Anguished Anniversary

I guess the only reason we've survived is that there are too many of us. There are more of us than there is trouble.

The wry words were those of Robert Kennedy, later to be struck down himself, meditating on all the losses of the Kennedy family, including that of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th and youngest elected President of the U.S. This week marks the tenth anniversary of his assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald. In one sense the event seems very long ago; the intervening decade-of war and protest, civil rights and Watergate, has been one of the most tumultuous in American history. Yet for many Americans it seems hauntingly close, so clear is the memory still of time and place and ordinary motion frozen by the bulletin from Dallas. Had he lived, John Kennedy today would be only 56 years old (see Hugh Sidey's recollections page 23).

On the eve of the anniversary and amid preparations for the marriage of R.F.K.'s oldest child Kathleen, 22, the Kennedy family was struck again. The towheaded twelve-year-old son of Edward Kennedy was found to have bone cancer, a rare and sometimes fatal disease of children. As a result, Edward Jr., called Teddy, underwent amputation of his right leg in Georgetown University Hospital. The Senator's elder son, second of three children, was an ardent fledgling skier, sailor and football player. Loving sports is, of course, part of the Kennedy tradition. So, too, was his father's decision to participate in the wedding of his niece as scheduled, standing in for his dead brother to give the bride away the same morning that his son was operated on.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.