Kathleen Kennedy Townsend sat scribbling notes at the funeral of Crystal Sheffield, a Baltimore police officer killed in a car crash while answering a call for help. The occasion marked another life cut short in its prime: A dedicated public servant, beloved spouse and parent.
Would you like to speak? someone had asked the gubernatorial candidate.
Townsend hadn't planned on it. But as she stood to face the silent crowd contemplating a senseless death, she pulled forth words she had memorized as a child. It was a quotation her father, Robert F. Kennedy, had taught her to appreciate.
FOR THE RECORD - The pictures from the John F. Kennedy Library that accompanied an article about Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's childhood in yesterday's Today section should have been credited to photographer Elizabeth Kuhner. The Sun regrets the error.
"Even in our sleep," she told the gathering, "pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart. And in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."
The words belonged to the Greek tragedian and poet Aeschylus. Her father had used them most memorably in the impromptu speech he delivered at a political rally in Indianapolis in April 1968 after informing the stunned crowd that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had just been shot.
Kennedy's listeners understood that the senator, who was running for president, felt the full weight of these words dealing with the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. Now, 34 years later, Townsend's audience could also hear the double meaning.
"My experience has been that that pain does not diminish," she later told a group at a Sept. 11 memorial service, according to a news account. "There are still days, weeks, months, years later that you still wonder, `Why did this happen?'"
As she goes about her campaign, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend remains a candidate colored by the images and words of her late father and uncle. More than most politicians, Townsend grew up in the corner of the public eye. She was born into a family who married, gave birth and mourned in public, who achieved the heights of fame and depths of disgrace in newspapers and magazines. Running for office has meant constantly referring to her childhood, to her years before public service. After decades of answering questions about her parents - What was it really like to be a Kennedy? - the 51-year-old lieutenant governor finds a way to make her responses thoughtful and fresh.
And those who watched her grow up say her life of privilege was not always what people may assume.
