Neal Gabler - Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour, 1932-1975

ON A BRISK, bright, cool August morning in Hyannis Port, they came. First the Barnstable motorcycle police, their bikes parked near the DO NOT ENTER sign, standing guard on Marchant Avenue a few hundred yards outside the famous Kennedy compound to keep onlookers at bay. Then the newsmen milling on Marchant, waiting to deliver their stand-ups while their white transmission vans lined Irving Avenue, bumper to bumper, satellite dishes tilted skyward between the trees, and the thick cables running down Scudder Avenue, perpendicular to Irving. And then the family: Ethel Kennedy, Robert Kennedys widow; and Jean Kennedy Smith, the senators sole surviving sibling, gaunt in oversized sunglasses and wearing a large straw hat; and Sargent Shriver, his brother-in-law, whose wife, Eunice, had died just two weeks before; and Kennedy cousins, dozens of them; and grandchildren, four of them. Then friends came, like John Kerry and his wife, Teresa HeinzKerry, who had been Massachusettss junior senator and later a Democratic presidential candidate. And others, neither family nor dignitaries, came to pay respects outside the compound, ordinary admirers like Anne Griswold of Centerville, who brought flowers and a balloon and a thank-you notenot a condolence cardto the senator for all hes done; and April Thomas of Marston Mills, whose two-year-old daughter, in a red sundress and red hat, held a sign written in blue marker: Teddy, you are a true gift of love, a work of art, signed by God! May his angels embrace you in love.

They came.

And they came again the next morning, among them Caroline Kennedy, the late presidents daughter, and Patrick Kennedy, Senator Kennedys youngest son, who had been traveling at the time of his fathers death, as the familyeighty-five of themattended mass in the rambling white clapboard house on the lip of Nantucket Sound, the house where the Kennedys had summered since 1926. Then they filed out onto the porch, some holding hands, others speaking quietly, a few laughing, and strolled down the driveway to watch the honor guard carry the flag-draped casket to a hearse. After the doors of the hearse closed, many of them touched the car reverently before scattering to their own vehicles in the motorcade for the seventy-mile journey to Bostona journey that Ted had planned, as he had planned every event of his funeral.

He had planned not just the route but the scale of the observancedrawn to what he saw as his proportions. There was to be no riderless horse pulling a caisson through Washingtons streets as at John Kennedys funeral, no train like the one that carried Robert Kennedys body from New York to Washington, echoing Lincolns funeral train, which bore him from Washington to his resting place in Springfield, Illinois. Teds motorcade was long but modest, informal, democratic, less solemn than celebratory: Teds scale, Teds mood.

As the caravan crept through Hyannis Port and down Main Street, they came. I remember where I was when President Kennedy died, and Ill remember where I was when the senator left Hyannis Port, said Virginia Cain, who had walked two miles to see the cortege pass. And past the local John F. Kennedy Museum, where an admirer had written across an old Ted Kennedy campaign poster: God bless Ted. The last was first, and where someone had draped a rosary over a photograph of Ted. And along the course north to Route 6, as gulls circled in the sky, they came, lining the streets, hundreds of them, many in shorts and shirtsleeves. Some applauded as the hearse passed, while Patrick, sitting in the passenger seat of the hearse, his eyes wet, mouthed thanks. Some saluted. Some waved flags or held signs: THANK YOU, TEDDY . Two women put their hands over their hearts as tears coursed down their cheeks. At Sagamore Bridge, connecting Cape Cod to the mainland, a bagpiper blew a dirge.

As the cortege moved down the flat highway, they came, some standing along the road, others stopping their cars on the overpasses, and they came as it snaked into Boston, at 4 P.M. that afternoon, up Summer Street in South Boston, holding signs FOREVER OURS; FAIR WINDS AND CALM SEAS past construction workers in hardhats and members of the carpenters union lifting more signs in tribute, and past landmarks and points of significance to Kennedy: St. Stephens, where his mother had been baptized almost a hundred twenty years earlier and where her funeral was held nearly fifteen years earlier; past his office in the federal building named for his late brother John, where Kennedy once had to escape angry crowds protesting his support for school busing to racially integrate Bostons public schools; past Faneuil Hall, where Mayor Thomas Menino had the bell rung forty-seven times for each year of Kennedys Senate service; past Boston Common, where, as