Although much has been written claiming that Jackie micromanaged John’s life, forbidding him from becoming an actor and forcing him to attend law school, the reality was always more complicated. Pat Manocchia recalled that Jackie offered general guidance but did not dictate individual choices, once advising him to “do something with your name.” At dinner one evening, she offered both of them the same advice: “You have been given great opportunities. You have to do something worthwhile.” John’s struggle was trying to discover a path that he found not only personally rewarding but also “worthwhile” on a larger scale. He attended law school not because Jackie insisted but because of the future opportunities it promised—as well as the three-year delay in having to make a firm career choice.
Jackie, however, did not shy away from letting John know how she felt about his girlfriends. She approved of Christina Haag but grew concerned when he started dating Daryl Hannah, a tall blonde actress who had starred in the 1984 hit movie Splash. Just a month after the People magazine article dubbing him “The Sexiest Man Alive,” John was spotted on a date with Hannah. They had actually been set up by her billionaire stepfather, Chicago businessman and film producer Jerrold Wexler, a major contributor to both the Democratic Party and John’s uncle Ted. Their first meeting occurred in the early 1980s while vacationing separately in Saint Martin with their families, but they met again at the 1988 wedding of John’s aunt Lee Radziwill to film director Herb Ross, who had worked with Hannah on Steel Magnolias.
Both John and Daryl were still in relationships when they quietly started dating. Officially, John remained linked to Haag, and Hannah was nearing the end of a contentious ten-year relationship with singer-songwriter Jackson Browne. In 1989 paparazzi spotted them over Memorial Day weekend on a fifty-six-foot yacht at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia, then later at various places around New York City. Initially, Daryl was unwilling to leave Browne without a commitment from John that they would be exclusive. In the meantime, John, who had broken up with Christina Haag in 1990, was seeing various other women, including Jackie look-alike Julie Baker, an actress.
Their unofficial relationship changed on October 1, 1992, when John flew from New York to Los Angeles to retrieve Daryl, who was upset over an altercation with her ex-boyfriend at their home in Santa Monica. Thereafter, John and Daryl began seeing each other exclusively. In August 1993 John was seen with the actress on a scuba diving vacation in Palau, a scenic island in the South Pacific. Eventually he moved into Hannah’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
The relationship had been rocky from the start. It is often said that every successful relationship has a flower and a gardener: one person needs to be tended, while the other loves to nurture and support. However, according to Rob Littell, both John and Daryl were flowers. One of John’s close friends recalled that Hannah possessed “these self-absorbed neurotic qualities that she couldn’t see beyond. She was a movie star, she was a bombshell, and she was all about her most of the time.” John quickly started to notice the insular, narcissistic nature of her world. “She was on a little hamster track of her own stuff that she may not ever face and grow out of,” remembered a friend.
Charlie King recalled having lunch with John a few weeks before the thirtieth anniversary of his father’s death in 1993. He noticed that John appeared uncharacteristically quiet and withdrawn. “He seemed really distracted,” King reflected. When he asked him what was going on, John responded, “I got into a fight with Daryl, and I’m living in the basement of a friend’s house, and my mother doesn’t really like Daryl all that much. It’s the thirtieth anniversary of my father’s death so I’m not really watching television. It’s a difficult time. This Daryl thing has me thrown for a loop.”
The next month, Mrs. Onassis discovered a lump in her right groin. A doctor mistakenly diagnosed it as an infection and ordered a round of antibiotics, but a few weeks later, she developed a cough, swollen lymph nodes in her neck, and stomach pain. She flew back to New York from the Caribbean where she had been vacationing, and she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “This is the good kind,” she assured John. “We can beat this.”
Initially, both doctors and Jackie expressed confidence that she would make a full recovery. In January 1994 Joe Armstrong found her in very good and determined spirits when he met her for lunch as she began her chemotherapy treatments. “I have to face this head-on and get through it. Then I’ll be okay by summer,” which was her favorite time of the year.
Her optimism seemed warranted. Yet by March, scans showed that while the lymphoma had disappeared from most of her body, it had spread to the membrane covering her brain and spinal cord. To treat the issue, doctors gave her radiation therapy.
John suspected that his mom’s illness was more serious than she admitted. “John seemed resigned to her fate, outwardly stoic, and relying, I think, on her strength to carry him through,” Littell observed. “He didn’t like talking about her illness. We stopped referring to his mother in conversation. The only thing John enjoyed during those sad months was his mother’s company. It was a special time for both of them, as she tried to prepare him for a life without her, and he immersed himself in the life she still had. Among the most important things she told him then was not to be afraid of his name.”
On Saturday, May 14, Armstrong, who had not seen Jackie for a month, met with her and singer Carly Simon for lunch at Simon’s Upper West Side apartment. “My heart just sank when she walked in,” he reflected. “She was as cheerful and warm as ever, but she was so thin and without eyebrows, without eyelashes, and a wig that didn’t really fit. I could never let her know that seeing this was breaking my heart.” Jackie gave Armstrong a ride home, and as he got out of the car she said, “Joe! Four more weeks, and I get my life back.” They talked on the phone the next morning, and then later that day, she collapsed and was admitted to New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center.
