On The Cape, Strangers Share Kennedy Loss

The woman driving the Hertz shuttle bus seemed a little distracted, but we took our seats and settled into the thick Boston heat and a family tradition: A journey to Cape Cod to gather with my family to celebrate my father's birthday.

We had only revived the tradition recently, but the Cape was just as I had always remembered it. We spent long, hot days on the beach, the wind hissing through the dune grass, gray-shingled homes watching over us like sentries.

The names of the towns are simple, like Dennis; quirky, like Mashpee; and storied, like Hyannis Port. The people here have come here all their lives. So while the Cape may be cranberries and clam bars and antique shops, it is also your grandparents, your parents, your childhood.

And the Kennedys.

"Kennedy," I heard on the shuttle radio. "Plane missing."

"What happened?" I asked the shuttle driver. "John Jr.'s plane is missing," she said, and our eyes locked in the rearview mirror. "They were coming up for Rory's wedding. I can't even talk about it."

Once again, I felt this strange connection with a man I had nothing to do with, but so much in common. John F. Kennedy Jr. and I are the same age, 38. Our mothers were pregnant at the same, hopeful time, the eve of Camelot. Each time I reached a milestone, there he was on the "People" page, doing the same thing, whether it was graduating from college or venturing out on his own. And while we were always on different planes of privilege and purpose, we were still in tandem: both making a journey of flight to the place of our childhood for a family celebration.

Driving out to the Cape from the airport, we got caught in the usual Saturday beach traffic. I listened to the news, looked into the other cars and saw faces as grim as mine. It was like we had all tuned into the same, awful baseball game.

At my uncle's house, my mother was distracted and slightly distraught, and I knew her mind and heart were responding to the news of JFK Jr.'s disappearance the same way as when his father was killed in 1963.

In the years since, just the sight of John F. Kennedy Jr. could transport my mother back to that too-brief time when American life seemed to be in balance - when she and my father were young and full of hope. It felt like that was being taken away again.

On the beach, there was a heaviness to the air that had nothing to do with the humidity. As news of debris washed on shore, the steel-gray sea in which we had learned to body surf seemed like it had turned on us. It had taken someone away. How could there be what the Coast Guard called "a bottom search" for the one Kennedy who seemed to have risen so far above the sadness?

"There are more people in mourning on Cape Cod than practically anywhere in the country," said Mike Barnicle, former longtime Boston Globe columnist and Kennedy family friend who now writes for the New York Daily News.

"There are huge numbers of people who live here who are of an age when they remember John F. Kennedy's voice, and his impact," Barnicle said. "They don't need to see it on TV. It's in their heads. It's with them forever.

"There are also many people who saw (JFK) here as a young senator, and later, as president, who remember him as a neighbor."

One of those people is Eileen Moroski of Hyannis Port, who spent 20 summers on the Cape before moving here permanently two years ago. When JFK died, Moroski sent his widow a Mass card, and got a note back. It is framed in her living room. Over the years, she had seen Jackie and Rose Kennedy together at church, Caroline on the street at Thanksgiving; and John Jr. walking on the beach. "You can't help it!" she told me. "You grew up with the Kennedys. It's Massachusetts forever."

Just a mile from her house, media trucks and forests of cameras choked the small streets around the Kennedy compound.

"Oh, my God," she said. "What a zoo. Thank God Caroline is not here. Ted flew out today and he is with her."

Moroski spoke of JFK Jr. with maternal familiarity - by his first name and with genuine concern.

"I'm surprised," she said of the plane crash. "He knows the Cape. Oh, sure he does. He's been here all his life. He knows he should have went on to Providence.

"He knows the weather will be clear for one minute and then the fog rolls in and you can't see the hand in front of your face. He knows that from sailing."

She sighed, shook her head and looked back toward the compound. "He was his mother," she said quietly. "He really was. We are all sick. Why did this have to happen?"

Sisters Ann Sebastian and Lynn Ireland also have their own connections with the Kennedys. Each waited on John Jr. years ago - Sebastian at Dunkin' Donuts ("He was with his mother. I was so nervous.") and Lynn at an ice-cream place.

More than 20 years ago, a neighbor who worked for Rose Kennedy gave them a glimpse inside the Kennedy compound here.

John and Caroline's rooms were "simple but beautiful," Ireland said. "The sheers were blowing; it was mystical," she said. "And when you're younger, you're thinking, `Man, I wish I was Caroline.' " Now, it seems Caroline has become more like them: The sisters lost a brother in 1992.

"I think about Caroline, all alone now," Ireland said. "At least I had my sister." They share a warm look, and then one of their daughters calls from the car. Time to get going. "John brought a lot of joy to the family," Ireland said. "So you have to look back and smile."

Paul Palmieri of Providence, R.I., has been coming to the Cape all his life. At 38, he has felt the same age connection with John Jr. that I have.

"You can relate to him," Palmieri said. "I watched his college graduation in 1983 and thought, `OK, that's when I graduated.' His life seemed close to mine."

On Sunday morning, Palmieri watched the television for news of the crash. When he came back, he noticed that television was carrying the dates, 1960-1999, under Kennedy's photo. "That's when we knew," he said. "This is a loss to our generation."

Still, he refused to believe that it was a loss; that Kennedy was really gone.

"You know what I'm hoping?" Palmieri asked. "I'm hoping he got so tired of the media, that he just parachuted somewhere to start a new life."

"But that would be hopeful thinking," said his girlfriend, Carrie Sylvester.

Outside the picket fence of the compound, people stuck flowers in the gates that occasionally opened for a family member, or friend, or worker cleaning up after the wedding that never was. Neighborhood kids peddled $2 bottles of water to weary reporters, some of them out-of-towners who puzzled over the simplicity of the Kennedy houses.

"All my life, I've heard about the Kennedy compound and I guess this is it," said a woman from Chicago. "So there are shingles all over the place. So that's a Cape Cod. I never knew what it meant."

Richard Burnett of Mountain Home, Ark., rented a house at Cape Cod for the first time this year. "It's a lovely old place," he said. "Kids are here with their grandparents, their great-grandparents. It's the thing to do.

"You drive by some houses, and they were built in 1743, 1780. There's a sense of history here.

"And I guess," he said, nodding toward the compound, "they are still making it."

I left Hyannis Port in time for my father's 70th birthday party at our family home, a small, sand-strewn cottage 15 miles away.

There was lobster and champagne and presents, and near the end of the evening, my father raised a glass. All he wanted, he said, was for all of us to be together, here at the Cape, like always.

It seemed like a simple request, before Friday.

Nicole Brodeur's column regularly appears Sunday and Thursday in The Times. Her phone number is 206-464-2334. Her e-mail address is nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.