Bearing Teddy: the lady in the shadows

Joan Kennedy saw former husband Ted through his many political and personal crises, while battling alcoholism and illness in a turbulent life of her own, writes Claire O'Mahony

Joan Kennedy was low-key at Ted Kennedy's funeral last Saturday.

Ted and Joan Kennedy's wedding day in November 1958

Casualty of Camelot: Edward (front row, right) with the rest of the Kennedy clan, including Joan (back row, second from right) at the height of the family's power and fame in the early 1960s

Kara Kennedy Allen

Ted Kennedy Jr with his wife Kiki Gershman

When President Obama delivered his elegant eulogy at Edward Kennedy's funeral in Boston last Saturday, he spoke movingly of Kennedy's widow, who had been his redeemer and the love of his life. "As Ted would often acknowledge, Vicki saved him. She gave him strength and purpose, joy and friendship, and she stood by him always." It was a fitting acknowledgement for the grieving widow who is widely credited with straightening out the late senator both professionally and personally. But Vicki Reggie was not the only woman in Boston basilica who had loved and married Ted Kennedy.

Present also was Joan Bennett Kennedy, married to Ted for 24 years and with whom she had three children and suffered three miscarriages. She had been at his side when his two brothers were assassinated. She had also stood by him throughout the Chappaquiddick scandal and offered her support during his disastrous bid to win the presidential nomination in 1980. While she had always maintained a dignified silence in the face of allegations about her husband's drinking and womanising, she was often a less than dignified figure herself, as her own alcohol addiction led to drink-driving charges, rehab and even, on one occasion, a humiliating fall in the street – and all played out under the media's scrutiny.

If Joan Kennedy was relegated to a footnote in Ted's history last weekend, it was not necessarily a reflection of their relationship at the time of his death. "They had an ongoing friendship," said an unidentified family member. "There are all sorts of emotions." According to her sister Candace McMurrey, Joan didn't want to intrude but appreciated being included. But as the frail-looking 72-year-old stayed quietly at the funeral's sidelines, it was impossible not to remember yet hard to reconcile her with the vibrant, young and beautiful Kennedy wife she once was, before tragedy, great personal pain and the pressures of marrying into America's greatest political dynasty would take its toll.

Virginia Joan Bennett was born in New York on 9 September, 1936. Her future problems with alcohol had some genetic origins: her adoring parents Henry Wiggin Bennett Jr and Virginia Joan Stead Bennett were successful professionals – and also alcoholics. At Manhattanville College, in New York state, she met her future sisters-in-law, Jean Kennedy and Ethel Skakel, who would marry Bobby. Musically talented (she was a pianist of concert quality) and reserved, she was also blonde and leggy (her brother-in-law, JFK, referred to her as 'the dish'), and did occasional TV ads for Revlon and Coca-Cola.

Ted Kennedy was a young law student when he first met Joan in 1957. They were introduced by his sister at the dedication on campus of a gymnasium in memory of another sister, Kathleen, who had died in a plane crash in 1948. After a year's courtship, they were married and a first daughter, Kara, was born in 1960. A son, Edward, was born the following year, but in 1964 Joan and Ted had a stillborn baby boy who was buried in the family plot at Holyhood cemetery in Brookline.

That was also the year that Ted barely survived a terrible plane crash while campaigning for his first full term in the US senate. Joan took on the full campaign-appearance schedule for his successful reelection. Another son, Patrick, was born in 1967 and while there was no outward appearance of disharmony between the handsome politician and his beautiful wife, all was not rosy in Camelot.

"My personality was more shy and retiring," Joan wrote in her 1985 biography, Living with the Kennedys. "And so rather than get mad or ask questions concerning the rumours about Ted and his girlfriends, or really stand up for myself at all, it was easier for me to just go and have a few drinks and calm myself down as if I weren't really hurt or angry."

In 1969 the Chappaquiddick tragedy occurred, an event which scuppered Ted's chances of becoming president, sent Joan into a downward spiral and still leaves more questions than answers some 40 years later. Late on a hot July night in 1969, Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge on the island of Chappaquiddick, Martha's Vineyard. His passenger, a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned while Kennedy swam to shore. Ten hours later he walked into Edgartown's police station and confessed that he was the driver of the black Oldsmobile that had already been discovered upside down, with Kopechne's corpse inside. Kennedy never deviated from his story that he had been giving an unwell Kopechne a lift home when he took a wrong turn in the darkness and veered off the unmarked bridge. The strong current, combined with a blow to his head, had hindered his abilities to either rescue Kopechne or report the incident immediately, actions he described as "indefensible". His doubters, pointing to his well-known drinking and womanising, and his knowledge of the area, found holes in his story and he was given a two-month suspended sentence for fleeing the scene, costing him his chance at high office. Joan stood by her man, attending Mary Jo Kopechne's funeral with him, but would lose the baby she was carrying some weeks later.

