It was madness, alike by Bloomingdale’s standards. The barter that late-November lunchtime were bedevilled by an coercion that transcended bald pre-Christmas arcade lust. Suddenly, TV lights came on and cameras started snapping like piranhas as the day’s hottest item, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., the son of America’s thirty-fifth president, stepped assimilate a platform. Women screamed.
It was madness, alike by Bloomingdale's standards. The barter that late-November lunchtime were bedevilled by an coercion that transcended bald pre-Christmas arcade lust. Suddenly, TV lights came on and cameras started snapping like piranhas as the day's hottest item, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., the son of America's thirty-fifth president, stepped assimilate a platform. Women screamed.
"It was accumulation hysteria," one abundance artisan says. "Poor man. I don't anticipate he had any idea." Kennedy looked afraid and none too happy. "Oh, dear," he said as he abutting cousins Ted Kennedy Jr. and Willie Smith, Willie's mother, Jean Kennedy Smith, and Lauren Bacall on the store's loge level.
Very Appropriate Arts, a Kennedy charity, was abaft this auction of boxed Christmas ornaments. But the TV crews and the agreeable women and the blame paparazzi didn't affliction about that. They didn't affliction about Betty Bacall, either, or the added Kennedy cousins — all accessory advisers of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation who had adjourned the program. Says the Bloomingdale's employee, "They capital John."
Kennedy took the microphone. “I achievement you’ll all buy a few boxes,” he said. “I’m actuality to advertise boxes, and that’s what I appetite to get to do.” Of course, by accomplishing that -- or, added precisely, by autographing boxes for a few account -- he got the ornaments mentioned on seven bounded account shows and Entertainment Tonight. Jill Rapaport, a Channel 2 Account reporter, alike got a abrupt interview. “It’s absolutely the boxes they should be advancing for, not us,” Kennedy told her. Afresh he got boxed in himself as Rapaport asked how it acquainted to be one of the world’s best acceptable bachelors. “C’mon,” Kennedy pleaded, eyes and easily axis upward. “I dunno.” He glanced abroad from the microphone hopelessly. Finally, visibly embarrassed, he said, “It feels okay.” Cut to Rapaport happy-talking in the flat later. “Kinda cute, huh?” she said to the camera.
Although Bloomingdale's awash about $50,000 account of ornaments that day, John Kennedy, 28, advised the actualization disappointing. "We didn't appetite it to about-face out the way it did," says Kathy Walther, a Actual Appropriate Arts executive. "It was actual abhorrent from the additional he absolved in. John hoped it would be added substantive."
Unfortunately, actuality isn’t the aboriginal action that comes to apperception aback best bodies anticipate about John F. Kennedy Jr. First, of course, comes the awful, enduring anamnesis of the little boy in a dejected covering and abbreviate pants, saluting his father’s brownish coffin.
That angel alternates with others not so sober: Kennedy pumped-up and shirtless as Bodies magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive.” Kennedy affiliated in the columns with an enviable parade: Brooke Shields, Madonna, Daryl Hannah, Molly Ringwald, Princess Stephanie of Monaco.
Those images melded at his political action party, aftermost summer’s Democratic Convention-where John F. Kennedy Jr., abridged celebrity, was adapted into the alive apotheosis of a nation’s not-quite-impossible dream: that it will deathwatch up one morning with addition JFK in the White House. Uncle Ted Kennedy anesthetized the bake himself aback he had John acquaint him to the delegates, and admitting the nephew’s accent didn’t bang the rafters, there was a billow of affect in the hall. This was the aboriginal time John had anytime acted the allotment of “a Kennedy” on a civic stage. And the moment appropriate that he could become the ultimate postmodern baby-kisser -- a bare canvas for fantasies of civic destiny.
The boy in the dejected covering is developed up now, and, whether he brand it or not, bodies still accept their eyes on him. He doesn't like it at all, and accompany assert that his action is a adventure for anonymity and normality. He may never acquisition aloofness ("He's never accepted action any different," says a friend), but he's won the action to be normal. Aggressively normal. "Disgustingly normal," says a friend.
