Mary Jo Kopechne

Career Kopechne was inspired by President John F. Kennedy's inaugural command "Ask what you can do for your country". She also taught business classes in typing and shorthand at Montgomery Catholic High School, and was an advisor to the school newspaper. She enthusiastically played on the Kennedy office softball team, playing catcher.

During the 1968 U.S. presidential election, Kopechne helped with the wording of Kennedy's March speech that announced his presidential candidacy. During his campaign, she worked as one of the Boiler Room Girls, the affectionate nickname given to six young women whose office area was in a hot, loud, windowless location in Kennedy's Washington campaign headquarters. They were vital in tracking and compiling data and intelligence on how Democratic delegates from various states were intending to vote; Kopechne's responsibilities included Pennsylvania. a Washington, D.C., firm that helped establish campaign headquarters and field offices for politicians, and was one of the first political consulting companies. In the fall elections of 1968, Kopechne did work on the re-election campaign of Senator Joseph S. Clark, Jr. (D-PA), who eventually lost. one of the political professionals who worked with her in Jersey City characterized her as "an exceptionally hard-working and skillful professional who knew her craft".

Kopechne lived with three other women in the Washington neighborhood of Georgetown. Robert's surviving brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, was there. off a narrow, unlit bridge, which lacked guardrails and was not on the route to Edgartown. The service was attended by Kennedy, his wife Joan, his sister-in-law Ethel, and hundreds of onlookers. in the parish cemetery on the side of Larksville Mountain. Massachusetts officials pressed for weeks to have Kopechne's body exhumed for an autopsy, but in December 1969, a Pennsylvania judge sided with the parents' request not to disturb her burial site. The quality of the investigation has been scrutinized, particularly whether official deference was given to a powerful and influential politician and his family. Kennedy would eventually overcome this and some lesser personal scandals to have a very long career as a Senator and to achieve a lengthy list of major legislative accomplishments. But the disparity of the outcomes remained; Kennedy biographer Peter Canellos has written of the aftermath: "Every day that he lived was one that Kopechne – a talented woman with political interests of her own – would not. It seemed cosmically unfair that he should have a second act when she couldn't even complete her first."

Kopechne's parents received a $141,000 settlement from Kennedy's insurance company.

Legacy In 2015, two cousins of Kopechne's in Pennsylvania self-published the book Our Mary Jo, which sought to emphasize the influence of her life, rather than discuss Kennedy or Chappaquiddick. It also includes some of the hundreds of condolence letters that Kopechne's parents received. Because Kopechne had been a strong believer in education and was deeply Catholic, family members started a scholarship fund in Kopechne's name at nearby Misericordia University.

A full biography, Before Chappaquiddick: The Untold Story of Mary Jo Kopechne (2020), was written by William C. Kashatus and published by Potomac Books. Kashatus has said that he spent more than a decade researching the work, inspired by Kopechne as an exemplar of the culture of the Wyoming Valley area, "where the people have a strong work ethic, very strongly Catholic at that period of time, and they raised their kids to respect themselves, respect other people, and work hard. And she really represented that to me."