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 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.”
