Pamela Kelley
The summer of 1973 completely changed the life of Pam Kelley. She was a free-spirited 18-year-old living in Massachusetts who loved swimming, animals, and her boyfriend, David Kennedy, the 4th son of Robert and Ethel.
On August 13th, the young couple went on a trip to the beach near Nantucket accompanied by Pam’s sister, a couple of friends, and Joseph Kennedy II, David’s older brother.
On their way home, their jeep, driven by 20-year-old Joe, swerved and flipped over, throwing out all of the passengers… and smashing Pam’s life in the process.
Due to the accident, she was paralyzed from the chest down and would never walk again. Doctors warned her then that she would never have children and wouldn’t survive past the age of 40.
Thankfully, though, they were wrong. She passed away on November 20th at 65, after a life of challenges and delights, addiction and recovery, not to mention resilience.
Ever since that crash all those years ago, a life tangled together with one of the country’s most prominent political families. Pamela’s final years were especially hard.
She had been in a Cape Cod nursing home after an infected bedsore caused such severe pain that she couldn’t sit in her wheelchair anymore.
Isolated in a facility during the coronavirus pandemic, Pam died lonely and depressed, according to her family. According to her sister, her cause of death is still unknown.
And what her family grapples with still is what the Kennedys could have done, yet did not, for Pam until her death.
