Joseph Gargan

Joseph F. Gargan Jr. (February 16, 1930 – December 12, 2017), was an American lawyer and a nephew of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. He was one of only two men, along with Paul Markham, in whom Ted Kennedy chose to confide immediately after the Chappaquiddick automobile accident which killed Mary Jo Kopechne. Orphaned at the age of sixteen, Gargan spent two consecutive summers with the Kennedys, and, being closer in age to Ted than the other Kennedy brothers were, developed a close relationship with his cousin Ted. Gargan was the campaign chairman for Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. Gargan fell out of favor with the Kennedy family in 1988, with the publication of journalist Leo Damore's book, Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-Up, because Gargan revealed in interviews with Damore details not released in public testimony, such as how Ted Kennedy contemplated covering up his role in the incident by claiming Kopechne was driving his car. Gargan's father, Joseph Gargan Sr., was an amateur boxer, a University of Notre Dame football player and graduate, and a decorated World War I US Marine officer, who married Mary Agnes Fitzgerald, daughter of John F. Fitzgerald and sister of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. The Gargans had three children: Joseph Jr., Mary Jo, and Ann. Mary Agnes died on September 17, 1937. The children became orphaned when Joseph Sr. died in 1946.. Gargan grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts. In the summer of 1940, when Gargan was 10 years old and Ted Kennedy was 8, Joe visited the Kennedy home at Hyannis Port. The Kennedys looked to Gargan to take Teddy under his wing as a peer big brother and keep him out of trouble, something his older brothers could not do because of their greater age difference. Despite disinformation spread by the Kennedys that Joseph Kennedy financed his orphan nephew's education, the estate of Gargan's father financed his secondary education at Georgetown Preparatory School, 1942–1948. For college, Gargan chose to attend Notre Dame as his father did, rather than Harvard as Joseph Kennedy and all of his sons did.