Kennedy Family

Rosemary Kennedy: Daughter of Joseph and Rose. Institutionalized since 1941 because of retardation and failed lobotomy. Now 80 years old.Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.: Son of Joseph and Rose. Killed in plane crash in 1944 during World War II. He was 29.Kathleen Kennedy: Daughter of Joseph and Rose. Died in plane crash in 1948. She was 28.Patrick Bouvier Kennedy: Born nearly six weeks premature to President John F. Kennedy and wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, on Aug. 7, 1963; died Aug. 9, 1963.John F. Kennedy: Son of Joseph and Rose, 35th president.

The Kennedys were gathered in Hyannis Port yesterday for what was to be a joyous occasion -- the wedding of Rory, the daughter Robert F. Kennedy never lived to see. Instead, they found themselves uniting in the all-too-familiar rituals of grief in what seems likely to become the latest in the unending series of tragedies that has struck this family."

WASHINGTON -- For a generation of Americans, the tragedies of the Kennedy family have become a grim but familiar national ritual.Everything else seems to be frozen in place. The country stands still while we wait for some definitive word that we have come to know is almost certainly going to be bad news.Almost 36 years ago, we waited for the news about President John F. Kennedy from Parkland Hospital in Dallas.This time we waited for news about the fate of John F. Kennedy Jr. -- whom many of us knew first all those years ago as John John, the little boy who saluted his father's flag-covered casket.

"Our hearts and prayers are with all those who have been touched by the sad news regarding John F. Kennedy Jr. and those with him. May the Lord of all mercies console and strengthen their families and friends."Cardinal William H. Keeler, Archbishop of Baltimore"The Kennedy family has had a long history of partnering with the NAACP. It goes back a generation to the father and mother. Today, this is a personal loss."Kweisi Mfume, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People"How much tragedy has to strike one family over and over again?

A headline in yesterday's National Digest misidentified a former tutor's employer as the Kennedy family. Kenneth Littleton worked with the children of Rushton Skakel. The Sun regrets the errors. Pub Date: 8/06/98

Weary and short of time, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend rehearsed out loud her final speech of the day as she hurried into Washington. Her voice trailed off. She didn't like the sound of what she was saying.She scratched out a few sentences in her prepared remarks. Then, as she stared out the car window, the right words came to her, words she knows by heart, the words of her father."Moral courage," she said a half-hour later at an Israeli tribute to her father, Robert F. Kennedy, "is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence.

Robert White lives in Catonsville but keeps his financial prospects, and maybe his heart, in Camelot. Many of us moved out of the neighborhood years ago, but White believes there are things that keep tugging us back: a vision of our youth, a remembrance of half-vanished ideals, or a shot at a really good deal on an ashtray in which John F. Kennedy once dumped an acrid cigar.White has spent the past 35 years collecting mementos of the martyred Kennedy, who had the good sense to be president before the age of Monica Lewinsky, Paula Corbin Jones or Kathleen Willey.

It's an image that blends the daring and the danger, the rambunctiousness and the risk-taking, so elemental to the Kennedys.The assembled clan streaks down an empty Aspen trail in the flat light of late afternoon, ignoring warnings to stop, laughing, joking, tossing a makeshift football as they go.Until the game intersects with calamity, another family tradition.Adventure and tragedy. Conjure up images of the Kennedys over the years, and those two words spring immediately to mind.There's the World War II heroism, the mountain-climbing expeditions, the whitewater rafting, the high-wind sailing.

Michael L. Kennedy, brother of Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy and Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was killed in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colo., yesterday afternoon.Kennedy suffered a major head injury when he crashed into a tree while downhill skiing with unidentified family members about 4 p.m."Ethel Kennedy and her family are mourning the loss of their beloved Michael, who was fatally injured while skiing with his family in Aspen," according to a statement released by the family last night.

"Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector," by James Hilty.Temple University Press. 576 pages. $34.95Before there was Janet Reno, before Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre and before the special prosecutor law itself, there was Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who saw not just his job but his mission in life as protecting his brother, who happened to be president of the United States.A thousand and one Kennedy books are out there, one for every day of John F. Kennedy's mythical reign. But this one, written by a historian, actually provides a useful service.