J.F.K. Era Survivors, Then and Now

Here is a look at what has become of some of the key figures associated with President John F. Kennedy:

McGeorge Bundy, now 69, was Kennedy’s special assistant for national security affairs. In Kennedy’s words, Bundy was one of his “inner circle” of advisers who met daily with the President and counseled him in times of crisis. After the assassination, Bundy continued as a special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson, and he became one of the shapers of Johnson’s Vietnam War policy. He left government in February, 1966, to be president of the Ford Foundation, where he remained until he accepted a teaching job at New York University in 1979.

John B. Connally, 71, was secretary of the Navy in the first year of the Kennedy Administration. As the Democratic governor of Texas (1963-1969), he was in the presidential limousine when Kennedy was shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, and he suffered a serious chest wound. In 1971, he returned to Washington to serve as President Richard M. Nixon’s secretary of the Treasury for one year. The Watergate grand jury indicted him in 1974 on bribery and perjury charges, in connection with an increase in federal milk price supports, but he was acquitted. In 1979, as a Republican, he ran for President but won only one delegate to the Republican National Convention. Earlier this year, as a Texas businessman millions of dollars in debt, he declared bankruptcy.

Edward M. Kennedy, 56, the youngest of the Kennedy brothers, is the only one still living. Reelected this year, he has served in the Senate since 1963 as one of its foremost liberal voices. He ran for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination but lost it to Jimmy Carter.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, 59, married Sen. John F. Kennedy in 1953. She and her two children earned worldwide respect for their conduct in the aftermath of the President’s assassination. In 1968, she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. He died in 1975. Jackie Onassis has been an editor at Doubleday since 1977.

John F. Kennedy Jr., 27, was three days short of his third birthday, a toddler known as John-John, when his father was killed. He has been graduated from Brown University and is studying law at New York University.

Robert S. McNamara, 72, was one of the most controversial Cabinet members of the postwar era. As defense secretary from January, 1961, until February, 1968, he was a leading architect of Vietnam policy. In the Kennedy Administration, he worked to bring the military services under strong civilian control. He left the Johnson Administration to become president of the World Bank. He retired in 1981 and wrote a 1986 book on arms control, “Blundering Into Disaster.”

Lawrence O’Brien, 71, one of Kennedy’s closest political advisers, was his special assistant for congressional relations and personnel. He kept that position under Johnson and served as postmaster general, then a Cabinet position, from 1965 until 1968. In 1969, he was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and as such became the principal target of the Watergate burglars during the 1972 presidential campaign. He served as president of the National Basketball Assn. from 1975 to 1984.

David Powers, 77, was known for his Irish humor during the years he served as a political operative and close friend to Kennedy. As a White House special assistant, he worked under the President’s appointments secretary. Powers stayed at the White House until 1965, when he resigned to become curator of the Kennedy Library in Massachusetts.

Dean Rusk, 79, was secretary of state throughout the Kennedy and Johnson years. Rusk helped Johnson carry out his Vietnam policy and became a staunch defender of the war. He left office in 1969 to become a professor of international law at the University of Georgia.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., 71, a noted historian, was a special assistant to Kennedy assigned to follow Latin American affairs. In this position, he helped shape American policy calling for the economic and political isolation of Cuba. His best-selling book about the Kennedy Administration won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1966. He also served as a presidential campaign adviser to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, Sen. George S. McGovern in 1972 and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in 1980. He has been a professor at City University of New York since 1966.

Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, 31, was 6 years old when her father was killed. Like her mother and brother, she has tried to stay out of the public eye since then. She studied at Radcliffe College and the Columbia University Law School. In 1986, she married design executive, author and poet Edwin Arthur Schlossberg. She gave birth on June 25 to a daughter, Rose, named for John Kennedy’s mother. The Schlossbergs live in New York.

Theodore C. Sorensen, 60, one of Kennedy’s closest aides, served as special counsel to the President throughout his Administration. Sorensen was Kennedy’s leading speech writer, and he and his staff shaped most of the Administration’s legislative agenda and took a leading role in formulating policy toward Cuba. After Kennedy’s death, Sorensen traveled and lectured, then joined a New York law firm in 1966, where he still practices. He tried unsuccessfully to capture New York’s Democratic Senate nomination in 1970, and was an adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis this year.