It surfaced yesterday that Tatiana, the granddaughter of former US President John F. Kennedy, had sadly died, but other untimely deaths have struck the Kennedy family over the years
The Kennedy family’s tragic legacy has been thrust back into the spotlight following the death of Tatiana Schlossberg. It was revealed yesterday (December 30) that Tatiana, the granddaughter of late US President John F. Kennedy, had died aged 35.
A climate journalist by profession, Tatiana revealed in November that she had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and had been given just one year to live.
Her revelation came in an essay for The New Yorker, where she announced her diagnosis of acute myeloid leukaemia. In the piece, entitled ‘A Battle With My Blood’, she also expressed a heartbreaking worry about her children, reports the BBC.
Tatiana, who shares two children, Edwin and Josephine, with her husband George Moran, wrote: “My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me.”
She continued: “For my whole life, I have tried to be good — to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter — and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry.
“Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
Tragedy appears to have haunted the Kennedy dynasty for more than eight decades. While many people are familiar with the circumstances surrounding JFK’s assassination in Texas, in 1963, numerous other significant deaths have also marked the family’s history.
Indeed, there have been so many that rumours persist of a so-called ‘Kennedy Curse’ — a term used to describe the many untimely deaths that have afflicted the political dynasty, spanning from air disasters to overdoses.
It all began in 1944, when Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the eldest child of Joseph Sr. and Rose Kennedy, died during a covert mission in the Second World War after his military aircraft exploded.
Only three years later, in 1948, Kathleen ‘Kick’ Kennedy, sister of Joseph P., also lost her life in an авиаtion disaster. In 1963, tragedy struck JFK personally when his infant son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, died shortly after birth.
Five years later, in 1968, JFK’s brother Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. However, the catalogue of unusual deaths within the family did not end there.
In 1969, Ted Kennedy, brother to both JFK and RFK, drove his car off a bridge in what became known as the Chappaquiddick incident, resulting in the death of a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne.
In 1984, David Anthony Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy’s son, died of a drug overdose in a Florida hotel. Thirteen years later, in 1997, Michael L. Kennedy, another of RFK’s sons, was killed in a skiing accident.
Nevertheless, these names represent only a fraction of the estimated 15 deaths commonly linked to the so-called ‘Kennedy Curse’.
Discussing the origins of the phrase, J. Randy Taraborrelli, author of The Kennedy Heirs, claimed it was Ted Kennedy who first “came up with the concept”.
He revealed to People: “Generally, they did not believe in the curse. It was Ted Kennedy who came up with the concept of the curse after Chappaquiddick, during a public address, when he said he wondered if perhaps that explained the terrible things that had happened to the family, including the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.
“And after that, the Kennedy curse became this sort of wide-ranging explanation for many of the things that were happening. But when times were particularly difficult, I think they slipped into wondering whether there really was some kind of curse.”
