Today, on the Sunday before the new year, the New York Times Magazine has its annual issue of brief profiles of famous, important, and not-so-famous-but-still-important people who breathed their last in the past twelve months. It is always a fascinating collection; for me, the exercise is a slap in the face, focusing my wandering attention upon how many remarkable lives and achievements have escaped my awareness and proper appreciation—and this is only a small, random collection. The last of the profiles, however, was about a life I knew a lot about: Ted Kennedy. In my view, the piece fails an ethical imperative. It doesn’t mention Mary-Jo Kopechne.

I have no objection to lionizing Senator Kennedy. He devoted his life to public service, worked hard, displayed integrity and courage in his professional conduct, and by any measure was one of the most important U.S. Senators in the nation’s history. By all accounts, he was also a very nice man. I have no objection, as long as one rule is followed by the late Senator’s admirers: don’t forget Mary-Jo, the 29-year-old campaign worker who drowned in the waters of Chappaquiddick Island. Ted Kennedy only had the opportunity to accomplish what he did because wealth, family influence and the near deification of his two martyred brothers in Massachusetts combined to allow him to escape the rightful consequences of his irresponsible and terrible actions on July 18, 1969. On that date, in the midst of a late night escapade typical of Kennedy men, he drunkenly drove off a Rhode Island bridge, left a young woman in his car to drown, and then, instead of reporting the accident, conferred with lawyers and Kennedy family “fixers” to concoct a cover story that might salvage his political career.

I watched his televised explanation from my parents’ home in Arlington, Mass., and like almost everyone else, I didn’t believe it. It didn’t matter, not in Massachusetts, not so soon after Bobby Kennedy’s death. The state had to have a Kennedy, so despite that fact that anyone else in Ted’s fix would have been facing a possible manslaughter conviction and even jail time, Kennedy was allowed to continue his political career, the ultimate triumph of privilege over justice, bestowed on a man who would later thunder from podiums that America had to stop kowtowing to wealth and power.

There have always been those, including my late father, who refused to forgive Kennedy for what happened to Mary Jo Kopechne, no matter what he did. Wall Street Journal blogger James Taranto never posted an item about Kennedy that didn’t include the parenthetical “Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.” I think that was wrong and gratuitously nasty. Still, Kennedy’s life was an ethical outrage that just happened to work out well for the nation, a life defined by moral luck. A victim’s life was snuffed out before she could achieve any of her dreams; the wrongdoer averted accountability and consequences, and became an American icon. It is a small thing, but essential nonetheless: no tribute, profile, accolade, sketch, or anything beyond an anecdote to, of or about Ted Kennedy’s life should fail to include a reference to the innocent life he helped end by his misconduct, so that just as his fame survives his wrongdoing, her memory survives the result of it.

It’s only fair.