Members of the Kennedy family have reached the highest positions in community office, becoming senators, congressmen, and equal the president. Now, the next generation of Kennedys is carrying that bequest forward.
Still, the family has additionally endured profound losses throughout generations. Most recently, Kyle Kennedy, the granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, died at 42 in September.
The family has additionally dealt alongside numerous tragedies, from sickness and assassinations to fatal accidents and addiction. The family’s former of defeat has fueled the long-running notion of a “Kennedy curse.”
Here are the many tragedies that have affected the Kennedy family.
Kennedy patriarch Joe Kennedy Sr. had elevated expectations of his children. Some conspiracists have suggested he was to accuse for what would befall his family.
Joe Kennedy Sr. rosy from fairly humble beginnings to rotate into an ambassador to Britain, and he made millions operating as a financial institution president, marketing liquor, and owning a Hollywood studio, The Atlantic reported.
Conspiracists have maintained that the Kennedy patriarch committed crimes akin bootlegging to create the fortune that eventually supported forthcoming Kennedy endeavors.
The New Yorker reported these crimes were frequently mentioned "in the identical breath" as the tragedies that struck the Kennedys, "assuming that there is a dreary form in the way things happen."
The archetypal Kennedy to awareness the brunt of his ambition was his daughter, Rosemary, delivered in 1918.
She had seizures and tantrums and was intellectually disabled, although her parents worked difficult to keep that a concealed from society.
To evade the suspicion that item was distinct concerning Rosemary, she was presented alongside her sister Kathleen at Buckingham Palace alongside another eligible debutantes, Marie Claire reported.
"To current Rosemary, an intellectually impaired adult, to the monarchy at Buckingham Palace during the debutante period was additional than a bold act," Kate Clifford Larson, the author of "Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter," said, Marie Claire reported.
"A debutante alongside intelligent disabilities would have stirred long-held prejudices concerning passing alongside 'defective' traits to the next generation," she said. "Joe and Rose were resolute to keep the family secret, making certain that Rosemary was treated fair akin all the another eligible young women presented at court that year."
In 1941, Joe Kennedy Sr. organized for his daughter, afterward 23, to have a lobotomy, alongside disastrous consequences.
At the time, the media stated the procedure was "easier than curing a toothache," NPR reported, and was frequently used to "treat" group alongside mental illnesses. However, the lobotomy lone made Rosemary's circumstance worse.
For months afterward, she was unable to stroll or talk, and she was put into an institution and cut off from her family for the next two decades. Rosemary lived at a mental health facility until her death in 2005.
The next tragedy struck the eldest son, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.
Joe Jr. had been groomed for governmental agency his entire life. When he was born, his grandfather, who was afterward the chief executive of Boston, had told the media he would rotate into chairman one day, according to the National Park Service.
Joe Jr. was prosperous the two as an sportsperson and a student, Vanity Fair reported.
When he graduated from elevated school, he was awarded a trophy for the finest pupil in the two "scholarship and sportsmanship," according to Vanity Fair.
Joe Jr. remaining before his elder twelvemonth at Harvard Law to unpaid as a Navy brochure in World War II. He died during a unsuccessful concealed bombing campaign.
According to the National Park Service, Joe Jr. volunteered for the mission, which engaged flying explosives complete enemy territory, detonating them, and parachuting to safety. However, the explosives were accidentally set off early, slaying the two pilots on commission the aircraft.
"His material achievement was so assured and inevitable that his death seems to have cut into the natural command of things," his brother John wrote in a family memorial.
In 1948, another aircraft collision rocked the family whenever Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy died in a aircraft collision in France.
She had been a headstrong child, and her decisions in her affection existence caused a rift in the family — her mother, Rose, disapproved of Kathleen's soon-to-be marriage to a Protestant man, The Atlantic reported.
Months following their wedding in 1944, her hubby was killed in battle, and she began an matter alongside Earl Peter Wentworth Fitzwilliam, a wed man.
Before the brace traveled to Paris to search her father's blessing, People reported that their 10-seat aircraft encountered turbulence and wrecked into the mountains between Paris and Cannes.
Both Kick and Peter, who was piloting the plane, were killed on impact. She was 28 years old. Only her father, Joe Sr., attended her funeral, according to The Atlantic.
After Joe Jr.'s death, Joe Sr. turned his concentration to John F. Kennedy, who told a friend, "Now the burden falls on me."
Joe Sr. helped him commencement his governmental life, using his contacts to call in favors and spending tens of thousands of dollars on his campaign, The Atlantic reported.
He reportedly said, "We're going to market Jack akin soap flakes," per PBS.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy became chairman of the US, and his family became everlastingly regarded as American royalty.
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated during riding in a motorcade in downtown Dallas.
He was fatally attempt on November 22, 1963. President Kennedy was 46 years old.
