“There goes Ted’s presidency, right there,” recalled Dun Gifford in a video interview before his death in 2010, remembering when his chartered plane flew over the Dyke Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island on the morning of July 19, 1969, soon after the tragedy. Gifford was a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Edward Moore Kennedy at the time. Even prior to calling the police, Kennedy had called him early that morning to come to nearby Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod. His principal mission was to remove Mary Jo Kopechne’s body from the jurisdiction of Massachusetts legal authorities, as quickly as possible.

Gifford’s remark neatly summarizes the tragedy that took the life of 28-year-old Kopechne, a passenger in Kennedy’s black Oldsmobile when it plunged into the waters of Poucha Pond on Chappaquid­dick Island sometime during the night of July 18-19. Gifford considered Kopechne a friend, but as for so many involved in this sad story, her death was relegated to secondary considerations to how it affected Teddy Kennedy.

It was the year after Kennedy’s brother Robert had been assassinated while running for president in 1968, and Ted was considered the most likely nominee of the Democratic Party to challenge President Nixon in 1972.

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