The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  John had to agree. He’d set it all straight after Rory’s wedding, he decided. Like Carolyn, he, too, just needed a little more time, not to figure out how he felt, but instead how to fix things with the woman he truly loved. Who knows? Perhaps John, a real student of history when it came to his father’s administration, could hear the words of President Kennedy echoing in his head: “The hour of decision has arrived. We cannot afford to wait and see what happens, while the tide of events sweeps over and beyond us. We must use time as a tool … We must carve out our own destiny.”

  John knew what his destiny held, and it was to be with Carolyn. He wanted to make it right with her.

  He was thirty-eight. She was only thirty-three. They had all the time in the world.

  Chosen One

  FIVE YEARS EARLIER: MAY 19, 1994

  Thirty-three-year-old John Kennedy Jr. stood next to the telescope he had so loved as a child, still in the exact same place it had been when he was growing up—in the corner of a large square drawing room with high ceilings, wide windows, and French doors facing an exquisite view of the city, north, south, and west all the way to the reservoir. On either side of the telescope, falling with grace onto polished hardwood floors, were red-and-gold silk drapes. Around it were multiple stacks of books and magazines on shelves, on tables, on the floor. “Orderly chaos,” is how John’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, once put it, having lived among it for almost thirty years.

  “Always loved this thing,” John told his uncle Yusha Auchincloss as he slid his fingers across the telescope. “Mummy bought this for me when I was a kid,” he added as he bent down and peered into the tube at the iridescent New York vista.

  “It’s a beaut, all right,” said Yusha. Yusha, the stepbrother of John’s mother, then recalled to John the day Jackie first showed him the telescope in a Manhattan store window. She said she wanted to buy it for her boy on the occasion of his seventh birthday. He remembered it as being “typical” of his stepsister to purchase a present she felt could be used as a learning tool.

  Just an hour earlier, John and Yusha had wept while their beloved Jackie took her last breath. As the two men spoke, John’s aunt Ethel Kennedy puttered around in the kitchen, preparing tea for those who’d stayed behind after saying their final goodbyes, including John’s uncle Ted Kennedy and his wife, Vicki.

  It had all happened so quickly. Jackie had just been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma a few months earlier, in January. After the diagnosis, a priority for her was the spending of quality time with her longtime companion, the financier Maurice Tempelsman; her children, John and Caroline; and her grandchildren by Caroline—Rose, Tatiana, and John, better known as Jack.

  Taking a step back from the telescope, John rose to his full six-foot-one height. Somehow he always seemed taller, though. Maybe it was his self-confidence that gave him the appearance of greater stature; his body was lean and trimly built like that of a dedicated athlete. He was arguably the best-looking of the Kennedys of his generation, with his square-jawed, lean, and angular features, his shock of thick black hair, the deep brown eyes and gleaming smile. The moment a person shook his hand, John made a deep impression. It wasn’t just the firm grip, it was also the laser-focused eye contact—friendly, curious, intense, all at the same time.

  Like his mother, John had mastered the art of making anyone with whom he was engaged feel as if he were the only person of relevance in that moment. His sister, Caroline, didn’t possess quite the same gift. Not always comfortable with direct eye contact from people, especially reporters, she’d make it clear that she didn’t welcome intrusion. Caroline was like Jackie; both could shut a person down if he had the temerity to ask an intrusive question. John was more like his father; he didn’t avoid invasive inquiries, he addressed them eagerly, almost like a politician, but without the slickness that comes with a hidden agenda.

