After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family--1968 to the Present

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  With the passing of a few more days, Jackie slowly began to slip away. It was as if she had let go, as if she had reconciled herself to her fate and was fine with it. If anything, she seemed peaceful. Finally, Caroline began making the dreaded phone calls to friends and loved ones to inform them that there wasn’t much time left.

  On Thursday morning, May 19, at about 11:30, Jackie was given the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church by Monsignor George Bardes of St. Thomas More Church. As he finished, Jackie looked up at him and smiled. “She was physically weak,” he said later, “but spiritually strong.” He also said he later found Caroline in her old bedroom, weeping. John met him in the hallway and walked him to the front door. “Thank you for coming,” John said, looking exhausted. “My mother really wanted to get that over with. You know how she is. Always with a checklist.” The two men smiled sadly and shook hands.

  Later that same day, many of Jackie’s friends and family members came to her home on Fifth Avenue to say goodbye to her. She had decided weeks earlier that, with the exception of her son and Maurice, only women should be permitted to sit by her bedside in her final hours. Her friend Bunny Mellon was present, as was singer Carly Simon, another close friend. There were many others coming and going—colleagues from Doubleday; longtime Kennedy acolytes; friends of Aristotle Onassis; people she had met from so many different walks of life over the years, some appearing to be almost in a daze as they talked among themselves, sharing their memories. Jean Kennedy Smith was present, as was her son William Kennedy Smith. Ethel’s sons Joseph, Bobby Jr., Michael, and Douglas were present, as well as Pat’s son, Christopher. Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill, was there, with her son Anthony and his wife, Carole. Sargent Shriver—looking particularly shaken—was present, as was his daughter, Maria Shriver. Of course, Ted Kennedy and his wife, Vicki, were there. Caroline had Ed Schlossberg at her side. However, John and Darryl Hannah were having trouble in their relationship at the time, and she was in Los Angeles. Obviously too ill to make the journey was Rose Kennedy. Also, Joan couldn’t make it; she was just too upset.

  Down below on Fifth Avenue outside Jackie’s building were scores of news crews reporting the story around the world that the Queen of Camelot might be near death. Jackie’s spokeswoman issued a statement saying that Jackie “is fighting another phase of her illness with great fortitude.” As a result, traffic was all but stopped in front of 1040 Fifth Avenue, the building Jackie had moved into so many years earlier when, still shocked and confused by the tragic turn her life had taken in Dallas, she decided to start anew.

  Soft Gregorian chants filled Jackie’s home and lights were dimmed as the procession of friends, family, and loved ones continued throughout the afternoon and into the evening. Slowly, people came and went from the apartment in solemn tribute to a woman who meant so much to so many, some of the female guests being permitted a few moments with Jackie in her bedroom. Candles were lit all about the apartment, lending an almost religious atmosphere to the proceedings. As people milled about, occasionally someone would tell a humorous story about Jackie or about one of the other Kennedys that would elicit soft laughter.

  Eunice and Pat were already present when Ethel came rushing in at about 3 p.m., but it was when the three Kennedy women exchanged greetings in the foyer that an almost palpable shift in energy seemed to occur. “It was as if a blanket of overwhelming sadness had descended upon us,” recalled one visitor. “Whereas all day long it felt as if everyone was trying to be strong, no tears but the kind of stoic strength they knew Jackie would have approved of, when the three elder Kennedy women converged, everyone sort of lost it. It was as if that’s when reality hit, when we all knew that this was true, that it wasn’t just some awful nightmare, that Jackie was, indeed, dying. I just remember the three of them—Ethel, Pat, and Eunice—walking into the living room with such devastated expressions on their faces. I’ll simply never forget it.”

  Just five weeks earlier, Jackie had called Ethel with her annual birthday greeting, this time for Ethel’s sixty-sixth. According to what Ethel recalled, the two shared a laugh when Ethel complained, “I feel more like ninety-six!” To which Jackie responded by saying, “Well, if you ask me, you don’t look a day over fifty-six!” And now it had come to this—Ethel about to walk into the bedroom in which Jackie lay dying, with her sisters-in-law Pat and Eunice at her side.

