John F. Kennedy, Jr.

John F. Kennedy, Jr. (born November 25, 1960, Washington, D.C., U.S.—died July 16, 1999, near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts) was an American publisher, lawyer, and member of the prominent Kennedy political family who was the son of U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline (née Bouvier) Kennedy (later Onassis).

Early life, education, and legal career

Born less than three weeks after his father, a U.S. senator of Massachusetts, had been elected president, Kennedy was the youngest of the first family’s two children. He was the first infant to live in the White House since 1893. From his earliest years, he was the focus of media attention, known to the press and public alike by his father’s nickname for him, “John-John.” He and his elder sister Caroline were part of the Kennedy “Camelot” myth (borrowing from Arthurian legend, the notion of Camelot cast the attractive, charismatic first family and the Kennedy administration as symbols of a hopeful, idealistic new era). Photographs of John-John playing in the Oval Office as his father worked added to the public’s perception of his parents as a young, vigorous couple leading a young and optimistic country. He was a few days short of turning three years old when his father was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The moment when he saluted his father’s casket during the funeral became one of the most poignant and famous images of the country’s mourning.

After the assassination Jacqueline Kennedy eventually moved with her children to New York City, where John attended a Roman Catholic elementary school. In June 1968 one of his uncles, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York, was assassinated while campaigning in California for the Democratic presidential nomination. Fears about her children’s safety led Jacqueline to enroll them in more exclusive schools. In the fall of 1968 John began attending Collegiate School in New York City. Later that year Jacqueline married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. Thereafter John and Caroline began spending their summers in Greece, though safety continued to be a concern for the family. In 1972, when John was 11 years old, the Greek government arrested several individuals involved in a failed plot to kidnap him and other prominent figures. At age 16 John enrolled in the private Phillips Academy in Massachusetts.

He later attended Brown University, where he majored in American history and from which he graduated in 1983. Having taken an interest in acting, he appeared in a number of amateur stage productions in New York City. At his mother’s behest, however, he entered law school at New York University. He failed the bar exam twice before passing on a third attempt. In 1989 he began working as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, staying in the position for four years and earning a perfect conviction record on the six cases he prosecuted.

Public prominence, George magazine, marriage, and death

Kennedy continued to be a focus of media attention in adulthood. His athletic pursuits, leisure activities, use of public transportation in New York, and rumored romances with famous women were frequently tracked by tabloid newspapers and magazines, which gave him titles such as “sexiest man alive” or “America’s most eligible bachelor.” Yet he was less involved in controversy than some of his Kennedy cousins, a few of whom made headlines for various arrests, tragic accidents, and scandals. He professed no public interest in entering politics, but he made a memorable political debut in 1988 at the Democratic National Convention, where he introduced his uncle Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

In 1995 Kennedy launched George, a glossy political magazine named after the first U.S. president, George Washington. The magazine became known for its pop culture approach to politics. Many issues featured covers with celebrities dressed as Washington or other early American figures such as Betsy Ross. As editor in chief, Kennedy contributed such articles as an interview with imprisoned former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson, an essay in which he described his first cousins Joseph and Michael Kennedy as “poster boys for bad behavior,” and articles on visits to Cuba on the anniversary of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, a landmark event in his father’s presidency, and to an Irish Republican Army funeral in Northern Ireland during the peace process that sought to bring an end to the Troubles.

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In 1996 Kennedy married Carolyn Bessette, a public relations executive for Calvin Klein, in a private ceremony. The news of their marriage was heralded in the media, which took an interest in Bessette’s trendsetting style and tracked her movements much as it had the rest of the Kennedy family. In July 1999 the couple were on their way to a family wedding on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with Bessette’s sister Lauren, in a plane piloted by Kennedy when their plane was reported lost. U.S. Navy divers recovered their bodies a few days later in the plane’s wreckage off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.