John F. Kennedy Jr. would have turned 60 that Wednesday. His plane crash was another chapter in the Kennedy's tragedy.
In purely theoretical terms, one would have to say that life provided him extremely richly: He was wealthy by nature and came from one of the great American families. He was a darling of women and looked like a movie star. But that was only one, the shining side of a legend. But life is not a theory, and for John F. Kennedy Jr. (1960-1999) the great, outstanding moments were consistently fateful encounters with death. Or with the fate of being a Kennedy in whose life death plays the main role. John F. Kennedy Jr. would have turned 60 on November 25, 2020. Would … He died well before his time on July 16, 1999. In the prime of his life, as they say. At 38.
He was a little kid when a picture of him went around the world, the most famous picture ever taken of him. It was his third birthday, an ice-cold November Monday in Washington D.C., when little John-John, as they called him affectionately, released his mother Jacqueline (1929-1994) and gave a military salute in front of his father's coffin. President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) had been shot three days earlier.
The little saluting son. This more helpless than touching gesture was to determine his whole life. Regardless of whether he later acted as a New York lawyer or publisher – the general public always saw in him the famous little "John-John", who greeted his dead father militarily.
Death and the Kennedy Family
"That made him America's son, the child of us all," said the journalist and Kennedy biographer Edward Klein. And Paul Wilmot, a family friend, is reported to have said, "That is when John Kennedy Jr. became who he was." At seven, John-John had to attend Uncle Bobby's funeral. Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968), the younger brother of the assassinated US President, was assassinated on June 6, 1968.
John F. Jr. learned during his childhood that death plays a major role in his family. Father and uncle are victims of crimes, his older sister Arabella was born stillbirth in 1956, his younger brother Patrick died in 1963 two days after his birth.
His famous name is more of a liability than an asset to John F. Jr. "If the US had a royal family, it could only be the Kennedys. And if there was an heir to the throne, it would have been John F. Kennedy Jr. He was our crown prince," writes a journalist. But the junior doesn't want to be a crown prince. He would like to become an actor, later a journalist, both of which his ambitious mother refuses to do.
Popular member of the New York Society
As a student he doesn't go to Harvard like his father and grandfather, but studies law at New York University Law School, where he only passes the bar exam on the third attempt. After that, he did not join one of those elite law firms in Manhattan, but looked for a rather unglamorous job with the public prosecutor until 1993.
Kennedy Junior becomes a coveted fixed point of the New York Society even without his intervention. He has affairs with actresses Daryl Hannah (59) and Sarah Jessica Parker (55). As early as 1988, "People" magazine voted him the "Sexiest Man Alive". After his mother's death, JFK Jr. went into journalism and became the publisher of the political magazine "George". In 1996 he married Carolyn Bessette (1966-1999), who was six years his junior, PR agent for fashion designer Calvin Klein (78) and an extravagant trendsetter.
Edward Klein's book "The Kennedy's Secret – A Family and Its Curse" describes a more crazy than tumultuous marriage. Carolyn is said to have beaten her husband, used cocaine and cheated on him with a Calvin Klein underwear model, Carolyn has ruined John-John's magazine "George", it is further alleged. In the end, a desperate John F. Kennedy Jr. sat in his suite at the Stanhope Hotel in New York ($ 2,000 / night) and yelled: "I've had enough! This has to stop. Otherwise we only have a divorce."
Lack of experience and cloudy weather seal his fate
"The Kennedy's curse results from the destructive clash of the family's fantasies of omnipotence with cold, harsh reality," writes Kennedy biographer Edward Klein. According to the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", this sentence is a final interpretation of the broken marriage: The couple want to leave for a wedding in Massachusetts on July 16, 1999. John-John recently got his pilot's license, but only a visual flight license. He himself sits in the cockpit of his Piper Saratoga. Also on board: Carolyn's sister Lauren Bessette (1964-1999).
Carolyn had her husband wait for hours at the airport because she had to have her nails painted in Manhattan, the "FAZ" quotes Edward Klein's thesis. That is why John-John's little plane only took off when it was already dark, simply too late for the novice flight Kennedy. The machine crashes off the island of Martha's Vineyard in the Atlantic.
A family history as America's tragedy
John-John challenged the gods and got on his plane despite a foot injury, his lack of experience and the cloudy weather, writes the "FAZ". "And like his aunt Kathleen and his uncle Joseph, he paid for his aviation arrogance with his life. One got caught in a thunderstorm in 1948 with her lover Peter Fitzwilliam … The other died in 1944 when his bomber was on the way to a heroic, suicidal secret mission exploded over England. Klein suggests that he wanted to outdo his younger brother John, who was already celebrated as a war hero. "
The bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law Lauren were found 40 meters below the sea floor and recovered days later. They were handed over to the sea together at a burial at sea. One more chapter in the Kennedy's tragedy, which is an American tragedy.