Thursday, July 22, 1999 Older Editions

Town recalls JFK Jr.

By Rebecca Lipchitz

Andover residents joined the nation in mourning the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and sister-in-law in a plane crash last weekend.

They joined millions of others in watching the intensive search that finally, yesterday morning (Wednesday) yielded the wreckage of the plane and Kennedy's body.

And for some locals, the grief was more personal, since they had known the late president's son as a student at Phillips Academy from 1976-1979.

Those who knew him here say JFK Jr. was a regular kid, not known for exercising privilege, but for being himself.

"He was a delightful human being," says Carroll Bailey, an English teacher who recently retired from Phillips Academy, where he served 10 years as a dean.

"Everybody liked him. I didn't know anyone who didn't respect John Kennedy," Bailey says.

Bailey never taught Kennedy in his three years at Phillips, but knew him.

"He never took any privileges," Bailey says, and recalls that JFK Jr. was friends with the son of another teacher who once said "'(Kennedy) went through school with one of my sons, and I never would have been able to identify him for you,'" Bailey says.

Meredith Price, house counselor at PA in the dorm where John Kennedy first came to live in Room 29 of the Stearns West dormitory building when he entered Phillips as a 10th-grader, described him as "really full of life."

Price still teaches English at the academy, but no longer supervises dormitories, he says.

As a house counselor, Price witnessed a side of Jacqueline Kennedy contrary to her image at the time, he says.

"She was a wonderful boarding-school mother. She called, sent cookies," Price says. But to visit, she had to arrive unannounced to avoid publicity, he says.

While Price was not young Kennedy's teacher, it was known that as a student, he excelled in drama and history, and less so in math, he says.

His interest in theater, particularly offbeat productions like theater of the absurd, was fueled by an active student named Jim Spader, who later became famous as actor James Spader, Price says.

"(Kennedy) had a streak of happy independence," Price says, which he believes led Kennedy to choose Brown University over Harvard.

"He was going to be himself," Price says.

His reputation for attracting females had not yet fully developed, Price says, partly because there weren't many opportunities for boys and girls to visit each other in rooms.

"He didn't have a whole lot of female visitors. He was a 10th-grader, after all," Price says.

But Kennedy was attracting the paparazzi.

"The really tough part was keeping people away from him," Price says. "(People from) a well-known tabloid newspaper thought it would be good to move into the Andover Inn (next to PA) and invite kids to dinner," Price says. PA officials put a stop to such activities rather quickly, he says.

During his Andover years, Kennedy also inspired a few brush-with-fame stories for local residents.

Andover resident Michael Frishman summered on Cape Cod next door to Phillips Academy teacher Sherm Drake, who tutored Kennedy in math.

After a hard day of math, Kennedy would be allowed to swim, says Frishman, who swam in the same lake.

One day, Frishman says, Drake was called to the Kennedy compound on the Cape for tutoring, since his student didn't have time to get away.

Upon receiving this message, Drake called to say he would be right over, and the Kennedys began giving him directions.

"'It's all right. I know where it is,'" Drake said, according to Frishman.

Price recalls the day his father-in-law, the late Ty Larkin, was visiting from Wilmette, Ill. Larkin, a Republican who considered Ronald Reagan rather liberal, happened to be there when Kennedy knocked on the door and asked for a loan of $5.

"My father-in-law died happy because the Kennedys owed him five dollars," Price says.