President Kennedy

GAY HEAD, Mass. -- Helicopters swirled above the westernmost coast of Martha's Vineyard yesterday as rescue boats bobbed below, looking for the plane carrying John F. Kennedy Jr. and the relatives who apparently crashed into the ocean with him in the latest tragedy to befall the country's most charmed and cursed family.Police closed miles of beach here, where earlier in the day several vacationers and investigators reported finding debris -- including three pieces of luggage belonging to the family, the nose wheel of a plane of the same design as Kennedy's single-engine, six-seat Piper Saratoga, and a prescription drug bottle bearing the name of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.

WASHINGTON -- The Kennedys are expected to assemble aboard the destroyer USS Briscoe and slip the remains of John F. Kennedy Jr. into the Massachusetts waters the family has sailed in times of joy and sorrow.The ceremony is expected to take place this morning, said Pentagon and government sources, under a Navy regulation that allows civilians to be buried at sea in the event of "notable service or outstanding contributions" to the United States.Sen. Edward M. Kennedy asked Defense Secretary William S. Cohen to permit the burial at sea, an ancient maritime tradition.

NEW YORK -- Remember this name: Gen. Anthony Zinni. He is the commander of U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf -- and he is probably on his way to retirement or professional martyrdom for telling the truth to power.It was Gen. Zinni, testifying last week before the Senate Armed Forces Committee on American operations above and around Iraq, who said:"I will be honest: I don't see an opposition group that has the viability to overthrow Saddam at this point. . . . it would be very difficult, and I think if not done properly, very dangerous."

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."

WHATEVER it was, John F. Kennedy Jr., had it, just like his dad -- that certain "je ne sais quoi" that you can't put your finger on, but you know it when you feel it.The same mysterious qualities that drew so many people, African-Americans in particular, to President Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy also rubbed off on John Jr.While media coverage did not fully capture it, many African-Americans were deeply touched by the recent deaths of Mr. Kennedy, his...

WASHINGTON -- To some born after the Kennedy assassination, John F. Kennedy Jr. was the heir to his father's legacy, a natural leader with unlimited possibilities and a sense of purpose. To others, he was a man best known for his tight abs and his girlfriends -- a super-hunk with inherited fame whose death, however tragic, would not shape a generation or brand him a national hero.The under-40 generation grew up with the Kennedy myth but never lived its reality. For some who experienced the Kennedy era through history books, the national significance of that plane's disappearance seems itself lost in a kind of haze.

I WAS DRIVING to the funeral of my cousin George Floyd Jr. when I heard the news on a radio broadcast that John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane was missing and that he hadn't been heard from for hours.My heart sank. I feared the worst, and it was confirmed later this week. John F. Kennedy Jr. is dead at the age of 38, killed in a plane crash along with his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette. Kennedy Jr.'s father -- President John F. Kennedy -- was only 46 when he was assassinated in 1963.

LAST WEEKEND, Senate minority leader Tom Daschle spent seven hours talking to Fidel Castro in Havana. U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donohue spent three days there last month. In June, low-level State Department and Coast Guard officials met with their Cuban counterparts to discuss the potential for collaboration on drug interdiction operations. More and more officials, it seems, are pursuing a dialogue with Castro's government.But not the White House. Fearful of a right-wing attack at the first sign that Washington might engage in diplomatic discussions over its long-standing differences with Castro, the Clinton administration has rejected all high-level talks with the Cuban government.

NOW THAT THE angst, agony and grieving are over, now that John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and her sister Lauren Bessette have been buried at sea, there's one last bit of business that needs addressing: taking to task those grouches who complained about the news coverage.You know who you are. You're the ones who waxed churlish about the "excessive" media reporting of the crash of JFK Jr.'s plane, the search for the bodies and the subsequent burials and memorial services. You're the ones that called the assorted media outlets and complained, at length, not to editors and policy-makers who are responsible for such decisions, but to folks who weren't involved in the process at all.Oh, how you ranted.

WASHINGTON -- It just seemed like the natural place to go.Over and over, that is how yesterday's visitors to Arlington National Cemetery explained their decision to brave the afternoon's above-90-degree heat and pay their respects at the gravesite of President John F. Kennedy.On a weekend when most Americans watched news of the late president's son slowly unfold -- his plane missing, luggage washed up, debris found, the search continues -- many area residents and tourists brought flowers, cards and photographs to the spot where President Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and two of their children are buried.

