NEW YORK -- They gathered in an oasis of quiet in the midst of the world's most know-it-all city, where streets were blocked and intruders were banned yesterday so that family and friends -- no matter how famous or familiar -- could commemorate in private the very public life, and death, of John F. Kennedy Jr.
"He had a legacy, and he learned to treasure it. He was part of a legend, and he learned to live with it," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said in a eulogy before about 315 mourners ranging from President Clinton to Muhammad Ali. "He had amazing grace."
John Kennedy; his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy; and her sister Lauren Bessette, killed in a plane crash one week ago, were memorialized yesterday morning at St. Thomas More Church on the Upper East Side. The simple and solemn ceremony drew members of both families, including Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and a number of celebrities and politicians.
The memorial Mass concluded a week that witnessed a remarkable outpouring of public grief for the sadly shortened lives. It was a recurring theme in Senator Kennedy's lyrical eulogy, in which he traced his nephew's journey from child of the Camelot White House to, most recently, Manhattan media mogul, who with his glamorous wife drew paparazzi like magnets whenever they stepped from their lower Manhattan apartment.
"From the first day of his life, John seemed to belong not only to our family, but to the American family," Sen. Kennedy said. "The whole world knew his name before he did."
Shortly after John was born, Kennedy recalled, the Irish ambassador recited a poem to his parents that went in part, "In the night that he is troubled, may a friend wake for him so that his time be doubled.
"He was lost on that troubled night," Kennedy continued, referring to last Friday's disappearance of the plane, "but we will always wake for him, so that his time, which was not doubled but cut in half, will live forever in our memory, and in our beguiled and broken hearts.
"We dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair, with his beloved Carolyn by his side," Kennedy said. "But like his father, he had every gift but the length of years."
As the family patriarch, Kennedy was once again charged with both leading the mourning and also the healing. He included several humorous anecdotes about his witty nephew, and even entertained guests at a post-service luncheon by breaking into song.
Senator Kennedy recalled how John Kennedy, then a bachelor, toyed with his uncle's staff by telling them he would bring a companion to a 1994 campaign event but would need only one hotel room for the night. The mystery companion turned out to a huge German shepherd named Sam that he had rescued from the pound.
A private life
While he lauded the young Kennedy's professional accomplishments and charitable projects, much of the senator's eulogy dealt with the private life that he managed to live despite the endless public fascination with the boy who grew up to be the tabloid-dubbed Hunk.
He described a son who protected his mother, a brother who cherished his sister, a cousin who could always be counted on for a game of touch football.
In a church where elderly New Frontiersmen such as JFK speech writer Theodore Sorenson and former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara mourned next to younger friends of John and Carolyn Kennedy, the senator's eulogy spanned the generations.
"For a thousand days, he was a husband who adored the wife who became his perfect soul mate," Kennedy went on to say, using the same abbreviated time span that defined President Kennedy's administration.
"John's father taught us all to reach for the moon and the stars," Kennedy said. "John did that in all he did -- and he found his shining star when he married Carolyn Bessette."
"It was a very moving service," said John Adams, a singer with the New York City Church of Christ choir, which performed at the memorial. "They conducted it as more of a celebration of his life, not his death. That's a very strong family, and it shows. It was good to see them together."
The Mass was led by a Jesuit priest, the Rev. Charles O'Byrne, who also performed the marriage of John and Carolyn in September 1996.
Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, John Kennedy's sister, read from Shakespeare's "The Tempest," and Ann Freeman, mother of the Bessette sisters, read from Thomas Holland's "Facts of Faith." A Bessette family friend, Hamilton South, offered a eulogy for Carolyn.
Hip-hop star Wyclef Jean of the Fugees performed a solo of the reggae song, "Many Rivers to Cross," and the choir sang "Amazing Grace."
A lighter aftermath
After the 90-minute service, guests walked or rode two blocks up to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, the school Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg attended as a child, for a luncheon. The Clintons, however, left immediately after the service and did not attend the lunch.
After the formal ceremony at the church, the luncheon was looser and lighter, according to C. J. Hardy, another singer in the choir.
"Ted was amazing," she said. "He told a lot of stories and jokes. He even sang 'Just A Closer Walk With Thee.' He's got a pretty good voice. We left on a high note, with joy."
Kennedy, his wife and his sister-in-law were cremated and buried at sea off Massachusetts on Thursday. A memorial service for Lauren Bessette will be held today in Greenwich, Conn.
Most of those invited to yesterday's memorial Mass kept mum, entering and leaving the church and school looking downward and ignoring the crunch of media staked out on various corners and the onlookers who were kept behind blue barricades.
Security was so tight for the presidential visit that the impromptu shrine of flowers and notes that had emerged on the fence of the church over the last several days was removed early yesterday morning. Two white floral arrangements instead were delivered to decorate the church.
Traffic and pedestrians alike were diverted from the blocks surrounding the church and the school, and guests to the memorial had to pass several guards checking their invitations.
But in this city that has fully embraced John F. Kennedy Jr., the neighbor they saw at the deli, in the subway and on his bike or in-line skates, New Yorkers would not be denied what would be the close of a week of remarkable outpouring of public grief.
Flowers and other mementos continued to pile up -- at the Kennedys' apartment in TriBeCa, at George's midtown headquarters.
"I wanted to be a part of this," said Frances Brower, a decorator who stood a half-block from St. Thomas More from 9 a.m. yesterday until the service ended 3 1/2 hours later. "I loved John to death. He is our own. He is a part of our generation, our New York."
But New York would have to wait outside on this steaming, sunny day, when the family that has uneasily straddled the private and the public chose to lean toward the former.
A generous gesture
Behind police barricades, though, both the media and the public craned for any glimpse possible.
When it came, it came from the most surprising source, the final direct link to President Kennedy and said to be the most private of them all: Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.
A long black limousine carrying Kennedy Schlossberg, her husband and three children curved around 89th Street and headed up Madison Avenue after the Mass.
A tinted window rolled down, and there she was, smiling and waving to those who had stood on the sidewalk for hours waiting for just that: a sense of connection.
"It was very nice that she showed her appreciation for the people coming," said Bea Ruhe, a nurse in the midst of the crowd that waved back, blew kisses and cheered. "That really meant something to me."
Some of the guest
President Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and daughter Chelsea; Maryland's Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; boxing great Muhammad Ali; Senators Christopher Dodd, John Kerry and Tom Daschle; Former Sen. Alan Simpson; Cousin Marie Shriver, the NBC correspondent; and her husband Arnold Schwarzenegger; ABC anchor Diane Sawyer and her husband director Mike Nichols; CNN's Christiane Amanpour and her husband Jamie Rubin, the State Department spokesman; JFK speechwriter Ted Sorenson; former Denfens Secretary Robert S. McNamara; Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' sister Lee Radziwell, economist John Kenneth Galbraith; JFK chronicler Arthur Schlesinger Jr.; Sen. Kennedy's former wife Joan Bennett Kennedy; Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner; Mark Shriver, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates; former U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II and HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who is married to Kerry Kennedy Cuomo.
Pub Date: 7/24/99