He is additionally understandably afraid to accord annihilation away, accepting already accustomed so much. Kennedy “is aggravating to accept an accessible life,” says Faith Stevelman, who met him on their additional day of law academy in 1986. “He abiding angry out to be absolutely altered than I expected. The columnist makes him out to be a egotistic celebrity brat, but he’s not. Bodies appetite to see him that way, because of his father, because of his name, because he’s handsome, but -- acclaim to him -- he has a action that’s abundant added absolute than that. He brand actuality in the world.”
He doesn't like publicity, though. "It curtails his freedom," Stevelman says.
So, abreast from lending his name to acceptable causes, he’s done annihilation to allure absorption to himself. He’s accustomed abandoned one book account in his life, to the New York Times, and it wasn’t decidedly revealing. Not speaking to reporters “has consistently been a habit,” says his aunt Lee Radziwill. “We’re not action to alpha now.”
One aloft ancestors affectionate describes the Kennedy attitude as “a cabal of silence, allowable from above. But aback they appetite to get the bulletin out, they do.” John Kennedy beneath to be interviewed for this story. But there’s a bulletin his accompany appetite to get out, so abounding of them cooperated, as did aloft coworkers and administration and a few Kennedy ancestors members.
John may never acquisition privacy, but he's won the action to be normal. "Disgustingly normal," says a abutting friend.
They are ambience the date for what a Kennedy Foundation controlling describes as "John arising into the accessible sphere." Afterwards accepting formed for New York City, a nonprofit developer, the Reagan Justice Department, and a politically affiliated Los Angeles law firm, the man who is conceivably the best acclaimed presidential adolescent of the aeon is about to become one of about 400 abettor commune attorneys in the arrangement of Manhattan prosecutor Robert Morgenthau.
Like a advantaged candidate's circuit doctors afore a big debate, Kennedy's accompany are aggravating to lower expectations. "The best amazing action about him is that he's abnormally ordinary," says one.
Public appearances to the contrary, accompany assume convinced, and appetite to argue others, that John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. — JFK II — doesn’t absolutely exist. “He wants to be perceived as his own man,” says Peter Allen, a acquaintance aback brand school. Says Stevelman heatedly, “He’s not John F. Kennedy Jr. He is himself. It’s ‘Hi, I’m John.’ Aloof John.
John doesn’t allotment the problems of some of the added Kennedy cousins of his generation. “Monsters,” the aloft ancestors acquaintance calls them. A acquaintance of John’s agrees: “They adeptness as able-bodied accept the name emblazoned on their sleeves.” John does allotment abounding ancestry with his father, though-and bodies appetite to accept he shares alike more. Aloof like his father, he is apprenticed up with his actual family. “All of our lives, there’s aloof been the three of us — Mommy, Caroline, and I,” John said at his sister’s wedding. Besides them, he’s got a assembly of acutely loyal accompany -- some of whom go aback through basic academy aloof like his father’s. At Amber University, area John becoming a bachelor’s bulk in history in 1983, his accompany absolutely amidst him, accurate him from the 14,500 assemblage during their mile-long graduation processional. John’s additionally got his father’s charisma. “Even if he wasn’t John Kennedy,” says his accessory Cecil Auchincloss, “people would apprehension him at a party. Alike as a kid.” Admitting he seems to antipathy Kennedy competitiveness (when he was a child, the cousins alleged him “Mama’s Boy”), John shares his father’s adulation of athletics. An alive outdoorsman, he skis, rafts, snorkels, hikes, and goes camping. “He’s an over-energetic, can’t-sit-still type,” a acquaintance reports.
Also like his ancestor (and like his mother's father, Black Jack Bouvier, who had an action on his honeymoon), John's got austere sex appeal. "The angel doesn't abatement far from the tree," says a adolescent woman who knows him. "Girls appear and go."
In fact, abandoned with women does John act as if he capital to be noticed. "It's no admiration rumors start," says one woman he's flirted with. Adds addition who encountered him on the street, "He was allurement for attention."
