A reporter's notes from Dyke Bridge

I WATCHED TV news off and on from morning to night the day Ted Kennedy died, enough to hear summations of what were obviously thought to be the key events in an important life.

The best public moment he ever had, one lovingly shown by every station on the day he died, was the eulogy he gave in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1968 for his assassinated brother, Robert Kennedy.

I was in the cathedral a day earlier when average citizens lined up for blocks to pass by a closed coffin near the altar. I watched Kennedy rise from his pew in front, walk out of the church and go to the end of that seemingly endless line and join the mournful, slow procession to the side of his brother's casket.

I timed how long it took him. I think it was an hour. When he finally reached the casket, he turned his head away, as though he couldn't bear to look. The Last Kennedy Brother patted the coffin with his left hand as though he were consoling Robert.

He could easily have fulfilled a Kennedy legacy and become president if Chappaquiddick hadn't happened, if Mary Jo Kopechne hadn't died. I would have counted Chappaquiddick and Dyke Bridge and Poucha Pond and the death of Kopechne as key events in an important life.

In all the newscasts I watched that day, Chappaquiddick was mentioned once. A few times, newscasters and commentators talked of Kennedy's "dark side" without mentioning any details.

Dyke Bridge, Poucha Pond and Kopechne were not mentioned even once in all the time I watched and listened.

On the day Kennedy died, Kopechne's life meant close to nothing in the media.

THE Daily News sent me to Boston in 1974 to cover protests and riots over the busing of black children to previously all-white schools.

When I was finished, the editors suggested I take a side trip to Chappaquiddick, the tiny island off Cape Cod separated from the upper-class resort of Martha's Vineyard by a channel 150 yards across at its narrowest point.

Kennedy was still considered a potential candidate for president, with one major obstacle, the party in a rented house on the island that ended in death of Kopechne in a car driven by Kennedy.

If this was the place where dreams of the presidency also died, the paper wanted me to take a last look around an island that was so small, only seven families lived on it with a summer population of less than 500.

What follows is from the notes of a reporter that include no interviews with anyone who had even remote knowledge of the events of the night the Oldsmobile Kennedy was driving went off Dyke Bridge over Poucha Pond, a small inlet.

It is not an indictment or a list of charges. It is simply a description of the lay of the land where a fatal auto accident happened five years earlier.

Nothing of importance had changed. The island still had just a single paved road that wound past the house where the fated party was held and continued on to the ferry landing. The old Dyke Bridge was still there, to be replaced by a new one some time later.

I crossed on a small ferry from Martha's Vineyard to Chappaquiddick and drove about three miles to the rented house that held the party in July 1969.

Five other men were present besides Kennedy, including Joe Gargan, Kennedy's cousin, and a lawyer, Paul Markham, former U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, and six women, including Kopechne, who served as a secretary for Robert Kennedy and was active in his 1968 campaign for president, as were the other women in attendance.

Kennedy reportedly was ready to leave shortly after 11 p.m., and Kopechne asked if she could go with him to catch the ferry back to Martha's Vineyard.

Kopechne's parents contended she was asleep in the back seat when Kennedy drove off the bridge. He later said he had mistakenly taken the wrong road on his way to the ferry.

It was less than a mile from the rented house to the road to the bridge. To get to the bridge, you had to take a sharp right-hand turn off the island's only paved road onto a dirt road.

It was my first time on Chappaquiddick, but could see no way I would have ever mistakenly turned onto the dirt road no matter what time of day it was or what the weather conditions were. It was a bright, mild autumn day when I was there.

Dyke Bridge was less than a mile from the turnoff. It was a rickety, rundown little bridge, and I approached it cautiously, at probably less than 10 mph.

The bridge had a sharp incline in the middle, and I was surprised after entering it that I was looking up at nothing but sky through my windshield.

Kennedy's car had hit the guardrail at the entrance to the bridge and reportedly flipped over into the water. From skid marks, estimates were that he was traveling 30 to 35 mph.

I thought that at 30 mph, a car at the top of the incline would be airborne, especially after careening off the guardrail. It was reported that residents said a car would be in trouble at 15 mph.

I saw a narrow, deserted beach on the other side the bridge. It wasn't a stretch to imagine why a man with a woman in his car would intentionally drive down that dirt road and cross that rickety bridge to get to that beach as midnight approached.

The rest of the story is well known. Kennedy said he made repeated attempts to rescue Kopechne and failed, and that he finally swam from Chappaquiddick to the Vineyard, where he had a hotel room. He reported the accident 10 hours after it happened.

It just didn't seem fair that Kopechne was barely represented in the requiems for the Lion of the Senate, the Last Brother.

Larry McMullen wrote a column for the Daily News for 20 years. Sixteen years after retiring, he still writes and he still gets angry, more often than not at the same time.