Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy / 1890-1995 -- Matriarch Dies At 104 -- `She Was The Most Beautiful Rose Of All'

HYANNISPORT, Mass. - She was a mayor's daughter, an ambassador's wife and a president's mother. For decades, Rose Kennedy led a life as a society matron, political campaigner, charity fund-raiser, devout Roman Catholic - and the mother of nine children.

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy died yesterday at age 104 of complications from pneumonia. At her bedside were son Sen. Edward Kennedy and his wife, Victoria; daughters Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith and Eunice Kennedy Shriver and her husband, Sargent Shriver; Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

"Mother passed away peacefully today," Sen. Kennedy said. "She had a long and extraordinary life, and we loved her deeply. To all of us in the Kennedy and Fitzgerald families, she was the most beautiful rose of all."

In a statement last night, President Clinton said that "very few Americans have endured as much personal sacrifice for their country as Rose Kennedy."

A private wake will be tonight on Cape Cod, the Kennedy family said, and funeral services will be tomorrow at St. Stephen's Church in Boston.

Mrs. Kennedy might have made a successful politician herself, but she relished the role of mother more than anything else. "Raising children is a challenge - they keep you young, alive, abreast of new things in the world," she once said in a magazine interview. "If you pass this up for a career, what have you got at

the end of a lifetime? Scrapbooks!"

But she was not a doting mother in the modern sense. "Whenever they needed it they got a good old-fashioned spanking, which I believe is one of the most effective means of instruction," she wrote in her 1974 autobiography, "Times to Remember."

She did not simply instruct her children but set herself as an example. Following the assassination of Robert Kennedy, she urged her grief-stricken children to acknowledge the throng who lined the New York streets for his funeral procession. "Start to wave, wave," she told them as she herself acknowledged the crowds.

She maintained a remarkable outward serenity, heavily grounded in her religious faith.

"ROSIE" TO HER FAMILY

She was born Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald in Boston on July 22, 1890, the eldest of six children of John Francis "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald. She was "Rosie" to her family, and "Rosie Fitz" to many of her close friends. Her father, who started out as a clerk, got into Democratic ward politics early, and won a seat in the Massachusetts state Senate, then the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1906 he became mayor of Boston - and again in 1910.

Rose was her father's favorite, and all the while she was growing up he was initiating her into the mysteries of ward and precinct politics, which she took to with enthusiasm.

Despite her intelligence - she graduated with honors from high school at age 15 - she never had any political aspirations of her own. She sacrificed her admission to Wellesley because her father believed that sending his daughter to a Protestant school could jeopardize Catholic votes. She shared the belief of her father and husband that politics was for men, and the church was for women.

ROUTINE INCLUDED MASS, GOLF

Her daily routine included morning Mass, afternoon golf, and entertaining the children and grandchildren, who were frequent visitors.

In 1914, she married 25-year-old Joseph P. Kennedy, whom she had known since she was 5. Earlier in the year, Kennedy had become the youngest bank president in the country.

Joe Kennedy became a multimillionaire through profitable business ventures - including the motion picture industry - and astute stock manipulation just before the market crash of '29.

"My husband changed jobs so fast that I simply never knew what business he was in," Rose Kennedy once said. In 1915, with the birth of Joseph Jr., she began raising a family whose members were to make more headlines than all her husband's millions.

In addition to nine children, she had 30 grandchildren and 41 great-grandchildren.

But Mrs. Kennedy also organized her life so she could take care of her growing brood and get away from them when she wished. To run the Kennedy households in Hyannis Port and Palm Beach, Fla., and the residences they had at different times in Brookline, Mass., and Bronxville, N.Y., she relied on cooks, maids, nannies and secretaries. She described herself as an executive.

By all accounts, she could be as tough as her husband. "Beneath her velvet glove . . . is an iron hand rivaling that of her spouse," wrote David E. Koskof in his 1974 biography of Joseph P. Kennedy.

"FINISH FIRST"

The young Rose Kennedy was known as a sympathetic mother, but she was scrupulous about instilling in her children the standards of their father, one of which was "Finish first."

Her children were the source of her greatest joys and sorrows. Joseph Jr. was a bomber pilot in World War II and was killed on a mission in 1944. His father had thought he would become president. That fell to John, who was assassinated in 1963.

Rosemary, who was born developmentally disabled and who was subjected by her father (unknown to the rest of the family) to a prefrontal lobotomy in 1941, now lives under custodial care in a Wisconsin convent school. Kathleen died in a chartered-plane crash in southern France in 1948. Robert was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968 during his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Edward was nearly killed in a plane crash in 1964.

"Sometimes I wonder if there is something about my family which invites violence," Rose Kennedy said in a 1968 interview in Look magazine. "Is it envy, you ask? I don't know . . . I've had so much, a son as president, two as senators, a son-in-law who's an ambassador . . . perhaps God doesn't permit that much."

The violence left a permanent mark. "It has been said that time heals all wounds," she wrote in her autobiography. "I don't agree. The wounds remain. Time - the mind, protecting its sanity - covers them with some scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone."

------------------- KENNEDY FAMILY TREE ------------------- Rose Kennedy and her husband, Joseph, the millionaire businessman and one-time ambassador to Great Britain who died in 1969, had nine children. Three became senators and one a president.

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (1915-1944): Died in a plane crash during World War II.

John F. Kennedy (1917-1963): A U.S. senator from Massachusetts before he was elected the 35th president of the United States in 1960. Assassinated in Dallas. Married Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953. She died of cancer last May 19. Their children: Caroline, born 1958, and John, born 1960.

Rosemary Kennedy: Born 1918. Institutionalized because of being developmentally disabled.

Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish (1920-1948): Married to William John Robert Cavendish, the Marquis of Hartington. Her husband was killed in World War II; she died in a plane crash.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver: Born 1921. Married to R. Sargent Shriver Jr., former Peace Corps director and unsuccessful candidate for president in 1976 and vice president in 1972. Their children: Robert Sargent Shriver 3rd; Maria; Timothy; Mark, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates; Anthony.

Patricia Kennedy Lawford: Born 1924. Married and divorced from actor Peter Lawford. Their children: Christopher, Sydney, Victoria and Robin.

Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968): Former U.S. attorney general, a U.S. senator from New York and a presidential candidate in 1968. Assassinated in Los Angeles. Married to Ethel Skakel, 1950.

Their children: Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; U.S. Rep. Joseph Patrick Kennedy II; Robert F. Jr.; David (died April 25, 1984); Mary Courtney Ruhe; Michael; Mary Kerry; Christopher; Matthew; Douglas; Rory.

Jean Kennedy Smith: Born 1928. Married Stephen Edward Smith in 1956; he died 1990. Now ambassador to Ireland. Their children: Stephen Jr., William, Amanda, Kym.

Edward Moore Kennedy: Born 1932. Attorney, U.S. senator from Massachusetts. Married Virginia Joan Bennett 1958; divorced 1983. Their children: Kara, Edward Jr. and U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I. Married Victoria Reggie in 1992.

--------- DONATIONS --------- Donations may be sent to the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation for its work on behalf of the developmentally disabled, at 1350 New York Ave., Suite 500, Washington, D.C. 20005