DEATH OF A MATRIARCH: ROSE FITZGERALD KENNEDY (1890-1995)

To call her a matriarch is perhaps too easy, too simple a description of her place not only in her family but in this nation's history. Her values, by necessity, were a product of her time and place: she was a wife and mother first and, above all, protective of her nine children, fiercely ambitious for them. And she withstood the misfortunes of her life with fortitude. But to call her a matriarch and leave it at that shows how much we forget. It was Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy--more than her brash and dashing husband, more than the glamorous daughter-in-law she outlived,...