Cape Community Offers Support To Kennedy

BOSTON -- Visitors to the JFK museum in Hyannis have been writing messages to Sen. Edward Kennedy in a special book the museum has provided. The messages are affectionate and show the public cares deeply about the last of the dashing Kennedy brothers, who has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.

VIDEO: Residents Offer Support

"I don't agree with all his politics, but he's very involved and done lots of things for the country, so I wish him well," said museum visitor Carol Rekow of Ft. Thomas, Ky.

"The well-wishers book is a way for them to just express how they're feeling, and I think that it gives them an opportunity to connect with those images of happy times of the Kennedys in Hyannisport," said museum curator Rebecca Pierce-Merrick.

NewsCenter 5's Amalia Barreda reported that another place where Kennedy will feel loved and supported is his church. When the senator's mother was alive, she went to Mass every day in Hyannis. When he is in town, he worships at Our Lady of Victory Parish in Centerville, where there have also been masses for Kennedy weddings and funerals.

Our Lady's pastor, the Rev. Mark Hession said the attitude to persevere that the senator displayed so vividly his first day home in Hyannisport from the hospital is rooted in his strong Catholic upbringing.

"It's symptomatic of the man to be a person of hope. He's gone through an incredible series of tragedies in his own personal life, family life. And I think there's a reservoir of genuine faith in him that is a place he draws deeply from. And if I can say so, a lot of it comes from his mother," said Hession.

The priest said the parish will provide Kennedy needs spiritually with a community that will support him with caring even as it respects the privacy he cherishes.