Michael LeMoyne Kennedy’s Tragic Ski Accident
George Silk/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty ImagesMichael Kennedy (top right) with his father and siblings in 1964.
Robert Kennedy’s children were the embodiment of the romanticized image of the Kennedy clan — and they were just as susceptible to the Kennedy curse.
Born in 1958 as the sixth of eleven children to Robert and his wife Ethel, Michael Kennedy led a charmed childhood until he was ten years old when his father was wrenched away from him by Sirhan Sirhan’s bullet.
Choosing to follow in his father’s footsteps, he attended Harvard — as per Kennedy tradition — before earning a law degree at the University of Virginia. After graduating, he chose to focus on his legal career rather than politics, but was nonetheless active in local charitable work and advocated for gun control.
Brooks Kraft LLC/Sygma via Getty ImagesMichael Kennedy celebrating his brother Teddy’s (left) reelection to the Senate. Future Secretary of State John Kerry stands behind the woman in the red dress.
Michael also embodied another famous Kennedy trait: his love of reckless fun. In December 1997, he was vacationing with friends and family in Aspen, Colorado, where his father had begun taking the family in 1962.
Reportedly an accomplished skier, Kennedy was using a water bottle packed in snow as a makeshift football during an impromptu game on the slopes. It was after four in the afternoon, when the snow turned icy — and Michael wasn’t wearing a helmet, despite warnings from staff.
Rushing to catch the improvised ball, he lost control of one ski and careened headfirst into a tree, suffering severe injuries. Two hours later, Michael LeMoyne Kennedy was pronounced dead at Aspen Valley Hospital at the age of 39. His funeral was held at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, on January 3, 1998.
As one commentator put it, his death was the latest in a family already “defined almost as much by suffering and scandal as by its accomplishments.”
John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Shocking Plane Crash
Getty ImagesJohn F. Kennedy Jr. salutes the casket of his father, the late President John F. Kennedy, on his third birthday.
From an early age, John F. Kennedy Jr. was all too familiar with the family deaths associated with the Kennedy curse. In one of the most infamous early images of him, three-year-old John, dressed in an old-fashioned smock, salutes his father’s coffin as he stands with his mother, sister, and uncle Robert in late 1963.
His mother resolved to protect her children from prying eyes as best she could, taking them to live in Greece when she married shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968. Despite the tight seal of privacy placed around him and his sister Caroline by their mother, John was frequently sought out by the media even while at school.
John’s interests never seemed to settle in any one field. While studying at Brown University, he became involved in contemporary liberal politics and dabbled in acting, and later developed an interest in flying, taking lessons on piloting light aircraft.
Stephen Rose/Getty ImagesOnce proclaimed the “Sexiest Man Alive” by People Magazine, John F. Kennedy, Jr., seen here with his wife Carolyn, struggled to define himself apart from his father’s legacy.
The younger Kennedy replicated his father’s playboy lifestyle, pursuing relationships with celebrities like Cindy Crawford, Darryl Hannah, Brooke Shields, and Sarah Jessica Parker before marrying Carolyn Bessette, a rising executive for Calvin Klein.
Their marriage was highly publicized, which may have been a factor in the disputes they soon had with one another before attending marriage counseling.
With their marriage patched up, Kennedy decided to take his wife and her sister Lauren along with him while flying to a family wedding in Barnstable, Massachusetts on the night of July 16, 1999. John was only qualified to fly under daylight conditions and soon lost his way without the advantage of landmarks.
John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane crashed into the Atlantic off the coast of New Jersey, killing himself and his two passengers instantly. At 38, he was only eight years younger than his father had been at the time of his assassination — and the next in a long line of Kennedy deaths.
