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The family brought David back to Hickory Hill in McLean, Va. On the way from the airport, Ethel and other members of the family stopped to say prayers at the graves of John and Robert Kennedy. Then, on a beautiful, sun-drenched afternoon, with the cars parked bumper to bumper along Chain Bridge Road, family and friends gathered. Babies squealed. Dogs tore around among the guests, bounding onto the furniture. Two Roman Catholic priests circulated among the people. Ethel bore up stoically. She spent much of her time with David's coffin in one room of the house. David's brothers were close to tears, but perhaps they remembered their grandfather's hard rule: "Kennedys don't cry."
That night the wake had some gaiety about it. The buffet tables were heaped with ham, turkey, macaroni casserole, tomato aspic and lasagna. David's coffin stood in the drawing room. The guests reminisced about David's brighter sides. Ethel was composed, perhaps because, as a friend says, "she believes he went right up there with his father."
—By Lance Morrow. Reported by Joseph N. Boyce/Palm Beach and Hays Gorey/Washington