Saoirse Kennedy Hill’s grief-stricken mother Courtney and grandmother Ethel seen for the first time as clan gathers to remember 22-year-old
Saoirse Kennedy Hill’s anguished mother was seen clutching her mom, Kennedy matriarch Ethel, while riding a golf cart in Massachusetts. This is the first time the two have been seen in public since Courtney's daughter’s death on August 1.
According to the New York Post, Courtney Kennedy Hill appeared grief-stricken as she wrapped a protective arm around Robert F. Kennedy’s widow. Both women wore large black sunglasses and wide-brimmed straw hats.
91-year-old Ethel reportedly decided to take family members out sailing on the family yacht Glide on the afternoon of August 2 before they returned to the Hyannis Port Yacht Club pier around 2.30 p.m.
Kennedy Hill’s niece Kerry Townsend Meltzer was also seen comforting the grieving mother as she drove the golf cart. The Cape Cod Times published pictures showing more than a dozen family members and friends embracing on the pier — the clan reportedly gathering to remember Hill.
The sailboat is owned by Max Kennedy, the ninth child of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel, according to a Boston Herald report from 2014
An initial autopsy conducted on Hill’s body showed “no trauma inconsistent with lifesaving measures,” authorities said on August 2. While she is believed to have died of an overdose, no official confirmation has been made pending a toxicology report, District Attorney Michael O’Keefe’s office said in a statement.
Hill reportedly suffered from bouts of depression, having written a piece in The Deerfield Scroll, the school newspaper of Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 2016 explaining her struggle.
"My depression took root at the beginning of my middle school years and will be with me for the rest of my life," she had said. "Although I was mostly a happy child, I suffered bouts of deep sadness that felt like a heavy boulder on my chest," she said. "These bouts would come and go, but they did not outwardly affect me until I was a new sophomore at Deerfield." She spoke about how she isolated herself and was "pulling away" from her friends and loved ones and lagging in school work.
After her death, a number of media outlets began calling Hill the latest victim of the "Kennedy curse" that has plagued her family for decades and blamed for the string of unfortunate and untimely deaths of a number of members.