Senator Ted Kennedy - A Retrospective

Teddy Kennedy Timeline, Including “The Big One”, Chappaquidick

Edward (Ted) Kennedy enrolled in Harvard University in 1950, but was kicked out in 1951 after he was caught paying another student to take a Spanish test for him. He enlisted in the Army, but had a very undistinguished two-year career. He eventually returned to Harvard and got his degree.

In 1962, he finally got his first -- and last -- "real" job when he was elected to fill his brother Jack's vacant Senate seat. Fortunately, he had just turned 30, the minimum age to hold Senate office. And that's when things started going downhill.

After a party on Martha's Vineyard, Ted drove his car back towards the mainland. He drove off a bridge and dumped the car into a pond. He swam to shore, went to a hotel, chatted briefly with the clerk, and went to bed. In the morning, a fisherman spotted the car and reported it to the police.

And when the police recovered the car from the water, they found the body of 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign staffer for Robert's presidential bid and guest at the party. The coroner determined that she had survived the crash and had remained conscious for several hours in an airpocket in the submerged car before dying. [In other words, Mary Jo died after Kennedy left the scene with her still alive, without reporting the accident, and swam to the mainland to attempt to establish an alibi!]

Teddy eventually pleaded guilty to "leaving the scene of an accident causing injury" and was given two months in jail (suspended) and his driver's license was suspended.

Ted had married Virginia Joan Bennett in 1958, and they had three children. She stood by him through all his scandals and peccadillos, even his disastrous run for president in 1980. She endured all the jokes, snide remarks, and rumors about him (largely dealing with his fondness for women and strong drink), but they divorced in 1982. Since then, she has struggled with alcoholism. Recently, her grown children petitioned to be named her legal guardians, saying her alcoholism had left her unable to care for herself.

Kennedy's womanizing ways are a Washington legend. When a supermarket tabloid published pictures of Kennedy getting "amorous" with a woman on his sailboat, one of his colleagues (Senator Howell Heflin) remarked that it appeared that Kennedy "had done changed his position on offshore drilling." In 1985, he and Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd allegedly made a "waitress sandwich" at a DC restaurant while their dates were in the rest room.
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An Official Version of the Kennedy/Dodd "Waitress Sandwich" - New York Magazine
“Washington's Sexual Awakening
In the capital, rules about sex are made to be broken
By Eric Konigsberg , New York Magazine
Published Feb 2, 1998

According to news reports, those two liberal Democratic lions and champions of women's rights, Sen. Ted Kennedy, the noted midnight swimmer from Massachusetts, and his buddy Christopher Dodd of Connecticut were out one night drinking at La Brasserie, a Capitol Hill restaurant.

Dodd had so much to drink he slumped in a chair. Kennedy decided to liven things up. So he threw a waitress on top of Dodd. Then Kennedy jumped on the astonished woman."She was said to have run screaming from the room," according to a lengthy 1991 profile on Dodd in the Hartford Courant.”
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Another Version of the Kennedy/Dodd “Waitress Sandwich”, from The Waitress's Point of View

The victim herself detailed the attack for Penthouse magazine in 1989, which was summarized by the Washington Times:

"When she put in an appearance in their private retreat - 'The Teddy Kennedy Fun Room' - the Massachusetts senator picked her up and heaved her onto a table. The crystal candlesticks and champagne glasses shattered as he grabbed her again and flung her on top of Dodd.
"Then Kennedy threw himself on top of the woman. The waitress implored Mr. Kennedy to 'Get off me!'
"Another waitress entered to find 'things all tipped over and Kennedy was on top, [the waitress] was in the middle and Dodd was on the bottom.' At that point the sandwich was disassembled."
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The Palm Beach Rape - The Ted and Willie Show

The story would be a watershed in American political and sexual mythology. Generations of condoned womanizing by America’s royal family had led to this: a young woman, claiming she was raped at the famed Kennedy mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, in the early hours of Easter morning after a late-night drinking binge with Teddy, his son, and his nephew, William Kennedy Smith.

Willie, as he was known, son of Steve Smith, the late “fixer of Kennedy scandals, was accused in the biggest family disgrace since Chappaquiddick. This would be the first defining new story of our tenure at Hard Copy, and we were sure to come up against massive competition from A Current Affair. After all, Brennan and Dunleavy had written Those Wild, Wild Kennedy Boys back in the seventies—and it wouldn’t get much wilder than this.

Michelle Cassone, a young woman who claimed to have gone to the mansion with the victim the morning in question, accused Senator Ted of chasing her around in a nightshirt while his nephew was having his way with the victim out on the beach.

That about sums it up, the life and times of the Last Liberal Lion of the Senate -- a man who cheated in college; had an undistinguished military career; drove his first wife, Joan, to drink with his own drinking and philandering; drove off a bridge and left his passenger to drown while he swam to the mainland to pretend it never happened; used his power and position to get away with sexually harrassing women whose work brought them into contact with him; and was a participant in the sexual "shenanigans" of his nephew Willie after a night of debauchery and drinking!