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THBTed Kennedy Letter Re: Mary Jo Kopechne 1970 ...
About Seller
522 South Pineapple Avenue
Sarasota, FL 34236
United States
Sarasota Estate Auction specializes in a wide variety of furniture, antiques, fine art, lighting, sculptures, and collectibles. Andrew Ford, owner and operator of the company, has a passion for finding the best pieces of art and antiques and sharing those finds with the Gulf Coast of Florida.
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About Auction
LiveAug 5, 2023
Featuring a Lifetime Collection of Early American Pottery, a Fantastic Georg Jensen Sterling Tea Set - 23 OZT, Important Books and Ephemera, and Exquisite Estate Jewelry. Also including art from artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Camille Pissarro, Karel Appel, Victor Vasarely, and many more. Sarasota Estate Auction sarasotaestateauction@gmail.com
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- Lot Description
This letter was written by Ted Kennedy about Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign worker for U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign, and part of a close team known as the "Boiler Room Girls". Ted Kennedy was Robert Kennedy's brother, and in 1969, she drowned when a car driven by Senator Ted Kennedy went off a narrow bridge on Chappaquiddick Island and overturned into a local pond. According to reports, Ted Kennedy left the party at 11:15pm; Kopechne's body and the car accident were not reported until the next morning, approximately nine to ten hours later. The letter here was written by Senator Kennedy about seven weeks after she died, and he states that even thought her death was unfortunate - he called it tragic - he would still run for the Senate in 1970. During the 1968 U.S. presidential election, Kopechne helped with the wording of Robert Kennedy's speech that announced his presidential candidacy. She worked as one of the Boiler Room Girls, the nickname given to six young women whose office area was in a hot, windowless location in RFK's Washington campaign headquarters - they were vital in tracking and compiling data on how Democratic delegates from various states were intending to vote - and Kopechne was devastated by the assassination of Robert Kennedy in June 1968. Robert and Ted were also younger brothers of President John F. Kennedy, who had been killed by an assassin's bullet in 1963. The background to Mary Jo Kopechne's death: on July 18, 1969, Kopechne attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island, off the coast of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. The celebration was to honor the dedicated work of the Boiler Room Girls and was the fourth such reunion of Robert Kennedy's campaign workers. Robert's surviving brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, was there. Kopechne reportedly left the party with Ted Kennedy about 11:15 p.m.; according to his account, he had offered to drive her to catch the last ferry back to Edgartown, where she was staying. She did not tell her friends that she was leaving the party, and she left her purse and keys behind. Kennedy drove his 1967 Oldsmobile off a narrow, unlit bridge, which had no guardrails and was not on the route to Edgartown. The vehicle landed upside down in Poucha Pond. Kennedy extricated himself from the car and survived, but neglected to tell authorities of the accident until the next day. The assistant medical examiner signed a death certificate, which listed the cause of her death as accidental drowning, but there were several discrepancies noted during the inquest: Senator Kennedy claimed the accident occurred shortly after 11:15 p.m., but a part-time deputy testified he saw Kennedy's car over an hour later, with Kopechne and Kennedy both in the car. A fire rescue captain who retrieved her body the next day testified he believed Mary Jo stayed alive for about a half hour inside an air pocket in the submerged vehicle and ultimately suffocated, and a request to have her body exhumed later on was denied by a court. A week after the incident, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury. He received a two-month suspended sentence, and on a national television broadcast that night, Kennedy said that he had not been driving "under the influence of liquor", nor had he ever had a "private relationship" with Kopechne. Biographers had serious questions about Kennedy's timeline of events that night, specifically his actions following the incident - why didn't he report things right away? The investigation itself has been scrutinized, particularly whether too much deference was given to a powerful and influential political family the Kennedy's. The events surrounding Kopechne's death damaged Ted Kennedy's reputation - people believe he had Presidential aspirations - and are regarded as a major reason why he never mounted a successful campaign for the Presidency, and why he essentially chose not to pursue the office. But Kennedy overcame this and some lesser personal scandals to have a long career as a Senator, and he went on to be known as the Lion of the Senate, one of the most influential lawmakers in that body in modern history. In a book published after Kennedy's death, he expressed remorse about his role in Mary Jo Kopechne's death, and rumors still persist about whether or not he had an affair with her, but nothing has even been proved. (See True Compass.) Two more letters accompany this one: one was written by Ted Kennedy again, but in 1967 in response to a letter from J. L. Armstrong, whose family had been donors to the Democratic party since the 1920's. (We auctioned off a letter written by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the last auction; it came with several letters from the Armstrong family trying to seek political favor with FDR, and those letters had been in the possession of the consignor for several decades. The consignor was also a first or second cousin of FDR and why those letters had been in his possession.) Ted Kennedy also signed the 1967 letter "Edward M. Kennedy", a very distinct signature from his signature on the Mary Jo Kopechne letter. A second letter written by Paul Richards accompanies the 1967 and 1970 letters too. Richards was an heir of the Ocean Spray cranberry family and in the business of collecting and authenticating autographs, and this letter says Mr. Richards had been examining a letter by JFK - President Kennedy - and decided that letter was signed by JFK's secretary and had no autographic value. The Richards letter also says he could not tell if the Ted Kennedy letter was signed by a secretary or autopen and just summarily dismissed it as having no value; this was only a few months after the Mary Jo Kopechne accident occurred, and we are not sure if Richards had time to understand the historical and political implications of the letter - it nearly cost Ted Kennedy his career - Mary Jo Kopechne lost her life, and through stupidity, lack of insight, or fear, Ted Kennedy nearly lost his political career. Note: we checked autopen signatures by Ted Kennedy and they are very different from the one signed in 1967. That one has a horizontal line on the stem of the y in "Kennedy', and the others online that are signed by autopen do not have that horizontal line or bar at all. The Raab Collection also has a letter written by Ted Kennedy about Mary Jo Kopechne and they assert they have never seen another Ted Kennedy letter about her, so even without all the hoopla about whether this was actually signed by Ted Kennedy, it is still an historically important document, and very rare for a letter with this content to surface in the public domain. The two Kennedy letters are both on a United States Senate letterhead, with "Edward Kennedy Massachusetts" in the upper left hand corner, and the letters measure 10 5/8 x 8 in. wide and are in very good condition, and the Mary Jo Kopechne letter has huge historical and political significance. Size: 8 x 10 5/8 (largest) 1656
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