BESSETTE FAMILY STILL KEEPING GRIEF PRIVATE

In the year since a ringing telephone brought awful news to Ann Freeman, the mother of Lauren and Carolyn Bessette has cloaked herself in private grieving, taking refuge only in her family and the Greenwich community that has supported her silence.

She has not joined in the public mourning for her daughters and son-in-law, John F. Kennedy Jr., or responded to the mounting rumors about her family’s possibly litigious relationship with the Kennedys. On the anniversary of her daughters’ deaths, however, it is clear that the least-public figure in this media-saturated disaster is still having difficulty keeping control of a life that spiraled wildly into the public domain exactly a year ago.

“People talk about Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy. But they forget that she lost two daughters,” said Mary Marks, the Christ Church secretary who helped Freeman plan last year’s memorial service for her daughters.

Marks and Freeman have not remained close in the last year; many friends said the mother has shed social ties and obligations in her grief. But Marks remembers vividly the last time she spoke to Freeman. The two women overheard a third discussing her twins. Marks said Freeman turned to her and said: “I used to have twins.”

Freeman has tried repeatedly to keep the press from her doorstep. Earlier this month, she released a rare public statement through her lawyer. “We have been besieged by requests for comments as the anniversary . . . draws near,” it read. “The loss of these three young people whom we loved so much has forever changed our lives. We continue to struggle with our grief and we choose to maintain what’s left of our privacy.”

But the statement has done little to keep the spotlight away.

Earlier this month, federal prosecutors finished their yearlong probe and concluded that blame for the airplane crash on July 16, 1999, lay at the feet of JFK Jr., a pilot too inexperienced for a solo flight on a hazy night. An instructor told investigators that Kennedy had dismissed his warnings and his offer to accompany the three on the flight.

It was Freeman, however, who was at the center of the news. The federal report gave her solid backing for a wrongful death lawsuit. And, since she had earlier filed paperwork reserving the right to sue, the press hounded her: Would she sue the country’s most famous family?

Another stir came last week, when Christopher Andersen released “The Day John Died,” a book reaping much attention and, once again, sending journalists to Ann and Richard Freeman. Is it true Carolyn and John’s marriage was stormy? Is it true the Freemans will get a million-dollar settlement from the Kennedys?

“It was all lies, all that lawsuit stuff. And it really hurt Ann,” said Randy Kraft, a friend who works with Ann Freeman at a local shelter for children. “Reporters have been so desperate to get to her, they’ll say anything.”

In fact, it wasn’t entirely untrue. But it was something Freeman did not want public. Her lawyer, New York estates specialist Constantine Ralli, confirmed that negotiations are under way between the Freemans and the Kennedys, though both parties “hope to keep cooperating in a nonjudicial, nonpublic way.”

Ralli would say little more, toeing the line that so many other Freeman friends do. “I don’t want to say anything,” he said. “I’m reluctant to talk to the press. I don’t want to say anything that can be used in a story.”

Andersen, the author who has written several books and articles about the Kennedy family, said he knows something about reclusive families, “and I found the Bessettes, if anything, were a tighter little group.”

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Ann and Richard Freeman rent an unassuming house on a private road in Old Greenwich, just a few blocks from the town’s exclusive Point Park.

They are building a mansion three blocks away. The new home is on a more secluded private road, where enormous mansions are separated by high hedges and there is very little chance a random car would roam by. Privacy, friends say, is paramount to them.

Ann was a school administrator married to a cabinetmaker when she had her three daughters. First, twins Lauren and Lisa-Ann were born; 18 months later, Carolyn was born.

The marriage to William Bessette fell apart when the girls were still young, and Ann remarried a wealthy orthopedic surgeon, Richard Freeman.

William Bessette, who had a distant relationship with his daughters, also is steeling himself against the press. He no longer answers the phone or the door at his White Plains, N.Y., apartment.

Ann Freeman, the girls and her new husband moved to Greenwich and began a life of private privilege; friends recalled the family as living a typically sequestered life in the affluent community.

When their youngest married JFK Jr. in 1996, they prepared for the crush of attention by asking family and friends to keep silent. When the press arrived, no one in- the-know spoke. Stories about Carolyn Bessette focused on her more talkative New York friends and information gleaned from her high school yearbook — the only information available in Greenwich.

The scenario was repeated unexpectedly last year. When news spread that JFK Jr.’s plane was missing, the Freemans again braced for the overwhelming attention accorded all players in a Kennedy saga.

News media from around the globe swarmed onto the narrow, twisting roads of Old Greenwich. The family responded by asking the police to close their street and prevent anyone but a few close friends from nearing their house. They sent a spokesman, family friend and local television reporter Grant Stinchfield, to deliver terse messages, beseeching reporters to leave.

Again, the media was left with virtually no new information on the Bessette girls.

“We all knew to respect their privacy by not saying anything,” Kraft said. “I had friends in the local press who are still angry with me because I wouldn’t talk about Ann.”

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Greenwich today is not transfixed by the tragedy as it was a year ago. The bustle of Old Greenwich’s downtown is now over this weekend’s sidewalk sale. The red-cushioned pews at Greenwich’s Christ Church are empty; the Freemans have asked that no service be held to note the anniversary. Even in New York, where thousands created a massive makeshift shrine at the apartment John and Carolyn shared, no one has yet left a single flower in remembrance.

Friends say that Ann Freeman, however, is far from healed. She is said to go out regularly. She meets with close friends or attends small functions. But, in general, they say, she is living a broken life.

Church secretary Marks said Freeman retreated to her home in the weeks and months after the service. She declined offers of counseling or support.

Andersen, the author, said his research revealed direct parallels between Ann Freeman and Caroline Kennedy. “These were women who were very stoic and dignified in public, but behind the scenes they fell to pieces,” he said.

Freeman also gave up volunteering and let the annual fund-raiser she usually coordinated go on without her.

She did, however, stay in touch with officials at the children’s shelter and created a fund in Carolyn’s memory there. In one of the few statements Freeman has released in the last year, she asked that any gifts in Carolyn’s memory be sent to the Greenwich-based Kids in Crisis shelter. Another fund in Lauren’s memory went to support a scholarship at Hobart and William Smith College, which Lauren attended.

The Carolyn Fund at Kids In Crisis has accepted about $75,000 in donations so far. The Freemans decided just last month to designate the money toward a summer education program.

“She wanted other children to have the same kind of love and care her own daughters had,” Kraft said. “That’s her way.”

It may also be that Ann Freeman came to understand the unofficial motto for the shelter that houses children from Greenwich and across the state: “No family is immune to crisis and affluence is no protection for children.”