In a voice that was at first inaudible, Senator Edward M. Kennedy pleaded guilty this morning in district court to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after knowingly causing injury to Miss Mary Jo Kopechne without making himself known. Judge James A. Boyle imposed a suspended two-month sentence to the house of correction at Barnstable, with the comment that “the defendant has already been and will continue to be punished far beyond anything this court can impose.”
Dukes County’s quaint, picturesque, Georgian-Colonial red brick and white trimmed courthouse was the focus of much of the world’s attention this week, and the adjectives in the first part of this sentence are a fair sampling of the ones dredged up by the reporters straining to give their prose a desperately needed dash of color.
“Could you tell me,” they ask, “how to get to the Kennedy Memorial Bridge?” Five years and a day after Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s black Oldsmobile lurched off the Dyke Bridge on Chappaquiddick, the senior Massachusetts senator at the wheel and the doomed Miss Mary Jo Kopechne beside him, tourists keep coming, at least 60 of them a day, to stand and stare at the scene of the Island’s - perhaps the nation’s - most celebrated automobile accident.
A newly-released trailer gives the first look at Chappaquiddick, an upcoming movie about Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s infamous 1969 car crash on the Vineyard.
Hollywood turned back the clock Thursday at the Chappy ferry landing, as Memorial Wharf became a movie set for the upcoming film about the 1969 Chappaquiddick accident.
Chief Dominick J. Arena of the Edgartown police yesterday filed application for a complaint against Sen. Edward M. Kennedy for leaving the scene of an accident on Chappaquiddick, in which Miss Mary Jo Kopechne of Washington, D. C., was drowned. Senator Kennedy has admitted that he was the driver of the automobile that ran off the Dike Bridge and sank in Poucha Pond, with Miss Kopechne trapped inside.
Islanders go the polls in the state primary on Tuesday to cast votes that will help choose Democratic and Republican candidates to run for the Massachusetts seat in the U.S. Senate left vacant in August when longtime Sen. Edward M. Kennedy — who held the seat for 46 years — died after a 14-month battle with brain cancer.
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. in every town.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the senior Senator from Massachusetts whose broad vowels were synonymous with Boston and whose liberal legislative record towered over all others, died late Tuesday night at his home in Hyannisport after a 14-month battle with brain cancer. He was 77 and had served in the U.S. Senate for 46 years. And he had long been a familiar presence on the Vineyard, where he is both credited for the infamy of Chappaquiddick and for the pioneering federal land trust bill that ultimately led to the creation of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
Martha’s Vineyard is a beautiful Island, a kind of glorious accident of nature. It’s a thriving, vibrant community, a mix of races, classes, and creeds, especially welcoming to presidents. What makes the Vineyard special, what attracts people to it, is that natural beauty and it’s mostly forgotten now how close the Island came to ruin. Forgotten also is the identity of its benefactor: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
