And now, they have assembled anew at this place where 40 years ago John F. Kennedy, squinting in the setting sun, summoned his generation to a new frontier.

This time the new Kennedy voice here is that of Caroline Kennedy, the determinedly private and nonpolitical daughter of John and Jacqueline Kennedy.

In a convention where prime-time minutes are cut up and parceled out like gems, she has been given eight evening minutes on Tuesday night. A voice rarely heard, she will introduce Uncle Ted -- Sen. Edward Kennedy, the liberal war horse summoning the faithful to the cause.

The daughter of John and Jacqueline Kennedy and wife of museum interior and theme park designer Edwin Schlossberg, she is a lawyer and co-author of a book on "The Right to Privacy" and another on the Bill of Rights.

"Caroline is very thoughtful, a scholar of American history and particularly constitutional legal history," says Bill Carrick, a Democratic consultant who worked on Edward Kennedy's unsuccessful 1980 campaign to wrest the Democratic nomination from President Jimmy Carter.

"People are going to be taken aback by what a poised and gifted person she is, and not only because of the poignancy of her speaking in the city where her father was nominated," he said.

The old-timers among the delegates will remember her as a White House child, a frolicking girl at play with her brother John.

The moment is bound to be poignant for another reason -- the memory of John's death, in the most recent Kennedy tragedy, the crash of his small plane off Martha's Vineyard, Mass., on July 16, 1999.

Other Kennedys have been given brief roles in the convention's daytime sessions.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., son of Edward, had a moment in Monday's opening session, the first to speak. He had only a moment, but he used it a litany of Democratic heroes of the past.

"In order to make this country the kind of place that lives up to its principles of fairness and justice for all," Patrick Kennedy said, "we need to carry on the fight of John Kennedy, we need to carry on the fight of Robert Kennedy, we need to carry on the fight of Martin Luther King, we need to carry on the fight of Cesar Chavez." Chavez was the farm workers' union leader who died in 1993.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, daughter of Ethel and Robert Kennedy, is also down for a moment -- less than a minute -- on Tuesday afternoon. The lieutenant governor of Maryland, she is the early front-runner in the 2002 Maryland gubernatorial race and a favorite of President Clinton. Additionally, Robert Kennedy Jr. speaks Tuesday afternoon about his heartfelt interest, the environment.

Trying to explain the hold the Kennedy family has held on the Democratic Party for 40 years, Erwin Hargrove, a presidential scholar at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., said even those born after Kennedy's assassination respond to his eloquence and his idealism.

"We need idealism, we, collectively, we Americans," he said. "Despite our cynicism, we do respond to idealism when it is genuine. If one goes into his private life, one loses respect for him, but he did have this capacity to lift us. The memory becomes more important than the man."

Kennedy's winning the nomination in 1960 was no sure thing. He won on the first ballot in competition with eight other candidates after intense maneuvering by his brother, Robert, and secret string pulling by his father, Joseph Kennedy Sr.

He decided to give his acceptance speech the next night in the open air, at the Los Angeles Coliseum, surrounded by his mother and father and the eight men he had defeated.

His words were eloquent -- "We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier, the frontier of the 1960s, a frontier of unknown opportunity and perils, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and dreams" -- but his performance uneven.

Tired, his voice strained, he faced the setting sun. Richard Nixon, his sure Republican opponent, watching, decided to agree to debate Kennedy in the campaign -- a decision that may have cost him the election. In the debates, Kennedy was smooth, sharp, poised, and Nixon was awkward, uncertain.

Four years later, a mournful Robert F. Kennedy would go to the Democratic convention in Atlantic City, N.J., dressed in black, to introduce a film in tribute to his martyred older brother.

For 16 minutes, he stood in impassive silence while wave after wave of applause rose from below.

Finally, he quoted Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet":

When he shall die,
ake him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Four years later, it was Robert Kennedy whom the Democrats mourned. He was shot -- in Los Angeles -- in pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination. This time, the film was a tribute to Robert Kennedy. The delegates sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."