The so-called "curse" of the Kennedys began to solidify the following week whenever Jackie Kennedy, who was known for shaping her family's depiction and her husband's presidency, welcomed a Life mag newsman to Cape Cod for an exclusive interview.
During the interview, she said, "There volition be awesome presidents again, but there volition never be another Camelot," CBS reported.
"You must think of this small boy, ill so much of the time, study history, study the Knights of the Round Table, study Marlborough," she continued, The Atlantic reported. "For Jack, former was complete of heroes."
It was complete the next few years, as Robert "Bobby" Kennedy grieved for his brother, that he started to see parallels between his family and the ancient Greeks.
A devout Catholic, Bobby began to inquiry the origin of his family's tragedies and whether God could provision him the answer as to why they had all suffered so much grief, The Washington Post reported.
Bobby had studied the ancient Greek tragedies throughout his education, and he began to diagram parallels between the traditional parables and his family's woes.
"He began to amazement if the Kennedy family had somehow overreached, dared too greatly," author Evan Thomas wrote in "Robert Kennedy: His Life," per The Washington Post.
"Athenian perform returns obsessively — as we do, all November 22nd — to the shocking and yet apparently inevitable spectacle of the fallen king, of power and attractiveness and privilege violently laid low," Daniel Mendelsohn wrote in The New Yorker.
In 1964, seven months following his brother was assassinated, tragedy nearly struck the Kennedys again whenever Sen. Ted Kennedy went downward in a aircraft crash.
Two group were killed in the incident, but Kennedy lived, CNN reported. He was remaining seriously injured, though. He bankrupt two ribs and three vertebrae, and his lung collapsed, Boston Magazine reported.
After the incident, Bobby alluded to the Kennedys being unlucky.
"There are additional of us than there is trouble," he told the media following the crash. "The Kennedys average to remain in community life. Good fortune is item you make, and bad fortune is item you endure."
Just four years later, in 1968, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated during campaigning to be president.
He was attempt moments following he had won the California Democratic presidential primary. After he was struck, he asked a busboy if everybody alternatively was unharmed, The Atlantic reported.
The busboy reportedly placed a rosary in his hand and told him that everyone was fine, according to The Atlantic. Robert "Bobby" Kennedy died shortly following at the age of 42.
It was yet another attack to the Kennedy family, particularly since Bobby had been acting as a surrogate begetter to his delayed brother John's two children. He additionally had 11 children alongside his spouse of 18 years, Ethel Kennedy.
In 1969, Ted Kennedy had another near-death cognition whenever he survived driving off a extend on the isle of Chappaquiddick in Massachusetts.
Ted Kennedy, afterward a senator, drove the car off the extend following leaving a cookout gathering at a rented cottage, The Atlantic reported. His passenger, a female named Mary Jo Kopechne, died at the scene.
Ted reportedly tried to preserve Kopechne, but he afterward fled and didn't study the collision for 10 hours. Still trapped inner the car, Kopechne drowned in the water. Ted afterward pleaded blameworthy to leaving the environment and was sentenced to a two-month suspended jail sentence, the BBC reported.
Ted remained a legislator following the disagreement but misplaced his chance to run for president.
After the crash, Ted Kennedy publically referenced the idea of a family curse for the archetypal time.
During his televised apology a week following the crash, Ted Kennedy stated he had wondered "whether several awful curse did really suspend complete all the Kennedys," The Washington Post reported.
It marked the archetypal period a associate of the Kennedy family openly said concerning the reported "Kennedy curse," the Herald Tribune reported. But the address had been crafted by multiple speechwriters, The New York Times reported, and was arguably additional of a PR stunt than a true apology or admission of guilt.
In the speech, he recalled the "scrambled thoughts" that went through his intellect following the crash, which he gave to the press.
"They were reflected in the assorted inexplicable, inconsistent, and inconclusive things I stated and did, including specified questions as whether the female power motionless be living location out of that contiguous area, whether several awful curse did really suspend complete all the Kennedys, whether there was several justifiable logic for me to doubt what had happened and to postpone my report, whether somehow the awful importance of this amazing event power in several way continue from my shoulders," he said.
"I was overcome, I'm frank to say, by a jumble of emotions: grief, fear, doubt, exhaustion, panic, confusion, and shock."
In 1984, Bobby Kennedy's son, David Kennedy, died of an overdose in a inn in Florida.
David had struggled alongside addiction for years following his father's assassination in 1968.
The New York Times reported that David was perchance traumatized following observing his father's assassination on TV whenever he was 13 years old. He was lone 28 years old whenever he was established deceased in his Los Angeles inn room.
Cocaine, painkillers, and a medication medication used to treat multiple distinct psychotic disorders were established in his system, the Times reported, although there was no decision of whether it was an unintended overdose.
