It’s hard to judge people’s choices without knowing the path the had to travel to get to that point. I’ve made bad choices and I’ve had it easier than most. Not everyone in pain makes perfect decisions. Sometimes they just want the pain to stop. So, yes, I view this young woman’s death as a tragedy.
John-John was licensed, but IIRC didn’t have enough experience on instruments to fly through weather and at night (and the latter was unexpected – he had planned to land before dark, but got stuck in traffic to the airport). He was also getting over an ankle injury, which hampered him on the controls.
I read an opinion once on whether his death was due to recklessness. The author thought it was more in the category of stupid mistakes, “like running a stop sign. Everybody makes stupid mistakes. But it seems like whenever a Kennedy runs a stop sign, there’s an 18-wheeler coming”.
Maybe karma is a real thing?
So three descendants of Joseph and Rose Kennedy have died in aircraft incidents, two were assassinated, two died of a drug overdose, one died of suicide, one died of a heart attack at 51, one died when two days old, and one died in a skiing accident. To figure out if that is surprising, how many descendants did Joseph and Rose Kennedy have, both those still alive and those who are now dead? (I can’t find any complete list of their descendants or even the number of them.) What proportion of Americans die in each of those ways?
Note that two of the aircraft deaths occurred in World War II. A lot of people died in that war. To be assassinated, you have to be a politician or at least a celebrity, and a lot of the family were that. Drug overdoses, suicides, skiing accidents, infant deaths, and heart attacks aren’t that rare. Until we know the total size of the family, we can’t say anything about how common or rare this number of particular deaths are.
one site says Joseph and Rose had 29 grandchildren(JFK Jrs generation), so by the time of the next generation it probably starts to be a fairly large number
According to this website, there have been nine children, 29 grandchildren, and 61 great-grandchildren so far (assuming that it’s up to date and that I counted right). So there are 99 descendants of Joseph and Rose so far (and 101 in the family counting them). Are 11 deaths which are supposed to be tragic that high a number?:
The only reason we hear of those deaths in national news is because they are members of *that *Kennedy family. The same amount of tragedies in a non-celebrity family would not get the attention.
I would say that it’s a high number. I just counted up my great-grandparents’ descendants (they were the same age as Joseph and Rose and their kids were born around the same time as Joe, JFK, Bobby) and came up with at least 130 of us including 5 children, 32 grandchildren, 62 great-grandchildren and so far around 35 great-great grandchildren (maybe more, I don’t know that much about my 2nd cousins’ kids).
6 deaths could be counted as tragic including early deaths from diptheria (age 5), brain tumor (44), breast cancer (42 and 50), thyroid cancer (38) and heart attack (40).
So far there are no fatal accidents, assassinations or causing others’ deaths.
There couldn’t have been any assassinations in your family, gkster, because no one in your family has been a politician, right? I suspect that the Kennedy family members have taken many more airplane flights than anyone in your family, particularly in dangerous wartime conditions. So if we eliminate the two assassinations and the three deaths in aircraft incidents, the 101 members of the Kennedy family have had two drug overdoses, one suicide, one heart attack at 51, one death when two days old, and one death in a skiing accident. In the 136 members of your family, there was a death from diphtheria at 5, one from brain tumor at 44, two from breast cancer at 42 and 50, one from thyroid cancer at 38, and one heart attack at 40. I don’t think that’s hugely different in numbers, although it is in types of death.
It is well-known that the kinds of depression that lead to suicides and drug overdoses are influenced by genetics. What happened in the Kennedy family wa not a “curse” but apparently a genetically inherited tendency towards depression. Perhaps the aircraft deaths can be explained as a genetically inherited tendency towards recklessness. (And let me note that a tendency towards cancer deaths is genetically inherited in other families.) For the other deaths in the Kennedy family, I see them as being a not a Kennedy family “curse” but an American “curse” in the 1960’s. Medgar Evers, John Kennedy, Malcolm X, George Lincoln Rockwell, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and Fred Hampton were politicians or leaders of political groups at that time who were assassinated. There were political trends in the U.S. at that point that explained them, not a family “curse”. The Kennedys just happened to be around at that point:
The whole business of calling such things a “curse” is counterproductive. It’s well-known in genetics that tendencies towards various physical and mental diseases are genetically inherited. Similarly, if things like assassinations happen in large numbers in a particular period in a particular country, it’s because of political trends, not a “curse”. Let’s try to be scientific about analyzing what’s going on.
I was going to go there, but you did it better.