Michael Kennedy Biography

Michael Lemoyne Kennedy was the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, and nephew of President John F. Kennedy. Michael Kennedy graduated from Harvard in 1980 and from the University of Virginia Law School in 1984.  He ran the Citizens Energy Corporation, which was founded by his brother, Joseph Kennedy II, and which provided low-cost heating oil to needy Massachusetts citizens. He married Victoria Gifford, the daughter of football star Frank Gifford, in 1981 and they had three children. Despite his career in public service, Michael Kennedy is most notorious for two incidents: an affair with his children’s babysitter, which became a public scandal in 1996 and led to his separation from his wife; and his death after colliding with a tree on the ski slopes of Aspen, Colorado in 1997.