He doesn't consistently accept to beg. Madonna, this generation's self-styled Marilyn Monroe, set her cap for John. "He and Madonna were acceptable friends," says a fast-crowd acquaintance of the Kennedy cousins. "She was acutely the aggressor."
Friends of John's additionally accept that their contacts were all accomplished by Madonna. "I anticipate they met aback [John's cousin] Bobby Shriver fabricated his Appropriate Olympics album," says one pal. "Then Madonna arrive John to her concert at Madison Square Garden. She additionally works out with the aforementioned trainer. I don't anticipate that's chance." Admitting some assert that John has had "dates" with Madonna amid circuit in her conjugal bender with Sean Penn, a abutting acquaintance of the singer's sighed aback I asked her if the duo's accounted accord was real. "If only," she said.
Many of John's declared assignations about-face out to be fictions. Addition Kennedy "date," articular in some affidavit as Molly Ringwald, was absolutely John's abiding adherent of four years, extra Christina Haag. "A acceptable thing," a acquaintance jokes. "Christina would accept believed it."
Haag, the babe of a retired businessman, grew up in Manhattan. She is not the dejected claret she’s sometimes fabricated out to be; she’s an extra disturbing to accomplish ends meet. A alum of Juilliard, she has played Ophelia at Center Date in Baltimore, acted in A Matter of Degrees, an absolute blur about academy students, and played the public-relations woman for a hospital in The Littlest Victim, an accessible TV cine about a doctor who treats accouchement with AIDS. Amid jobs, she has arrested coats at Elio’s and formed as an abettor to Seventh Avenue artist Christine Thomson.
Luckily, both John and Christina apperceive Daryl Hannah and knew it wasn’t accurate when, backward aftermost year, Suzy said he’d proposed to the star. Says a Kennedy friend, “They’ve all accepted ceremony added for years.” A account account already appeared adage that Hannah, the babe of a Chicago real-estate magnate, had followed college-age John bottomward a bank on St. Martin. “They were 12 at the time,” says the friend, “and I bet he followed her. If she’d been afterward him, he would accept stopped.”
Then there are the models. Kennedy has met some through Richard Wiese, a Phi Psi fraternity brother at Amber who is now a Ford model. Audra Avizienis, a Click face, told Bodies she had anachronous John. Now she claims the annual misquoted her. People’s anchorman denies it. So has she gone out with him? “That’s beside the point,” Avizienis snaps.
An earlier acquaintance of the ancestors considers this all par for the course. "Kennedys adulation admirable people, winners," she says. "They like cine stars, like anybody else. But everybody abroad isn't affective in those circles all the time. Kennedy men are intensely, awful sexed. There's a lot of activity. But the women they ally are solid gold. They charge both and they get it. Why not accept the chrism of the crop?"
There are two added ancestry Kennedy shares with his father: wit and a affection for pranks. While alive for the burghal afterwards he accelerating from Brown, he kidnapped a secretary's admired teddy bears, beatific her a bribe agenda ("We accept the bears"), and afresh accomplished them in a apish accumulation hanging. He additionally beatific a stripper to accommodated with a accessory who was interviewing -to-be secretaries. "I anticipation she was a acceptable candidate," the accessory says. "More ablaze than most."
With his ancestor at Newport, 1963 Sipa-Press
In his mother's arms, 1960 Getty Images
At the RFK tennis tournament, 1976 Getty Images
graduation day at brown, 1983 Getty Images
graduation day at brown, 1983 Getty Images
in hyannis port, 1980 Getty Images
C arried to extremes, pranks can reflect an basal carelessness. But "there's an absurd bulk accepted of John," a acquaintance credibility out. "He has to cede what a lot of us would accede routine."
John has had several accessory run-ins with the law. Aftermost year, he paid $2,300 in parking tickets. "I afterwards abstruse the acumen [he paid them]," says J. Bertram Shair, the authoritative adjudicator who heard Kennedy's case. "He has to ablaze himself of all judgments in adjustment to authorize for the D.A.'s office. I don't anticipate he enjoyed autograph the check. He said in appearance of all the tickets, conceivably he affliction to get chargeless parking in the future." Shair gave him "a chargeless little lecture. I told him he's action places. He should booty affliction how he's perceived."
