- Joseph Kennedy Senior had ambitions that his son would become the president of the USA. When the oldest of them died, the choice fell on the next one
- President John F. Kennedy died on November 22, 1963 in the assassination of Texas. On June 6, 1968, the same fate met his younger brother, Robert
- Women from the Kennedy family also affected the tragedies. Rosemary was mutilated at her father's order, Kathleen died in a plane crash, and Maeve and her 8-year-old son drowned
- You can find more such stories on the Onet's main page
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Over the past 80 years, the Kennedy family has affected many misfortunes. After the attacks on John F. Kennedy in 1963 in Dallas and his brother Robert five years later, some family members began to believe in what the press wrote – over the influential pregnancy clan.
Later misfortunes – car accidents, air disasters and drowning – only confirmed public opinion as to the rumors about fate. According to some, it was a payment for what Joseph Kennedy Senior and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy made Rosemary's eldest daughter.
Rosemary Kennedy – “Hidden daughter”
Rosemary Kennedy was born in 1918. From childhood she had problems emotions, suffered from epilepsy, she never learned to read and write well. Her problems were the result of hypoxia of the girl's brain during the suspended delivery, when the nurse ordered the giving birth to Rose … squeeze her legs and wait for the late doctor.
Rosemary studied at a special school, but her family allowed her to enjoy life. In 1938, the girl went to Great Britain. She came to the salons, ran away from home and slept with casual men. My father was afraid that the girl would get pregnant.
From the left: Sisters Euntcie and Rosemary Kennedy, 1938
In 1941, Joseph – allegedly without his wife's knowledge – decided to subject his daughter a lobotomy, which at that time “was treated” by people with mental disorders. The procedure, consisting of cutting nerve fibers connecting the leading lobes of the brain with the inter -marsh, failed. “From a full life, a laughing 23-year-old, she became devoid of contact with the world, a mockery, sick woman”-wrote Kate Clifton Larson in the book “Rosemary: The hidden daughter of Kennedych”.
Joseph Kennedy SR was unable to look in the injured daughter in the eyes. He placed it in a care center, away from the world and family. Until his death in 1969, he never visited her. Rosemary died in 2005 for natural reasons. She behaved like a child of several years until the end of her life.
Hope of the family died in the explosion, a younger daughter in a disaster
Joseph Kennedy SR was a banker, and he broke the fortune on real estate trade. He was also an extremely ambitious man – he planned for his sons of his career and wanted to make them the most influential people in the country. He was the US ambassador in Great Britain, but in 1940 he abandoned his position convinced that Korona would lose the war with Nazi Germany, and the US should isolate themselves from what was happening in Europe.
Joseph Jr, Joseph SR and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in the 1940s.
Kennedy put the greatest hopes in his oldest son. He saw him first as a senator and then in the president's chair. The war hero, educated and handsome – Joseph Junior was to start his political career after the war. He died on August 12, 1944 during the secret action “Projekt Anvil”, when TNT load broke out on board the piloted aircraft. He was 29 years old.
Just four years later, 28-year-old Kathleen, a younger daughter of Kennedych, died in a passenger plane crash in France. Kathleen, called “Kick” by his loved ones, was a humanitarian activist and chose her life in Europe alongside her husband, awning William Cavendish.
Kathleen Kennedy and William Cavendish, Marquis Hartington, 1940
At their wedding in May 1944 only Joseph Jr. The immediate family refused to come, outraged by the fact that she was brought up as a Catholic “Kick” in love with the Protestant. Just a few months after the wedding, Kathleen lost her husband and her beloved her older brother in war.
Next in the queue to the throne: John, Robert and Ted
After the tragic death of the eldest son, the senior of the family poured all his ambitions to John Fitzgerald. At the same time, he was very careful that no scandal would spoil his family reputation, although he was having an affair with Gloria Swanson and Marlena Dietrich.
John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office, 1960
His dream, for Kennedy to go to the White House, came true in 1961, when John F. Kennedy won the election and became the youngest president in the history of the country. He appointed his younger brother Robert, the prosecutor general. On November 22, 1963, JFK died in an assassination, shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. He was 46 at the time of his death.
