quote:

Originally posted by TigerDore:
The sins of the father...

Ah, yes. To have been a bootlegger during the Prohibition. Or, as the end of prohibition loomed (in 1933), to have invested heavily in Scottish distilleries. Timber, coal, iron, it seemed money was ripe for plucking off the trees back in the days.

Bingo card, K, F, T comes up again ... The worst may have been J.J. running his twin engine airplane into the ocean.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
They think the laws don't apply to them and they're right about all but one.
The laws of physics.

I agree, but this isn't a question of laws; it's a question of common sense. Not only is a ball not worth endangering oneself and child over, but rough water without even having a lifejacket on, much less in the boat is utter foolishness. It does prove that no matter how rich, famous, or influential someone is, at the end of the day they will end up just as dead as the most uneducated, ignorant moron. The real victim is the child that counts on "adults" to watch over them.

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:


...The worst may have been J.J. running his twin engine airplane into the ocean.

It was a single engine Piper Saratoga, his MANY mistakes are explained here:

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-...mistakes-jfk-jr-made

There was a MASSIVE search for the wreckage, even the Navy got involved.

quote:

Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean

They were weighted down by their name.

quote:

Originally posted by gearhounds:

I agree, but this isn't a question of laws; it's a question of common sense. Not only is a ball not worth endangering oneself and child over, but rough water without even having a lifejacket on, much less in the boat is utter foolishness...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...ng-winds-cold-water/

A mortal threat to mariners’: Kennedy canoe incident highlights danger of small boats, strong winds and cold water

By Jason Samenow
April 4 at 11:31 AM

The tragic situation involving two members of the Kennedy family, who disappeared in a canoe late Thursday afternoon on the Chesapeake Bay, illustrates how serious strong winds and cold water are for boaters in the spring.

As reported Friday evening, the extensive search for Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, 40, and her 8-year-old son Gideon, “turned from rescue to recovery.” The pair had set out in a canoe in Shady Side on Thursday afternoon, about 15 miles south of Annapolis, to retrieve a lost ball.

A family spokesman said neither of the McKeans were wearing live jackets. The spokesman emphasized they got in the canoe thinking it would take just a minute to get the ball. The canoe was in a protected cove with calm water, but still got swept out with the wind and strong undertow.

At 4 p.m. Thursday, around the time the McKeans were on the water, Annapolis reported sustained winds at 22 mph with gusts to 36 mph. Waves on the water were reportedly two to three feet high.

Such conditions pose a particular, and occasionally unrecognized, threat to boaters.

An article on “coping with wind” at paddle.com states that if large waves run up against the front or bow of a canoe, they can break over and swamp the vessel. Or, if crosswinds slam waves up against a canoe’s side, the boat can take on water “very quickly.”

The canoe and a paddle were recovered Thursday night near Deale, Md., about six miles south of Shady Side, according to the Coast Guard.

Thursday’s winds were generated by a massive ocean storm east of New England which had unleashed gusts up to 70 mph in the North Carolina Outer Banks on Wednesday and to around 55 mph in eastern New England on Friday.

The National Weather Service had issued a small craft advisory for both the Chesapeake Bay and Tidal Potomac starting Wednesday morning and continuing through Friday for winds up to 30 knots (35 mph) and “hazardous” conditions.

“Inexperienced mariners, especially those operating smaller vessels, should avoid navigating in hazardous conditions,” the advisory stated.

(link has Weather Service chart warning of hazardous conditions)

But the winds were not the only hazard the McKeans faced. Following the winter months, water temperatures are slow to warm. A buoy near Annapolis reports recent water temperatures around 51 degrees.

University of Minnesota’s online resource on hypothermia says exhaustion or unconsciousness can occur in one to two hours in water temperatures between 50 and 60 degrees. The expected time of survival is less than 6 hours.

“Boating on cold water is inherently very dangerous for the unprepared,” states a boating safety website from the National Weather Service serving the Washington/Baltimore region.

The website explains: “Due to the water being very cold in spring, hypothermia is a mortal threat to mariners. This serious condition can occur when boaters are sent into very cold waters due to a capsized boat that was overturned by a sudden change in weather conditions.”

To avoid this peril, the Weather Service recommends:

Knowing the forecast before venturing out on the water and having a way to receive updates
Carrying a life jacket for every passenger
Watching for signs of changing weather such as increasing clouds and winds, thunder, or sudden drops in temperature
Heading to shore immediately if conditions deteriorate and/or special marine or other storm warnings are issued.
The combination of conditions on Thursday has turned deadly in the Washington region in recent years.

Three weather-related boating accidents resulted in four deaths in Maryland waters in the spring of 2018. None of the victims were wearing life jackets.

Three fisherman died in a wind-related accident on the Tidal Potomac in late November 2016.

