Remembering Camelot's Prince

I remember exactly where I was 10 years ago when news reached me that John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane had gone missing; the suddenness hitting me like a stray golfball. It was around 9 in the evening and I had just arrived home from work. I then sank into the living room couch, suddenly feeling like I weighed a ton, and wondering if the Atlantic Ocean had claimed John. I reflected anew on whether there was indeed a Kennedy curse. Were the Kennedys always cut off in their prime? But the Kennedy matriarch Rose lived to be over 100 and Ted Kennedy, the “Lion of the US Senate,” is valiantly fighting brain cancer at age 77.

To whom much is given, much is expected. The Kennedys have scaled many heights, and have savored rare, blissful triumphs since they sailed to America from Ireland during the potato famine –– the sweetest triumph of which was JFK’s election in 1960 as the first Irish-Catholic president of the United States. But they have also endured much pain and unspeakable tragedy: three plane crashes (which killed Joe Jr., Kathleen Kennedy, and JFK Jr.), two assassinations (of JFK and RFK), a drug overdose (David Kennedy’s) and a fatal skiing accident (Michael Kennedy’s).

John was 38, a good eight years younger than JFK was when he was assassinated in 1963. When people die young, we grieve not only that they are gone too soon, but also because we will always wonder what they could and would have been. The unfulfilled potential, the broken promise from a life that could have been great, that could have made us better — is what we mourn for.

I did not know John personally and envy the NAIA reporters and personnel who met him on a stopover to Palau in the early ’90s. John, who was with Darryl Hannah, requested for privacy without losing his smile and his manners.

Maybe JFK Jr. would have been senator, maybe he would have been president. But the life he lived even before he attained a fraction of the greatness of his father was extraordinarily ordinary. He was unbent by the burden of having a legendary father and namesake; he did not buckle under the world’s tremendous expectations of him. He lived a life, and was not a prisoner of its pressures.

According to this week’s edition of People magazine, which interviewed one of John’s closest friends Sasha Chermayeff and published never-before-seen photos of JFK Jr., John sometimes referred to himself as “Juan” Kennedy. He would even sign some of his letters as “Juan” — perhaps because he fancied the Spanish version of his name, perhaps because he wanted some anonymity.

Eight days before he died, he also reportedly told Sasha, whose son Phinneas was his godchild: “I really want to have a child.”

Sasha said John was pondering going into politics. “Things were getting pretty clear. I don’t think he was going to be wasting too much time. He had an awareness of life, and I think he was going to seize the moment. He was really poised for the next part of his life — and then he was gone.”

Gone too soon.

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Another article that came out at nypost.com, quoting Kennedy biographer C. David Heymann, also said John was claiming his political destiny. “JFK Jr.’s future course would inevitably, if somewhat belatedly, have led to a career in politics. Toward the end of his life, he frequently spoke of running for office — if not in New York, then possibly in Massachusetts, the home base of his illustrious family.”

Here are excerpts from the article, which came out in commemoration of John’s life and 10th death anniversary today. Heymann’s newest book on the family, “Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story” (Atria Books/ Simon & Schuster), is also out today.

In the fall of 1993, John F. Kennedy Jr. got a call from an adviser to New York Mayor David Dinkins, asking him to join his re-election campaign. JFK Jr. agreed. He joined a Sunday morning walking tour for Dinkins on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The last stop of the day was Zabar’s, the well-known food emporium on Broadway and 80th Street. “There was a horde of cameras and cops outside the store,” said Ken Sunshine, the mayor’s publicist. “When John went in and stood by the fish counter, several old biddies buying lox approached him. They started screaming. ‘John John — it’s John Kennedy!’ Pretty soon every customer in the place ran over and surrounded him. They started tearing at his clothes and grabbing his hair. The brie went flying. It was wild. We had to call in the police to rescue him.” JFK Jr., who died 10 years ago this week, never escaped the spotlight — but he dealt with it with aplomb. From Nov. 25, 1963, when he solemnly saluted his father’s horse-drawn coffin, until July 16, 1999, when his Piper Saratoga aircraft plunged into the Atlantic, killing him at 38, the privileged son of a president still managed to live the life of a down-to-earth New Yorker, friends recall.

Steve Florio, a magazine publishing CEO and friend of John’s, was also struck by his humility on a visit to his TriBeCa loft in 1997, a year after his marriage to former Calvin Klein publicist Carolyn Bessette. After dinner, the threesome sat on the floor sorting through a Kennedy clan photo album. There was Uncle Teddy at a Hyannis Port party doing an Irish jig. Then came the 1996 post-wedding shot of JFK Jr. gallantly kissing Carolyn’s hand. Next, he produced the original picture of himself as a small child hiding underneath his father’s desk in the Oval Office, followed by the famous photograph of him saluting, age 3, at President Kennedy’s funeral. “My God,” said Florio. “Every once in a while, I had to remind myself that John was the son of one of our most prominent political leaders. You’d never have known it from his outward demeanor. He was such a natural and truly humble soul.”

 Jackie’s death at age 64 came as a terrible blow, though it also appeared to liberate him. “He couldn’t see himself practicing law,” Barlow said. “He had the soul and personality of a politician. It was in his blood. He could converse with anyone. It was a real gift.” When he won the presidency in 1992, Bill Clinton, for whom John had campaigned, offered John an unspecified position in his cabinet. “Ted Kennedy was all for it,” recalled Rob Littell, “but John declined. He said to me, ‘If I accept, everyone will say I got it only because I’m a Kennedy.’ “ He saw the sardonic humor inherent in politics and the tie between public office and entertainment. It gave rise to George, the magazine he founded in 1995.

By early 1999, with his marriage more or less back on track, John’s career focus again began to shift. He informed New York Democratic chairperson Judith Hope that he was strongly considering a run in 2000 for the Senate seat then still occupied by the soon-to-retire Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In retrospect, it can be said that George was merely a stepping stone and that JFK Jr.’s future course would inevitably, if somewhat belatedly, have led to a career in politics. Toward the end of his life, he frequently spoke of running for office — if not in New York, then possibly in Massachusetts, the home base of his illustrious family. Now, 10 years after his death, we can only suppose what might have become of his ambitious plans, and whether or not we would have come to refer to him as President John F. Kennedy.

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