John could not be with Jackie that weekend because Daryl insisted that he deliver the ashes of her dead dog and attend its funeral in Los Angeles. John longed to be with his mother, but he agreed to his girlfriend’s request anyway. When he arrived at the dog’s funeral, Hannah became distraught because John had placed the ashes in a simple box rather than something more elaborate. John was angry at himself for not being home with his mother the entire weekend, but he did not want to deal with the media fallout over a breakup while he should be focusing all his energy on his mother.
John returned to New York after the weekend, and on Tuesday evening he, Caroline, and Ed joined Anthony Radziwill and his fiancée, Carole, for dinner. Earlier that day, they had learned the gravity of the situation and the likelihood that Jackie would die. John was both furious that he had been at a dog’s funeral thousands of miles away and devastated that he was losing the most important person in his life. At one point, he excused himself from the table and locked himself in the restroom. When he returned, his eyes were red. He did not want to break down in public, so once again he hid his grief.
On Wednesday, everyone’s worst fears were confirmed. A CAT scan showed that the cancer had spread to Jackie’s liver. The doctors stopped all treatment, and she decided to die at home. A health care worker told The New York Times, “She had an aggressive cancer that was treated aggressively and that initially responded to therapy, but it came back in her brain and spread through her body.”
Joe Armstrong was scheduled to have lunch with John on Thursday, May 19, but John called in the morning to cancel. “It’s like a car speeding down the highway and the pieces are falling off,” he said. Later that afternoon, Jackie’s cook and assistant, Marta, called both Joe Armstrong and Carly Simon and asked each of them to come say good-bye. The family held a quiet vigil around her bed, where Jackie lay with a bright-colored scarf wrapped around her head. She looked peaceful, with her hands folded over her stomach and her eyes closed. Joe did not think it appropriate fo
r a man to enter her bedroom, so he waited in the living room with John while Simon paid her respects. When John walked Joe and Carly to the door, he said, “Mummy loves you two so much,” and broke down in tears.
That evening, Jackie lapsed into a coma after receiving the last rites of the Catholic Church and died at ten fifteen, with John and Caroline by her side. She was just sixty-four. “It’s a strange procession,” John told Billy Noonan. “First come the doctors, then the lawyers, then the funeral director. It isn’t simply a death but a series of steps in death.”
The next morning, John went downstairs to address the dozens of reporters and cameramen clustered outside the apartment building. He revealed that his mother had died, “surrounded by her friends and her family and her books and the people and the things that she loved. She did it her own way and on her own terms, and we all feel lucky for that, and now she’s in God’s hands.” He thanked the public and said, “I hope now we can have these next couple of days in relative peace.”
On the day of the viewing, John grew restless and needed some exercise. He went roller blading with Hannah past St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic Church at Park Avenue and Eighty-Fourth Street, where the funeral would be held on Monday the twenty-third. John staged his appearance with Hannah for the press. In his mind, the relationship had already ended, but he did not want rumors of their impending split to distract from his mother’s death. In private, the two were barely talking. “It was very awkward,” recalled a family member. He left the apartment at one point to play football in Central Park, pursued by nearly a dozen photographers and reporters. “It’s his mother!” his former roommate Christiane Amanpour shouted at them. “Leave him alone!” His friend Chris Cuomo, younger brother of Andrew and a future TV news personality, checked in to see how John was holding up. “I need this right now,” John responded, referring to his desire to get outside and run around in the park.
That evening, John and his sister, followed by four dozen photographers, arrived for Jackie’s wake. By six o’clock, nearly eight hundred people had gathered outside the apartment. Sightseeing buses stopped occasionally to allow tourists a chance to take pictures. Strangers dropped bouquets of roses at the doorway, while dozens of reporters, photographers, and television camera crews camped outside. At one point, John stood on the balcony and acknowledged the onlookers with a wave. “Can you believe this?” he said, incredulous, to Billy Noonan. “They’ve been there for days. All for Mummy.” Jackie’s body lay inside a closed coffin, draped with an antique cloth. Once the many guests had left, a small group of family members and close friends gathered for a buffet-style dinner. A clueless Daryl made small talk by telling another guest about how she had met Jackson Browne.
St. Ignatius had been Jackie’s childhood church; she had been both baptized and confirmed there. Once again John did not want to reveal his grief to the public. “It’s just going to be really hard for me because I am not going to cry,” he admitted to Sasha. “I’m not going to cry in front of fifty million people.” Although TV cameras were not permitted inside the church, the CBS, NBC, and CNN networks all broadcast the audio of the funeral service.
Rising to the pulpit, John told the one thousand mourners that “choosing the readings for these services, we struggle to find ones that captured my mother’s essence. Three things came to mind over and over again and ultimately dictated our selections. They were her love of words, the bonds of home and family, and her spirit of adventure.” His uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, remembered John’s mom as someone who “made a rare and notable contribution to the American spirit. She was a blessing to us and to the nation. No one ever gave more meaning to the title of first lady.” Jackie, Teddy concluded, “was too young to be a widow in 1963 and too young to die now.”
