Changing Hawaii

By Diane Yukihiro Chang

Monday, July 19, 1999

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Plane crash took
more than 3 lives

IN 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, the full impact of the tragedy was lost on at least one first-grade class at Manoa Elementary. After the announcement on the school's public-address system and our abrupt dismissal by tearful teachers, we were merely happy about getting to go home early that day.

In 1968, when Robert F. Kennedy was shot to death in Los Angeles, my mother woke me with the sad news -- knowing that I was rooting for him in the presidential campaign. But when you're a tired 12-year-old, the ramifications of violence can't keep the eyelids apart. It was much too easy to fall back asleep.

This Saturday was a different story. The report of another Kennedy's possible demise put the adrenaline into overdrive.

When the TV networks preempted their regular Saturday-morning programming to say that a single-engine airplane -- piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr. and carrying his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette -- was missing off Martha's Vineyard, the realization was breath-taking.

The three of them, dead? No, it couldn't be true.

As the search continued through the weekend, it culminated in the ominous terminology change from "rescue" mission to "recovery" operation. The trauma deepened into depression.

But why? What was it about this particular news event that was especially distressing to an official middle-ager like me? Maybe it was because:

Baby-boomers can readily relate to 38-year-old JFK Jr., a guy we grew up with and who seemed to have just gotten his bearings both professionally and personally when the end came too soon.
The eerie coincidences and ironies, like their destination being a joyful event (the wedding of a Kennedy cousin); JFK Jr.'s aunt and uncle both dying in aircraft crashes; it being almost 30 years to the day since Teddy Kennedy's Chappaquiddick episode, which basically killed his own chances for the White House.
Carolyn and Lauren being in the ill-fated plane together was a reminder of the closeness of siblings, who transcended "mere" bloodlines to become the best of friends. (Could the media please stop calling the victims "John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and her sister," since these women have names?)
A president who dies in office makes the ultimate sacrifice for his country, and his family suffers the most. Yet despite losing his father, JFK Jr. grew up to be a good-humored, unspoiled and far from bitter man, thus erasing some of the nation's guilt in the process.
It seemed so unfair that any clan should have to bear such an overabundance of premature deaths in a public and highly scrutinized forum.

PERHAPS the most painful part about the disappearance of John and Carolyn and Lauren was the apprehension that, maybe, this grief was premature. Maybe they were alive and well somewhere, and all of this mourning would be rewarded with a miracle!

If so, the three of them would return to become part of the world that was so different back in 1963. In that era, many of us were too young to realize that the assassination of a president was one of the worst things that could befall a nation. The murder of his brother made us remember again.

Now, as middle-aged citizens, we are unfortunately old enough to know that the death of a president's son means another part of us has likewise died. It's called the past.

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Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
dchang@starbulletin.com, or by fax at 523-7863.