The shy, sole survivor of an era

ONE EXCEPTION as Kennedy family members gathered for Mass at their secluded Hyannisport compound yesterday was Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, born in 1957 and sole survivor of the brief US presidency known as Camelot.

The most private and least public member of a family who lived in the spotlight, 41-year-old Caroline, a married lawyer and author with three children, was close to her brother John.

Her life has been marked by the untimely deaths of her closest kin. In 1963, her newborn brother Patrick died of breathing problems. The same year, her father was assassinated in Dallas when she was six. In 1968, her uncle Robert was murdered while campaigning for the presidency. Her mother Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, died of cancer in 1994. Now her brother John is gone at 38, leaving her only survivor of the glittering Kennedy family who occupied the White House.

Caroline Kennedy has always shunned publicity. When John `s plane was reported missing, she returned to New York's Long Island from a rafting trip in Idaho to be with her husband Edwin, a designer of museum interiors and exhibits, and their children aged 12, nine and six.