After the death of his brother, Robert Kennedy got to the Senate, and in 1968 he announced that he would run for president on behalf of Democrats. He soon divided his brother's tragic fate.
Robert Kennedy with his wife Ethel during the election campaign in 1968.
On June 5, 1968, he performed at an election meeting at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. After a fiery speech, he wanted to leave the building – contrary to the bodyguards – through the hotel kitchen. It was there that Sirhan Bishara Sirhan fired eight shots in the back and head of the politician. Three arrows reached the target, the remaining injured people. Robert Kennedy died the next day in the hospital. He was 42 years old and orphaned 11 children and did not wait for the birth of the youngest daughter of Rora.
It was after Robert's death – so near the shocking attack on JFK – the media began to write about the curse of the family. Public opinion picked up this topic, the more that only the youngest of the brothers, Edward “Ted” Kennedy, remained alive.
In 1964, Ted miraculously survived the plane crash in which two of his colleagues died. Five years later, while returning from the party he lost control of the car and fell into the river. He was under the influence of alcohol. He managed to get out, but the secretary traveling with him Mary Jo Kopechne was killed. Kennedy did not report to the police the next day, ensuring that he tried to help the passenger. He spent two months in prison for escaping from the scene of the accident.
John, Robert and Edward “TED” Kennedy, 1960
Ted Kennedy also ran for the president's seat, but he did not have charisma, talent and ambition like his brothers. Later he became a senator and he held this position until his death in 2009 on brain cancer.
Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of JFK, also believed in rumors about the curse. Two months before his death, the couple said goodbye to the newborn son, Patrick, who lived only 39 hours. Jackie's rest was afraid of her children, Caroline and John Junior. She died in 1994.
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy survived her husband, three sons and daughter. She left in 1995 at the age of 104. “I wonder why God took me three able -bodied, brilliant and talented sons, and left a incapacitated daughter?” He quoted her words “Daily Mail”, after the death of 86-year-old Rosemary Kennedy.
New generations, old “curse”
In the following years, the sons of Robert Kennedy also reached the tragedies. In 1973, Joseph P. Kennedy II caused a car accident in which his teenage brother David suffered a spinal injury, and Pam Kelley was paralyzed. Joseph was fined in the amount of $ 100. for a reckless ride. In the same year, 12-year-old Edward Kennedy Jr fell ill with cancer and lost his right leg.
After the accident, David Kennedy became addicted to painkillers and died as a result of overdose in 1984, at only 28 years old. In 1997, another son of Robert Kennedy, Michael, died while skiing. He was 39 years old.
John F. Kennedy JR and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, May 1999
Just two years later, another unimaginable tragedy affected the family. Called the “son of America” by John F. Kennedy Jr-who as a 3-year-old in 1963 saluted a casket with his father's body-he died on July 16, 1999 in an air disaster on his way to the wedding of his cousin, Rory Kennedy. The small passenger aircraft piloted by him fell into the Atlantic. His wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette were also on board. Their bodies were found in the wreck a few days after the disaster.
The tragic death of John Kennedy Junior, who, unlike his cousins, stayed away from politics, was not the end of family tragedies. In 2012, Mary Richardson, wife of Robert Kennedy Junior, committed suicide at their home in Mount Kisco, and a year later Kennedy's punishment, daughter of Teda, died of a heart attack.
Robert Kennedy's two granddaughters left only half a year apart. The 22-year-old Saoirs Roisin Kennedy Hill died in her family home in Massachusts as a result of overdose of drugs. Maeve McKean drowned together with her 8-year-old son Gideon during a kayak trip on the Gulf of Chesapeake.
Robert Kennedy Junior with his wife Mary Richardson Kennedy, 2008
However, does the Kennedy Clan really affect the fate? Maybe public opinion pays much more attention to every accident that will happen to this large family, and each subsequent one increases the sensational topic of the alleged curse.
“Our ailments are no different from other people's, our tragedies are not so unusual at all. We are a large family, but above all more in public view than others. We are constantly observed by the media, it is more difficult to hide our problems” – said Patrick J. Kennedy in “USA Today” in 2019.
