RFK died twenty-five hours after suffering a gunshot wound to his head. With Ethel overcome by grief, Jackie became the one to order doctors to remove him from life support. The senator’s anguished press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, made the announcement: “Senator Robert F. Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. today, June 6, 1968. He was forty-two years old.”
Later that day, RFK’s body was flown to New York and transported to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, where the next day mourners lined up for hours to pay tribute. At 4:25 P.M. Mrs. Kennedy made a surprise appearance at the church, accompanied by John and Caroline. They knelt at the foot of the casket, crossed themselves, and uttered a prayer. Before leaving, they placed their hands on the head of the coffin for a moment, then turned and walked solemnly away.
On June 8 John once again found himself at a sorrow-filled funeral grasping his mother’s hand. This time he had to say good-bye to the only father he truly knew. He joined his sister and cousins in bringing the bread and wine for the consecration to Archbishop Terence J. Cooke, who presided over the Mass. During Communion, John offered his arm to his seventy-seven-year-old grandmother, Rose, and escorted her to the altar. For those mourners who remembered John from his father’s funeral, that gesture felt too much to bear. The scene, noted The Washington Post, “brought quick, involuntary tears.”
After the service, RFK’s body was placed on a special train to Washington, DC’s Arlington National Cemetery for burial a few feet away from his brother. Kathy McKeon, who accompanied the family on the trip, described John as “more wound up than usual” as they pulled out of New York’s Penn Station. He found William Kennedy Smith, and the two “were soon crawling around the floor with their toy cars.” Caroline, however, clung tightly to her cousin Courtney, who was also eleven years old and, like Caroline, had now lost her father. “As the train rolled through the big cities, small towns, and open fields where mourners lined the tracks by the tens of thousands to bid farewell, the two girls clung to each other and sobbed,” Kathy wrote.
I was one of them. RFK’s funeral train traveled on a track just a few hundred yards from my row house south of Philadelphia. My dad asked my brother and me if we wanted to go, and we both agreed. As we walked out the door, it looked as if a giant fire alarm had gone off. People were fleeing their houses to make their way up to the tracks. We stood on a trestle bridge and looked down below, waiting for the train to pass. My mind captured a picture of the poignant scene: those gathered there were old and young, men and women, African Americans and whites—all standing shoulder to shoulder. I remember a group of nuns, rosary beads in hand, lined up along the tracks beneath us. And then came the train traveling at a fairly high speed. Teddy Kennedy was standing on a platform outside the caboose, waving gently. I glimpsed the flag-draped coffin inside. What I did not know then was that someone who would change my life was also on that very train.
At one point, as they made their way down the tracks, John spied a sudden camera flash outside the window where he was sitting. He grabbed Kathy, his eyes full of fear. “Kat, is someone shooting at us?” he cried. “Are they coming to get us next?” McKeon assured him that he was safe and explained that he had just seen a camera flash and was hearing the sound of flowers hitting the train. “They’re very sad that Uncle Bobby was killed, and they’re throwing bouquets of flowers to show how much they loved him,” she reassured him.
As they neared Washington’s Union Station where they would board buses for the short trip to Arlington National Cemetery, John changed into his funeral suit and prepared for the final act of a long day of mourning his uncle. An endless procession of cars and buses transported mourners to the cemetery. The cortege snaked its way past a few buildings where RFK had served—the Senate Office Building, the Capitol, the Justice Department—before pausing briefly at the Lincoln Memorial. At Arlington, John walked up the sloping hill with six hundred other family members and friends to the graveside. The burial was originally scheduled for five thirty, but since the train was five hours late, dusk had turned to darkness, and mourners lit their own way with candles and flashlights.
After watching Bobby laid to rest, Jackie, John, and Caroline walked alone to the Eternal Flame that flickered nearby and marked the grave of President Kennedy. They knelt, said a prayer, and placed flowers on the grave site. Mrs. Kennedy then crossed herself and put her arm protectively around John.
* * *
—
The assassination of Robert Kennedy shocked the nation and seemed another sign that America was spiraling out of control. But for Jackie it meant even more. She had lost both her husband and now her brother-in-law to assassins’ bullets. She feared for not just her own life but for the lives of John and Caroline. She grew ever more determined to find a way to shield them from harm. “If they’re killing Kennedys, then my children are targets,” she was reported to have said. “I want to get out of this country.”
CHAPTER 4
“IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO JOHN . . .”
In the fall of 1968, John switched from the Roman Catholic St. David’s, which was a few blocks away from his mother’s apartment, to the Collegiate School, a religiously unaffiliated 330-year-old boys’ school on the Upper West Side. The school, which boasted one of the most demanding academic programs in the country, downplayed JFK Jr.’s enrollment, the headmaster telling The New York Times, “He applied, he was a bright boy, he was tested and accepted.” One parent predicted that John “will be just another little boy in the class even if he does carry a great name.”