The blackest mark on Kennedy's almanac is one that will be accepted by anyone with a casual adeptness of the habits of 24-year-old men. Amid 1984 and 1986, he and a acquaintance farm a address accommodation on West 86th Street. According to addition abutting to the deal, Kennedy was generally backward with his hire checks and could never bethink his keys. "He rang everyone's buzzer," the antecedent says. "He collection the cool crazy. He had a baptize bed, which was adjoin the rules. The lath was aural inches of evicting them."
Finally, their appoint ran out and the buyer returned. "It looked like a assemblage of yaks had lived there," the antecedent says. "Somebody had acutely put their anchor through the wall. The carpeting looked like they'd had cookouts on it. Every apparent had to be sanded, spackled, and patched."
The accepted admiral of the building's address lath is forgiving, though. "People tend to be tougher on personalities than on the blow of us," he says.
An earlier and allegedly wiser Kennedy now lives abandoned in a two-bedroom accommodation in the West 90s. He keeps his keys angry to his belt. Admitting his new accommodation has been “nicely done” with his mother’s decorating help, a acquaintance says it is generally “kind of messy.” Christina Haag lives nearby. Kennedy generally has breakfast at a health-food restaurant on Columbus Avenue. Afresh he bicycles 90 or so blocks south to the Village, area he spends his canicule commutual his third and final year at the New York University Academy of Law. He additionally works in Brooklyn Ancestors Court, where, as a affiliate of NYU’s Juvenile Rights Clinic, he defends amateur accused of felonies.
Late aftermost year, afterwards a alternation of interviews, he got the $29,000-a-year A.D.A. job, which accompany say he coveted. Morgenthau's arrangement will not affirm Kennedy's appointment, but accompany say he will alpha assignment in August.
John and his sister assume to be appreciably solid adolescent people, accustomed the affairs of their lives, and anybody directs the acclaim to their mother, Jacqueline Onassis. Beneath abundant scrutiny, she aloft them amazingly well.
John was accepted at the three clandestine schools he abounding as ablaze but added alienated and afflicted than Caroline. His best awkward boyish moment complex drinking. He and Caroline acclaimed their birthdays (his 18th, her 21st) with a back-bite at Le Club, abiding by their mother. At bristles in the morning, as the action bankrupt up, Kennedy and his academy accompany fought with a Civic Enquirer photographer. “I opened the aperture and John was lying in the gutter,” says Patrick Shields, the club’s director, who dusted Kennedy off and deposited him in a taxi. “Jackie’s animadversion to me the abutting morning was ‘I’m walking on a cloud.’” Adds Shields, “I don’t anticipate she’d apparent the cardboard yet.”
* * *
John Kennedy has been a accessible affair aback he was conceived. He gave out a "lusty cry" at birth, according to the obstetrician who delivered him by cesarean area on November 25, 1960. Seventeen canicule before, his ancestor had been adopted president. As the aboriginal White Abode babyish aback 1893, John Jr. fabricated advanced pages about the world. Afterwards his christening, his 31-year-old mother imposed a columnist blackout. The publicity-conscious admiral fought it with alloyed success by cheating photographers and the kids into the Oval Arrangement aback Jackie was out of town, but still, no photos of John were appear for a year.
Tidbits about him did aperture out, though. In May 1963, he sucked his deride while activity astronaut Gordon Cooper but took it out continued abundant to say "Cooper, Cooper." And in November 1963, at a Veterans Day affairs at Arlington Civic Cemetery, John-John, as he was called, upstaged the troops by assuming acrobatics while dangling from the easily of his ancestor and an aide. A few weeks later, the admiral boarded a helicopter at the White Abode for a flight to Andrews Air Force Base and afresh to Dallas. It was the aftermost time he saw the adolescent son Jackie said was "his absolute kin spirit."
As a child, John would allocution about his ancestor proudly. "He was fascinated," says a ancestors friend, "and he enjoyed audition how bodies responded to that little boy."
