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.
7 Comments
I can think of at least two others that could have been mentioned. One is fairly obvious: Mary Jo Kopechne. The other is columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, whose mysterious death was remarkably similar to Marilyn Monroe’s. Kilgallen was ready to have a book published about the JFK assassination, but after her death, all of her notes, transcripts and rough draft of the book mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again.
Do not want this crap on my phone again
I’m surprised that you didn’t mention the name of Mary Jo Kapechne, (sp)? who drowned in a car
accident driven by Edward Kennedy. Her drowning was mysterious. I’m sure there are more women, whose lives were ruined or adversely affected by this powerful family.
You left off several others. Ted Kennedy while driving after a party he was giving a girl a ride home he crashed his car is a River the girl died and he ran home. Also his wife became an alcoholic.
Joanne
Most of the Kennedy’s are dead. Let them rest in peace. Seems to me you’d be more interested in JFK’S death than his sex life.
You forgot Mary Jo Kopechne, the young lady who drowned on Chappaquiddick island in 1969 while in a car driven by Senator Ted Kennedy that overturned into a pond. The Senator got out alive but he left Mary Jo and didn’t report the accident until the next morning!
You left out my friend Martha Moxley!