The Kennedys, a lineage marked by premature and traumatic deaths
The death of Tatiana Schlossberg, John F. Kennedy's wife, adds to the long list of tragedies suffered by one of the most prominent families in the U.S.
BarcelonaIf the United Kingdom has the Windsors and their misfortunes to accompany the chronicles of every era in the country's history, the United States can review much of its modern history through the Kennedy family and the avalanche of setbacks that have befallen this legendary political dynasty. The latest member to make headlines due to a cruel twist of fate is climate journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, daughter of Caroline Kennedy and, therefore, granddaughter of former US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. According to a statement released by her family through the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation the day before the end of the year, the young woman died at the age of 35. as a result of a rare and aggressive form of leukemia. "Our beloved Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always live on in our hearts," read the statement announcing her death.
The news had already been anticipated by the media, as Schlossberg—who bore that surname from her father (the artist Edwin Schlossberg) despite having married the urologist George Moran—had announced in November that she was suffering from the disease in an article in the magazine The New Yorker In it, she also revealed that doctors had given her a life expectancy of less than a year. Schlossberg explained that the acute myeloid leukemia she was suffering from had been diagnosed after she gave birth for the second time, in May 2024. This fact, she said, immediately led her to think that her loved ones would have virtually no memory of her. "My first thought was that my children, whose faces I constantly see in my mind, will not remember me," she wrote before revealing that the treatment she had undergone included a bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy, procedures that ultimately could not save her.
Finally, she also expressed regret for causing additional suffering to her mother and her family. "Throughout my life I have tried to be good: a good student, a good sister, and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never upset or anger her. Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to the life of our family, and there is nothing I can do to prevent it," she wrote. The text—titled A battle with my blood– It caused a shock within his media-savvy family, not only because it deepened their dark legend, but also because he openly criticized them. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., hired by Donald Trump as Secretary of Health in his last administration, for his completely anti-scientific and anti-vaccine positions.
A thousand previous misfortunes
Tatiana Schlossberg, who is survived by a three-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter, was the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, the only surviving child of the four children President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had with Jacqueline Kennedy. In 1956, the 35th President of the United States and his famous wife had their first child, a daughter named Arabella, who was stillborn. In 1957, the couple welcomed Caroline, currently the only surviving direct descendant of the iconic presidential couple. In 1960, John F. Kennedy Jr. was born. He died along with his wife, Caroline Bessette, and her sister in a tragic plane crash in 1999 off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. The youngest member of the family, a baby boy named Patrick, died in 1963, two days after his birth, from respiratory problems caused by premature birth. In fact, Jackie Kennedy – then also using the surname Onassis – also died prematurely, passing away from non-Hodgkin lymphoma at the age of 64.
This series of misfortunes befell President JFK's immediate family, but the long shadow of tragedy extends far beyond that immediate circle. In fact, the first tragic event that befell them was the death of JFK's older brother, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the eldest of the nine Kennedy siblings. Born in 1915, he died at the age of 25 during World War II when a bomb he was carrying in the plane he was piloting exploded before it could be dropped on its target. He and his co-pilot were killed. The second Kennedy brother to die was the President of the United States. At just 46 years old, while still serving as President, he suffered the most well-known assassination in history. The third of the siblings marked by misfortune was Rosemary Kennedy, born in 1918 with mental problems and who underwent a failed lobotomy in 1941. She lived her entire life confined in a psychiatric center and died in 2005 at the age of 87.
Air crashes as a backdrop
Kathleen Kennedy, born in 1920 and killed in 1948 at the age of 28 in a plane crash, is also among the Kennedy siblings who died prematurely. She was flying from London to Paris to meet with her father, from whom she had become estranged after her intention to marry William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, a union he disapproved of. She wanted to reconcile with him, as he had stopped speaking to her. Her father was the only Kennedy from the extended family to attend the funeral, which was organized entirely by the Cavendish family. Finally, we must also remember Senator Robert F. Kennedy, born in 1925 and assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968. Palestinian-American Sirhan Sirhan shot him as RFK celebrated his victory in the California Democratic primary, a triumph that foreshadowed his own. The motive for the assassination was the politician's explicit support for Israel.
The curse The Kennedy family's tragedy, as the media has often pointed out, didn't end there and has continued through subsequent generations. RFK didn't have to witness the premature deaths of two of his 11 children—the youngest, named Rory, never met him because the politician was assassinated before she was born—in traumatic circumstances. In 1984, David A. Kennedy died of a drug overdose at only 28 years old, and in 1997, Michael LeMoyne Kennedy, a political activist and lawyer by training, died in a skiing accident in Aspen at only 39.
In 2011, Kara Anne Kennedy—daughter of Senator Ted Kennedy, also JFK's brother—died at the age of 51 from a heart attack. Seven years later, Christopher Kennedy Lawford, the eldest son of Patricia Kennedy—also JFK's sister—died of a heart attack while practicing yoga in Vancouver, Canada. He was 63. In August 2019, 22-year-old Saoirse Kennedy Hill died of an accidental overdose of medication she was taking for chronic depression, according to the autopsy. She was the only child of Courtney Kennedy, RFK's daughter. In 2021, Maeve McKean, also a close friend of Robert F. Kennedy, and her son, Gideon, disappeared in a canoeing accident on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Their bodies were found five days later. She was 40 and the boy was 8.