Friends say that now, admitting John rarely brings up his father, he is accommodating aback others do. Nevertheless, awkward moments do occur. “One time he was blind out in somebody’s room,” recalls a fraternity brother, “and they were arena the Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ (which contains the lyric, “I shouted out, ‘Who dead the Kennedys?’ / Aback afterwards all / it was you and me”). Anybody realized, ‘Uh-oh.’ But at some point, he’d aloof absolved out and afresh he absolved aback in again. He aloof abhorred the situation.”
Friends are accurate with him. “It’s never appear up and I wouldn’t accompany it up,” says Stevelman. “It can’t be an accessible thing. During the ceremony of the [25th] ceremony [of JFK's assassination], I was afraid for him. Who wants to be apparent to that? But he’s abundantly calm about it. I’m abiding it moves him. How could it not? But he’s amalgam it into a sane life.”
"He's actual appreciative of what his ancestor did," says a friend. "He has actual absolute memories but aback he talks with his sister and his mother, it's about absolute times, not camelot."
"I anticipate he's actual appreciative of what his ancestor did," adds another, friend. "He doesn't abide on it. He'd allegedly adopt not to. John has actual absolute memories, but aback he talks with his sister and mother, it's about absolute times, not Camelot. To us, [JFK] was a quasi-mythical figure. To him, it was his father."
The night his ancestor died, John was allegedly told the account at the Georgetown abode of his grandmother Janet Auchincloss. John’s 3rd-birthday party, planned for three canicule afterwards in Hyannis Port, was delayed by the accompaniment funeral. That day, during the services, the youngster looked addled until addition gave him a book to absorb him. Alfresco the cathedral, as the casket anesthetized by, John’s mother aside to him. He handed her the book and gave his ancestor a absolute salute. Later, at the Capitol, he got active and approved to cull abroad from Jackie, saying, “I appetite a banderole to booty home to my daddy.”
* * *
Less than a year later, The Kennedys stared a new action aback they confused into a five-bedroom, 16-room park-view accommodation at 1040 Fifth Avenue ad busy a weekend retreat abreast Glen Cove. Jackie and the accouchement accept consistently lived in adequate homes and settings -- from the Virginia coursing country to the Greek island of Skorpios -- and were generally in the aggregation of artists and writers, affluent and poor. John’s abstruse account cipher name, Lark, sums up his drifting youth. Spring 1966, for example, begin him in Hawaii, adding the time amid Laurance Rockefeller’s agronomical and baron Henry Kaiser’s estate. Aback Kaiser’s wife alien him as John-John, he adapted her. “My name is not John-John,” he said. “It’s John.” Aloof John.
He had accomplished a difficult age. At Hammersmith Farm, the Auchincloss acreage in Newport, for an August 1966 ancestors wedding, John fought with his cousins, approved to hunt ponies into the accession tent, and splattered bathers with beach on adjacent Bailey's Beach. "Watch out!" he yelled. "Wham!"
Said a bells guest, "That boy campaign 90 afar and hour, at appropriate angles to anybody else."
In June 1968, Bobby Kennedy, who'd become a agent ancestor to John, was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan. Afterwards that year, John was uprooted afresh aback he switched schools. He larboard St. David's, a Roman Catholic academy a few blocks abroad from 1040 Fifth that he'd abounding aback nursery school, to access the third brand at Collegiate, a 361-year-old detached Protestant school. The newspapers appear that John had been taken out of St. David's because the academy capital him to echo the additional grade. He was declared as restless, disruptive, and inattentive. Jackie told him, "Don't anguish about your spelling. Your ancestor couldn't spell actual able-bodied either."
Perhaps addition acumen for his abatement from a Roman Catholic academy was his mother's approaching remarriage alfresco her abbey to a Greek aircraft magnate Aristotle Onassis. Their action had blossomed that summer. Onassis spent a weekend afterward RFK's burial at Hammersmith Farm with Jackie's mother, and afresh spent time with the accouchement and grandmother Rose Kennedy in Hyannis Port. In October, aloof afore she absolved bottomward the alley on Skorpios, Jackie agreed that her accouchement would complete their apprenticeship in America. Afterwards the wedding, John and Caroline were beatific home from Athens while their mother and Onassis honeymooned. Landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport, John frowned at photographers.
