Paul F. Markham, at Chappaquiddick the night of Kennedy’s car crash, dies
Mr. Markham, who was 89 when he died July 13 in Brooksby Village in Peabody, was no stranger to high-pressure or high-profile moments.
After a car he was driving went off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island — claiming the life of Mary Jo Kopechne — US Senator Edward M. Kennedy first tried diving into the water to rescue her, and when he couldn’t, he went back to the island cottage where the two had just left a party.
Moments after Kennedy arrived outside, a guest inside the cottage approached Paul F. Markham and said: “Paul, the senator wants to see you.’’
Stepping out the door, Mr. Markham found Kennedy in the back seat of a car. Joseph F. Gargan — a Kennedy cousin who also was attending the party — was in the driver’s seat. Mr. Markham climbed in the front passenger seat and the three headed to the Dike Bridge.
At an inquest months later, Mr. Markham testified about that moment when they arrived at the scene: “Up to this time I didn’t know what the accident really was and I remember saying, ‘Holy God.’ ’’
Mr. Markham, who was 89 when he died July 13 in Brooksby Village in Peabody, was no stranger to high-pressure or high-profile moments when he stepped out of that car 50 years ago this month next to a bridge that would forever figure prominently in the nation’s political history.
Until a few months before that night, he had served as US attorney for Massachusetts. His office had taken on organized crime figures, and even prosecuted famed pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock for counseling men to evade the draft during the Vietnam War. (Spock and three others were convicted, but the verdicts were reversed on appeal.)
During more than 45 years as a lawyer, much of it in private practice, Mr. Markham was known for his commanding presence. He was 6 foot 4 and “had a big voice and was just an imposing figure there in the courtroom,’’ said his son John of Melrose, who also is an attorney.
“He was really dedicated to the profession,’’ John said of his father, who practiced law into his mid-70s, retiring in 2004. Mr. Markham, John added, kept working “just because he enjoyed doing it.’’
Long before that night on Chappaquiddick, Mr. Markham had been a political worker and social friend of the Kennedys — once suffering a shoulder injury during one of the family’s touch football games at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port.
Robert F. Kennedy, then the US attorney general, had appointed Mr. Markham to serve as an assistant US attorney in Massachusetts.
Mr. Markham’s boss, US Attorney W. Arthur Garrity Jr., became a federal judge and in July 1966 at age 36, Mr. Markham was appointed to serve as interim US attorney.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, later made the appointment permanent, and Mr. Markham served as US attorney until early 1969 — stepping down after President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican, took office. Mr. Markham went into private practice for the remainder of his legal career.
On a July night a few months after Mr. Markham left the US attorney’s office, he, Gargan, and Kennedy arrived just past midnight at the Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, just off Martha’s Vineyard.
The car had landed top-down in the water, and Mr. Markham and Gargan dove in to try to locate Kopechne.
“We grabbed ahold of the car, because the current was tremendous and I was surprised by that at first,’’ Gargan, who at one point was swept about 25 yards from the submerged vehicle, said in his inquest testimony.
The two repeatedly dove below the surface for “40 to 45 minutes,’’ Mr. Markham testified at the inquest, adding that “we were singularly unsuccessful in trying to get into the car.’’
Gargan testified that he told Kennedy the accident had to be reported to the police. “All right, all right, I will take care of it,’’ he quoted Kennedy as telling him and Mr. Markham. Kennedy also told the two men to return to the cottage. But Kennedy didn’t report the accident, and instead went to his hotel room on Martha’s Vineyard.
A month after Kopechne died, her mother, Gwen, told reporters she thought Mr. Markham and Gargan — who also had formerly served as an assistant US attorney under Garrity — shouldn’t have waited for Kennedy to notify the authorities.
“Needless to say, by not reporting the accident at once, Gargan and Markham invited all kinds of awful speculation,’’ Gwen Kopechne said then. “Many people will always think there was more to this tragedy than just an accident.’’
The following morning, after Mr. Markham learned that Kennedy had yet to report the accident, he and the senator went to the Edgartown Police Department on the Vineyard. Kennedy dictated a statement about the accident to Mr. Markham, who gave it to the police chief.
In the lengthy interview with the Globe five years later, Kennedy placed the blame for the delay in notifying the police squarely on himself.
“It was my responsibility and it was my obligation and it was me that drove the vehicle and it was me that caused the accident,’’ Kennedy told the Globe. Gargan and Mr. Markham, Kennedy added, “performed heroically and with considerable danger to their own lives in trying to dive into that vehicle.’’
The youngest of four siblings, Paul Francis Markham was born May 22, 1930, a son of James E. Markham and Mary Hickey. Mr. Markham’s father had worked in the administration of President Harry Truman, and for a time was in charge of recovering properties stolen during World War II.
Mr. Markham grew up in the Washington, D.C., area, where he graduated from Georgetown Preparatory School in North Bethesda, Md., when Gargan was also a student, according to Gargan’s obituary.
Mr. Markham’s family vacationed in Rockport and Gloucester, where one summer he met Claire Louise Burke on the beach. Mr. Markham and Burke, a Boston University graduate, married several years later, in 1956.
After graduating from Villanova University, Mr. Markham served in the Coast Guard, and then went to the Boston University School of Law. He was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1958.
The Markhams had seven children. In addition to his wife, Claire, and his son John, Mr. Markham leaves four daughters, Ellen of California, Jane of Chicago, Susan of Melrose, and Mary Soldati of Portland, Ore.; another son, Paul of Shrewsbury; and 10 grandchildren.
A funeral Mass was said earlier this month for Mr. Markham in St. Mary Church in Melrose. He and his wife had lived in the same home in Melrose for 50 years, before moving in 2016 to Brooksby Village, where he died after a period of declining health.
Over the decades, the Melrose house was a home base for three generations of Markhams. “The kids would come back, then the grandkids would come back. It was nice,’’ John said.
At home, at work, and on the mountain slopes where he was an avid skier, Mr. Markham “had that type of personality that I think really attracted people,’’ John added.
“When he was in the US attorney’s office, I think there were only 15 employees then. Back in the day, he knew everybody,’’ John said, adding that his father “just had that charisma about him. He had so many friends.’’
