A Private Child of Camelot Is Once Again in Spotlight

In so many ways, she stands apart.

Three years older, almost to the day, than the brother who perished last weekend when his plane crashed into the sea off Martha’s Vineyard, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is--by careful design and assiduous practice--the least-known member of her immediate family.

While her brother seemed to move smoothly past the curiosity and the cameras that followed him, she is panther-like in her determination to dwell outside the spotlight.

Now, as the sole survivor of the 35th president, that may not be so easy. Consider, for example, the fact that some news organizations reported she left her house for an hour to take a bike ride with her husband.

“She will manage. She is strong,” said John Seigenthaler, director of the 1st Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University who has known her for decades. “But it’s going to be very difficult.”

While her brother was flying toward Cape Cod to attend the scheduled wedding Saturday of their cousin Rory Kennedy, Schlossberg was vacationing with her family at the Idaho ranch of Rolling Stone publishing tycoon Jann S. Wenner. By coincidence, the weekend also marked the Schlossbergs’ 13th wedding anniversary.

Though inseparable in childhood from her cousins Maria Shriver and Sydney Lawford, Schlossberg was never fully at home in the rollicking extended family of Ethel Kennedy and the late Robert F. Kennedy. Far from a rebuke of her cousin Rory, however, her absence from the wedding was seen by friends as a sign of her commitment to her husband, museum designer Edwin Schlossberg, and their three children.

“Caroline has built her own family now,” Seigenthaler said.

In turn, those around her say--after a period of what will likely be prolonged and private grieving--Schlossberg can be expected to carry on the legacy that she and her brother picked up when their mother died five years ago. Schlossberg is deeply involved in the John F. Kennedy Library here. She also is a board member of several cultural and civic organizations in New York.

“I would be very surprised if she becomes the public face of the Kennedys, I would be stunned,” said Richard Reeves, author of “President Kennedy: Profile of Power.” On the other hand, said Reeves, “I am sure she is going to emerge as a, or the, senior voice within the family.”

After she received word of the disappearance of her brother, his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, Schlossberg headed not for the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port, but for her family’s own vacation home in the Hamptons on Long Island. It was there that her uncle, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, visited her Monday after authorities confirmed the deaths of all three passengers aboard her brother’s airplane.

Raised in golden surroundings, Schlossberg and her brother adored one another. Yet in many ways, they were as different as they were alike.

He lived in hip lower Manhattan; she dwells on the more staid Upper East Side. He published a slick political magazine. She writes scholarly legal books. He partied at the clubs. She attends meetings of the Brearley School parents’ association.

He had the dark and dashing looks of the Bouviers, their mother’s family. Physically, she is a Kennedy through-and-through, with chestnut hair and aquiline features. Until his marriage in 1996, John F. Kennedy Jr. was a major playboy. She married the son of a Jewish textile manufacturer and promptly began having children. Rose, named for her grandmother is 11 and Tatiana is 9.

Her third child, a son, was named both for her brother and her father. John F. Kennedy Jr. doted on all three Schlossberg children--”an amazing uncle,” as their Uncle Ted noted this week--but he was especially devoted to 6-year-old Jack.

“God, he loved that boy,” a friend said.

Schlossberg attended boarding school at Concord Academy in Massachusetts, then an all-girls school known for its focus on the arts. She graduated from Harvard, her father’s alma mater, with a degree in fine arts.

When she and her husband were married on Cape Cod, a crowd of 2,000 spectators lined the road. Thirteen years her senior, Edwin Schlossberg has written books on the arts and the environment and designed playgrounds and theme parks.

While attending Columbia Law School, Caroline Schlossberg teamed up with classmate Ellen Alderman to write a book about the Bill of Rights called “In Our Defense,” which was well-received by critics. Together the two authors went on to write “The Right to Privacy,” which uses real-life legal cases to argue that privacy is losing ground to public access, and that society needs to reexamine that imbalance. Other than writing, she does not practice law.

In touring to promote the book, the two authors drew strict limits. No personal questions were permitted.

“I know people don’t always believe this,” Schlossberg said while promoting that book, “but my life is much more private than most people would think.”

Her insistence on privacy is the legacy of a mother who taught her well. Be wary of outsiders, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis counseled her daughter. Stay away from large gatherings with unimportant people. Love your family. Live your life.

Indeed, friends circled the wagons tightly this week. Her co-author would not discuss their literary collaboration. Her literary agent had no comment, nor did the editors of her book. Friends begged off even the most benign questions. How the shy little girl who charmed the country when she rode a pony called Macaroni across the White House lawn will fare as the final standard-bearer of Camelot will clearly be closely watched.

Friends predict that her own family will be more of a bulwark than ever. She stands apart, they point out. Not alone.

* KENNEDY CRASH DETAILS: More information is given on plane’s last minutes. A14

* SAFETY IN NUMBERS: Faced with tragedy, a Ladera Heights family drew strength from its many members. E1