What about Joan?

My mother and I was talking about this a couple of days ago and this Huffingtonpost hit the nail on the head.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sophia-a-nelson/what-about-joan-kennedy-d_b_272034.html

Vickie definitely was not the other woman so this is not an attack on her. God Bless her for being so strong these few days and being strong during Teddy's illness. I will say a prayer for her and her family tonight. That being said, I can remember how hard (and unfair?)life has been so for Joan. When I caught a glance of her last night, may heart went out to her.

Everyone said that Vickie saved Teddy. Many of my fellow sistas can vouch against. A woman can not save a man who doesn't want to be save. I feel that when Teddy got with Vickie and he WAS READY to change his ways. I'm glad that he found a wonderful woman like Vickie to help him through this transition.

But I still can't help thinking, What about Joan?

After reading the article, I realize it wasn't just me and my mother who felt this way. Tonight I will also say a special prayer for Joan.

Ted did for Joan. Condos, money, etc.

Joan was well cared for. I'm letting that go.

If she got a bit of spotlight, the wingnuts would feast on her past troubles.

the camera went past her a couple times. She was a few rows back and it looked like one of Bobby's sons was escorting her.

a few times.
I know she has had(have?) her demons. Her hard life shows up in her face, but that woman has been to hell and back at least a hundred times. I just wish that it had been acknowledge a little more since she was there for the most hellish times. And she never remarried.

She was with the family on Cape Cod for the motorcade to the JFK Library. She was at the funeral today in Boston as well, but I'm not sure if she made the trip to DC.

She has battled alcoholism for years and not very successfully. From Wiki

Her later years have been shaped by chronic alcoholism, which had appeared during her marriage. It escalated with sporadic, uneven sobriety, repeated drunk-driving arrests,<2> court-ordered rehabilitation,<2> and a return to drinking. This ultimately led to kidney damage, with the possibility of dialysis<3> and protracted complications from increasingly strict legal guardianship.

In 2005, she was hospitalized with a concussion and a broken shoulder after being found lying in a Boston street near her home.<2><12>

In July 2004, her son Edward had been appointed her legal guardian; in 2005 her children were granted temporary guardianship.<13>

At her request in 2005, her second cousin, financial planner Webster E. Janssen of Connecticut, established a trust controlling her estate in violation of her son's guardianship. Her children later took successful legal action against Janssen, removing him as trustee and later filing a complaint against him with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.<14><15> She agreed to strict court-ordered guardianship and her estate has since been placed in a new trust overseen by two court-appointed trustees.<3>

She was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery in October 2005.

She has had a very troubled life.

Joan was a troubled woman for many years. I think the writer of the HuffPo article is woefully unimformed about what really happened. It is Teddy that should be commended for standing by her and taking care of her even after they were divorced.

and they raised three children together. It would have taken away nothing from Vicky for Joan to have been acknowledged more prominently.

but I feel they could have figured it out.

Maybe it wasn't so much as the Kennedys as much as the speakers that I had a problem with.

They never enjoyed a good marriage altho' they did achieve a peace accord.

and I'm sure it has been frustrating for her kids and for Teddy. Still when the mother of his children is there you would think someone would have mention her. Even if it was only in an anecdotal way.

And the children of Teddy neither did or said anything to take away from her. But she has been a struggling addict for years. She's not strong and never has been.

as I said, the fault wasn't Vickie or the Kennedys.
The various speakers made it seem that his life began with Vickie and that wasn't the case.

And God Bless the priest for recognizing her part in the life of Teddy.

versus 17 years to Victoria. She had three children and three miscarriages, one shortly after Chappaquiddick. The mentions of her were conspicuous by their absence. By the time Ted married Victoria he was 60 years old, in deteriorating health, with his oat-sowing years well past him. Victoria helped him quit drinking, but Joan had dealt with the worst of his excesses.

He was an old man who was ready to settle down with an attractive younger single mother. And God bless him for being able to have some peace and joy at that point in his lefe. No one would or should take that away from Ted or Vickie.

But Joan got short change this weekend. I don't blame the family, but I do blame those old, true friends of his who got up and spoke.

that's a long time ago now.

For all we know, she may have instructed her children (and the family) that she didn't want attention called to her. She was never comfortable in the spotlight during the marriage, I doubt that she would really want it turned even for a moment now.

Everyone came, everyone behaved graciously and did not detract from EMK's memory.

Sadly, I've watched several families with remarriage turn a funeral into a disaster.

On edit--a prayer for Joan certainly seems in order.

alive and was at the funeral, pardon me for not remembering, but Joan and Teddy had three children together and I was not too sure if he and vicki has any children together.

Where ever Joan is, may she be happy. If Vicki was a live saver for Teddy, then she also deserve kudos. God bless that family, they have endured enough!

I don't think there is any bad blood there. Joan was an alcoholic, and struggled with it until very recently. It is very sad. She stuck with Ted during his worst times. However, I think he was probably part of the reason that she drank, maybe not because of him, but he probably an enabler. I'm not saying that as a bad thing, Joan probably was prone to alcoholism, it is a devastating disease. It has to be a really difficult life to be the wife of a politician, and if you are prone to alcoholism, it is probably that much worse.

strikes against her, she and Ted produced four great kids together and endured the loss of three others (if memory serves.) And he was a hound dog during his youth. Although they were probably madly in love at first, life in the limelight magnifies and intensifies every misstep. I think they gave it their best shot when they reunited before his presidential primary run, and had he won, they might have made it. I've known many alcoholics who beat the devil and lived very full and rewarding lives, even after falling off the wagon a time or two. Unfortunately for Joan, who had once been so strikingly beautiful, the ravages of time have not been kind to her. I can sympathize...I wear my hard times on my face, too.