PAUL B. 'RED' FAY JR., 91 Confidant of President Kennedy's Paul B. Fay Jr., a confidant of John F. Kennedy's from their service together during World War II to his tenure as a high-ranking Navy Department official in the Kennedy administration, died Sept. 23 of complications from Alzheimer's disease at his home in Woodside, Calif. Mr. Fay, a San Francisco businessman after his years as Navy undersecretary during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, got to know Mr. Kennedy in the fall of 1942, when Mr. Fay was a Navy ensign assigned to the PT Boat School in Melville, R.I. Both men were dispatched to the South Pacific, where they were part of the same squadron - Mr. Kennedy as skipper of PT 109, Mr. Fay as executive officer of PT 174 and subsequently captain of PT 167, based at Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.

COCOA BEACH, Fla. -- Col. James B. Swindal, the Air Force One pilot who flew President John F. Kennedy's body back to Washington in the hours after his assassination in Dallas, died April 25 at a hospital here. He was 88. The cause was heart failure after suffering complications from a broken hip, said his son, James L. Swindal. Colonel Swindal became the commander of Air Force One - the designation for any plane carrying a president - at the beginning of President Kennedy's presidency.

WASHINGTON - Fred Dutton, the all-around adviser and strategist for leading Democrats since the John F. Kennedy era who died Saturday at 82, was a rare breed. He walked comfortably and influentially among two customary adversaries - politicians and the press. Mr. Dutton combined a keen knowledge of the inside workings of Washington with an optimistic, jovial personality that made him a valued counselor to such varied figures as the Kennedy brothers and, in more recent years, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's longtime ambassador to the United States.

WASHINGTON - I can't imagine what Sen. Edward M. Kennedy must feel. I mean, I know it's traumatic to see your brother shot in the head and killed. But what must it add to your pain to see that tragedy become a video game? It happened last week. The game, available online, is called JFK Reloaded, and it was released to coincide with the 41st anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Download the game at a cost of $9.99 and you find yourself on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.

THE 2004 presidential campaign begins in earnest this month, and I'm still looking for a candidate. The entire field - President Bush and his would-be challengers - leaves me cold. I'm still looking for a candidate who draws us together rather than hardening the divide between us, a candidate who calls us to a cause greater than ourselves rather than appealing to our selfish interests, a candidate who inspires us to overcome our fears rather than give in to them. I haven't found such a man or woman.

WILLIAMSPORT -- Nobody finishes the John F. Kennedy 50 Mile race, Mike Spinnler likes to say. They complete it. It's hard to argue with the race director's logic when you look at a field of nearly 1,000 runners. The roster is filled with athletes who have competed multiple times, some with consecutive streaks that would make Cal Ripken envious. For them, the JFK is always unfinished business. Yesterday, with rays from the rising sun lighting the way, 770 men and 185 women pounded up the hill out of Boonsboro at the start of the 41st annual event -- the oldest ultramarathon in the country.

JOHN F. KENNEDY'S family plans to mark this day quietly, privately, as it usually does, visiting his grave at Arlington National Cemetery but otherwise calling no attention to the anniversary of his passing. His loved ones prefer to go public on the 35th president's birthday in May, in hopes of focusing the nation's memories on the man, and his life. Their challenge is that even 40 years later, JFK is most often viewed in terms of his assassination, and what it meant to everyone else, particularly the generation for whom Nov. 22, 1963, was a defining moment.

After 40 years it has become a tired truism that anyone old enough to remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy can remember clearly where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the news from Dallas. For Dr. Robert G. Grossman, this "flashbulb" is not just a vivid personal recollection. It is one of acute professional and historical significance. On Nov. 22, 1963, Grossman was a 30-year-old neurosurgeon in Dallas. He had been on the staff at Parkland Hospital there for just five months when a telephone call - which he and his colleagues at first suspected was a particularly bad joke - summoned them to Parkland's Trauma Room 1. President Kennedy, they were told, had been shot.

ARLINGTON, Va. - On election night, 1960, I watched the returns trickle in to Huntley and Brinkley on a black-and-white TV set at an American University fraternity house in Washington. I was an almost 18-year-old college freshman, and Dwight Eisenhower was the only president I had been aware of. The results would not be determined until the next day, but when they were (and even with the tampered ballot boxes in Cook County, Illinois - the "hanging chad" scandal of that day), John Fitzgerald Kennedy was declared the winner over Vice President Richard Nixon.

Martin E. Underwood, a retired state employee who had been an advance man for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and was riding in the Dallas motorcade when President Kennedy was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, died of cardiac arrest March 18 at Maryland Shock Trauma Center. Mr. Underwood, who was 88, had been recovering from injuries suffered in a fall a few days earlier at the home of his son in Carney, where he had been living. He had retired about 1979 from a position in the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where he went after joining state government and working as an aide to former Gov. Marvin Mandel.