INTERVIEW WITH TED KENNEDY

My Interview With Sen. Ted Kennedy

By Ken Simmons

During my career as a broadcast journalist I gained the reputation of being able to secure private, one-on-one interviews that others seemed unable to obtain. Some of these interviews included several with Florida Senator and later Governor Lawton Chiles, with whom I had become friends, and who had earlier invited me for dinner with him and his lovely wife, Rhea, at his lakeside home in Lakeland, as well as interviews with future President Jimmy Carter, a 90-minute in-studio interview with his wife Rosalyn, and a memorable interview with Sen. Edward (Ted) Kennedy.

During the campaign season for the presidency in 1975-1976 I had been able to secure another of those private interviews, this time with Senator Ted Kennedy. The location was at the Walt Disney Resort Hotel in Orlando where a number of high-ranking politicians had gathered, and the hotel concierge arranged for an ante-room for our use, a room that was separate from the other more crowded conference rooms.

There were just three of us in the room, Sen. Kennedy, me, and another person that I later learned was his aide and bodyguard.

During the interview I asked him about the concerns his mother, Rose Kennedy, had expressed about him running for president, in light of the fact that two of his brothers, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy, had both been assassinated. Kennedy indicated he respected his mother’s worries over the prospect of him becoming a candidate, but if he made the decision to run he said, “I appreciate my Mom’s concerns, but I am my own man, and if I make the decision to get in the race it’ll be my decision alone.”

Next, I breached another subject, and I did so cautiously knowing that it would likely stir up considerable controversy, but I asked,

“Senator Kennedy, if you decide to run are you prepared for the inevitable questions you will likely get from the world media concerning the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick?”?

At that point Senator Kennedy’s face turned beet red, and without saying a word he glanced in the direction of the other man in the room, who then rushed over to me, grabbed me, and then manhandled me out of the room. During what turned out to be a minor scuffle, I shouted,

“Senator Kennedy, if you can’t handle my questions, how are you going to handle the questions from the major media outlets concerning the death of Ms. Kopechne?”

History later showed that American voters had great concerns over the issue of trust, and therefore chose Jimmy Carter, with whom I also had a private interview prior to his winning the presidency in 1976.

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*Mary Jo Kopechne died on July 19, 1969, just 1 day prior to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's historic moon landing on July 20, 1969, which means that the tragedy at Chappaquiddick was completely overshadowed by the moon landing. Ms. Kopechne had been in a car with Senator Kennedy, and as they left a party involving Kennedy’s campaign staff the car Kennedy was supposedly driving went off a bridge at Chappaquiddick Island near Martha's Vineyard, and Ms. Kopechne died. She was just 28 at the time of her death. That tragedy was surrounded with many questions, such as,?

“How did Kennedy extract himself from the car, either by opening the car’s door, or a window, without completely flooding the car’s interior?” This begs another question, *“Was Kennedy actually in the car when it went off the bridge?” The scuba diver, along with the coroner, confirmed that Mary Jo Kopechne did not drown, but actually suffocated. According to both the coroner and the diver, there was a pocket of breathable air in the car, air that could have sustained her for at least two or three hours.

It is believed, and was also referenced in the movie "Chappaquiddick" (2018), that Kennedy may have sat on the edge of the bridge for hours, possibly sobering up and wondering what the events of that day would do to his political career. Meanwhile, Ms. Kopechne fought for her life inside the partially-submerged Oldsmobile, a car that belonged to the senator’s mother, Rose Kennedy.