And so it was on Sunday, while many in the public were enjoying a round of golf, digging into a trashy beach novel, or breaking into provisions for the first barbeque of the summertime season.
JFK’s only daughter, Caroline, traveled to the presidential library named for her father to witness an announcement: The US Navy is going to name its next aircraft carrier in honor of the nation’s 35th president.
The USS John F. Kennedy will restore a tradition of having the late president’s name affixed to a ship in the military branch for which he served during World War II.
The prior USS John F. Kennedy, also an aircraft carrier, was decommissioned in 2007 after Caroline Kennedy herself christened it in 1967. It is now docked in Philadelphia, with some attempting to bring it to Newport, R.I., so it can be a tourist attraction in the naval town where the future president married a future first lady, Jacqueline Bouvier.
The timing of the announcement was no coincidence. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus chose a Sunday amid the three-day Memorial Day holiday weekend because May 29 was JFK’s birthday.
Yoon S. Byun/Globe StaffVicki Kennedy overlooks the site of EMK Institute.
The late John F. Kennedy Jr. recalled the date with the FAA registration painted on the fuselage of one his airplanes: N529JK.
“President John F. Kennedy exemplified the meaning of service, not just to country, but service to all humanity,’’ Mabus said in announcing the decision.
Among those who attended the ceremony were Caroline Kennedy’s three children, the only grandchildren of John F. Kennedy: Rose, Tatiana, and Jack Schlossberg, whose profile is reminiscent of his grandfather's.
Their attendance was part of another family tradition: honoring and perpetuating the family legacy.
In fact, with the most public of the Kennedys gone, it has become the central focus of the survivors.
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