  Again, much like a person in politics, John could also command a room. He had an innate ability to communicate ideas with eloquence and passion, qualities a lot of people felt were genetic. However, not every Kennedy was blessed with them. For instance, John’s cousin Patrick—Ted’s son—was less authoritative. Even though he’d been in government since he was just twenty-one—elected to the Rhode Island House of Representatives in 1988 as the youngest member of the family to ever hold office—Patrick had to work hard at, as he once put it, “being that guy, when, actually, I’m this guy.” Time noted, “Speechmaking so terrified Patrick that colleagues recalled seeing his hands shake from across the chamber.” Patrick, of course, proved himself over time because he put in the work to do so. However, it definitely wasn’t a fait accompli that just because a person was born Kennedy he or she would be a natural communicator; Patrick’s uncle Bobby Kennedy Sr. was also a clumsy speaker at first; he, too, had to really work at it. However, when John Kennedy Jr. addressed the Democratic National Convention in July 1988 to introduce his uncle Teddy, he somehow seemed to have it naturally, whatever it is:

  Over a quarter century ago my father stood before you to accept the nomination for the presidency of the United States. So many of you came into public service because of him. In a very real sense because of you he is with us still, and for that I’m grateful to all of you. I owe a special debt to the man his nephews and nieces call Teddy, not just because of what he means to me personally but because of the causes he’s carried on. He has shown that an unwavering commitment to the poor, to the elderly, to those without hope, regardless of fashion or convention, is the greatest reward of public service. I’m not a political leader, but I can speak for those of my age who have been inspired by Teddy to give their energy and their ideas to their community … He has shown that our hope is not lost idealism but a realistic possibility.

  It wasn’t much, but it was enough to convince a lot of people that John could very well be the heir apparent to the Kennedy throne. A two-minute standing ovation for the twenty-seven-year-old Kennedy scion said it all.

  When People magazine named him “Sexiest Man Alive” that same year, John took it in stride and accepted as par for the course the gentle ribbing from friends and relatives that went along with such silliness. He didn’t surround himself with sycophants. It didn’t matter who a person was, John showed that person respect if he was engaged by him. One observer of his life aptly noted, “he had the ability to spend twenty seconds with you and leave you feeling as if the sun had just shone on you and you alone.” For example, once at Hickory Hill—the home owned by Ethel Kennedy, where his cousins had been raised—John was having a conversation with Fina Harvin about politics. She was smart and engaging, even if she was “only” the daughter of Ethel’s governess. As they spoke, a beautiful and sophisticated young woman approached and began hitting on John, completely ignoring Fina. Maybe the interloper even wondered what such a plain-clothed, “ordinary” girl could possibly mean to him. John looked at the gorgeous stranger and said, “Excuse me, but I’m talking to this young lady right now.” Then he turned his back on the other person and continued his conversation with Fina.

  Another interesting component to his personality was his temper. John had a short fuse. He could take a lot, but there would come a point when he would just explode. When that happened he could unleash a fury that was surprising considering his generally amiable personality. Madonna, when she dated him back in 1985, used to complain about it to her friends. At the time, she was separated from her husband, Sean Penn, also known for his volatile temper. She told one person that John was “slightly more frightening.” Whereas Sean would act out, perhaps give a photographer a body shot just to vent, somehow John’s way seemed more personal. Madonna said he would get up in her face, maybe an inch away, and scream at her at the top of his lungs when they were in a fight. That romance lasted just six months. All the women with whom John would become romantically involved would eventually feel the brunt of his fury, and none would ever forget it.

  One of the problems John Kennedy faced was that
most of his relatives viewed him as a sort of “chosen one” since he was the son and namesake of the family’s only President. His father had gotten an early start in politics. At twenty-nine, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected to Congress. At thirty-four, his son told a reporter, “I’ve never really been a long horizon type person.”

  These days, most of John’s cousins were invested in political and philanthropic activities, while he toiled away at a boring nine-to-five in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. When, at twenty-six, Representative Patrick Kennedy was asked if he wanted to one day be President, he didn’t even hesitate. “Yes. Absolutely,” he said. Another cousin, Joe—Ethel’s eldest son—had started a company, Citizens Energy, to provide oil to the underprivileged. He abandoned that enterprise in 1986 to become a Massachusetts congressman (in the same seat John’s father had held from 1947 to 1953). At that time, Joe turned Citizens over to his brother Michael, who was now doing an admirable job with it. Yet another cousin, Kathleen—Ethel’s oldest—also had her eye on politics; she would become lieutenant governor of Maryland in just a year’s time. Her brother Bobby was an environmental activist and an attorney for Hudson Riverkeeper, dedicated to keeping the Hudson River and its shores clean. Many of John’s other relatives of his generation were charting similar paths.

