Joseph and Rose Kennedy with their nine children in 1938.
After Robert and John F. Kennedy were assassinated, an idea formed that the family could be cursed.
Their history has been marred with tragedy, including four plane crashes, a skiing accident, and a lobotomy.
In 1969, Ted Kennedy even publicly referred to the curse when he apologized for fleeing a car crash.
The Kennedys have reached the highest position in public office — becoming senators, congressmen, and one becoming the president.
But their family also has had to deal with countless tragedies: two assassinations, two overdoses, four plane crashes, a skiing accident, and even a botched lobotomy.
Some people, including Ted Kennedy, have openly referred to the curse that befell the family, while others have blamed the ambitious patriarch Joseph Kennedy Sr. for pushing his children too hard.
Here are the tragedies that have struck the Kennedy family.
In 1969, Sen. Ted Kennedy apologized to the nation a week after he fled the scene of a car crash leaving a dead woman named Mary Jo Kopechne behind.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy leaves a courthouse in 1969, after pleading guilty to leaving the scene of a fatal accident.
Ted Dully/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
During his televised apology, he said he had wondered “whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys.”
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy leaves a courthouse in 1969 after pleading guilty to leaving the scene of a fatal accident.
Joe Dennehy/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
This was the first time one of the Kennedys had publicly acknowledged the curse, but the idea began following the assassinations of his two brothers, John and Rober, earlier that decade.
John F. Kennedy with his family at their Boston home on July 8th, 1934.
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But it wasn’t a coincidence he had invoked the idea of a curse.
The speech — which, according to The New York Times, was arguably more of a PR stunt — had been crafted by several speechwriters, including former President John F. Kennedy’s speechwriter Ted Sorenson.
Sources: Herald Tribune, Washington Post, New York Times
But it was Robert Kennedy who first wondered if their family was cursed, according to Edward Klein in his book, “The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America’s First Family for 150 Years.”
A portrait of Robert Kennedy.
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Robert recognized the parallels between what had happened to his family and the Greek tragedies; in particular, the impacts of family curses and the sins of a father haunting later generations.
Robert Kennedy is shown during a press conference beside then-U.S. Attorney James O’Brien.
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Conspiracists have maintained that Kennedy patriarch Joe Kennedy Sr. committed crimes like bootlegging to make his fortune.
Joseph P. and Rose Kennedy were surrounded by their children at a family gathering at their home in Palm Beach, Florida.
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According to The New Yorker, these crimes were often mentioned “in the same breath” as the tragedies that struck the Kennedys, “assuming that there is a dark pattern in the way things happen.”
Source: New Yorker
Even if the accusations weren’t true, Joe Sr. was certainly ambitious and expected a lot from his children.
Joe Kennedy Sr. with his sons John and Joseph Jr. in 1937.
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He had risen from reasonably humble beginnings to become an ambassador to Britain, as well as making millions working as a bank president, selling liquor, and owning a Hollywood studio.
Joe Kennedy Sr. with Winston Churchill outside Downing Street, London, in 1939.
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And he expected his children to go even further.
Joe Kennedy Sr. and John F. Kennedy pose for a photograph while boarding a plane in 1939.
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The first Kennedy to feel the brunt of his ambition was his daughter Rosemary. She had seizures and tantrums and was intellectually disabled.
Kathleen, Rose, and Rosemary Kennedy in formal gowns and carrying bouquets at Buckingham Palace in 1938.
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Joe Sr., conscious of the stigma of mental disability and focused on his sons’ political futures, forced her to have a lobotomy when she was 23 years old.
Eunice and Rosemary Kennedy pictured aboard the S. S. Manhattan in New York in 1938.
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At the time, the media said the operation was “easier than curing a toothache,” according to NPR. But the lobotomy made things worse.
For months afterward, she was unable to walk or talk. She was put into an institution and cut off from her family for the next two decades.
Sources: Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, Marie Claire
The next tragedy struck the eldest son. Joe Jr. had been groomed for political office his whole life. When he was born, his grandfather, who was then the mayor of Boston, had told the press he would become president one day.
