Michael LeMoyne Kennedy

Michael LeMoyne Kennedy (February 27, 1958 – December 31, 1997) was an American lawyer, businessman, and activist in Massachusetts. He was the sixth of eleven children of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy. Kennedy also served as the manager of the non-profit organization Citizens Energy. He died in Aspen, Colorado, in 1997 after skiing inadvertently into a tree. Michael LeMoyne Kennedy was born on February 27, 1958, in Washington, D.C. He was named LeMoyne for Kirk LeMoyne Billings, the preparatory school roommate of his paternal uncle, John F. Kennedy, and a Kennedy family friend. He was five years old when his uncle was assassinated and ten years old when his father was assassinated. He graduated with a B.S. degree from Harvard College in 1980 and subsequently earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1984. After law school, Kennedy worked briefly for a private law firm in Boston, Massachusetts. After his brother Joseph was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986, Kennedy became the manager of his non-profit organization, Citizens Energy Corporation, which provides heating oil and services to elderly and low-income households in Massachusetts and other cold-weather states. Kennedy co-chaired the Walden Woods Project, a non-profit organization to preserve Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. In 1994, he co-founded Stop Handgun Violence, a group that works to increase public awareness about the danger of handguns. That same year, he helped organize his uncle Ted Kennedy's successful re-election campaign for the U.S. Senate against Republican challenger Mitt Romney, later a governor of Massachusetts and United States senator from Utah. Kennedy married Victoria Denise Gifford, daughter of former professional football player and sportscaster Frank Gifford and Maxine Avis Ewart, on March 14, 1981, in New York City. They had one son, Michael LeMoyne Kennedy Jr. (born January 9, 1983), and two daughters, Kyle Francis Kennedy (born July 1984) and Rory Gifford Kennedy (born November 14, 1987). The family resided in Cohasset, Massachusetts. In 1997, the news alleged that Kennedy was having an affair with the family's underage former babysitter. Allegations were reported that the affair had begun three years earlier, when the babysitter was 14 years old. Kennedy took and passed three polygraph tests conducted by companies employed and directed by the Kennedy family, claiming he had not had sex with the Cohasset teen until she was 16, the legal age of consent in Massachusetts at the time. Kennedy was investigated for statutory rape. Soon after the scandal began, Kennedy and his wife separated. His son Michael Jr. and wife, Mary Campbell, had one son, Michael LeMoyne Kennedy III, in 2014 and a daughter, Quinn Elizabeth Kennedy, in 2016. Kyle and her husband Liam Kerr were married on August 18, 2012, and had sons Conor Kennedy Kerr (2014) and Declan Francis Kerr (2016). A daughter, Conor's twin sister, Josephine Ethel Kerr, died in infancy in 2014. His youngest daughter, Rory, married David DiCamillo on September 30, 2016. They had their first child, Jack Kennedy DiCamillo, on September 20, 2018. Kennedy died on December 31, 1997, in a skiing accident in Aspen Mountain, Colorado. He was playing football while on skis with several other members of the Kennedy family when, at approximately 4:15 p.m., he hit a tree. Kennedy was not wearing a helmet or other safety equipment. The family had been admonished by the ski patrol to cease the activity. After the accident, Kennedy was taken to Aspen Valley Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:50 p.m. He was interred on January 3, 1998, in the family plot at Hollywood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts. Kennedy Family Member. The sixth of eleven children of 1968 Presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, he was considered one of the more politically astute Kennedys but preferred to operate from behind the scenes in politics. Michael was head of his brother Joseph's non-profit organization, Citizens Energy Corporation, a company that provided heating fuel to the poor. He helped his uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, organize his 1994 reelection campaign, and served as the chief political advisor to his brother, Representative Joe Kennedy, Jr, in his run for Massachusetts governor. He was married to Victoria Gifford, daughter of famous sportscaster Frank Gifford, and they had three children: Michael Jr, Kyle Francis, and Rory Gifford Kennedy. In early 1997, he was involved in a political scandal when it came out that he was having a long-term affair with the family's babysitter. The affair had been started three years earlier, when she was 14 years old, and for a short time, Michael was under police investigation for statutory rape. The investigation ended when the babysitter refused to testify. Shortly after the police dropped the investigation, Michael and Victoria separated, and Michael underwent rehabilitation for alcoholism. Shortly after treatment for his alcoholism, he died in a freak skiing accident while vacationing in Aspen, Colorado, when he collided with a tree while playing football on skis with other Kennedy family members. Bio by: Kit and Morgan Benson