[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 105 (Thursday, July 22, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Page S9070]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  MARY MCGRORY ON JOHN F. KENNEDY, JR.

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, it happens I was in the White House, in 
what was then Ralph Dungan's southwest office just down the hall from 
the Oval Office--where they were cleaning the carpet, the President's 
furniture having been moved to the outside corridor with his rocking 
chair atop the clutter--when word came from Dallas that the President 
was dead. A few moments later Hubert H. Humphrey burst in, embraced 
Dungan and let out: ``My God, what have they done to us.'' By ``they'' 
of course he meant the political right wing in Texas. Later we learned 
that the Dallas police had arrested a man associated with Fair Play for 
Cuba. What indeed had been done to us, what were we doing to ourselves?
  That evening a group of us who lived on Macomb Street, out 
Connecticut Avenue, drifted over to Mary McGrory's. We sat about, 
saying little. At length Mary, with the feeling only she can put into 
words, announced: ``We'll never laugh again.'' ``Heavens, Mary,'' I 
replied, ``we'll laugh again. It's just that we will never be young 
again.''
  In this morning's Washington Post, her column ``A Death in the 
Family'' describes in poignant detail the history from then to now, now 
being of course the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., so much on our minds 
in those slow-paced days of mourning so many years ago, now himself 
gone, along with his wife Carolyn and his sister-in-law Lauren 
Bessette.
  I ask unanimous consent that her reflections be reprinted in the 
Record in full following my statement.
  There being no objection, the article ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, July 22, 1999]

                         A Death in the Family

                           (By Mary McGrory)

       To understand the round-the-clock coverage of John 
     Kennedy's death, the unending talk about it, and the 
     makeshift memorials, it helps to remember what the country 
     felt about his parents. His father, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 
     handsome and dashing, came out of Boston insisting on being 
     our first Catholic president--and was assassinated on Nov. 
     22, 1963.
       His beautiful mother, Jacqueline Bouvier, once dismissed as 
     a social butterfly, stepped forward and held the country 
     together. She arranged a funeral that was majestic and moved 
     through it like a queen. She saw to every detail from the 
     kilted Irish pipers to the eternal flame.
       When it was over, she summoned the most famous political 
     scribe of his time, Theodore H. White, and put a name on her 
     husband's time in office, Camelot. The country has been 
     emotionally involved with the Kennedy's ever since. They are 
     numerous, good looking and always up to something. They have 
     provided a pageant of smiles, tears and scandals.
       When John Kennedy's single-engine plane, with him at the 
     controls, fell off the radar at the Martha's Vineyard 
     airport, the nation once again went to its post by the 
     television to keep vigil with the Kennedys.
       In the five days that followed, the dread and dismay were 
     laced with indignation. This was not supposed to happen. This 
     was entirely gratuitous. The crown prince had been exempt 
     from ``the curse of the Kennedys''--a phrase coined by Uncle 
     Teddy during the Chappaquiddick crisis. Had not Jackie 
     Kennedy sequestered her children from the turbulence at the 
     Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, as Bobby Kennedy's 
     fatherless sons wrestled with various demons? She took John 
     and Caroline over the water to Martha's Vineyard.
       John had not followed in his father's footsteps. He was his 
     mother's son. She brought him up not to be a Kennedy, but to 
     be himself. He shared her detachment about politics. When 
     asked a while back how, in the light of his father's 
     posthumously revealed promiscuity, Jack Kennedy would have 
     tolerated today's fierce press scrutiny, John Kennedy said 
     coolly he thought his father might have chosen to go into 
     another line of work.
       John Kennedy died like his father violently and too soon. 
     His blond wife, Carolyn Bessette, and his sister-in-law 
     Lauren Bessette died with him. At 38, he left more 
     unfulfilled promise than performance. He was strikingly 
     handsome and unexpectedly nice for one of his looks and 
     station. He was courteous to all, even the paparazzi who 
     dogged him from the age of 3 when he broke the nation's 
     heart by saluting his father's coffin.
       The tabs called him ``The Hunk'' and People magazine said 
     he was ``the sexiest man alive.'' If the grief seems 
     disproportionate to his life, it is easily explained. He was 
     measured by who he was, not what he did.
       His mother vetoed his first choice of a career, the 
     theater. He went into the law, but not for long. He founded a 
     magazine he called ``George.'' It was to be a glossy, trendy 
     monthly that treated politics as entertainment.
       He courted publicity for ``George'' by sometimes doing odd 
     things: He posed nude for an illustration to accompany a 
     critique of his Kennedy cousins' behavior. More recently, he 
     visited Mike Tyson, the convicted rapist, in prison; he 
     invited pornographer Larry Flynt to the White House 
     correspondents' dinner. Like his mother, he never explained 
     his actions. He was a free spirit. His father, despite his 
     private excesses, was decorous in his public life, having a 
     politician's perpetual concern about what the neighbors will 
     think. Jack Kennedy was witty, sometimes in the mordant Irish 
     way; his son was whimsical. Politics does not allow for 
     whimsy.
       John's love life was of aching, international interest. He 
     courted a string of gorgeous girls and then married one. He 
     married willowy Carolyn Bessette at a secret wedding on an 
     island off Georgia. He was terribly proud of his coup against 
     the press. He released one picture. It was of him kissing his 
     bride's hand. It was drop-dead romantic.
       The country spent the last weekend soaking up every detail, 
     watching hour after hour of Jack's funeral, Bobby's funeral, 
     touch football, prayers at Arlington. The context was pure, 
     incredible Kennedy. The clan had gathered at Hyannis Port to 
     celebrate the wedding of Rory Kennedy. A huge tent had been 
     set up on Ethel's lawn. It was the one mercy of the grim 
     weekend. The Kennedys, who derive such solace from each 
     other, were together. The wedding was postponed. The family 
     mourned.
       Washington talked of nothing else. Arguments broke out over 
     ``the curse of the Kennedys''--was it really the rashness of 
     its members? ``Where was God in all this?'' one man demanded 
     to know at a subdued Saturday party.
       All agreed on one point: It was a shame.

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