Patrick Bouvier Kennedy

Patrick Bouvier Kennedy (August 7, 1963 – August 9, 1963) was the youngest child of United States President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and brother to Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. He was born five and a half weeks prematurely by emergency caesarean section at the Otis Air Force Base Hospital in Bourne, Massachusetts, with a birth weight of 4 pounds 10½ ounces (2.11 kg),^[1] and was transferred to Boston Children's Hospital where he died two days later of hyaline membrane disease. His obituary in The New York Times stated that, at that time, all that could be done for a victim of hyaline membrane disease "is to monitor the infant's blood chemistry and to try to keep it near normal levels."

Patrick Kennedy's death from hyaline membrane disease, now more commonly called respiratory distress syndrome, helped spark new public awareness of the disease and further research. As of 2004^[update], the disease has an overall mortality of less than 15%—and is much less fatal among mildly to moderately premature infants, such as Patrick. Also, treatment modalities are now widely available in developed countries, such as continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), pulmonary surfactant replacement, and improved respirator technology, that either did not exist or were unavailable in 1963, even to the child of a United States president.

A funeral Mass was held on August 10, 1963 in the private chapel of Richard Cardinal Cushing in Boston. Patrick was initially buried at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts. Patrick's body and that of a stillborn sister were re-interred on December 5, 1963 alongside their father at Arlington National Cemetery, and later again moved to their permanent graves in Section 45, Grid U-35.^[2][3]

References