Kennedy never had any idea that anyone was in the back seat.” How did he ever find out? “When he phoned his family and friends later that night, they must have told him that Mary Jo had been in the back.” The death of Mary Jo, the failure of Ted Kennedy to summon help, and the lack of any explanation to Mary Jo’s family, thus stems not from a lack of gentlemanly conduct, but from an excess.
[This Google Map shows the section of very rough dirt road that Ted Kennedy traveled to get to the Dike Bridge. Even today, in an era of near-infinite property taxes, the road is painfully bumpy and washboardy. A person would have to be virtually comatose not to wake up while in the back seat of a car on this road, yet the Wikipedia page on Mary Jo notes that she “rarely drank much.”]
About dirt roads – they vary a lot over time. If someone went over the road with a bulldozer/grader recently, they can be pretty smooth. If a lot of rain fell since the road was last graded, the road can be pretty lousy. Is there any way to know the state of the road, at that time?
Not that I have (or want to have) any opinion on the events in question.
I was (and am) really impressed at the well-kept state of many unpaved roads in western Colorado. Not something I had any reason to expect (having lived nearly my entire life in suburban Southern California.)
That at least has the virtue of making more sense than the common story; and if she rarely drank much, then inadvertently drinking to excess would have been easier… but if so, why hasn’t the notional third person come forward in these more modern, less judgmental times?
“but if so, why hasn’t the notional third person come forward in these more modern, less judgmental times?”
Because Teddy was ahead of the times and this married woman was a “cougar”. Sadly, she’d be 100 now if she had not passed on. 🙂
Wouldn’t the presence of Mary Jo as a sort of chaperone instead of an embarrassment have been a perfect out? The story seems pretty unlikely, but okay, let’s run with it. Who was the secret wife? Jackie O?