Memorial for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's daughter and her son attended by over 3,000 people virtually via Zoom
A virtual memorial for Meave Kennedy Townsend McKean and her son Gideon was held on Saturday to honor their lives. Former Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's daughter and her 8-year-old son died last week in a tragic canoeing accident in Chesapeake Bay.
The memorial titled 'A Gathering of Love and Thanksgiving for Maeve and Gideon' was organized via a Zoom video conference. The video conference saw over 3,000 participants take part in the memorial that was kept virtual because of the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
According to a report in People, Mark Bailey, husband of Maeve's aunt Rory Kennedy said, "Maeve’s sister Kat and her husband Tyson worked directly with Zoom’s tech department to figure out how to make this all happen."
The memorial brought together people close to Maeve and her 8-year-old son with prayers, poems, songs and a variety of readings. Bailey added, "While we’re not in the same space, we can’t hug or kiss, we’re not physically with each other, they’re still with us. And it means so much to us to have you here with us too. And so through this nutty Zoom call, we’re going to share and touch and visit and shine a light on this love for Maeve and Gideon that holds us all together."
In his eulogy, Maeve's husband David said, "I had a crush on Maeve from the moment I met her. We said that we loved each other after dating for two weeks. I’ve been going back through old letters and we were talking about growing old together before we’d ever even moved into our first apartment. She wrote to me about how scary it was to be this sure about anything. Weren’t we too young? ‘I know,’ I replied, ‘Won’t this kind of intense love fade?’ I laughed in tears reading those letters because those kids were so young. They had no idea."
He also shared, "That intense love never dulled at all. It just grew. It got deeper and more complex and more complete. It incorporated our triumphs and our struggles and our joy and our fights and more laughter than anyone could ever expect to a lifetime, and it became the foundation on which we built our lives."
Later in the memorial special guests, Natasha Bedingfield and Kenny Chesney joined the memorial in performing songs, with Chesney singing 'Amazing Grace'. Melissa Etheridge closed the memorial with a performance of “Spirit in the Sky” on guitar.
Maeve, one of Sen. Kennedy’s granddaughters and the daughter of former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and David Lee Townsend was an attorney and professor. She shared three children with husband David: Gideon,7-year-old Gabriella, and 2-and-half-year-old Toby.
David had said last week that Maeve and Gideon had ventured out into the Chesapeake on a canoe to retrieve a ball but they were pulled away from the shore. The paddle and the capsized canoe was found the same evening, however, Maeve and her son's body was only recovered days later.