Mrs. Kennedy had taken a routine tour of Collegiate in the spring of 1967. “She was obviously impressed with the school,” noted an observer. “She liked the spirit of the school from the minute she set foot in it.” The following week, she returned with John. It’s unclear, however, why Mrs. Kennedy decided to move John to Collegiate. Some papers reported that St. David’s planned to have John repeat the second grade because of his immaturity, but a faculty member there dismissed the story. “That simply isn’t the reason for the change,” he said. “It simply isn’t a true picture. The boy is as exuberant and restless as many boys of his age.”
John fit in well at Collegiate. Bruce Breimer, a popular history teacher who doubled as the director of college guidance, recalled that John “was well liked. He had a lot of friends. He was comfortable.” John also enjoyed playing pranks, especially on the Secret Service agents who were assigned to protect him. “I was working late at school, and there was a track meet in Long Island,” Breimer recounted. “In those days, the track team traveled in two big vans, and John switched vehicles without informing the agents. When the van carrying John had a flat tire, the agents followed the wrong vehicle back to the school. “They were not happy, but John thought it was the funniest thing in the world.”
Breimer, who was the teacher John credited with inspiring his interest in history, taught a class on the American presidency. The class, a mix of lecture and discussion, had twelve students. Since Collegiate had a trimester system, they could study only seven presidents. “We did it chronologically, and the last president we covered was his father,” Breimer recalled. John, who was talkative in other sections, was uncharacteristically quiet when the topic of JFK came up.
Students were also required to write six-page papers on each of the presidents discussed in class. John had turned in good papers on all the other presidents, but “when it came time to writing the paper about his father, he gave me something that came straight from Encyclopaedia Britannica.” Breimer sympathized with John and understood that he could not deal objectively and analytically with his father. “It was his way of saying, ‘I wish I could have pulled this off but I can’t. I’m accountable, and if you want to nail me for it, you go ahead and do it,’” Breimer recalled. The instructor returned the graded papers to everyone but John, who approached him after class.
“Where’s my paper?”
“You know that
guy Charlie Hamilton in Greenwich Village who buys all the Kennedy memorabilia?”
“Yes, I know who he is.”
“Well, I sold it to him,” Bruce joked. “I had to supplement my income.”
“That paper wasn’t worth a nickel,” John responded, laughing.
* * *
—
Attending a new school was not the only surprise that John experienced in the months following Robert Kennedy’s assassination. On October 20, 1968, the thirty-nine-year-old former first lady stunned her adoring public by donning a wedding dress and pronouncing “I do” to Aristotle Onassis, a sixty-two-year-old wealthy Greek shipping tycoon. From that moment on, she would be known as “Jackie O.,” a nickname that first appeared in Time magazine. Her marriage to Onassis shocked the nation. “It’s the end of Camelot” became a common refrain. “The reaction here is anger, shock, and dismay,” declared The New York Times. “The gods are weeping,” read a quote in The Washington Post. Even a German newspaper announced, “America has lost a saint.”
While the wedding was a surprise to almost everyone, this was not a new relationship. Over the years, Onassis had found ways to support Jackie during difficult times. They met in the 1950s, when JFK was still a senator. After Patrick died in August 1963, Onassis invited her for a six-week Mediterranean cruise on his boat the Christina, a Canadian frigate named after his daughter that he had transformed into a floating palace. JFK disliked and distrusted Onassis and often dismissed him as “a pirate.” In 1955 the US government had sued Onassis for removing a fleet of ships that he had purchased and promised to keep in the United States. But the president admitted it would be beneficial for his wife to get away from Washington. Onassis fell in love with the first lady on that trip, and it grew clear that Jackie enjoyed his company. She personally invited Onassis to attend her husband’s funeral and asked him to stay as her guest in the White House.
Over the next five years, they arranged private rendezvous at his apartment in Paris or at exclusive dinner parties in New York. But she took care to downplay their burgeoning romance by being seen in public with other eligible bachelors, leading Onassis to refer to himself as “the invisible man.” In May 1968, while on a cruise, Aristotle finally took the plunge and proposed to Jackie. She asked for time to consider his request, worried about whether John and Caroline would accept him as their stepfather. It was RFK’s strenuous objections, however, that proved most central in keeping her from committing to Onassis. Robert needed Jackie’s nostalgic afterglow to help fuel his campaign and pleaded for her to wait until after the election. But now that Robert was dead, she no longer felt any need to keep her relationship with Onassis a secret. “It’s a tragedy for America,” Onassis confided to a friend, “but for Jackie . . . she’s finally free of the Kennedys.”
Jackie found many attractive qualities in Onassis. Although he had a reputation for being vulgar and uncouth, Jackie described him to friends as erudite and sophisticated. He held salons on his boat where he invited artists and intellectuals to discuss important topics. She was fascinated by both his charm and his extravagance. “He was a force of nature,” she told her close friend Joe Armstrong. Most important, he offered her not only unlimited wealth, privacy, and security, but also warmth. She explained to a friend that she married Onassis because “I was lonely and wanted someone to care about me and someone I could care about.” Onassis showered her with affection at a time when she felt vulnerable and isolated. The former first lady would say later that he “rescued me at a moment when my life was engulfed in shadows.”