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. at Harvard University in 1938.
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Joe Jr. was successful both as an athlete and a student.
When he graduated from high school he was awarded a trophy for the best student in both “scholarship and sportsmanship.”
Sources: Washington Post, CNN, JFK Library, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair
But in 1944, Joe Jr. was killed by flying explosives across Nazi-controlled Europe during a covert mission called “Operation Aphrodite.” He was 29 years old.
Joe Kennedy Jr. smiles at the camera in 1944.
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“His worldly success was so assured and inevitable that his death seems to have cut into the natural order of things,” his brother John wrote in a family memorial.
Sources: Washington Post, CNN, JFK Library, The Atlantic, NPS
In 1948, another plane crash rocked the family when Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy died in a plane crash in France.
John F. Kennedy and Kathleen Kennedy at Palm Beach, Florida, in 1934.
Corbis/Getty Images
She had been a headstrong child, and her decisions in her love life caused a rift in the family after her mother Rose disapproved of Kathleen’s marriage to a Protestant man.
Kathleen was onboard a 10-seat plane when turbulence caused it to crash into the mountains, killing everyone on board. She was 28 years old. Only her father Joe Sr. attended her funeral.
Sources: Washington Post, CNN, The Atlantic
After Joe Jr.’s death, Joe Sr. turned his focus to John F. Kennedy, who saw it coming and told a friend: “Now the burden falls on me.”
John F. Kennedy and his father Joe P. Kennedy poses for photographers onboard the SS Queen Mary in 1938.
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Joe Sr. helped him begin his political life, using his contacts to call in favors and spending tens of thousands of dollars on his campaign. He reportedly said, “We’re going to sell Jack like soap flakes.”
Joe Kennedy Sr. and John F. Kennedy in 1938.
Pictorial Parade/Getty Images
And the selling worked. In 1960, John F. Kennedy became president of the United States. But tragedy struck again less than three years later when he was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. He was 46 years old.
President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie in a motorcade minutes before he was killed in 1963.
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The so-called “curse” of the Kennedys began to solidify the following week when Jackie Kennedy, who was known for shaping her family’s image and her husband’s presidency, invited a Life magazine reporter to Cape Cod for an exclusive interview.
Robert and Edward Kennedy with Jackie Kennedy during the funeral of President John F. Kennedy.
Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images
During the interview, she said, “there will be great presidents again, but there will never be another Camelot.”
“You must think of this little boy, sick so much of the time, reading history, reading the Knights of the Round Table, reading Marlborough,” she continued. “For Jack, history was full of heroes.”
Sources: NBC News, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair
It was over the next few years, as Robert Kennedy grieved for his brother, that he started to see parallels between his family and the ancient Greeks.
Robert Kennedy at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1968.
Archive Photos/Getty Images
According to Daniel Mendelsohn, it made sense.
“Athenian drama returns obsessively — as we do, every November 22nd — to the shocking and yet seemingly inevitable spectacle of the fallen king, of power and beauty and privilege violently laid low,” he wrote in The New Yorker.
Sources: Washington Post, New Yorker
In 1964, seven months after his brother was assassinated, tragedy almost struck the Kennedys again when Sen. Ted Kennedy went down in a plane crash. Two people were killed in the incident, but, unlike his siblings, he lived.
Sen. Edward Kennedy is visited by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the hospital where he is recovering from injuries received in a plane crash.
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He was left badly injured though. He broke two ribs, and three vertebrae, and his lung collapsed.
“There are more of us than there is trouble,” Robert told the media after the accident. “The Kennedys intend to stay in public life. Good luck is something you make, and bad luck is something you endure.”
Sources: CNN, Boston Magazine
Just four years later, in 1968, Robert was assassinated while campaigning to be president. He was shot moments after he had won the California Democratic presidential primary.
Robert F. Kennedy speaks at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Dick Strobel/AP
As he lay dying, he asked a busboy if everybody else was okay. The busboy told him everyone was.
