On July 23, 1999, a memorial Mass was held for the three crash victims at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. President Clinton and the First Family attended, as well as 4,000 other mourners, 3,000 of whom stood outside the church.

"We dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair, with his beloved Carolyn by his side," Senator Edward Kennedy said in his eulogy. "But, like his father, he had every gift but length of years."