"He was delicate and gentle, which was attractive," his ex-girlfriend Rachel Ward afterward wrote of David in The Sydney Morning Herald in 2014. "David was extremely young whenever his father, Robert F. Kennedy, died, and it had an enormous effect on him. He had a medication addiction and was a troubled soul. He didn't have the arrogance of the another Kennedys since he was misplaced and struggling. But in the end, he couldn't get himself together and went under."
In 1997, Michael Kennedy, another of Robert Kennedy's sons, died in a skiing accident in Colorado.
Michael, 39, had been tossing about a football alongside his relatives during skiing.
The family had played "ski-football" for generations, The New York Times reported, and Kennedy was skiing during playing football on ski equipment alongside relatives and allies whenever he struck a tree; he was not wearing a helmet.
In another community tragedy, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, and her sister died in a 1999 aircraft collision near Martha's Vineyard.
On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his spouse Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her older sister Lauren Bessette were killed in a aircraft crash off the shoreline of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.
The collection was dropping off Bessette on the isle before Kennedy and Bessette-Kennedy planned to journey on to Hyannis to act his cousin's wedding.
However, following encountering hazy conditions off the shoreline of Martha's Vineyard, Kennedy, the plane's pilot, wrecked the aircraft into the ocean, slaying everyone on board.
As Coast Guard officials searched for the missing bodies, the community surge of sorrow grew complete the tragedy of the three young passengers' deaths.
Twenty years later, in 2019, tragedy struck the next generation of Kennedys whenever Saoirse Kennedy Hill, Robert's granddaughter, died from an unintended overdose.
Saoirse died of an overdose at the family's compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, The New York Times reported. She was 22 years old whenever she died, and had earlier written concerning her battle alongside depression, which she called "deep bouts of sadness that felt akin a dense boulder on my chest."
"Our hearts are shattered by the defeat of our cherished Saoirse. Her existence was filled alongside hope, promise, and love," the family stated in an authoritative statement.
In 2020, another of Robert's granddaughters, Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, and her 8-year-old son, Gideon, died in a canoe accident.
The mother and son went missing in a canoe during searching for a domain that had drifted out into the Chesapeake Bay. Both of their bodies were afterward established by divers, The New York Times reported.
Tatiana Schlossberg, the eldest kid of Caroline Kennedy, died in December 2025.
In a November 2025 composition for The New Yorker, Schlossberg revealed that she had been diagnosed alongside terminal acute myeloid leukemia. Doctors discovered the malignancy shortly following she gave commencement to her female in May 2024.
In the essay, Schlossberg reflected on the ache her assessment caused her family, penning that she had spent her existence trying to defend her mother before facing a tragedy she could not prevent.
Schlossberg and her husband, George Moran, had two children: their daughter, Josephine Moran, delivered in May 2024, and their son, Edwin Garrett Moran, delivered in April 2022. He is the archetypal great-grandchild of John F. Kennedy.
The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation announced that Schlossberg died on December 30. She was 35.
Kyle Kennedy, the granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., died at the age of 42.
Kyle Francis Kennedy, the granddaughter of Robert and Ethel, and female of Michael Kennedy (who died in a 1997 skiing accident), died on September 21 at her residence in Westwood, Massachusetts.
She spent much of her occupation in education, advocating for additional equitable basic education.
Though her logic of death has not been publically disclosed as of October 21, she struggled alongside health issues complete the former few years, including a serious spinal cord hurt that remaining her alongside long-term paralysis and another grave health challenges, according to Kennedy's obituary.
After her injury, Kennedy continued her assistance activity by testifying before the Massachusetts State House concerning bias in healthcare against impaired individuals.
She is survived by her erstwhile husband, Liam Kerr, and their two sons, Conor, 12, and Declan, 10. Their daughter, Josephine, was a twin to Conor and died fair days following she was delivered in 2014.
Even if several otherworldly power akin a curse isn't at play, it's undeniable that the Kennedy family has suffered a lengthy cord of tragedies and heartbreak.
In 2018, Edward Klein, who wrote a publish concerning the Kennedy curse, defended his assertion concerning the misfortune the Kennedy family experienced.
"I've looked elevated and low and cannot discover another family since the ancient Greek House of Atreus that has suffered additional calamities and misfortunes than the Kennedys," Klein, the author of "The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America's First Family for 150 Years," told The Washington Post.
"The humanity of their narrative is what keeps us engaged," Kennedy family biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli told NBC News in 2019. "We equal rearward the scenes of their affluent lifestyle, and we see, for all the advantages they have, tragedy can motionless happen."
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James Pasley is a freelance news newsman for Business Insider based in New York.
Erin McDowell is a elder newsman on Business Insider's editorial partnerships team. She covers food, lifestyle, and amusement for Business Insider and its partner sites, including MSN, Apple News, and Yahoo.She graduated from Elon University in January 2019, anywhere she studied strategic communications and digital art. She has written for V Magazine, Milk.XYZ, OUT.com, Brides Magazine, and more. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
