The granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy and her 8-year-old son were missing on Friday after they took a canoe out into rough waters on Chesapeake Bay, near Annapolis, on Thursday evening.Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, 40, and her son, Gideon, rowed the canoe out around 4 p.m. to fetch a ball that had been kicked into the water by children playing in their yard, Maeve’s husband, David McKean, told The Washington Post. “They just got farther out then they could handle, and couldn’t get back in,” he said.Emergency services said they received calls around 4:30 p.m. about a pair in a canoe struggling to return to shore. An overturned canoe matching the description of the one that went missing was recovered, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources police said. A search for the pair continued on Friday after it was suspended when night fell on Thursday.Thursday was very windy and an ocean storm off the coast of New England made conditions treacherous.“At 4:30 p.m., our 911 Center received a call from a concerned citizen,” Anne Arundel County Fire Department said in a statement. “The caller stated he saw two people in a small canoe or kayak drifting in the bay. A water rescue assignment was dispatched to the area bringing marine resources to the area. Firefighters arrived at the pier and confirmed the sighting of two people in a small vessel several miles from the pier drifting south in the Chesapeake Bay.”The Fire Department said boats and helicopters began a search of the Chesapeake Bay and, at 7 p.m., the kayak and a paddle were recovered. The search was called off at 7:30 p.m.McKean is executive director of the Georgetown University Global Health Initiative and the daughter of former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. She is the grand-niece of former President John F. Kennedy.Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan confirmed the suspected drowning on Friday and said an “intensive search” was underway.“I spoke with the former lieutenant governor and, on behalf of the people of Maryland, I expressed our most heartfelt sympathies to her and to her entire family,” he said. McKean served in the Peace Corps in Mozambique before returning home in 2002 to help her mother, Kathleen, campaign for governor of Maryland. She also worked for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), where she met her husband, also a human rights lawyer. McKean worked on the State Department’s global AIDS program and on human rights in the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration.The Kennedy family has endured an extraordinary amount of tragedy over several generations, from the high-profile assassinations of McKean’s grandfather and great-uncle to the fatal plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr., to the deaths by heart attack of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ex-wife, Mary, and niece, Kara, in 2012 and 2011 respectively.Just last year, McKean’s cousin, Saoirse Roisin Kennedy Hill, died of an accidental drug overdose at the Kennedy family compound in Cape Cod.In a 2003 New York Times profile on her marriage to David, McKean was described as a free spirit who was, according to her father David L. Townsend, “always playful, a kind of Annie Oakley character.”The pair were married at the Woman’s National Democratic Club, a sprawling Washington mansion, and told the Times that they bonded over everything from literature to politics and social justice. “We’re very much in love,” Maeve told the newspaper. “And we’re kind of cheesy, too.”Gideon is the couple’s first child and was reportedly named after a Supreme Court case that ordered states to pay for public defenders. They have another son and daughter.Maeve McKean’s sister, Kerry Kennedy Meltzer, is an ER doctor who has been working on the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
