The Kennedy Jinx

At 20, Joseph Patrick Kennedy III has already encountered a remarkable string of misfortunes. The adventurous oldest son of the late Robert F. Kennedy has been attacked by a roan antelope in Africa and knocked down by a bull calf in Spain; he has broken his leg while playing football and again while skiing; he has been skyjacked by Arab terrorists on an airliner to Southern Yemen. Last week young Joe had his worst mishap to date while visiting some friends on Nantucket (sister island to Martha's Vineyard, site of Uncle Ted's disastrous automobile accident in 1969, which ended in the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne). As Joe drove his open Jeep along winding Polpis Road through the island's sparsely populated interior one afternoon, the vehicle skidded out of control on a curve and flipped over, throwing all of its seven passengers into the scrub alongside the road.

Four of them, including Joe, suffered only minor injuries. But Brother David, 18, severely sprained his back, and Mary Schlaff, 22, of Grosse Pointe, Mich., fractured her pelvis. Worst of all, Pamela Kelly, 18, the daughter of a bartender in Centerville on Cape Cod, broke her leg and her back and was paralyzed from the waist down.

The police reported finding no evidence that alcohol or drugs were involved. They cited Kennedy for negligent driving and ordered him to appear at a court hearing this week. For Pamela Kelly, however, the agony was just beginning. The Coast Guard flew her to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, where three specialists summoned by the Kennedy family tried for three hours to repair the damage. By the end of the week she began to have some feeling in one of her legs, an encouraging sign. But doctors said it would be several weeks before they would know whether she could ever walk again.

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