Apparently, though, intimacy was not part of the deal. Kathy McKeon remembered that when Onassis visited Jackie’s New York apartment for the first time, two months after the assassination, she observed no sense of romance between the two. Jackie “treated him the same as she did any friend who came for a holiday,” she recalled. “They relaxed in the living room with after-dinner drinks, then retired to their separate rooms each evening.”
Before committing to Onassis, Jackie insisted on a strong prenuptial that would codify the terms of their relationship. Her brother-in-law Teddy Kennedy flew to Onassis’s private island, Scorpios, off the western coast of Greece, to negotiate the deal for her. The marriage contract required only that Jackie and Ari spend Catholic holidays and summers together. She would be left free the rest of the time. She did not have to bear him a child, and they would sleep in separate bedrooms. In return, she received $3 million in tax-free bonds, along with a monthly allowance of $10,000 for expenses, $7,000 for medical needs, hairdressers, and makeup, and $10,000 for new clothing. John and Caroline received $5,000 a month for their education and other expenses.
John and Caroline found out that their mother was getting married the day before they flew to Athens. John once told me that whenever his mother needed to break news to him, she would take him for a carriage ride around Central Park. A few months earlier, they’d ridden around the park as she told him that she was moving him to a new school. Now they were back in the carriage, and that’s where she told John and Caroline that she planned to marry Onassis. John seemed to take the news in stride, but Caroline was visibly upset.
“Could you please do me a favor and go talk to Caroline?” Jackie asked Kathy. “I just told her the news, and she’s very, very upset. She’s in her room crying.” Kathy found Caroline curled up in her bed with her face buried in a pillow and her “small shoulders heaving with her sobs.” But the ten-year-old quickly composed herself and packed her bags for the trip to Greece. Kathy noticed that John was “hanging close to his mother” and did not “seem visibly upset by the prospect of getting a stepfather.”
Onassis sent a plane to fly them from New York to Athens, where a helicopter was waiting to whisk them off to Scorpios. McKeon remembered that John was “beyond excited” to be back on a helicopter, sitting near the pilot and asking him “a million questions.” Jackie and Caroline seemed “cool as cucumbers” as the helicopter lifted off, but John noticed that Kathy was nervous. “Don’t be afraid, Kat,” he consoled. “We’re not going to land in the water, we’re landing on the boat! There is a big space on the deck.” Once onboard the Christina, Kathy, John, and Caroline spent hours exploring it, from the dining room boasting a long banquet table, to the grand swimming pool. With the mere push of a button, a floor would cover the pool and serve as a dance floor.
In October 1968, just four months after RFK’s assassination, John and Caroline joined two dozen other family members to witness their mother’s marriage in a tiny whitewashed chapel on Scorpios. Not everyone was happy about the wedding. Aristotle’s two children, Alexander and Christina, acted openly hostile to Jackie, and the multimillionaire had to plead with them to attend. Christina bitterly referred to Jackie as “my father’s unhappy compulsion.”
Aristotle spent time with both John and Caroline, but he formed a special bond with his stepson. Jackie’s cousin John Davis remarked that Onassis “filled a great void” in John’s life. “He liked to play with the children, to take John to baseball games and to go fishing with him, and I think John enjoyed the male companionship.” Caroline was slower to warm up to the new father figure in her life. She was naturally reserved; it took time for her to trust people. John had no such reticence. The way into John’s heart, McKeon said, “was to get down on the floor and play with him.” She described Onassis as “a good father to John and Caroline.” Although he was old enough to be John’s grandfather, “he paid attention to them, and they loved him.”
What John enjoyed most of all was spending summers on stunning Scorpios. Onassis bought the island in 1963, shipped in sand from a neighboring island to create a private beach, planted more than two hundred varieties of trees, and constructed a large family compound. Lee Radziwill described it as “a beautiful part of the world, covered with almond and lemon trees, set in a satin sea, with a magnificent coastline.”
In 1969, when they spent their f
irst summer in Greece, Ari took them for a tour of the scorpion-shaped island in the Ionian Sea and indulged them as best he could. He treated John and Caroline to motorboat expeditions, purchased a few horses and ponies for them to ride, and regaled them with stories of his childhood. He even gave John and Caroline their own twenty-eight-foot sailing boats, requesting that John’s name be painted on his. Onassis took an instant liking to John that first summer, spending hours driving him by jeep all over the island, including its heavily forested area. On a few occasions, he took John to Athens onboard a seaplane. “Ari doted on John like he was his favorite puppy,” recalled Tina Radziwill, who spent summers on Scorpios. “He was really sweet with John.”
The island, in addition to its natural beauty, provided the eight-year-old with space to satisfy his boundless energy. “It was John and Caroline, me and Anthony, and sometimes the Shrivers—Maria and Timmy,” recalled Tina. “The day revolved around waterskiing,” she recalled. “John had a tutor, and there was a lot of debate over whether he should take his lessons before or after waterskiing, because the best time to ski was in the morning when the waters were calm and before the sun got too hot.” The teacher wanted to have the lesson first, but John, along with his cousins, pressured him to back down.
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