  Always Jackie

  As Maurice Tempelsman opened the door to Jackie’s coral-and-peach-colored bedroom, the Kennedy women—Pat, Ethel, and Eunice—walked in, took one look around, and then stood in place for a moment as if in a state of shock. Pat, her eyes wide with disbelief, seemed to crumble a bit; Eunice put her arm around her shoulders and held her tightly. There in front of them was Jackie, lying peacefully in her large, canopied bed. Wearing a print scarf, she was on her back, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, and her hands folded peacefully over her chest. She was partially under a blanket with an intravenous tube connected to one arm through which morphine was being administered. Though unconscious, she looked quite beautiful and even regal as she lay bathed in the soft and gentle glow of three antique lamps.

  Ethel walked into the room first. “Oh my God,” she said, seeming overwhelmed. “It can’t be true,” she said as she sat in a chair to Jackie’s left and took her hand. “It just can’t be true,” she repeated. Eunice and Pat then walked to the other side of the bed. As Eunice took Jackie’s other hand into her own, Pat, standing behind her sister, began to murmur, “No, no, no.” It was then that Maurice closed the door to the bedroom.

  The three Kennedy women never spoke of their last, private moments with Jackie. However, one of Ethel’s sons—who wished not to be identified—said in a 1999 interview, “My mother told her how much she loved her and how much she had always meant to her, no matter their petty differences. However, she said that she wasn’t sure that Aunt Jackie understood what she was saying or if she was even awake. She said that the room was beautiful, that there were flowers everywhere, soft music playing, Jackie’s books all around her. There were manuscripts and bound volumes. Books by Isak Dinesen, Jean Rhys, and Colette. Record albums. The music she loved. But in the middle of it all was this vision, Aunt Jackie. She said she had never seen Jackie look more lovely, more peaceful. The word she used was ‘serene.’ I remember it because that’s a word I don’t think I had ever heard my mother use. She said, ‘Jackie was just so serene. I had never seen anyone look that way before.’ I don’t think she ever thought it possible that Aunt Jackie would not be here.”

  The Kennedy women were with Jackie for about thirty minutes. By the time they emerged, they seemed to have a newfound strength. Now there were no tears. It was as if their time with Jackie had somehow bolstered them, enabling them to accept the inevitable.

  “She’s going to be fine,” Eunice told Caroline, according to several witnesses. “God is with her now, as always. He’s with all of us. Do you believe that?” she asked her niece.

  “I do, Aunt Eunice,” Caroline said, seeming determined to be strong. The two embraced. Eunice reached into her pocket and pulled out a chain of rosary beads and gave them to her niece. Caroline’s husband, Ed Schlossberg, then hugged Eunice, followed by Ethel and, finally, Pat. “Thank you for being here for my wife,” he told them.

  Before taking her leave, Ethel asked to see John. He came from the kitchen, his dark eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. Now thirty-three, he was wearing a beautifully tailored dark blue suit with a crisp white shirt and aqua-colored tie. With all of that wavy thick hair and his jaw so strong, he was a strikingly handsome man. But on this night, he somehow looked just like the lost little boy who had saluted his slain father’s casket so many years earlier.

  “Kiddo, I have always loved you like one of my own,” Ethel said, reaching up to brush the tears from John’s eyes. “Your mother doesn’t want you to cry now, John,” she said. “You have to be strong. Your mother was always so strong. She wants you to smile now.”


  John tried his best to force a smile, but it simply wouldn’t come. Ethel placed one hand on each side of his face and pulled him close. Then, looking at him with great warmth, she said, “Your parents will be together in heaven very soon. And they will look down on you and Caroline. And oh, how they will love you, John. Oh, how they will love you!”

  At that, John’s face broke into a small, sad smile as he wrapped his long arms around his beloved aunt and held her close.