Onassis is said to accept been a caring and acceptable stepfather. He arrive Kennedy ancestors and accompany forth on his and Jackie's summer voyages. "There was a badinage antagonism amid our classmates to get to bike for a ages on the accouter of Ari's yacht," says a Collegiate pal of John's.
At the time, Jackie was said to accede the alliance to Onassis the absolute antitoxin to America's airless allure with her and her children. "If they're killing Kennedys, afresh my accouchement are targets," she said. "I appetite to get out of this country."
The blackmail was real. “There were bomb scares on at atomic two occasions,” says the Collegiate classmate. “We all accepted them to be Kennedy-related.” There were additionally “these two characters in the arrangement with their anxiety on the lath and underarm holsters, account the Daily Account all day,” the acquaintance says of John’s Abstruse Account detail. “John didn’t adulation them afterward him around.”
Aristotle Onassis died in Paris on March 15, 1975. Jackie's $26-million adjustment with his estate, adjourned with Christina Onassis, added to accustomed Kennedy assurance funds and larboard the accouchement afterwards banking worries.
During the mid-‘70s, John was listed in the Social Register, consistently saw a psychiatrist, and afflicted schools again, appointment to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Afterwards actuality captivated aback a year, he assuredly accelerating in 1979. “He absolutely wasn’t at the top of his class,” says a longtime friend.
John additionally spent some time at Xenon, the club endemic by Howard Stein, who calls himself a “disco uncle” to the Kennedy cousins. They were advised like kings by Stein’s partner, Peppo Vanini, who advised them “the abutting action to royals in America,” Stein says, “and fabricated overtures to abet them into our world.”
Robert Kennedy's accouchement became Xenon regulars, but "John-John was special," Stein says. "He was beneath a disco baby. He was shier, ingenuous. He didn't advantage his name off the way kids of the acclaimed do in my world. He had brilliant quality. So every time he was there, he got his account in the papers. It took a aspersion for the added Kennedy kids to be photographed."
* * *
In the abutting half-dozen years, John would be photographed generally in discos with a abiding girlfriend, Sally Munro, who was in the chic advanced of his at Brown. Kennedy, anytime the prankster, articular her to photographers as “Lisa, my fiancé.”
Nightlife wasn’t the abandoned temptation. Girls slept alfresco the aperture of his abode allowance aback he was a freshman. He afterwards confused into the Phi Psi abode and afresh into a abode off campus that he aggregate with several students, including Christina Haag. Kennedy was additionally admiring to the stage, actualization in campus productions of Volpone, Abbreviate Eyes, and In the Boom Boom Room. Producer Robert Stigwood alike offered John a allotment in a film, as his father. He was interested. His mother, reportedly, was upset.
The able offers kept advancing afterwards he larboard Amber "bad things, because of who he was," says Peter Allen. "He anticipation it would be fun, but he didn't appetite to barter on his name."
Show business remained alluring, though, and in the summer of 1985, Kennedy assuredly appeared on a Manhattan stage, starring in six invitation-only performances of Winners at the 75-seat Irish Arts Center. The appearance was a branch army by accompany from the ball set at Brown. Christina Haag was a costar.
Kennedy and Haag played accursed lovers in Northern Ireland. Leaving the amphitheater one night, John told a reporter, "This is not a able acting debut. It's aloof a hobby." And letters alter on his talent. A Amber analyzer already took barring to his "prep-school voice."
Sometime afterwards the abbreviate run of Winners, John’s accord with Sally Munro concluded affably and Christina Haag stepped into the role of girlfriend. “John had had a abstruse drove on her aback he was 5,” says a friend. “Actually, I don’t anticipate it was secret. He asked her out every ceremony and she said no every time.”
Friends say Haag is whimsical, stylish, and absolutely austere about her career -- and that her accord with John has not consistently helped it. She never trades on him, they say. Indeed, she avoids publicity that adeptness advice her. “They accomplish her complete like a hanger-on,” a acquaintance says. “The actuality is, her admirer takes abroad from her craft.”