It was yet another blow to the Kennedy family since Robert had been acting as a father to John’s children and had 11 of his own children.
Sources: Washington Post, Washington Post, The Atlantic, New York Times
In 1969, Ted Kennedy had another near-death experience when he survived driving off a bridge on the island of Chappaquiddick in Massachusetts. His passenger, a woman named Mary Jo Kopechne, died at the scene.
A tow truck pulls Senator Edward Kennedy’s car out of Poucha Pond after the Senator’s infamous accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969.
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Ted reportedly tried to save Kopechne, but instead, he fled and didn’t report the accident for 10 hours. He later pled guilty to leaving the scene and was sentenced.
Ted remained a senator after the controversy but lost his chance to run for president.
It was after this crash that he brought up the possibility of a family curse.
In 1988, he told 60 Minutes: “That will remain with me for my whole life.”
Sources: Washington Post, The Atlantic
In 1984, Robert’s son David Kennedy died of an overdose in a hotel in Florida.
David Kennedy photographed in New York in 1984.
Images/Getty Images
David had struggled with addiction for years. He was reportedly traumatized after watching his father’s assassination on TV when he was 12 years old.
Sources: CNN, Washington Post, New York Times
In 1997, Michael Kennedy, another of Robert Kennedy’s sons, died in a ski accident in Colorado. Michael had been tossing around a football with relatives while skiing, which the Kennedys had played for decades. He was 39 years old.
Michael Kennedy speaks out in favor of assault weapons ban during a press conference outside then-Speaker Thomas Finneran’s office.
Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
In 1999, another fatal plane accident claimed the life of 38-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr. when it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing him, his wife Carolyn Bessette, and his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette.
John F. Kennedy, Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, in 1998.
Mitch Jacobson/AP
John Jr. only had about 300 hours of flying experience and rejected an offer of having one of his flight instructors accompany them.
Sources: Washington Post, History.com
They were flying to Cape Cod for the wedding of Robert’s son Rory. But because it took five days for divers to find the bodies, instead of celebrating, the family had to wait for news before they grieved over yet another tragedy.
Mourners pay respects at the floral shrine outside of the building where John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn lived in 1999.
Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images
Twenty years later, in 2019, tragedy struck the next generation of Kennedys when Saoirse Kennedy Hill, Robert’s granddaughter, died from an accidental overdose.
Saoirse Kennedy Hill holds a relative’s baby before a ceremony for naming the Robert Kennedy Navy Ship at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, in Boston.
Elise Amendola/AP
In 2016, she wrote about her struggles with depression in a personal essay.
Sources: CNN, Washington Post, NBC
In 2020, another of Robert’s granddaughters, Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, and her 8-year-old son Gideon, went missing in a canoe while searching for a ball that had drifted out into the Chesapeake Bay. Both of their bodies were later found by divers.
David McKean, Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, and their family attend a gala in New York City in 2019.
Mike Pont/Getty Images Images for Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
In 2018, Klein, who wrote the book about the Kennedy curse, defended his claim about the misfortune experienced by the Kennedy family.
The christening of Caroline Kennedy, with Robert, John, Jackie, and Joe Sr. in the background in 1957.
Bettmann/Getty Images
“I’ve looked high and low and cannot find another family since the ancient Greek House of Atreus that has suffered more calamities and misfortunes than the Kennedys,” he said.
Source: Washington Post
Even if some otherworldly force like a curse isn’t at play, it’s undeniable that the Kennedys’ tragedies still transfixed the nation. As presidential historian Michael Beschloss told NBC News, it was difficult to point to a more notable political dynasty.
Brothers John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy in 1960.
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And as J. Randy Taraborrelli, who wrote four books on the Kennedys, told NBC News: “The humanity of their story is what keeps us engaged … We peer behind the scenes of their wealthy lifestyle, and we see, for all the advantages they have, tragedy can still happen.”
A portrait of the Kennedy family in the living room of their home in Bronxville, New York, in 1938.
Bachrach/Getty Images