If her alcohol consumption had been problematic before, the Chappaquiddick incident pushed her over the edge. "For a few months, everyone had to put on this show, and then I just didn't care anymore. I just saw no future. That's when I truly became an alcoholic," she told Laurence Leamer, author of The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family.

There were future trials to overcome. Edward Jr developed bone cancer that would lead to the amputation of his leg in 1973. (Kara was stricken with lung cancer at a relatively young age and is in remission.) Joan's drinking escalated but her private unravelling only became public fodder in 1974 when she was arrested for drink driving in Virginia, resulting in her losing her licence for six months. The marriage limped on, but in 1978 the couple separated and Joan went on record about her alcoholism in magazine interviews. When Kennedy ran for president in 1980, she still campaigned for him, even though they had been living apart for two years. The divorce in 1982 was at her request, according to Edward Klein, author of Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died. "It was a real effort on her part to establish herself as an independent women who would no longer be an extension of Ted's life. She tried very, very hard," he told a magazine.

Drink continued to dictate her life however. In 1988, she crashed her car into a fence on Cape Cod and was ordered to attend an alcohol education programme, and in 1991 she was arrested after witnesses saw her drinking vodka from the bottle on an expressway. There were regular stints in drying-out clinics, but in 2000 she declared she had been sober for nine years. "It's such a relief to be free," she said in an interview that year, and indeed it appeared that the former Mrs Kennedy had taken control of her life, writing a family guide to classical music and getting involved with numerous charities, as well as supporting the arts.

But she had spoken prematurely because in autumn 2000 she was arrested for drink-driving for the fourth time. The final, humiliating misadventure, in 2005, which led to her family's intervention, was when she was found by a passerby on a sidewalk, drunk, with concussion and a broken shoulder. She had been skipping AA meetings, drinking in secret, and consuming mouthwash and vanilla extract – in the absence of booze – in enough quantities to seriously damage her kidneys. A day later Patrick declared that he would not be pursuing his dream to follow his father into the senate and the three siblings launched a court case to take control of their mother's life.

As well as Joan's alcoholism, there was also the issue of Webster E Janssen, a second cousin on her mother's side, who assumed control of her $9m estate, set up two trusts of which he was sole trustee and put her Hyannis Port house on the market. Joan's children were eventually successful in court and Janssen was removed as trustee. The outcome was that two court-appointed trustees were put in place to oversee her money and she was ordered to stay sober. If she did not, her children would be granted permanent custody of her. She was not happy about aspects of the provisions but her relationship with her children improved subsequently. That year was Joan's annus horribilis – in October 2005 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, from which she recovered following surgery and radiation treatment.

Today Joan Kennedy remains sober and appears in relatively good health. She still summers at Hyannis Port, where she tries to stay out of the public eye. As an unrecognised, almost invisible, figure last weekend in Boston basilica, it is difficult not to feel sympathy for this woman who, in the great tradition of Kennedy women, stood by her man in his darkest hours and whose life was also tragically marked by the Kennedy curse.

The Kennedy clan: Edward's children

Despite the presence of four US presidents at Ted Kennedy's funeral, as well as celebrities like Lauren Bacall and Jack Nicholson, all eyes were on his grieving widow and his children – the sons who spoke so eloquently; the two stepchildren that he adored. Kennedy was survived by five children in total. Kara Kennedy Allen (49), who is married with two children, works for Very Special Arts, a creative counterpart to Special Olympics. She, like her brother Edward Jr, has battled cancer, after being diagnosed with lung cancer in 2003. She is currently in remission. Ted Kennedy Jr (48) is an investment banker and lawyer. At the age of 12, he was diagnosed with bone cancer, which led to the amputation of his right leg. Married to Kiki Gershman, clinical professor of psychiatry at the Yale school of medicine, they have a daughter Kiley (15) and a son Edward (11). Patrick Joseph Kennedy II (42) serves in the United States House of Representatives. The youngest member of the Kennedy family to hold elected office, he struggles with drug and alcohol abuse, prescription-drug addiction and bi-polar disorder. Kennedy checked into a medical facility for treatment in June of this year, stating to the press that his recovery was "a lifelong process". Vicki Reggie's two children from her former marriage, Curran (27) and Caroline Raclin (24), who supported her at the funeral, were extremely close to their stepfather.

September 6, 2009