Kathleen, 13, held the baby. She's his eldest sister, and his godmother. Joseph Patrick III, 12, godfather and eldest brother, stood with his father Bobby and his six other brothers and sisters, while Monsignor William McCormack baptized Matthew Maxwell Taylor Kennedy in Manhattan's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Jostled by newsmen, TV cameras, and his share of 200 spectators, Cousin John-John felt that too many people had come. "I'm squashed," he said to his mother, Aunt Jackie. But one guest couldn't make it at all: the U.S. Ambassador in Saigon, who had provided the Senator's son with his two middle names.
A cast of thousands turned up at Forest Lawn for the funeral of one of Hollywood's best-loved ones, Jeanette MacDonald. At the gate gawked 1,500 extras, while the supporting players, in the Church of the Recessional, read like a photomontage of yesterday's film clips and more recent headlines. Irene Dunne, Mary Pickford and Nelson Eddy stood in the pews; Barry Goldwater and General Lauris Norstad (now president of Owens-Corning Fiberglas International) were pallbearers. But the star was Miss MacDonald. As her recorded voice sang Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life, a canary caged in the church chimed in.
Shuffling into Yankee Stadium in 1961, a hairless has-been at 35, discarded by San Francisco, Quarterback Yelberton Abraham Tittle passed the New York Giants to three straight Eastern Division titles and won a spread all his own in the N.F.L. record book. But 1964 was the year the Bald Eagle didn't have it. Weary and often injured, he wound up next to last in the passing statistics, and the Giants plummeted to last place. So after 17 years in pro football, Y.A., now 38, announced that he was folding his wings. "I never wanted to be a mediocre player, and last year I was mediocre." Besides, he cracked, when Rookie Quarterback Gary Wood asked to date his daughter, "I figured it was time to get the heck out of here."
Erie Stanley Gardner might call it The Case of the Shrinking Celebrity. Three times in the past year, TV's Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, 47, has slipped into South Viet Nam, visited some 8,000 U.S. servicemen stationed in remote areas, sometimes with Viet Cong shells bursting near by, and issued no publicity about it to boost his ratings. He jotted down the names of thousands of servicemen whose relations he called up for a personal report when he got back. Burr hobbled through his most recent Jeep-and-helicopter round last month despite a painfully pinched leg nerve, and though he rarely gabs about Perry Mason (preferring to listen to G.I. gripes), the gunner who flew with him gives the consensus: "Ray Burr is one helluva fine guy."
Nevada's Governor Grant Sawyer, 46, figured to score zero-cool with the school set. "One basic need of youth is to participate in the responsibilities of adult life," he observed in a televised message to the state legislature, proposing to lower the minimum voting age from 21 to 18. One youth, however, was already participating by calling her father, Grant Sawyer, and telling him as soon as he left the air that his idea turned her off. Added Gail Sawyer, 15, a Carson City tenth-grader, in an interview: "If voting qualifications were lowered, most kids would just go for who their parents are for." Most kids.