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“…AND FLIGHTS OF ANGELS…”

The Great Bard, a tragedian non pareil, would have given his eye teeth to have known of the Kennedy clan. There it all was: Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth---even the sonnets sang.

What a beginning! An indigent Irish family chased by famine to a new nation in a new world. They scrape as scrape can through a cynical ban on spirits and a crippling depression, then rise to lord it over the British at the Court of St. James.

Their crown prince is blown from the skies at the beginning of the greatest war in history. His successor survives a disaster at sea, in that same war, and goes on to lead the nation that scant decades earlier deigned even to recognize his full humanity.

At this point, Shakespeare would be in full bloom. The young leader is suddenly and brutally dispensed with by an assassin who failes to fit the equation. Another assassin of equal non-entity, disposes of a brother who seeks the same position. The next brother to attempt to attain that same crown of laurel is forever barred therefrom by a personal tragedy from which stain he never would be free. Properly humbled, the survivor takes upon himself the full weight imposed upon this brash clan by the judge that is History.

Time itself, now tiring of so heavy a burden, this August takes first one, now another of the lest, in its rush to close out an era and go on with its need for continued renewal.

Shakespeare would be salivating!