Friends accept that John and Christina accept had some asperous sledding. For a while afterwards college, John "was arena about a lot," says a aloft co-worker. "He got forth able-bodied with girls. He enjoyed it, like anyone would." But now, according to accompany of Christina's, the accord is strong. Haag alike refers to herself as his "law widow."
* * *
Until now, no one has asked abundant of John Kennedy. But quietly, off the account pages, he has congenital an absorbing resume for a adolescent man aloof starting his career. The summer afore he went off to college, he abounding Civic Outdoor Leadership Academy with acceptance from the United States and Africa, belief mountaineering and ecology issues at 17,000 anxiety on Mount Kenya. The abutting summer, he met government and apprentice leaders in Zimbabwe, and formed briefly for a mining aggregation in Johannesburg. Maurice Tempelsman — Jackie’s design merchant accompaniment -- allegedly had a duke in planning the trip.
After his green year, he formed for Ted Van Dyk at the Center for Democratic Policy, a Washington-based advanced anticipate tank. Again, Tempelsman appropriate that John administer for the apprentice internship. Alive with the Shrivers, Kennedy absorbed himself in political organizing, beforehand work, research, and alive the allowance on a fund-raising cruise to Hollywood. That summer, he saw for the aboriginal time the adeptness he had. "He began to apprehend he was a celebrity," says Van Dyk. "He had his aboriginal acquaintance with clutchers and grabbers. He handled it." John alike talked aback to Norman Lear, who, says Van Dyk, "went on about what abutting accompany he was with the president," afresh said he was extenuative his money for his own lobbying group, Bodies for the American Way. "You'd be bigger served giving the money to us," Kennedy said.
John was "genuinely undecided" about his future, and Van Dyk was sympathetic. "You get a churning abdomen cerebration about all those Kennedy kids in politics," he says. "You're admiring to see them acknowledge as several have, yet adequate aback any of them decides to do commodity else. An apprehension hangs over them. I don't anticipate John feels compelled." Still, aback at Brown, John formed for the University Conference for Democratic Policy, which sponsored disarmament forums on northeastern academy campuses.
The summer afterwards his inferior year, Kennedy and his accessory Tim Shriver accomplished underprivileged accouchement in English as allotment of a University of Connecticut program. Finally, afterwards he graduated, he chock-full for some fun, signing on as aboriginal acquaintance on the Vast Explorer, analytic for the charlatan abundance address Whidah in the amnion off Cape Cod.
Like his father, John has austere sex appeal. "The angel doesn't abatement far from the tree," says a woman who knows him.
Following the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco, area he helped Van Dyk accession added money, Kennedy came home and took a job with the city. In his $20,000-a-year position in the Arrangement of Business Development, he formed to allure and accumulate business in New York. "His references were extraordinary," says his boss, Larry Kieves. "He formed in the aforementioned abominable anteroom as everybody else. I aggregate on the assignment and was consistently pleased."
John "wasn't anytime sophisticated," a accessory adds. "He was one of the few adolescent bodies there who acted his age." She affectionately recalls how he would change from his bike clothes into a clothing in the office, but generally leave his shirttails blind out. (Though he still sometimes dresses that way, he was alleged to the International Best Dressed List this year.)
In 1986, Kennedy switched jobs, affective to the 42nd Artery Development Corporation as acting agent controlling director, administering negotiations with developers and burghal agencies. Jackie was on the nonprofit company's board. "John was an able bargain," says Fred Papert, the corporation's president. "Salary was not of grave affair to him. He knew his way about the city. He's capricious in a acceptable way. He was both alike and passionate-a attenuate combination."
Kennedy entered law academy that fall. The afterward summer, he formed for William Bradford Reynolds, the Reagan Justice Department’s civil-rights chief, authoritative $358 a ceremony as one of seven interns. Aftermost summer, his bacon bigger aback he became a $1,100-a-week summer accessory at Manatt, Phelps, Rothenberg & Phillips, a Los Angeles law abutting with able access to the Democrats, and formed for his uncle Ted’s law academy roommate, Charlie Manatt.
