Kennedy Family

She raced to the hearse as it pulled up to Our Lady of Victory Church just after 10 a.m. Saturday and opened the vehicle's back door. For a moment, it was as if 29-year-old Rory Kennedy planned single-handedly to carry her brother Michael's heavy mahogany coffin into the gray and white church where, for years, the Kennedy family has worshiped in the happy days of summer. But just as swiftly, the youngest of Robert F.

R. Sargent Shriver, a lawyer who served as the social conscience of two administrations, launching the Peace Corps for his brother-in-law, President Kennedy, and leading the "war on poverty" for President Johnson, has died. He was 95. Shriver died Tuesday at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., his family said in a statement. His health had been in decline since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2003. His illness moved his daughter, California's then-First Lady Maria Shriver, to testify before Congress in 2009 about the disease's "terrifying" reality.

In these days of rapidly changing technology and built-in obsolescence, nothing in our culture seems to last long -- except, that is, people's fascination with all things Kennedy.

The Los Angeles Police Department has apologized to the family of the late Robert F. Kennedy and removed items from a homicide exhibit in Las Vegas that included the dress shirt worn by the senator when he was assassinated in 1968, officials said Tuesday night. The shirt was among a number of items included in the highly publicized display at the 2010 California Homicide Investigators Assn. Conference, which is being hosted by the LAPD. The crime-scene evidence can be seen by the general public for the next two days.

The walls in her home hint at her remarkable journey. There are pictures with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ronald Reagan, a commemorative plaque from Robert Kennedy's children, and a congratulatory note from Barack Obama. For 44 years, Ena Bernard was part of a family that amounts to American royalty. She started at the bottom, or, in her case, with the bottoms -- wiping them, patting them and threatening to swat them when their owners didn't follow the rules.

The Los Angeles Police Department has apologized to the family of the late Robert F. Kennedy and removed items from a homicide exhibit in Las Vegas that included the dress shirt worn by the senator when he was assassinated in 1968, officials said Tuesday night. The shirt was among a number of items included in the highly publicized display at the 2010 California Homicide Investigators Assn. Conference, which is being hosted by the LAPD. The crime-scene evidence can be seen by the general public for the next two days.

Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg has given birth to a son and named him John Bouvier, after her maternal grandfather. The baby, born Jan. 19, and Mrs. Schlossberg, 35, were doing well, family spokeswoman Nancy Tuckerman said Thursday.

The Kennedy family is selling the Palm Beach estate that once served as the winter White House but more recently was the backdrop for a rape case. Bryan Dunn, spokesman for the New York-based Joseph P. Kennedy Enterprises Inc., said Friday that Sotheby's International Realty had been given an exclusive listing to market the terra-cotta-roofed oceanside property that has been in the family for six decades. The asking price: $7 million.

Police and prosecutors Friday sought credit card, taxi and airline records to trace movements of members of the Kennedy family during the weekend of an alleged rape at the Kennedy estate. The travel and spending records were sought as part of the rape case and an investigation into possible obstruction of justice after a 29-year-old woman claimed that she was sexually assaulted by a member of the Kennedy clan.

Among the visitors to former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis before her death on Thursday were: * Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, daughter, and her husband, Edwin Schlossberg. * John F. Kennedy Jr., her son. * Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), brother-in-law, and his wife, Victoria Reggie. * Lee Radziwill Ross, sister. * Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.), son of late brother-in-law Robert F. Kennedy. * Ethel Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's widow.

Former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, the eldest son of Robert F. Kennedy, announced Monday that he would not run for the Senate seat held for nearly 50 years by his late uncle, Edward M. Kennedy. The decision was certain to widen the race for the Democratic nomination. In a statement, the former six-term congressman said he cared about those seeking decent housing, fair wages and healthcare. But, he added, "the best way for me to contribute to those causes is by continuing my work at Citizens Energy Corp."

If it weren't for the familiar rows of Chiclets-sized teeth, the trio in the 1962 photo that appeared on scores of front pages last week, with their slim-cut suits and skinny ties, could have been mistaken for the ad men of "Mad Men's" Sterling Cooper agency. The senator from Massachusetts, whose life would forever be framed by the brothers who predeceased him, looks directly at the camera, as sharp and focused as Don Draper on the Kodak account. His suit, several shades darker than his brothers', is set off by a crisp, white triangle of a pocket square.

The words are what woo us. The words written about Edward M. Kennedy and the rest of the Kennedy family, and the words spoken and written by the family members themselves. The words that come from historians and hangers-on, from admirers and skeptics, from novelists and songwriters, from cousins and pundits and pals. The Kennedys are as much a literary phenomenon as a political one, a fact that President Obama seemed to acknowledge with his statement in the wake of Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's death at 77 from brain cancer on Tuesday: "An important chapter in our history has come to an end."

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy didn't live to see his last public wish granted. Last week, during what turned out to be his final days, Kennedy sent a letter to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Democratic leaders of the state Legislature, asking that the state law for choosing a successor be amended. Kennedy hoped to have Patrick granted the power to choose an interim senator until a special election could be held. Currently, the only process for replacing a senator in Massachusetts is through a special election, which could take up to five months.

Like their parents before them, many of the so-called fourth generation of the Kennedy family are public servants, attorneys, authors and activists. They, too, have suffered addiction, divorce and untimely ends. With the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the family patriarch, public attention has naturally turned to the next generation of the family many liken to American royalty. The question on many minds: Will the Kennedys ever produce another political giant? It may not, however, be a question the Kennedys are asking themselves.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, whose advocacy for the mentally disabled helped bring people with special needs into the mainstream of American life, has died. She was 88. Shriver, the sister of President Kennedy and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and the mother of California First Lady Maria Shriver, died early today at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Mass., her family said in a statement. In a speech last year at the Women's Conference in Long Beach, Maria Shriver said her mother had had several strokes.

The idea of using Rose Kennedy as the central figure of a one-woman show seems inevitable. She was on the sidelines of many major events in the 20th Century, in the background behind a husband who was one of the movers and shakers of political and financial affairs (and other affairs), mother of a president and three senators.

For their sake, and ours, it would be better if members of the Kennedy family were not so incessantly prominent in this country and around the world. Yet there is no helping it. The shootings of President John F. Kennedy, in 1963, and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968, punctuated some of the largest political upheavals in the nation's history. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has proved no exception to the pattern.

Re "Obamas' puppy is out of the bag early," April 12 The Obamas have taken "limousine liberal" to a new level. They promised their daughters a puppy if they moved to the White House and, while they discussed rescuing a mutt, they in fact received a purebred Portuguese water dog from the Kennedy family, pledging instead to make a financial donation to the D.C. Humane Society. The dog is absolutely adorable and has received worldwide media coverage, which will probably drive up demand for the breed exponentially.

The walls in her home hint at her remarkable journey. There are pictures with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ronald Reagan, a commemorative plaque from Robert Kennedy's children, and a congratulatory note from Barack Obama. For 44 years, Ena Bernard was part of a family that amounts to American royalty. She started at the bottom, or, in her case, with the bottoms -- wiping them, patting them and threatening to swat them when their owners didn't follow the rules.