BOB KALINOWSKI, STAFF WRITER
She was the pretty, young woman
who drowned in a Chappaquiddick Island waterway in 1969 after U.S. Sen. Ted
Kennedy drove his car off a bridge and fled, derailing his presidential
aspirations.
But that’s about all most
people know about Forty Fort native Mary Jo Kopechne, surviving family members
say.
They believe she deserves a
better legacy.
Kopechne’s family hopes a book
they’re about to be release, entitled “Our Mary Jo,” and a scholarship fund
started in her name at Misericordia University in Dallas will finally give her
a proper identity.
“Mary Jo always got lost in the
shuffle of Chappaquiddick,” said co-author William Nelson, whose mother was
Kopechne’s first cousin. “In many ways, her book and her scholarship kind of
take Mary Jo back from Chappaquiddick. They finally bring her back to the
Wyoming Valley.”
Barely mentioned
Unlike anything ever written
about Kopechne, the book doesn’t dwell on Chappaquiddick and how Kopechne died.
In fact, it’s barely mentioned. The 180-page book focuses on her life, the
potential of the rising political operative, and the impact of her death at age
28, her family says.
The granddaughter of two coal
miners from Luzerne County, Kopechne would go on to help craft and type the
speech Robert F. Kennedy delivered in March 1968 announcing his bid for the
presidency.
Kopechne, whose family roots in
the Wyoming Valley can be traced back 250 years, is buried at St. Vincent’s
Cemetery on Larksville Mountain, the fifth generation of her family laid to
rest there.
Nelson’s grandfather, and then
his father, served as cemetery caretaker. He grew up in a house across the
street and used to frequent the cemetery, which became a constant destination
for media crews fascinated with the case.
“People with cameras were
always coming up to me and asking, ‘Do you know where Mary Jo is at?’” recalled
Nelson, 43, who was born three years after Kopechne died. “That began the
mystery for me.”
At the time of her death,
Kopechne was an up-and-coming Washington, D.C. political operative, who worked
tirelessly on Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign before his assassination.
She later met her political idol’s brother, Sen. Ted Kennedy, whose car crash
off a bridge near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, ended her life and his
chances to become president like his brother, John F. Kennedy.
As Kopechne remained trapped in
the submerged car, Kennedy left the scene and didn’t report the crash until 10
hours later. The senator, who claimed he “panicked” after several attempts to
dive in the water to rescue her, quickly pleaded guilty to a minor fleeing the
scene charge and received no prison time. He remained in office until his
August 2009 death at age 77.
For 46 years since the tragedy,
Kopechne’s name has been synonymous with what became known as the
“Chappaquiddick incident.” An advertisement for the book says, “Millions of
people know Mary Jo Kopechne’s name, but only a few people know who she was.”
The inspiration for the book
came about three years ago when Nelson and his mother were sifting through the
hundreds of sympathy letters sent to Kopechne’s parents from around the world.
Some of those letters are being revealed publicly in the book for the first
time.
The book glosses over how
Kopechne died because “Chappaquiddick was never about Mary Jo,” Nelson said.
“Chappaquiddick was about a lot
of other people — who did what and what they didn’t do,” Nelson said. “We came
to the realization Mary Jo owes Chappaquiddick no debt.”
Pursuit of justice
The book explains that
Kopechne’s parents died — Joseph in 2003 and Gwen in 2007 — believing justice
was never served in Kopechne’s case.
“Let’s be honest. They felt
slighted by what happened,” Nelson said during a recent interview at his
sister’s house in Wilkes-Barre. “They lost their only daughter and nothing
really was ever done.”
Nelson wrote an excerpt about
their agony printed on the back cover of the book: “I watched Gwen and Joe —
Mary Jo’s parents — wait their entire lives for justice for their daughter.
They died without receiving it, perhaps because they were waiting on justice
based on her death. We seek justice of a different kind — a justice based on
her life.”