Most notably, on March 6, 2004, five people died when a sudden blast of wind capsized a water taxi into 44-degree water in the Baltimore Harbor.

Because of threat posed by winds to mariners, the National Weather Service has developed a proposal to rename small craft advisories “small craft warnings.” It is currently seeking public comment on this proposed changed through an online survey.


Peter Hermann contributed to reporting.

There Kennedy’s, I’m surprised they didn’t call the Navy to get their ball.

quote:

he worst may have been J.J. running his twin engine airplane into the ocean.

As staed earlier, it was a Piper Saratoga recently purchased. If he had stayed with the earlier Cessna 182, the accident might not have happened. Getting into the hi performance aircraft with not a lot of hours and not IFR certified was a fetal mistake.

I flew out that way many times years ago and it's not that difficult a flight...in good conditions.

He based his aircraft at Caldwell where I flew out of in those days. Never met him but anyone that did always said he was a great guy devoid of any attitude.

That family is full of poor choices and have been living off grandpa Joe’s fortune for almost a century...of course putting someone in the White House didn’t hurt either.

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:

quote:

Originally posted by TigerDore:
The sins of the father...

Ah, yes. To have been a bootlegger during the Prohibition. Or, as the end of prohibition loomed (in 1933), to have invested heavily in Scottish distilleries. Timber, coal, iron, it seemed money was ripe for plucking off the trees back in the days.

Bingo card, K, F, T comes up again ... The worst may have been J.J. running his twin engine airplane into the ocean.

Also, stock manipulation, spinning, money laundering, etc. Joe Kennedy was a consummate con-man, and one of the more significant villains in US history.

I wish they’d stay the frack out of politics & the trying to save world routine.. so tired of the Kennedys & their bs..

quote:

Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean

I love that 4 generations down they still can't let go of the 'name'.

"Oh, I'm a Kennedy..."

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:

quote:

Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean

They were weighted down by their name.

damn.

a double entendre, even.

quote:

Originally posted by CQB60:
I wish they’d stay the frack out of politics & the trying to save world routine.. so tired of the Kennedys & their bs..

The universe is too, it seems.

Especially terrible about the kid, any kid.

quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:

quote:

Originally posted by CQB60:
I wish they’d stay the frack out of politics & the trying to save world routine.. so tired of the Kennedys & their bs..

The universe is too, it seems.

Especially terrible about the kid, any kid.

Definitely terrible about the boy. Poor choices led to the sad and unnecessary fatalities for both. Any relative of that family should NOT be the throwing caution to the wind type.

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:

quote:

Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean

I love that 4 generations down they still can't let go of the 'name'.

"Oh, I'm a Kennedy..."

Well we don't have titles here, so how else are us little people supposed to know they're our betters if they don't keep reminding us with their name?

I'm not familiar with recovery procedures. If Josephine Schmucatelli and child were missing would they get the same level of effort?

"Authorities from the Maryland Natural Resources Police, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Anne Arundel County Fire Department began their search Thursday using boats and helicopter crews. By Friday night, searchers had covered 2,275 square miles of water.

The Natural Resources Police said on Saturday that they were back out on the Chesapeake Bay using side-scan sonar and were being assisted by helicopters from Anne Arundel County and state police. A spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Police confirmed the mission is now deemed a “recovery effort.”


Complete article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...b593300d0_story.html

Kennedy mother and son, swept away in Chesapeake Bay, are mourned by family

By Peter Hermann
April 4, 2020 at 11:25 a.m. CDT

David McKean knows the chances are “impossibly small” that his wife and 8-year-old son — both members of the Kennedy family — are still alive after disappearing in the Chesapeake Bay two days ago.

Even as authorities continued to search for Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, 40, and son Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean, David McKean acknowledged it was a recovery mission in a moving tribute to them on Facebook on Saturday.

“It is clear that Maeve and Gideon have passed away,” wrote McKean, in a post confirmed as authentic by a close friend of the family. “The search for their recovery will continue, and I hope that will be successful.”

Maeve and Gideon have been missing since Thursday afternoon, when they climbed into a canoe to retrieve a lost ball from a waterfront home south of Annapolis.

The family had temporarily moved out of their house on Capitol Hill in Washington, McKean said, and into the Shady Side, Md., home of Maeve’s mother, former Maryland lieutenant governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. There was more room for them there while isolating for the coronavirus outbreak.

McKean said his wife and son, who attended Watkins Elementary School in the District, were playing kickball behind the house near a shallow cove, described as protected from the Greater Chesapeake “with much calmer wind and water.”

One of them kicked the ball into the water, and Maeve and Gideon climbed into a canoe “intending simply to retrieve the ball, and somehow got pushed by wind or tide into the open bay,” McKean said.

