Ashes of Kennedy Crash Victims Returned to Sea

In a simple, solemn ceremony aboard a Navy destroyer, the ashes of John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and Lauren Bessette were committed to the ocean Thursday morning, not far from where they died last week when their private plane spiraled into the sea.

About 15 Kennedy and Bessette family members were present for the somber farewell on the deck of the Briscoe, about five miles off Martha’s Vineyard. At the families’ request, the occasion was private, and the media horde that had descended on Cape Cod and the Vineyard was kept at a respectful distance, at least one mile away.

Mourners included 41-year-old Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, now the sole surviving child of the the late President Kennedy; and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who continued a sorrowful tradition of escorting fallen family members.

Looking sad and exhausted, it was the 67-year-old senator, the family’s patriarch, who led a small family delegation Wednesday aboard the Navy salvage ship Grasp to identify the bodies of the Kennedys and Bessette.

Edwin Schlossberg accompanied his wife Thursday. Also in attendance were Ann and Richard Freeman, the mother and stepfather of the two women killed; and Lisa Ann Bessette, the 34-year-old twin sister of Lauren Bessette, who was an investment banker in New York. Kennedy cousins Maria Shriver and William Kennedy Smith also were among those who boarded the Coast Guard cutter Sanibel in Woods Hole, Mass., shortly before 9 a.m. to take them to the Briscoe.

Cremation and the sea burial were apparently selected to ensure privacy. Two Navy chaplains, both Roman Catholic, and a Roman Catholic priest officiated at the simple ritual, which did not include a Mass.

Burial at sea is a tradition that dates to ancient Greece. Usually it is performed for active or retired members of the military or their families, but Navy regulations permit the ceremony to be performed for “notable service or outstanding contribution to the United States.” This was the category that Defense Secretary William S. Cohen invoked in granting a request from the Kennedy and Bessette families for the military to provide the burials.

Later in the day, a public Mass sponsored by the Emerald Isle Immigration Center was held at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Lower Manhattan, not far from the hip TriBeCa neighborhood of New York where John and Carolyn Kennedy lived.

With all 600 seats in the church filled, 400 people standing inside the cathedral and 3,000 more gathered outside, bagpipers led the clergy into the church. “The Kennedy family lives large in our imaginations, and perhaps the great gift they have given us is they have lived as legends,” Msgr. Thomas Leonard told the worshipers. “They have given us the gift of seeing the scope of life.”

Kennedy, 38, his 33-year-old wife and her sister were headed for Martha’s Vineyard from a New Jersey airport Friday when the Piper Saratoga piloted by Kennedy crashed. Their plan had been to drop Bessette off on the Vineyard, a fashionable island vacation mecca, and then proceed to Cape Cod for the scheduled wedding Saturday of Rory Kennedy, daughter of Ethel Kennedy and the late Robert F. Kennedy.

The disappearance of Kennedy’s aircraft set in motion an extensive search on land, at sea and from the air that drew on resources from the Navy, the Coast Guard, the National Transportation Safety Board and other federal agencies, as well as local search crews.

The wreckage was discovered in murky waters about 7 1/2 miles off Martha’s Vineyard, at a depth of 116 feet. Navy divers recovered the three bodies Wednesday.

Items from the plane, including its registration papers, had washed up earlier on Martha’s Vineyard on a private beach at Gay Head left by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to her two children when she died five years ago.

The bodies were returned to land late Wednesday for autopsies that showed the three died instantly from multiple traumatic injuries, said Dr. Russell Evans, chief medical examiner for Massachusetts.

Though photographs are normally taken at autopsies, a report in the Cape Cod Times said the Kennedy family had requested that no photographs be taken to avoid sensationalistic publicity.

On this warm Thursday morning, the Briscoe spent about half an hour floating motionless in calm, steady waters off the southwest coast of the Vineyard. Several people rose to speak during the course of the burial. The Navy vessel carried three folded U.S. flags and three wreaths with red, yellow and white flowers to honor the victims.

The sea has figured prominently in the lives of the Kennedys. The family’s vacation compound at Hyannis Port hugs Nantucket Sound, and even as the family awaited word on the grim search for Kennedy’s plane, several family members slipped out to go sailing.

A young John Kennedy Jr. had sailed with his father there, and later, with his uncle Ted and his cousins. One of his favorite gifts from his stepfather, the late shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, was a small boat to sail off the island of Skorpios, in Greece.

