John F. Kennedy Jr. never knew a life out of the public eye. Born three weeks after his father was elected president, he moved into the White House with his family at just two months old and almost instantly, he became the subject of intense media attention. His mother Jackie tried to create as normal a childhood as possible for both John and his older sister Caroline, but their photos regularly appeared on the covers of magazines and newspapers, as they became symbols of the youth and vitality that the Kennedy administration came to represent. And when President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, the image of a 3-year-old John giving his father's casket a salute during the funeral became etched in the annals of history.
America's fascination with John continued as he got older; tabloids regularly speculated on his relationship status, and in 1988, he was named People's "Sexiest Man Alive." But just a few years later, he took the headlines into his own hands by launching George magazine in September 1995. With the tagline “Not just politics as usual,” the publication was, in many ways, before its time, existing at the intersection of popular culture and the political discourse that would come to a head just a few decades later, when America elected a reality TV personality president.
George was an evolution of the political magazine, certainly, but more than that, it offered an outlet for John to speak directly to an audience in his Editor's Letters, and for him to examine what it means to lead a public life through interviewing figures ranging from the Dalai Lama and Warren Beatty to Cokie Roberts, Madeleine Albright, and Gerald Ford.
When the plane John was piloting went missing in July 1999, the news coverage was constant as the country watched and waited. And when the Coast Guard finally confirmed that John, his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her sister Lauren, had all died in a crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, America mourned once again the loss of potential, as the Kennedy family buried a man far too young.
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In the years since, there have been numerous books written about John—biographies and memoirs—offering differing perspectives on the Prince of Camelot, but there's still more story to tell.
On the 25th anniversary of John's death, JFK Jr: An Intimate Oral Biography offers untold memories, never-before-seen photos, and revelations about John from the people who knew him best.
Here, its co-authors, RoseMarie Terenzio, who was John’s close friend and executive assistant at George, and Liz McNeil, an editor at large at People magazine, speak with T&C about how this book came together, and what it means to keep John's legacy alive.
There have been so many books written about the Kennedys, and specifically about John. What makes this one different and why does now feel like the right time for this book?
RoseMarie Terenzio: For your first question—what makes this different?—is that it's an oral biography. So, it's other people telling their stories, and how they came to know John, and experienced John, and their relationship with John. And I don't think that's ever been done before. There are many people who've never spoken before spoke for this book.
And, why now? Obviously, the anniversary, but I also think it felt like enough time had passed that they felt like they were celebrating him, rather than mourning him, in the interest of not having him be forgotten, because it's important that he's remembered.
Liz McNeil: Rose, when you were talking, I was thinking, the epigraph for our book is by a really good friend of John's named Jack Merrill: "Some people have asked, why talk after all these years? You've shut up for so long. And I think—it's for him." That was the spirit of the book.
Tell me a little bit about the decision to write this book as an oral history, and what that process was like for each of you.
LM: As a reporter, it was amazing. It's the voices. That's what I love so much about our book—it wasn't us writing John's story. You actually hear it from the people who were there. You hear it from early on to the very end.
And I loved whenever we could capture the person's voice, or the cadence, or the quirks of their language, we left that in, and it really was about hearing from them. And I love the fact that we have a high-low thing, like we have President Clinton, but we have Jill Wooten, his favorite waitress at El Teddy's. We have Radu, but we have Gary Hart. And so, it really was about this kaleidoscopic view of John from all these different viewpoints.
RT: And I think the other thing that is so interesting about this book, is that, in addition to the high-low, you have these people that he met when he was in grade school at Collegiate or from Andover, and they stayed friends their whole lives. And, even though their paths may have diverged at some point, they stayed in touch. He kept friends throughout his entire life.
LM: At the very end, when you're talking to the people that John was in touch with at the end of his life, a lot of them are the people that you're going to hear from in the Andover section, and Collegiate, and at Brown.
In doing a project like this, who was your first call?
LM: We each have one.
RT: Oh, boy. The first one was Sasha Chermayeff, but also Robbie [Littell], Ed Hill.
Why did you think of them first? Why were they essential in telling this story?
