Worldandnation: 'Every gift but length of years'

'Every gift but length of years'

Sen. Kennedy eulogizes his nephew at a private Mass attended by 350, including the president and first lady.

By Boston Globe

NEW YORK -- A week of national mourning for John F. Kennedy Jr. came to a quiet end Friday, as 350 close friends and relatives assembled in a Manhattan church to say their formal farewells, while outside, 1,000 or so strangers stood solemnly under the broiling sun to pay their respects.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the uncle who has served as surrogate father to so many Kennedy children, eulogized this nephew -- the 38-year-old publisher, philanthropist and man-about-town, who was viewed by many as the "heir to Camelot" -- in a 10-minute speech full of fond memories, anguish and humor.

"He had a legacy and he learned to treasure it," the senator proclaimed. "He accepted who he was, but he cared more about what he could and should become. . . . And he could laugh at the absurdity of too much pomp and circumstance."

He remembered once when John Jr. was asked what he would do if he went into politics and was elected president, and he replied, "I guess the first thing is call up Uncle Teddy and gloat."

"I loved that," his uncle said Friday. "It was so like his father."

He ended on a more solemn note, saying, in a paraphrase of a Yeats poem about a man who died young, "We dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair. . . . But like his father, he had every gift but length of years."

After the eulogy, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, John Jr.'s sister, got up and gave the senator a hug.

According to a spokesman for the family, Caroline recited a passage from Shakespeare's The Tempest. And the hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean sang Jimmy Cliff's reggae hit Many Rivers to Cross.

The Mass was an invitations-only affair, with no press allowed. (Sen. Kennedy released his eulogy later in the day; the family spokesman talked to reporters briefly about what took place.)

It was held in the Church of St. Thomas More, the same Catholic church where John and Caroline's mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, regularly worshiped, and where she was memorialized in a Mass five years ago. The Rev. Charles O'Byrne, who led Friday's service, presided over the wedding of John Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, who also died in last week's plane crash with her sister Lauren Bessette.

Dr. Richard Freeman and his wife, Ann, the stepfather and mother of the Bessette daughters, were among the first to arrive at the church. Richard Bessette, their father, and Lauren's twin sister, Lisa Bessette, also attended.

Carolyn was eulogized by Hamilton South, who worked with her. A private memorial service for Lauren Bessette is scheduled for tonight in Greenwich, Conn.

The mood apparently lightened somewhat after Friday's Mass, at a luncheon in the Covenant of the Sacred Heart, a nearby Catholic girls' school that John Jr.'s sister, Caroline, once attended. At one point, according to two people at the luncheon, Sen. Kennedy sang A Closer Walk With Thee.

C.J. Hardy, a member of the O Freedom Choir, which had sung Amazing Grace during the Mass, and who watched the senator sing at the luncheon, said afterward, "We left on a high note, a note of joy."

John Adams, another choir singer, said of the ceremony generally, "The family tended to look at it as more a celebration of life than a mourning of death. . . . Obviously, that's a very strong family, and it shows."

About a third of the invited mourners were Kennedys by blood or marriage. A few were "New Frontiersmen" from President Kennedy's administration in the early 1960s: Arthur Schlesinger, the palace historian; John Kenneth Galbraith, an economist and ambassador to India; Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense.

Other political figures included President Clinton (who presented photos of John Jr.'s White House visits to Caroline, Sen. Kennedy and the Bessette family), first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, and their daughter, Chelsea; the other senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kerry; Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd; former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, one of the few Republicans, who worked with John Jr. on the board of Harvard's JFK Institute of Politics; and State Department spokesman James Rubin, who attended with his wife, CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour, who had been a friend of Kennedy's since his college days.

Also attending the Mass were boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who was a friend of John Jr.'s; TV news anchor Diane Sawyer and her husband, film director Mike Nichols; TV producer Lorne Michaels; and Maurice Tempelsman, who was Mrs. Onassis' companion in the latter part of her life.

Ali was the only guest who, after the Mass, walked out to the barricades on E 89th Street and Park Avenue, shook hands with several of the police officers on duty, and waved to the crowd, before heading off in one of the dozens of limousines hired for the event.

Security was tight, especially with Clinton's presence. Media and the public were kept a block from the church. Motor traffic was cut off for 10 blocks.

Armed Secret Service agents, on the roof of the church, yelled to apartment-dwellers across the street, "Close your windows!"

Despite the distance, more than 1,000 people lined the streets, some arriving as early as 6:30 a.m. and most standing patiently by 9 a.m. -- two hours before the Mass was scheduled to start. They all stayed until it ended at 12:30 p.m.

As the procession of mourners walked two blocks up Madison Avenue to the school where the luncheon took place, the spectators remained quiet and respectful. Many bowed their heads. (The Clintons did not take part in the procession or the luncheon, and returned to Washington after the Mass.)

Throughout the morning, the crowds -- as diverse as the city itself, including blue-collar workers, new immigrants, business executives and teenagers too young to remember the first John F. Kennedy -- clutched cameras, held each other's hands, or hoisted pictures of "John-John" as a child.

It was a scene that has been repeated in spontaneous memorials across the city.

Sen. Kennedy, in his eulogy, acknowledged these sentiments. "From the first day of his life," he said, "John seemed to belong not only to our family, but to the American family. The whole world knew his name before he did."

The Mass was in a relatively small church; though Onassis' memorial Mass was held in the same church, her funeral took place a few blocks away, in a church with four times the seating capacity.

At one point Friday, Caroline Kennedy seemed taken with the public sympathy. En route from the Mass to the luncheon, she rolled down the window of her limousine and waved, drawing smiles and applause.