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Driftwood memorial honors crash victims

 
Published Aug. 15, 1999|Updated Sept. 29, 2005

On a beach near this Martha's Vineyard town stands a lone reminder of the deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and her sister: a simple cross fashioned from driftwood lashed together with grape vines.

"I had to come and see it," said Stephanie O'Leary, 37, of Hanson, Mass., one of about a dozen people visiting the cross on a recent morning.

"I'm getting chills," said 33-year-old Kim Noonan of Marshfield, Mass., staring at the 4-foot cross. "It's still hard to believe."

Nearly a month after their deaths, the simple monument is about the only place to mourn.

Kennedy's parents are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, which draws nearly 4.5-million visitors each year.

But Kennedy, 38, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, 33, and Lauren Bessette, 34, were buried at sea.

The single-engine Piper Saratoga piloted by Kennedy plummeted into the ocean about 7 miles from Martha's Vineyard on the night of July 16, instantly killing all three.

They had taken off from Fairfield, N.J., en route to the Vineyard, where they were to drop off Lauren Bessette, and then to Hyannis Port for the wedding of Rory Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

The cross was erected by several summer and year-round residents on July 21, the day the bodies and the fuselage of their small plane were located on the ocean bottom.

It is anchored in the sand of Philbin Beach, where Lauren Bessette's luggage had washed up four days earlier. And it's not far from the estate that Kennedy and his sister, Caroline, inherited from their mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

It leans slightly and is crowned by two small American flags. The names John, Carolyn and Lauren are written in blue marker on the arms of the cross, which is encircled by rocks, many bearing personal messages. "TOO SOON" is scratched onto one stone.

At the time of the burial at sea, many tourists on Cape Cod and the Vineyard had yearned for some kind of permanent memorial.

But others, such as John Carroll of Burrillville, R.I., who was on the Cape at the time of the private ceremony, said a permanent resting spot probably would have caused mayhem.