RT: Because they were his closest friends. Sasha knew John from 11th grade throughout his whole life. They knew him best. And, they add this gravitas to the book that gives it a credibility and a feeling of, this is real. This is not just grabbing people who met him, or knew him, or on the periphery, but these are the people he spent weekends with. These are the people who were at his wedding, where there were only 40 people there. These are the people that he kept very close throughout his entire life.
LM: And of course, as a reporter, right, who covered John back when nobody would talk, those names were never public. I never knew about any of those people in John's life. They're not in the paper or anything. For me, my first call was Clint Hill, the secret-service agent who risked his life to save Jackie and tried to save the president, who I'd known from working with him on his books. I think Clint says he's the first person to hold the baby after Jackie gives birth, maybe after the nurse. So, how many people are there that were there in the room? I think symbolically, it was important for me to do that interview first.
Given that so much has been written about John’s life, and many Americans watched him grow up, was there a pressure to have anecdotes and stories that were new in this book?
RT: We both felt, I don't know if you call it, pressure. But once we started talking to the people who knew him best, we were secretly calling each other and going, "It was so great." We saw as it was unfolding that this was going to be a really different take. First of all, no one has ever had the access to be able to do what we had, because Liz had been reporting on John and on his family for 20 years. And, she was the first reporter after he passed away, and the only reporter after he passed away until I wrote my book [Fairy Tale Interrupted], that I would even have a conversation with. I mean, I wouldn't talk to anybody. And, there was a trust there.
All through the years, we forged this bond. I really trusted her. And, in past iterations of anniversaries and things like that with John, some of these people that were very close to him came to know Liz, because she was interviewing them and they came to trust her, too So, it was the perfect team to go in and say, "We're doing this, please talk to us. This is a celebration." And, for some of these people, it wasn't like I had to introduce my co-author and be cautious that she was a journalist, because they already knew her.
There was a synergy that you could not replicate. It just happened. It was years of a friendship evolving between the two of us. And then, in a way, Liz was coming into that circle from her reporting and her journalistic side, and me from the more personal side.
LM: Of course, when you send an email and say, "I'm working with Rose." Or Rose says, "Okay,” it's a whole other level. Somehow the doors open. And whenever you would get something fresh and sparkling, I think, it would just give us so much energy. Like when we heard the stories from Collegiate about him bringing Rosie Greer for Father's Day, or when his friend... I just was reading it this morning when his friend hurts his leg and he's in the infirmary, and John's just like, "Oh, well, I'll just have the Secret Service take you to the hospital." And, his family's like, "John, you can't do that. They're not your chauffeur."
RT: "They're not there for your friends to be driven around."
LM: We were like, "Oh, this is so fresh and-"
RT: And so human, and so like kids.
How did you all navigate that wanting to protect this legacy of your friend and your boss RoseMarie, but also painting a truthful picture of what actually happened?
RT: It was extremely difficult and emotional. And, my instinct was always to push back and protect. But again, because of the relationship that Liz and I had forged over all these years, her guidance and the fact that, as a journalist, she put her journalist hat on and introduced it in a way that was not tawdry, but just factual. For me, the scariest thing that was, "I know these people. They trust me. And, I don't want to violate that trust." And I don't think that we did. Her journalistic guidance was unbelievably valuable. I could not have done this book with anybody else.
LM: It's a careful road. And, Rose and I would have long conversations about showing someone's humanity. And what's humanity really, right? Our frailty, our vulnerability, our faults, our less-than-perfect pasts. Something about that would open John up a little bit to our readers. What's the thing we talk about with our friends, right? Our vulnerabilities, our worries. So I thought, if we could somehow present some of that, that it would present a new side of John, a new picture, and allow you a deeper understanding.
RT: And just humanize him in a way that he's not this commercial unknowable phantom, but he's a real person.
Was there anyone who eluded you? Who still said no, who you wanted to be a part of the story?
RT: There's a whole list. There's also a list of people who said, "no, no, no," who'd never spoken before, and then, said, "You know what? I think it's time and I do want to do this." We had people who said no for months, and months, and months. And then, literally, there were some that came through a week before our deadline. There are two of his friends that I would've loved. One who said yes and then said no.
But, I think, two other the people that we really were hoping to get were Julia Louis Dreyfus and Jerry Seinfeld for the "Contest" episode, because it was so funny. And because Jerry and John are on Jay Leno together the last night of Seinfeld.