It just seems callous when the first wife is relegated to a footnote despite the many years of devotion and children she gave to the man. She would tend to think, So what am I...chopped liver?!?

I thought she showed immense courage attending the services and probably would have preferred to not be subjected to scrutiny and all the tch, tch... Vicky saved him, etc. But she was there because she is still their mother and once, if not still, loved their beloved father as much as anyone there.

Both of my brothers are acute alcoholics; there is a strong genetic line of alcoholism that runs through my mother's side of the family - all men, no women.

Need we say it again - alcoholism is extremely difficult to beat. A psychoanalyst friend of mine once told me that 75% of alcoholics never beat the disease - no matter how hard they try.

Nobody or nothing else is the reason someone drinks, but they can be the excuse the alcoholic uses.

Some people have a genetic predisposition to become alcoholic and it can happen regardless of how stressed or unhappy they are. It can be taken as a sign of recovery when someone stops blaming others for the way the fact they used alcohol to cope.

and from what I could tell had to EXPLAIN who she is to the dofus!

perhaps she was reaching out to offer Bush help with his problem.

Hope she really is ok.

It must have been hard for her to hear that over and over again. She's had a rough go of it in her life and my heart goes out to her.

I don't mean to detract from Vicki, I have no reason to doubt that she was the love of Ted's life and helped him overcome his own demons, but I imagine it must have been like a little knife twist for Joan each time she heard it.

what Joan had to.
She went to Mary Jo Kopechne's funeral with Ted and paid the price for it. A few days later she suffered her 3rd miscarriage. She had been publicly humiliated countless times. Some were her on fault and some were not.

Vickie was blessed to get the best of Teddy while the mother of his children got the worst. This isn't an attack of Vickie because I'm sure it was not a garden of roses for her all the time being married to a Kennedy politician. But at the end of the day she got a man who was ready to change and Joan got the man who wouldn't change.

Very well put.

... I wondered why she wasn't seated more closely with her children, why they seemed to gravitate so much more toward Vickie, and Joan almost seemed like "an ex-girlfriend" when all of the news quips said that she and Ted stayed in touch and were amicable through the years ...


:( Sad for her.

I watched a tape of the funeral today. Yesterday we met friends for brunch, so I taped it. Today I saw her. She was thrusting her tongue out the way GWB* did when people on here said it was a side-effect of psych drugs. I know she has suffered with addiction. But there were many accolades for Vickie, and no mention of the mother of Teddy's children. They are beautiful children. She had to have been a good mother to give birth to robust, beautiful children. They seem to have been nurtured and reared well. We all know Teddy was not there all the time. I just want to say a prayer for her and thank her for her life. she did a good job in spite of an overwhelming addiction. Bless her heart. Here is my kudo to Joan, as well as Vickie.

they both that the same problems with alcohol addiction. Ted beat his problem, but Joan has not as of a couple years ago, but she is still part of the family and was included in all the events of the last several days. There was picture of Joan and Vicki walking together from the Hyannis house. Joan is clearly welcome in Vicki and Ted's home.

They all seem to get along just fine, but Joan and Ted have been divorced for a very long time so naturally she is the focal point.

all of the Kennedys had to endure, and the ones that she and her husband had to bear in particular. It is obvious that she didn't have the strength required to get her through.....and instead she had to get away from it.

I think that considering that Vickie was Ted's wife for nearly 20 years, makes her as much a Kennedy as Joan ever was. The difference of course is that most of the tragedies had already happened when Ted met Vickie, giving her an advantage in perception. How Vickie would have dealt with the blows dealt Joan, who knows how well she would have fared. That being said, it is Ted who is gone....and it is he who we will sorely miss.

but hearing all the accolades thrown Vickie's way just rub me the wrong way. Especially when everyone KNEW what Joan went through and had to put up with.
Remember, Joan was with Teddy longer than Jackie and Ethel. Who knows how either one of them would have handled being married to a Kennedy for over 25 years?
I guess that's the price of being a starter wife.

I wondered if she was even alive - considering how many Kennedy's have died, it wasn't crazy of me to think that considering there was absolutely no mention of her.

Then when I realized she was there on both days - and never once mentioned by anyone, I felt very sad for her.

Especially if he ever remarried and there was a grieving widow. That would be the absolute nadir of narcissism.

youth. How sad is has been for her. And for her kids who have had the burden of dealing with her tragedy. I cannot imagine finding out your mother is wandering in the streets, out of it...and the police find her...

One can only have pity for her and hope she can find some peace, somewhere...

It's a pity because she was such a beauty. BTW, the man she's talking to in that pic is Tony Bennett.

:-(

I for one feel bad for Joan as well but I don't know of alot of woman who would have shared this day with the ex wife. With that being said I think both of the Kennedy woman had a great love for our dear Teddy and it showed.

Joan will find comfort from her children and the good memories that she and Teddy shared and so will Vicky.