EDITOR'S NOTE: Northampton writer and historian Allison Lockwood wrote this column for the Gazette in 2005 recalling Sen. Edward Kennedy's plane crash in Southampton and his medical care at Cooley Dickinson Hospital.

"Sen. Kennedy Is Injured In Plane Crash Which Is Fatal To Pilot And An Aide" proclaimed two rows of large headlines across the top of the Gazette on June 20, 1964.

Below the headline was a photo of U.S. Atty. General Robert Kennedy and his sister, Mrs. Stephen Smith, who had flown from Washington to Boston and were driven, with a State Police escort, to Northampton "to comfort their injured brother at Cooley Dickinson Hospital." The couple appear stunned -- as perhaps they were -- with memories still fresh of the assassination of President John Kennedy on Nov. 22 the previous year.

"Family Of Joe Kennedy Is Plagued By Troubles," readers were then reminded by an AP feature article below the photo. "Assassination, violent death and plane crashes have claimed four of the clan of the onetime ambassador to England. Illness has also taken its toll - from the paralyzing stroke that hit 76-year-old Joseph Kennedy to the lung disease that took the life of his grandson Patrick (son of the President) when he was less than two days old ... It will soon be the 20th anniversary of the tragic day when the oldest of the nine children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy was killed on a World War II secret mission." Also mentioned was the death in a 1948 plane crash of his sister Kathleen, "already a wartime widow."

With 32-year-old "Ted" Kennedy aboard the seven-passenger Aero Commander plane, headed for Barnes Airport in Westfield on the evening of June 19, were Kennedy aide Edward Moss, Sen. and Mrs. Birch Bayh of Indiana, and pilot Edward Zimny. They were en route to the Democratic State Convention at West Springfield where, according to the Gazette, Kennedy was "about to be nominated by acclamation for another term as Senator on the Democratic ballot."

Sen. Bayh was to have been the main speaker. The convention "adjourned in stunned silence" upon learning of the crash, but not before Massachusetts Gov. Endicott Peabody was given "an overwhelming endorsement of 1,259 votes, 398 more than were needed, for nomination for a second two-year term."

Gazette reporter Don Ebbeling provided a detailed account of the crash. "At ten o'clock last night, just an hour before the crash, there was an indefinite ceiling of 900 feet with an obscured sky and two miles visibility with heavy fog. The aircraft was in contact with Barnes Airport and Westover Air Force Base -- and Barnes officials said the craft had completed its outbound turn over the airport and was headed toward the runway for a landing. It was following instrument procedures and had received permission to land. Runway lights were turned on to full intensity, and everything was in readiness for the landing."

Three miles short of the Barnes runway, however, the craft "smashed into the top of a hill off East Street, Southampton, in an apple orchard owned by Walter Bashista," according to the Gazette account. "The crash was on a hill 370 feet above and three miles short of the Barnes runway." The plane "skidded to a stop against a tree ... The nose of the plane was slightly above and to the rear of the cockpit" that "looked like it had been ripped open by a can opener." Edward Moss and pilot Edward Zimny did not survive.

First to reach the site of the crash was Robert E. Schauer, an East Street resident, who had heard a loud "thud" and gone out to investigate. He found Sen. Kennedy lying on the ground near the crash site and Sen. and Mrs. Bayh extricating themselves from the wreckage. Later accounts attributed their relatively good condition to the seat belts they had used. Without them, Bayh told Ebbeling, "we wouldn't be alive to talk about it."

Dr. David R. Jackson was the first of the medical staff to reach Cooley Dickinson Hospital, where all five passengers were brought by the Southampton and Easthampton ambulances. Jackson called Drs. Thomas Corriden, David Jennison and George Snook.

Corriden boarded the ambulance on its arrival and had Kennedy, who "complained of pain in his back and arms", rushed to the intensive care unit.

Maureen Nolan Musante, then about to graduate from the hospital's two-year X-ray training course, remembers being awakened in the "call room" and hurrying to a patient's bedside with her portable x ray equipment. "I had no idea who the patient was until I reached him," she says, adding that "he was calm, kind and considerate and helped us position him for the X-rays. He was also concerned about the condition of the Bayhs."

With calls from all over the country, as well as Dublin and Paris, the hospital telephone exchange experienced "a nightmare," reported the Gazette. By 2 p.m. the following day, the local telephone company had installed 20 additional telephones in the hospital's conference room which had become a media center for the many newspaper, radio and television representatives.

President Lyndon Johnson called from the West Coast at 12:05 a.m., "and later it was reported ... that he had Dr. Corriden call him back with a personal report on the two senators." More than "400 toll calls were handled between midnight and 6 a.m."

On the heels of the senator's brother, Robert, and their sister Jean, arrived his wife, Joan, together with the recently widowed Jackie Kennedy, still clad in black, with a scarf wrapped about her hair and neck.

Alison Sharpe Lucey, then a medical technologist assigned to take Sen. Kennedy's blood samples, recalls the excitement concerning Mrs. Kennedy and the crowds on the hospital grounds watching the celebrities arrive and depart.

For several days Gazette pages were crowded with photos that included Dr. Corriden, credited with having "Saved Life Of Kennedy"; Sen. Bayh resting against a tree in Childs Park, where he went for a walk; Joan Kennedy with her two small children, Kara and Eddie; the gruesome plane wreckage and the Civil Aeronautics Board and Federal Aviation Agency officials here to determine the cause of the crash; Sargent Shriver, "director of the Peace Corps and brother-in-law of Sen. Ted Kennedy"; Governor Peabody; Northampton police officer Michael Shea; Cardinal Cushing; Atty. General Kennedy addressing a news conference; four photographers clad in hospital gowns -- cameras in hand -- "being taken on a tour of the hospital by Dorothy Potter of the public relations staff," and one of "Former Ambassador Joseph Kennedy in his wheelchair."

A photo in the New York Herald Tribune showed a "canvas contraption called a Foster Frame", one of which was flown up from Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington for Senator Kennedy's use here. This device, according to the cutline, "holds him tightly, eliminating the need for a cast, and he can be turned from supine to prone position without loosening the traction."

Reported the Gazette on July 9: "A wan but smiling Sen. Edward M. Kennedy left Cooley Dickinson Hospital this morning." Accompanied by his wife, Dr. Corriden and a nurse, he made the 3 ½ hour trip to the Lahey Clinic in Boston, in an Air Force ambulance, to complete his recovery from "a broken back". The trip was "interrupted only to fortify him with a hot dog and a coffee milkshake."

Looking back on this event of 1964, Dr. George Snook, who was at that time a relatively youthful orthopedic surgeon of 39, believes that "Cooley Dickinson Hospital did a magnificent job ... Senator Kennedy was well treated here with a minimum of invasive treatment and also had great nursing care. The Foster Frame was too large for the ambulance, so I made a sort of plaster bed for him in which to make the trip to Boston. A small, 200-bed hospital suddenly had a major personage descend on them with no warning whatsoever, and it met this crisis with all the aplomb of a major hospital."