Every Kennedy family tragedy that’s fueled the idea of a ‘Kennedy curse’

A devout Catholic, Bobby began to question the source of his family’s tragedies, and whether God could give 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 draw parallels between the classic parables and his family’s woes.

“He began to wonder if the Kennedy family had somehow overreached, dared too greatly,” author Evan Thomas wrote in “Robert Kennedy: His Life,” per The Washington Post.

“Athenian drama returns obsessively — as we do, every November 22nd — to the shocking and yet seemingly inevitable spectacle of the fallen king, of power and beauty and privilege violently laid low,” Daniel Mendelsohn wrote in The New Yorker.

He was shot moments after he had won the California Democratic presidential primary. After he was struck, he asked a busboy if everybody else 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 soon after at the age of 42.

It was yet another blow to the Kennedy family, especially since Bobby had been acting as a surrogate father to his late brother John’s two children. He also had 11 of his own children with his wife of 18 years, Ethel Kennedy.

During his televised apology a week after the crash, Ted Kennedy said he had wondered “whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys,” The Washington Post reported.

It marked the first time a member of the Kennedy family openly spoke about the reported “Kennedy curse,” the Herald Tribune reported. But the speech had been crafted by several speechwriters, The New York Times reported, and was arguably more of a PR stunt than a true apology or admission of guilt.

In the speech, he recalled the “scrambled thoughts” that went through his mind after the crash in a speech he gave to the press after the incident. 

“They were reflected in the various inexplicable, inconsistent, and inconclusive things I said and did, including such questions as whether the girl might still be alive somewhere out of that immediate area, whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys, whether there was some justifiable reason for me to doubt what had happened and to delay my report, whether somehow the awful weight of this incredible incident might in some way pass 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.”

Michael, 39, had been tossing around a football with his relatives while skiing. The family had played “ski-football” for generations, The New York Times reported.

Saoirse died of an overdose at the family’s compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, The New York Times reported. She was 22 years old when she died, and had previously written about her struggle with depression, which she called “deep bouts of sadness that felt like a heavy boulder on my chest.”

“Our hearts are shattered by the loss of our beloved Saoirse. Her life was filled with hope, promise, and love,” the family said in an official statement. 

“I’ve looked high and low and cannot find another family since the ancient Greek House of Atreus that has suffered more calamities and misfortunes than the Kennedys,” Klein, the author of “The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America’s First Family for 150 Years,” said, according to The Washington Post.

“The humanity of their story is what keeps us engaged,” Kennedy family biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli told NBC News in 2019. “We peer behind the scenes of their wealthy lifestyle, and we see, for all the advantages they have, tragedy can still happen.”