  “It wasn’t as if John had never fulfilled the family’s long-standing mandate to be of service,” noted Senator George Smathers in a 1999 interview; he was one of JFK’s best friends in the Senate and had been an usher at his wedding to Jackie. “I remember that when he was fifteen, he and his cousin Tim [Shriver] went to Guatemala to assist earthquake survivors. When he was in his twenties, he worked on a program to help the disabled in New York City. I know he dabbled in an organization to assist in youth drug prevention. Nothing really stuck, though.”

  More recently, John had founded Reaching Up, a foundation he designed specifically to care for the mentally ill. He was also on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, a retinue founded by Wall Street millionaires devoted to programs benefiting New York’s poor children. Though he was obviously trying—and a lot of people thought he was doing well with philanthropy—John still couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t making much of an impression, at least not like many of his Kennedy cousins. “You are what you do,” his aunt Ethel had told him. “But how do you compete with those people?” John later asked, speaking of Ethel’s children, as well as Ted’s and Eunice’s, in particular. It didn’t help that some of his cousins rubbed his nose in their overachieving ways. During a particularly virulent argument, one cousin who had always been competitive with John said, “When I stack my value to society against yours, I win. I win by a lot, and you know it.” John never got over the criticism.

  John’s sister, Caroline, had a more clear-eyed vision of how she wanted things to unfold in her life. She sailed through school with mostly good grades, traveled a great deal, and had a lot of friends. Though she became a lawyer, she wasn’t practicing because she’d decided to focus on her husband and children. Like her mother, she was devoted to family. She also had a wide range of charities in which she was passionately involved. Whereas John felt he was just killing time in the DA’s office, his sister’s days were full of scheduled activity. John would sometimes complain to her that he’d been at a crossroads for most of his life, trying to determine the best way forward in terms of keeping up with the other Kennedys. This would always cause Caroline to lose patience with him. She couldn’t have cared less about keeping up with the other Kennedys.

  The Kennedy siblings were different in other ways, too, such as in the way they handled the burden of their family responsibility to legacy, as evidenced by a wide-ranging discussion between brother and sister about funeral preparation the night their mother died.

  “Caroline said she didn’t want any mention of Aristotle Onassis during the service,” Yusha Auchincloss would recall in a 1999 interview. “But John didn’t want to ignore Onassis’s place in their mother’s life. ‘After all, she’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,’ he said. ‘How can we not mention that she was married to Ari?’ After Ari’s death back in 1975, Jackie could have dropped the ‘Onassis’ surname and reverted to ‘Kennedy’ or even ‘Bouvier.’ She didn’t. Caroline’s mind was made up about it, though. In terms of Jackie’s place in American history, she reasoned, she should only be remembered as a former First Lady who’d been married to an assassinated President. The Onassis years were a private matter for family, Caroline said, not something my stepsister ever meant to be played out in public. It was only the press who had made it such a spectacle.”

  John didn’t agree. He reasoned that even though Jackie knew full well when she married Ari that the world would not approve, she’d had the courage of her convictions to do so anyway. In his mind, marrying Ari had been a brave move, one that should be lauded during the funeral service, not ignored. He felt that Caroline’s targeting of the press in the Onassis matter was disingenuous; the real truth was that she simply didn’t want the man’s name mentioned because she just hadn’t liked him.

  While John had gotten along with the Greek tycoon, Caroline never warmed to him. He could never replace her father, not that he ever tried. However, John took Ari at his word when he said he wasn’t trying to be his father; he just wanted to take him to baseball games or out on his yacht where he would teach him how to fish. John didn’t have high expectations of Ari. He could see, even as a kid, that what mattered most was that Ari made his mother happy, or as Jackie once put it, “Aristotle Onassis rescued me at a time when my life was engulfed in shadows.”

