The first event made the news big time. Radio, television, newspapers, the Internet. And it stayed in the news for a couple of weeks or so.

Few, if any, of the other sudden deaths that day received any coverage at all. Not on radio. Not on TV. Not in newspapers. And not on the Internet.

Why?

Well, you might say in response, people didn't know any of the others.

But did they know Mr. Kennedy? No. They knew about him. But they didn't know him. And there are lots of people the public knows about whose death receives only a passing acknowledgement in the so-called news media.

So I don't think that that answer can reasonably explain the outpouring of attention given to Kennedy's death when none was given to the death of any of the others.

OK, then, how about the value of Mr. Kennedy's life? Was his death a great loss to the nation? Not really. He hadn't contributed anything of any significance to his fellow Americans. Not any more than was contributed by any of the others who suffered a violent death that day.

What about potential then? OK, what about it? Was his potential for service any greater than the potential of any of the others? Who knows?

And then there was the placing of flowers and notes and cards on the sidewalk in front of the building in which Mr. Kennedy had lived by people who never knew him. Why weren't they doing the same in front of the building in which the nine-year old who had been innocently gunned down in a drive-by shooting and who they didn't know either lived? Or the young man killed in a traffic accident, leaving a wife and three small children to fend for themselves?

Why? Why, indeed. I don't think I'll ever understand why. The best I can come up with is that the mourners, other than the members of Kennedy's immediate family, felt that identifying with the deceased gave their lives for one brief moment an importance that those lives could never otherwise possess. An importance not achievable by identifying with any of the others who died suddenly that day or by identifying with Mr. Kennedy himself were he still alive and unapproachable.

Paraphrasing a Publilius Syrus maxim of some 2,000 years ago: Some people believe that it's only in the presence of death that we're all equal.

If true, how sad. You see, every life is important, simply by reason of its own existence. As John Donne put it: The death of any man diminishes me.

Nevertheless, may John F. Kennedy, Jr. and all the others who died that day, suddenly or otherwise, rest in peace.

Think about it.