A close friend who spoke on behalf of the family, Alan H.H. Fleischmann, Maeve’s godfather, said neither was wearing a life jacket, anticipating they would be in the canoe only a minute or two. Maeve apparently underestimated the wind, gusting about 30 mph, and the strong undertow that sucked the canoe into the bay and into two- to three-foot-high waves, Fleischmann said.

Someone called police around 4:30 p.m. on Thursday to say he saw the canoe from the Columbia Beach pier. The Coast Guard said mother and son were “seen struggling to return to shore in a canoe” near Herring Bay and then not seen again.

McKean said the canoe was found Friday evening, miles away and capsized.

Authorities from the Maryland Natural Resources Police, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Anne Arundel County Fire Department began their search Thursday using boats and helicopter crews. By Friday night, searchers had covered 2,275 square miles of water.

The Natural Resources Police said on Saturday that they were back out on the Chesapeake Bay using side-scan sonar and were being assisted by helicopters from Anne Arundel County and state police. A spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Police confirmed the mission is now deemed a “recovery effort.”

The apparent deaths have sent another shock wave through a family likened to Great Britain’s royalty and one that has been beset by tragedy.

Maeve McKean was a granddaughter of the late senator Robert F. Kennedy and grandniece of former president John F. Kennedy.

Her mother, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, was a teenager when her father, Bobby Kennedy, was assassinated, and she has now lost a daughter and grandson. The McKeans have two other children, 7-year-old Gabriella and 2-year-old Toby.

In a statement, Townsend described Gideon as a star athlete “who loved soccer, golf, and running,” and who “took after his parents in the most extraordinary ways. He loved riddles, math, chess, and adventures.”

Though he was 8 years old, his father said, he “may as well have been 38.” In his Facebook post, McKean described his son as “deeply compassionate, declining to sing children’s songs if they contained a hint of animals or people being treated cruelly.”

Gideon, he said, “hated if I accidentally let a bad word slip,” and spent hours in his room reading “and trying to decipher the mysteries of the stock market.”

In his school picture, Gideon insisted as many friends as possible join him in the shot. He played sports six days a week and complained when his father hadn’t signed him up to play on the seventh. Gideon was named after a Supreme Court case ordering states to pay for defense attorneys for the poor.

“It is impossible to sum up Gideon here,” wrote his father, a human rights attorney. “I am heartbroken to even have to try. I used to marvel at him as a toddler and worry that he was too perfect to exist in this world. It seems to me now that he was.”

Maeve McKean was the executive director of the Georgetown University Global Health Initiative and was president of the Parent Teacher Association at the Capitol Hill Cluster School. Her mother said she had a “fire emanating from her soul.”

She graduated from Boston College and Georgetown University with a joint degree in law and international conflict resolution and served in the Peace Corps in Mozambique. She met her husband while working for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). During the Obama administration, Mc­Kean worked in the State Department’s global AIDS program and on human rights in the Department of Health and Human Services.

John T. Monahan, a senior adviser to the president of Georgetown University, said in a statement that Maeve “was a brilliant, passionate, and energetic advocate for human rights and social justice.”

Maeve turned 40 in November, and McKean said “she was my best friend and my soul mate.” He said her laugh could be heard blocks away, “and she laughed a lot.”

His wife simultaneously took on community projects, raised the children and trained to run in the Boston Marathon. She once returned from a 30-hour trip to Asia and took a cab from the airport to a pool to play with the children, he said.

“There were weeks when we had people over to our house so often that our kids would be confused when we were just having dinner as a family,” McKean said.

He said his two other children, Gabriella and Toby, slept next to him Friday night.

“I promised them that I would do my best to be the parent that Maeve was,” he said, “and to be the person that Gideon clearly would have grown up to be.”


Dan Morse contributed to this report.

My aforementioned remarks failed to impart my sympathies & regret the tragedy and loss of these two children..

quote:

Originally posted by divil:

quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:

quote:

Originally posted by CQB60:
I wish they’d stay the frack out of politics & the trying to save world routine.. so tired of the Kennedys & their bs..

The universe is too, it seems.

Especially terrible about the kid, any kid.

Definitely terrible about the boy. Poor choices led to the sad and unnecessary fatalities for both. Any relative of that family should NOT be the throwing caution to the wind type.

quote:

Originally posted by airsoft guy:

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:

quote:

Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean

I love that 4 generations down they still can't let go of the 'name'.

"Oh, I'm a Kennedy..."

Well we don't have titles here, so how else are us little people supposed to know they're our betters if they don't keep reminding us with their name?

Hell, I'm a Kennedy too. Just not that branch. Always referred to myself as the "poor Kennedys"

The water is still pretty cold around here so I doubt the bodies will surface for a while...

Reading the gal's bio - she was another 'commie agenda enemy of America' type. No loss.

Sad about the boy.

At some point she realized she had killed him due to her folly.

There is some satisfaction in that.

I grew up there. The water can be unforgiving.

Can't say I really care

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