  “What should I call your mom when I meet her?” John’s friends would often ask him. “Call her ‘Mrs. Onassis,’ unless she tells you otherwise” would be his quick answer. In the matter of Onassis’s placement at Jackie’s service, though, Caroline would prevail. The Greek tycoon’s name would not be mentioned, nor would any of his relatives or friends who knew Jackie be invited to the funeral.

  Then there was a debate about Jackie’s sister, Lee. Should she be allowed to speak? The two hadn’t been close in recent years; it was only in the final months of Jackie’s life that Lee emerged as a supportive presence. Caroline was angry at her aunt and didn’t want her to have a significant place in the service. John was torn; Lee’s son, Anthony, was not only his cousin but his best friend. He pled his case but, in the end, Caroline again had her way.

  That conversation was followed by another having to do with the scope of the funeral. Ted Kennedy wanted it to be big and ceremonial for public consumption, with cameras in the church. John agreed. However, Caroline was against it. She wanted the service to be more private, no cameras. Again, she would have her way; Jackie’s service would end up being a private one at St. Ignatius Loyola Church, where she had been baptized and confirmed, and with no cameras, just a public address system to the crowds gathered on the streets in front of the church.

  In the end, Caroline had won all three debates. This dynamic had always prevailed in the siblings’ relationship, though. One of the problems John faced was that as forthcoming as he was with others, he was reticent about expressing himself to his own sister. He never wanted to argue with her. Jackie had raised them to be there for each other, always. John loved his older sibling, trusted her implicitly, and simply didn’t want to fight with her. Of course, this sometimes meant that he would bottle up his feelings, which would sometimes result in those infamous flashes of anger toward others.

  “At the end of the day, as always, Caroline had her way with the arrangements,” John later complained to his friend John Perry Barlow. Barlow was a former Grateful Dead lyricist who went on to become an internet rights pioneer and human rights activist. He and John had been close friends for years, ever since Jackie made arrangements for her son to be a wrangler on Bar Cross Ranch near Pinedale, Wyoming (where Barlow grew up), for a couple of months back when John was seventeen.

  “Why don’t you, for once in your life, stand up
to your sister?” Barlow asked. “No, that’s not how we are,” John said. “She’s usually right, anyway,” he added.

  “But it’s not good, John,” Barlow told him. “She walks all over you.” Sounding defeated, John said he understood that but it’s just the way it had always been with them. “Well, change it,” Barlow exclaimed. John said he would, “one day soon.”

  A few days later, following the funeral Mass, members of the family and a few close friends boarded a chartered plane at LaGuardia that would also take Jackie’s body to Washington, D.C. She was then to be laid to rest next to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, at Arlington National Cemetery. Fewer than a hundred people would then gather on a hillside before the same eternal flame that was first lit years earlier by Jackie in honor of her martyred husband.

  “Guess we’re orphans now, me and Caroline,” John told Gustavo Paredes after Jackie was buried. Gustavo, who was five years older than John, had spent most of his youth and then early adult life in the company of the Kennedys. He was the son of Providencia Paredes—“Provi”—from the Dominican Republic, Jackie’s assistant at the White House who then transitioned into a new role as a close friend of the former First Lady’s. When he was about seven, Gustavo used to have such admiration for President Kennedy’s well-tailored suits. “Sure wish I could have a suit like that,” he would tell him. Jack would promise that once he was out of office, he would give him a couple suits as souvenirs by which to remember his administration. Shortly after he made that vow, second grader Gustavo was being picked up by Secret Service men at his Catholic school for his own protection because the President had been shot. He then attended JFK’s funeral. Now, all these years later, he was at John’s side as Jack’s widow was also being laid to rest. “You get to this place in life, and you think, now what?” John told him. “Who are you? Are you a grown-up now? At some point, all of us face this existential crisis, don’t we?”