RT: And we tell that whole story about how that all came about, and we talked to the executive producer of Leno, Dave Berg, and we talked to John Max who wrote some of the jokes, and we talked to Jay Leno, but we really wanted to get an inside perspective from Jerry and Julia on how that episode shaped, because John had no idea that it was happening or even that it had happened. And I remember him saying on Leno, "I was on my way to work, and all these people were like, 'Hey, I saw you on Seinfeld last night.'" So he was like, "What? What are you talking about? I was on Seinfeld? I've never been on Seinfeld." And so, I think, that was something that we really would've liked to get. And we tried, and tried, and tried, and they said no.
This book is coming at an interesting time, because there has been such a resurgence of interest in John and in Carolyn. What do you make of that? Why do you think they continue to capture the interest of people?
RT: I think there's a cycle of nostalgia that just naturally happens with decades. It was the '90s' turn. And I think if you look at that decade, other than Princess Diana, John was arguably the most famous person in the world at that time. And they were the most famous, glamorous couple.
I also think that the mystery of them persists, because there was no social media, and no cell phones with cameras. So, we're not bombarded by images. There's no fatigue about them, because there wasn't this massive social media world that we live in now, with video, and phones, and cameras on your phone. And, I remember when my book came out and people were like, "Do you have any pictures of you and John?" I'm like, "I think I have three somewhere." I dug them up. But, people asked "Why didn't you take pictures?" and I just said, "Well, who brings a camera to work?"
How did you all decide how to end the book?
LM: The end is John's friends saying goodbye. And, there's this beautiful line from Sasha where she talks about the "John tree," [speaking about the web of relationships between John's loved ones]. "John helped create these deep, trusting relationships. And I realized we have this John tree, this kind of sacred thing."
Something grows out of all those friendships, right? And she tells a story where she hadn't seen Robbie [Little] in many years, and then she's in the hospital. And he's out there with flowers, even though you're not supposed to bring flowers. And, she called their connection part of this beautiful John tree. And then, she says, that's what John and Carolyn taught us about life, "the beauty and the brevity." I loved that phrase. Because when I think about them, that's what I think about: the beauty and the brevity.
And so we took little snippets from some of our favorite interviews, and that last chapter became an ode to John. And then we specifically chose Robbie's quote for the very end. He talks about connecting with Caroline [Kennedy], and Caroline says something like, "He really loved you." And Robbie says, "That was mutual." Ending the book on the word mutual, that was by design. Because, what we learned writing the book was, there really was such a mutuality in these relationships. John marked them, but boy did they really mark John. These men had a deep impact on him. And that's what I learned from talking to so many people— how deep these connections were. And so, that's why it ends on that word and it ends on that spirit.
RT: Well, I'm crying. The coda was the part that really was the most emotional. And I think it was just like Liz said, it was their goodbye, but it was also about the imprint, the mark that John left on them, that to this day is still there, and the things about their lives that are because of him. The coda was the last tribute. It was an outpouring of love, and celebration, and just wanting to hold on to those memories and share them with the world.
This book is now a part of John's legacy. How do you both feel as being a keeper of John’s legacy of someone who is no longer here but continues to be almost omnipresent in media?
RT: Through sheer force of will I just didn't want him or her to be forgotten, and I still don't. And, if another opportunity came along to celebrate him and Carolyn, I don't know if I would pass it up, because I just think it's so important. I mean, the only way to pass through grief is with memories. How do you celebrate a person? How do you keep them a part of you? By remembering them. Think about if you've lost anyone. I lost my parents, and, we still sit around at Christmas and tell funny stories about my mom and the things she used to do. And, that's all you have. If you don't have that, you lose the person. And I think, for me, it's also selfishly a way to hold on to a little part of him.
LM: Hopefully, by sharing the stories, it's a tribute, I think, to John's humanness, his humanity. I think as a journalist, I really wanted to get it right. That was really important. So, we really pushed on these interviews and we really tried a lot of people. We were always going back often to make sure we understood, we got things right, that we were stretching our questions to make sure that we had covered things. It was a very intense experience, and we feel really proud of it.
As the digital director for Town & Country, Caroline Hallemann covers culture, entertainment, and a range of other subjects
