T.L. Morrisey

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Date of Death for Leo Kennedy

If you remember (John) Leo Kennedy, one of the McGill Group of poets from the 1920s, and if you check out his bio in Wikipedia you'll see that they don't have a date of death for him. It was fairly easy to find out when he died, just look it up on the Social Security Death Index. Leo Kennedy had three children, two sons from a second marriage, and both sons seem to have disappeared. He also had a son from his first marriage, Peter Kennedy, who as of a year ago was still alive. After Peter Kennedy's parents' marriage ended in divorce Peter distinguished himself by attending Harvard University, becoming a medical doctor, and living in San Marino, CA, one of the most affluent communities in the States. Dr. Kennedy suffered a car accident a few years ago that seems to have ended his medical practise; after the accident Dr. Kennedy wrote a book, Medicine Man: Memoir of a Cancer Physician, and in the Introduction he notes that both of his parents were alcoholics or substance abusers; he's a lot tougher on his father than Patricia Morley was in her bio of Leo Kennedy. Maybe this explains why Leo Kennedy accomplished so little as a poet. Leo Kennedy spent his final years living in a hotel near his son's home until his death at age 93 on 14 December 2000. BTW, Leo Kennedy was born in Liverpool, England, not in Michigan, where he lived for a number of years. 

(When I did this research in February 2018 Wikipedia did not have a date of death for Leo Kennedy; I now see that as of May 2018 someone has corrected this by giving the year but not the day and month of Kennedy's passing.)





2 comments:

Brian Busby said...

Sadly, but not surprisingly, The Canadian Encyclopedia records nothing more than a year of death. Published in 2002 - by no less than the University of Toronto Press - W.H. New's Encyclopedia of Canadian Literature had it that Kennedy was still alive. What a negligent and ignorant country we sometimes seem.

Stephen Morrissey said...

Hi Brian, I am told that Margaret Atwood left Kennedy out of the New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse. I haven't seen this anthology but if so then other writers are also ignorant... Pity. Brian Trehearne's anthology is excellent.