I could never get past Edward “Ted” Kennedy and the Chappaquiddick Island incident where Mary Jo Kopechne was left for dead in a car in the salt water.

In July of 1969 I was a 13-year-old girl who had just moved to the coast of Massachusetts, where Kennedy was the Senator. His actions of that evening together with what I comprehended as his lack of a conscience chilled me to the bone. I wondered about it for years and was often disgusted when I heard his name.

That was before I entered the long arduous struggle of adulthood with all its difficult circumstances and choices. That was before I understood much about my own human failings. That was before I really understood forgiveness...

CATEGORY: General Society

TAGS: Ted Kennedy,Chappaquiddick Island incident where Mary Jo Kopechne,dead in a car,Massachusetts,contrition,Ellen Leahy

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I placed a colander of freshly washed cherries on the picnic table.

“Mom brought me cherries every day when I was in the hospital,” my youngest brother Steve said, “and she read to me from The Wind and the Willows.”

“Really?” I said, “I never knew that.”

Steve had accidentally lit himself on fire, when he was about six years old. He had been playing with those old-fashioned white tip kitchen matches back in the 1960s before the fire department’s dynamic program Stop, Drop and Roll.

My oldest brother Bill and I were playing catch in the backyard, when we heard Steve screaming. I assumed one of my other brothers was chasing him, until he came to our second story bedroom window...

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