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Post by Admin on Apr 3, 2020 19:45:37 GMT
Robert F. Kennedy‘s granddaughter Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean and her young son, Gideon, are missing, according to her husband, after a canoeing accident in Chesapeake Bay on Thursday afternoon.
David McKean told The Washington Post that Maeve and Gideon had “popped into a canoe” to go and retrieve a ball that had landed in the water while their family was at her mom’s waterfront property in Shady Side, Maryland.
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources police confirmed in a statement that a 40-year-old woman and an 8-year-old boy went missing Thursday afternoon from that same location after they “appeared to be overtaken by the strong winds” while canoeing.
“They just got farther out than they could handle and couldn’t get back in,” David told the Post.
Reached by PEOPLE, a desolate-sounding David declined to comment further, saying the available info on the incident had already been reported.
“At this time, our family asks for privacy and that everyone keep Maeve and Gideon in their prayers,” a family spokesman said in a statement to the Post.
The DNR police did not identify the missing woman and child but said “the preliminary investigation revealed that the pair may have been paddling the canoe from a residence … out into the bay to retrieve a ball and were unable to paddle back to shore.”
Maeve is the daughter of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who was Maryland’s lieutenant governor from 1995 to 2003.
At a coronavirus briefing on Friday afternoon, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan confirmed Maeve and Gideon’s disappearance.
“An intensive search has been underway since late yesterday,” he said.
The canoe and a paddle were recovered Thursday night, according to authorities.
Hogan said he had spoken with Meave’s mother on Friday morning “and on behalf of the people of Maryland, I expressed our most heartfelt sympathies.”
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Post by Admin on Apr 4, 2020 0:55:56 GMT
Who Is RFK’s Granddaughter Maeve?
Maeve most recently was serving as the executive director of Georgetown’s Global Health Initiative, a “university-wide platform for supporting research, teaching, and service in global health.”
She is a Georgetown alumnae, having earned both her law degree and a master’s degree in international negotiations and conflict resolution in 2009.
“Her work focuses on the intersection of global health and human rights,” according to a brief Georgetown bio.
Before that, she worked in the State Department’s global AIDS program under former President Barack Obama as well as in the Department of Health and Human Services focusing on human rights, according to the Post.
Husband David is also a lawyer, the Post reported. Gideon is their oldest child.
Early in her post-college years, Maeve served in the Peace Corps, traveling to Mozambique, and met her future husband while working in California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office in the early 2000s, The New York Times previously reported.
As she told Glamour in 2008: “Four years ago … I met a UC Berkeley lit major named Dave McKean, who was kind, brilliant and hilarious. He went off to the Far East to teach English just when I was moving to Washington. At the end of his school year, I bought a plane ticket to China, and we traveled through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. You really get to know each other when you both have food poisoning in Cambodia.”
“Now I’m at Georgetown, getting both a law degree and international relations M.A., he’s at American U. law school, and we are head over heels in love,” she continued then, playfully noting: “Like Brangelina, we sometimes sign our letters ‘Maevid.’ He just asked me to marry him!”
Maeve’s father told the Times in 2009 that, as a girl, she was “always playful, a kind of Annie Oakley character.”
Reflecting on her family name, Maeve told Glamour that people were quick to misunderstand her lot in life.
“People think, because I’m a Kennedy, I’m extremely wealthy and don’t flaunt it,” she said with a laugh. “I have a great name, but by the time you get to the fourth generation, the money’s run out. We’re fortunate compared to the average American, but to think I’m a trust fund kid — so not true!”
Only two generations removed from America’s most famous trio of political scions — former President John F. Kennedy and Sens. Ted and Robert Kennedy — Maeve told Glamour she had her own civil goals.
“There’s no question that I want to go into public service, but my friends and I talk a lot about the question, How can you go into public service with debts like the ones we’re racking up?” she said then. “I’ll be leaving law school with $150,000 in student loans to repay. Human rights jobs have starting salaries of $35,000. It’s up to us to find a way to keep doing good while going into our chosen careers.”
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Post by Admin on Apr 5, 2020 4:18:38 GMT
The Kennedy family is mourning the deaths of Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, the granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, and her 8-year-old son Gideon.
As the Coast Guard suspended its search for the pair on Friday, one day after the pair went missing in a canoe accident in Maryland, Maeve’s husband, David McKean, shared the tragic news that the pair had been presumed dead. “It is clear that Maeve and Gideon have passed away,” he wrote in an emotional Facebook message.
A close family source tells PEOPLE a gathering following news of their deaths will be “difficult“ at this time.
“Because of social distancing it will be difficult to gather everyone together,” the family source says, adding that typically “the community comes together, the family and friends so everyone can talk through things and share memories.”
“They were so young and they had their whole lives ahead,” the family source adds of the late mother-son pair.
After the Kennedy family has endured decades of loss, the family source also notes how difficult the recent deaths are for family matriarch Ethel Kennedy, now 91.
“It’s never-ending for her. She has lost her husband, two of her children, her nephew John and now two [of] her grandchildren, and a great-grandchild, it’s unimaginable,” the family source says.
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Post by Admin on Apr 9, 2020 19:00:37 GMT
Robert F. Kennedy’s granddaughter Maeve McKean accidentally drowned in the turbulent and chilly water of the Chesapeake Bay after a canoeing accident with her 8-year-old son, officials said Wednesday.
McKean’s cause and manner of death were confirmed by a spokesman for the state’s chief medical examiner, which is handling the case.
Her body was recovered Monday afternoon — four days after the accident — about two and a half miles from where she and son Gideon had first set out in a canoe. Her husband said they had hoped only to retrieve a ball that had fallen into the water during their game outside the bay-front home where they were staying. But they were beset by high wind and waves and pulled further and further away.
She and husband David McKean and their three young children had gone to her mother’s empty waterfront property on the bay, in Shady Side, Maryland, in order to give them some space while isolating during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“Gideon and Maeve were playing kickball by the small, shallow cove behind the house, and one of them kicked the ball into the water,” David wrote in a Facebook post on Friday as authorities shifted their search from rescue to recovery of the remains.
“The cove is protected, with much calmer wind and water than in the greater Chesapeake,” David wrote then. “They got into a canoe, intending simply to retrieve the ball, and somehow got pushed by wind or tide into the open bay.”
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Post by Admin on Apr 17, 2020 1:38:06 GMT
Thousands of mourners gathered electronically Saturday to remember the lives of Robert Kennedy's granddaughter Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean and her 8-year-old son Gideon, who were tragically killed in a canoe accident earlier this month.
One participant called the ceremony touching, moving and devastating.
The virtual memorial, described by a participant as one of "love and thanksgiving," was named, "A Gathering of Love and Thanksgiving for Maeve and Gideon." It included prayers, poems, readings and songs, according to a source who virtually attended the event.
Country star Kenny Chesney performed a moving rendition of "Amazing Grace."
"Yesterday's service was extraordinary, meaningful, loving, and painful. It was unimaginably hard to grieve together without being together physically, but the remembrances for Maeve and Gideon was so strong that all felt close," Alan Fleischmann, the former chief of staff for Maeve's mother, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who remains very close to the family, told CNN.
People Magazine first reported details of the ceremony.
Maeve's husband, David, eulogized his wife and son in touching tributes, according to the source.
According to the source, David McKean said he had a crush on her from the first time he met her. He talked about their young courtship, how they would always write letters to each other even to the present and how they talked about growing old together.
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