  At quarter after ten that evening, May 19, after everyone had departed, leaving only Caroline, John, and Maurice to spend their final hours with her, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis departed from this world—always a legend, always an icon, always a mother… a woman greatly admired. Fittingly, she would be buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to her beloved first husband, the president.

  PART NINETEEN

  John and Carolyn

  John Kennedy Jr. at a Crossroads

  Flash back to June 9, 1990. Ethel Kennedy’s daughter, Kerry, had just married Andrew Cuomo* at St. Michael’s Church in Washington, D.C., the same church where John Kennedy’s funeral was held in 1963. After the nuptials, Ethel Kennedy hosted a lavish reception for the two political families—the Cuomos and the Kennedys—at her Hickory Hill estate. Recently, Ethel’s sons had set up a flying fox on the property—an aerial cable usually used for military maneuvers. Jackie took one look at it and, turning to Sargent Shriver, said, “How long do you think it’ll be before John is up there on that thing?” Sarge just smiled. No sooner had Jackie spoken than she noticed a commotion behind her. “Come on, John, get up there,” Ethel’s sons Joe and Bobby were saying to John Kennedy Jr. “Just try to stop me,” John said as he took off his suit jacket and loosened his tie.

  “Oh, no. Really John, must you?” Jackie said.

  “Yes, Mother, I must,” he said with a laugh.

  John jumped up onto the flying fox’s small seat, grabbed the pulley, and pushed off from a platform. Soon he was sailing in the air about twenty feet off the ground, right across Ethel’s property and into a smooth-as-silk landing just a couple of feet away from his aunt Ethel. “My God! You almost hit me,” Ethel shouted at John. “Almost doesn’t count, Aunt Ethel,” he said with a big grin as he jumped off the apparatus and ran from her. At that, Ethel grabbed a chocolate cupcake off a platter and hurled it at her nephew. He yelped as it hit him right in the back of the head. “You’re right,” Ethel said, laughing, “almost doesn’t count.” Jackie just laughed at the sight and shook her head in dismay. Turning to Maurice Tempelsman, she remarked, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with that boy.”

  He had always been impulsive and unpredictable, but after the death of his mother in 1994, there seemed to be a great deal of pressure on John Kennedy Jr. to do something important with his life. Jackie’s passing caused some political pundits and Kennedy watchers to look to John as perhaps the next great Kennedy. It was as if Jackie’s death signified an end of the Camelot era, that is unless someone stepped in to continue the epic tradition. Adding to the pressure was that Jackie had also sometimes been critical of John’s lack of focus. Though she would not have wanted to see him in public office, she definitely felt he was too old not to have some direction in his life, a real career. A lot of others felt the same way, both in his private life as well as in the media. After all, he was JFK’s one and only son. Surely he should be the Kennedy to do something truly noteworthy.

  Few people knew that John gave generously to several charities and spent a great deal of time working with inner-city children in Harlem and in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. Moreover, he helped start Exodus House, a school for Harlem children. He also helped tutor students there. In 1995, he established Reaching Up, Inc., a nonprofit organization that trained caregivers for the mentally disabled, and a very personal undertaking for him in that it mirrored his aunt Eunice’s work. He also worked with the Robin Hood Foundation to help poor children in New York. These endeavors did not generate a lot of press for John—which was by design. He didn’t want the attention, he just wanted to make a difference. Thus most people weren’t aware of John’s personal philanthropy—even many of his cousins didn’t know about Exodus House, for example—and felt he should be doing something in the political arena. After all, there were Kennedys in office making significant contributions as public servants—why not John?

  For instance, Ted’s son Patrick had become the youngest member of the Kennedy family to hold elected office when he won election to the Rhode Island House of Representatives at age twenty-one. He would serve two terms in the Rhode Island legislature and go on to become the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 1999 to 2001. He served from 2001 until his retirement in 2011 as a member of the Rhode Island delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives, with membership on a number of its standing subcommittees. In true Kennedy tradition, he was the sponsor of the Mental Health Parity Act in 2008. In November 1986, Bobby’s son Joseph Patrick Kennedy was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the Massachusetts 8th Congressional District. He served there until 1999. Bobby’s daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend would become the sixth and first female lieutenant governor of Maryland when she was elected in January 1995. She would serve until 2003.