The book and scholarship do
that, Nelson said.
The Kopechne book
coincidentally is being released just after the recent dedication of the Edward
M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston. Several
representatives for the institute did not return emails and calls about whether
any members of the Kennedy family planned to purchase the book or donate to the
scholarship fund.
“Do I have any thoughts on Mr.
Kennedy? No,” said Kopechne’s cousin and co-author of the book, Georgetta
Potoski of Plymouth.
In addition to being cousins,
Potoski, 72, and Kopechne, who would have turned 75 this year, were great
friends growing up.
Before their deaths, Kopechne’s
parents gave Potoski all the sentimental things they kept of Kopechne,
including old photos, the hundreds of sympathy letters and even a carbon copy
of Robert Kennedy’s speech that Kopechne helped create.
“We had all these photographs,
all these stories and all these letters,” said Potoski, chairwoman of the
Plymouth Historical Society.
From them, the book, “Our Mary
Jo,” was launched.
“This book introduces Mary Jo
Kopechne to a world that has long remembered her, tussled over her and felt
bereft for not ever really knowing her,” Potoski said. “It is told here by the
family to whom she belonged and to whom she was loved.”
In the book, family members
describe a tale of one mother that always made her kids wave to Kopechne while
passing the cemetery where she’s buried.
“Now, their children do the
same thing,” Potoski said. “In addition to all the reasons this book was
written, it is certainly for all those people who still wave to Mary Jo.”
Kopechne ‘changed history’
Nelson and Potoski are well
aware Kopechne’s death greatly influenced American politics.
“Her death changed history,
because ...,” Nelson said, before his mother jumped in.
“Because Ted Kennedy never made
it into the White House,” Potoski said.
The family thinks 46 years
later, people are still fascinated with Kopechne. A certain mystery surrounds
her because almost all media stories focused on Kennedy, they said.
“People are still upset about
what happened in 1969. People thought something should have been done for her,”
Nelson said. “We wanted it to be a living breathing thing. We didn’t want it to
be a plaque on a tree or something.”
They chose to start scholarship
in her name at Misericordia University in Dallas because of her deeply held
Catholic beliefs.
The first 250 people to pledge
$100 toward the scholarship will receive a copy of the book. Additional copies
will be sold for $24.95. It will be released only locally at first because
“this is where Mary Jo was from,” Potoski said.
The $25,000 in initial seed
money from donors will ensure that a fundraising protocol is established so the
scholarship will “continue to benefit students in perpetuity,” said Michele
Zabriski, director of development at Misericordia.
Any student in good academic
standing who demonstrates a financial need will be eligible for the annual
scholarship. Kopechne’s family said they wanted as many students as possible to
have a chance at receiving the financial aid in Kopechne’s memory. The annual
gift, they said, will make sure her legacy lives on — only now in a positive
way.
After the first prototype of
the book was handed over to the family recently, Nelson took his 6-year-old
son, Gavin, to Kopechne’s grave. After explaining to his son who Kopechne was,
he took a photo of Gavin holding the book at her grave site.
“It was very symbolic of the
reasons why we wrote this book,” Nelson said. “To show future generations who
this woman was and what she would have accomplished.”
bkalinowski@citizensvoice.com
570-821-2055, @cvbobkal
The family of Mary Jo Kopechne,
the Forty Fort native killed in 1969 when U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy drove his car
off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, has written a book called “Our Mary Jo.”
Proceeds of the book will go to a scholarship fund in Kopechne’s name at
Misericordia University in Dallas.
The first 250 people to pledge
$100 toward the scholarship will receive a copy of the book. Additional copies
will be sold for $24.95.
Donations can be sent to:
Misericordia University
Mary Jo Kopechne Scholarship
Fund
301 Lake St.
Dallas, PA 18612
ONLINE: Information about the
scholarship can be found on the “Mary Jo Kopechne Scholarship” page on Facebook.