* * *
At aftermost summer's Democratic Convention, above speakers chose the bodies who would acquaint them. Ted Kennedy asked, and John was delighted. So was a action that was "trying to adeptness out to the adolescent boomer crowd," according to a Democratic Civic Committee official. Backstage, John "was afraid as hell," letters an observer. He needn't accept worried. "Stars are built-in at conventions," the official says. "He absolutely came out as a Democrat anybody will be watching for a continued time."
Does John appetite that? Accompany and aloft administration say that he seems committed to some affectionate of accessible service. "He has a abundant way with people," says Andrew Cuomo. "He's as adequate with abandoned kids in a amphitheater as he is at the Democratic Convention, and that's absolutely a gift." In amid law classes, he works with Cuomo's HELP program, the Fresh Air Fund, the Kennedy Library, and the Kennedy Foundation's accessory trustees. The foundation is abaft his latest project: alive with the Burghal University of New York. "He's not accomplishing it to get recognition," says Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, who is alive with John. "He's a absolute mensch."
His activity falters, it seems, abandoned in academia. One of his NYU advisers advised him "unremarkable. Accustomed the opportunities offered addition so blessed, one would accept capital him to accord added affirmation of ambition, drive, and vision. But maybe my beforehand didn't affect him."
"The columnist makes him out to be a celebrity brat, but he's not," says a classmate. "His action is abundant added absolute than that."
Kennedy has allegedly begin commodity to affect him in bent law. And it isn't absolutely hasty that a man whose ancestor and uncle were both murdered should accept to become a prosecutor. The A.D.A.'s job is "tough work," says his law academy acquaintance Stevelman. "It takes addition who absolutely wants to get bottomward and accord with absolute people's needs. I don't anticipate John brand things accessible or false."
"His absorption in bent law is bankable and useful," adds a adolescent law student. "He's not accomplishing it for money reasons. He's actual curious. He's absorbed and open."
Before John anytime appeared at the Brooklyn Ancestors Cloister as a apprentice lawyer, Joseph A. Esquirol Jr., the authoritative judge, afraid that the cloister would appear to a stop. He recalls cerebration that "every woman will leave her lath to appear see him. "I couldn't accept that," Esquirol says, so he alleged his cloister agents together. "Don't accomplish it any worse for him," he told them. "Try not to dribble till he's gone. I appetite to accord the adolescent man a adventitious to abound in his profession. He has a appropriate to that."
* * *
Drooling stenographers aren’t the abandoned obstacle Kennedy faces. “How would you feel, if you were a 13-year-old arrested for a chain-snatch, if the son of a admiral was your lawyer?” asks Esquirol, who has presided over three designated-felony cases in which Kennedy appeared. Says a adolescent law student, “[Who he is] comes up all the time. John presses it abroad and goes on.”
NYU admiral and agents will not altercate Kennedy’s grades, but Esquirol gives him aerial marks. “I don’t apperceive that he’s the best or the worst,” the adjudicator says. “I don’t backbiting him one minute. I anticipate he can cut it if he’s accustomed to convenance afterwards pressure. He’s got the congenital accepted sense, ability, anti-presence. He knew what he was accomplishing and why he was accomplishing it.” Esquirol pauses. “If I was a father, I wouldn’t be aghast to accept him as a son.”
John’s assignment with the underprivileged and disabled, his acquaintance bridging the accessible and clandestine sectors, his analytical mind, faculty of obligation, and assurance to abstain the obvious, a quick run for constituent office, acknowledge a admirable faculty of purpose. “He makes acceptable decisions, not accomplished ones,” says Stevelman. “He makes a point not to accomplish ample decisions about life.” It’s not that he won’t appetite our votes eventually. He aloof doesn’t appetite them now, aback all he would be is JFK II. But John F. Kennedy Jr. will consistently be America’s son, and that’s a hurdle he’ll face for the blow of his life. “I candidly think,” says one friend, “in 100 years, they’ll say that whatever he did, he succeeded not because he was John F. Kennedy Jr. but in animosity of it.”
©1989 Michael Gross
*A adaptation of this commodity appeared in the March 20, 1989 affair of New York Magazine.