  By 1995, John was definitely at a crossroads. When he was with his cousins at the compound, it had gotten to the point where nobody even mentioned his career—or lack of it. In a way, that just made things worse. It was as if people had begun to accept that he had no real career and it was okay with them. He seemed to be getting a free pass just because he was JFK’s son.

  One of the greatest misconceptions about John Kennedy Jr. was that while he was a sincerely nice man, he wasn’t very bright, sort of like a golden retriever—sweet but dumb. Doubtless, this was the result of the problems he had passing the bar and of all the publicity he had received the two times he failed it. True, maybe law wasn’t his calling, but he had brains, drive, energy, and ambition. He was vastly intelligent in other areas, especially in the area of politics. In fact, he lived and breathed politics. Being of service to others was a code he had lived with all of his life. It was something in which he truly believed.

  Here’s a telling story about John:

  Back in 1988, when he met Al Gore for the first time at the Democratic convention at the Omni in Atlanta (at which John was one of the speakers), Gore was annoyed by the demands of the pressing crowd and said to John, “Can you believe these people? What a pain in the ass this is! They are always wanting something from us.” John was stunned. He didn’t say anything at the time, but from that moment on Al Gore was not a person for whom John had much respect. In fact, Gore’s sentiments were completely antithetical to everything John thought a public servant should aspire to be. “I was deeply offended by it,” he told Richard Bradley at George magazine when recounting the memory. “I thought, man, are you crazy? These people are why we’re in politics! They’re looking up at us. They believe in us. And your attitude is that they’re a pain in the ass?”

  In truth, the reality of John Kennedy Jr. was much more interesting than his public persona because—unlike what some thought of him—the real JFK Jr. was thoughtful and introspective. “But one also has to beware of anyone who says that John was a certain way and always acted a certain way,” said Richard Bradley. “In fact, he was never consistent, always fluid in his thinking and in his reactions. His thinking was never monolithic. He was also smart enough to know how simplistic his public persona was. He understood that JFK Jr., as a cultural figure, was completely disconnected from the reality of his true character and personality. In fact, he understood the culture and the mechanisms of culture better than most people because he had lived it all his life. He was attached to people’s memories, and that was okay with him, if a little frustrating. He understood that there were special demands on him, though. Just because of who he was.”

  Certainly, it was relatively easy for some of the other Kennedys to
go into politics and start with a clean slate. After all, who really knew anything about Ted’s son Patrick? And who even knew who Bobby’s son Joe was? And could anyone pick out Kathleen Kennedy Townsend from a crowd, other than in her own state? Not really. Those politicians were distinguished by their fathers and their family lineage—and then later by their politics—but John came with all sorts of baggage having nothing to do with his parents but rather with what people thought of him specifically. What they wanted him to be. What they expected him to be. Therefore, he was reluctant to just jump into politics and do battle with all of those preconceived notions. He wanted to take his time. He wanted to think about the best way to proceed. Yes, he was interested in public service—but at his own speed, in his own time.

  It would be at this juncture of his life—the time following his mother’s death—that John Kennedy Jr. became seriously involved with a woman he had dated only casually a few years earlier. With the passing of time, she would confound and confuse as much as she would bewitch and beguile. She would also turn out to be his greatest encourager. If John had been granted the gift of old age, it’s likely that this particular woman might have been someone he, in his senior years, would have looked back on as one of his most seminal relationships even though it’s doubtful that they would have ended up together for the rest of their lives. She was likely destined to just be an important chapter in the great book of his life and times. However, as it would happen, she would be John Kennedy Jr.’s last love. She would be his wife. And not until death would they part.