Kennedy also was an avid swimmer, kayaker and scuba diver. In his teens, he participated in salvage operations that took him aboard a sunken pirate ship off the shores of Martha’s Vineyard.

At the church in Manhattan, Kennedy’s uncle, Sargent Shriver, waved a small American flag and a small Irish flag as he left the services. Shriver said the Kennedy family is shaken by the loss of another of its members but that they are holding up well.

“One can never be adequately prepared, but the Kennedy family has shown great courage and bravery,” he said outside the church. “I think the Mass today was a great way to remember John.”

One of the officiating priests, Father Colm Campbell, said that in his 40 years as a priest in the United States and in Ireland, “I have been with families who lost loved ones in their youth, stillborn babies, cot deaths, serious illness, murders, tragic accidents, sudden death, but never, never have I had to minister to a family who has suffered all of these agonies, and often many times over, like the Kennedy family has done.”

John Kennedy’s friend Rodney Cook flew in from Atlanta to speak at the memorial. Cook, an architect, met Kennedy through various charitable groups, one of which hoped to start an artists’ colony on Cumberland Island, the Georgia retreat where Kennedy and Bessette were married.

“Beyond his celebrity, he gave his time to things he thought would help people,” Cook said after the service. “There’s nobody to replace him.

A private memorial Mass will be this morning at St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church in Upper Manhattan, where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis often worshiped. Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is a parishioner there as well, and her children were baptized in the church.

The service will be by invitation only. President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton are expected to attend this Mass, scheduled to “celebrate the lives of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr.”

On Saturday, a private service will honor Lauren Bessette at Christ Church in her hometown of Greenwich, Conn.

Times researcher Edith Stanley and special correspondent Diane Seo contributed to this story.

Updates, additional photos and graphics, and related video are available on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/kennedy

* MEDIA WHIRLPOOL: TV critic Howard Rosenberg found the funeral coverage a bit crazy and hysterical, to say nothing of manipulative. F1

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America’s Most-Prominent Political Family

Here’s a look at the Kennedy family through the years:

Patrick Kennedy, 1857-1929

m. 1887

Mary Hickey, 1857-1929

Joseph P. Kennedy, 1889-1969

m. 1914

Rose Fitzgerald, 1890-1995

John Fitzgerald, 1863-1950

m. 1889

Mary Hannon, 1865-1964

Joseph Jr., b. 1915, d. 1944, Killed in a plane crash during World War II. He was 29.

John F.

m. Jacqueline Bouvier, 1953

Caroline, 1957, Lawyer

John Jr., 1960, Died last week in crash

Rosemary, b. 1918, Institutionalized since 1941 because of retardation and failed lobotomy. Now 80 years old.

Kathleen, b. 1920, d. 1948, Died in plane crash at the age of 28.

Eunice

m. Sargent Shriver, 1953

Robert, 1954, Producer

Maria, 1955, Reporter / news correspondent

Tim, 1959, President Special Olympics

Mark, 1964, Member Maryland House of Delegates

Anthony, 1965, Started Best Buddies

Patricia

m. Peter Lawford, 1954

Christopher, 1955, Lawyer, producer, actor

Sydney, 1956, Homemaker

Victoria, 1958, Lawyer

Robin, 1961, Wildlife conservationist

Robert

m. Ethel Skakel, 1950

d. 1969

Kathleen, 1951, Lieuteant governor of Maryland

Joseph, 1952, Congressman

Robert F., 1954, Environmental law professor

David, 1955, died of overdose in 1984

Courtney, 1956, Homemaker

Michael, 1958, died 1997, Chairman of Citzen’s Energy Corp.

Kerry, 1959, Married Andreew Cuomo

Christopher, 1963, VP for Maketing Merchandise Mart Properities

Max, 1965, Lawyer

Douglas, 1967, Freelance writer

Rory, 1968, Producer and documentary filmmaker

Jean

m. Stephen Smith, 1956

Stephen Jr., 1957, Lawyer, teacher

William, 1960, Doctor

Amanda, 1967, Adopted Ph.D. Special Ed.

Kym, 1972, Adopted, Travel agency

Edward

m. Joan Bennett, 1958, divorced 1984

Kara, 1960, Director

Ted. Jr., 1961, Lost leg to cancer

Patrick J., 1967, Congressman Rhode Island

Sources: Associated Press, Kennedy: the New Generation, Edward Kennedy and the Camelot Legacy