Her body was carried by private plane to Washington National Airport, where thousands of people lined the roadside to observe the hearse make its way to Arlington National Cemetery. There, on that hot afternoon, Jackie was buried near the same Eternal Flame that she had lit thirty-one years earlier during another moment of national grief. The brief ceremony lasted a mere fifteen minutes and was attended by only a hundred family members. “May the flame she lit so long ago burn ever brighter here and always brighter in our hearts,” President Bill Clinton proclaimed. John and Caroline knelt in silent prayer before the casket. Caroline placed a white lily on the bier, then kissed the casket. John went next, pausing first to gently reach down and touch the simple bronze grave marker for his father.
John was left “emotionally wiped out” by his mother’s death, but he kept such feelings to himself. “I learned from my family that you don’t wallow in death,” he told Gary Ginsberg. “You move on. You hold it inside.”
John elaborated on his thoughts about death six months after his mom passed, when he learned that his friend Charlie King had lost his father. John sat down and penned a remarkably thoughtful letter about life and loss that revealed a great deal about the way he had learned to deal with death. “I heard through the grapevine of your loss and wanted to just let you know that I know what you’re going through,” he wrote. “It’s hard and it sucks and there’s really nothing that folks can say especially those who didn’t have the pleasure of knowing your father.” He went on to say that his own experience had taught him to “let yourself steep in the whole experience of loss, it’s as much a part of life as birth, laughter and marriage and so it has its own meaning and purpose that must be considered.” Too often, he continued, “we look at death as some shocking anomaly and thereby blind ourselves to the many revelations and epiphanies it can bring. So explore the meaning of it all, it’s there and you’ll grow enormously from it.” He told Charlie that his mother once told him “that 18 months after she lost my father she would smile when she thought of him instead of cry and that made all the difference. That’s starting to happen to me now,” he admitted. “And I hope it comes soon to you.”
Apparently, one of the revelations that John had while dealing with his mother’s passing was that he was now on his own. In an odd way, Jackie’s death proved liberating for John. “It left him unequivocally an adult, the bearer of his parents’ legacies,” Rob Littell wrote.
Following the funeral, John and Daryl spent the weekend in Hyannis with Sasha, who recalled, “Daryl was upstairs freaking out because another one of her dogs was sick. She was going on and on about her dog.” John, who was returning to Hyannis for the first time since his mother had died, remained overcome with grief, repeating, “I just didn’t want her to die.” He could not understand how his “girlfriend” seemed more concerned about her dog than she did about him. “I felt so bad about him that all she cared about was her dog,” Sasha reflected.
The loss of his beloved mother gave John the strength to finally end his dysfunctional relationship with Hannah shortly afterward. The breakup was easy for him, as he had already started seeing another beautiful blonde—the one who would eventually become his wife.
CHAPTER 7
“WHAT ABOUT A MAGAZINE ABOUT POLITICS?”
In 1988 Michael Berman and John started talking about pursuing a business venture. Michael had been serving as an unofficial advisor for the past few years, during which the two men developed a close friendship. John felt it was the right time for him to take risks. While he relished taking physical risks, his professional life had followed a conventional route up until this point. After graduating from Brown in 1983, John went to New York University Law School and then spent four years working in the Manhattan DA’s office before leaving in early 1994.
John often told me about how his grandfather Joseph P. Kennedy’s business acumen and entrepreneurial spirit had primed the family for financial security and allowed future generations to pursue careers in public service. Aside from the inspiration from his family’s past, John found creating and owning a business attractive on other, more personal levels. He could not envision himself working as a cog in
a large bureaucracy, and it was clear to me that after four tiresome years in the DA’s office, he knew he did not want to practice law long term.
Berman seemed like the ideal partner. John enjoyed Michael’s quick mind and dry humor, while Michael understood John and made sure not to exploit his celebrity. John’s contribution to any venture seemed obvious, as his fame could open doors that might otherwise remain closed in addition to providing access to people normally unavailable. Furthermore, pairing John’s reputation with Michael’s keen public relations skills would hopefully lay the basis for lasting success.
They formed a corporation, appropriately named Random Ventures, to pursue whatever ideas came to mind. John’s first idea grew from his love of outdoor adventure, specifically kayaking. Long before the sport became popular, John had purchased a custom-made kayak from a company in Maine, which produced, in his words, “the Rolls-Royces of kayaks.” This superior model, John believed, could be made more accessible by selling kits that would allow people to build independently. Berman thought John raised an interesting question: “Could you mold these kayaks and mass-produce them in a way that was affordable?” Berman and Kennedy traveled to Maine to meet with the owner and inspect the kayaks. After looking at the numbers, however, they both came to the realization that people who wanted custom-made kayaks would not buy a mass-produced version.
John then transitioned to the idea of creating a rent-a-dog business. In his mind, the typical customer might be a lonely, recently divorced father or a family of young children who could not care for a dog full-time. “A lot of people say to me, ‘I would love to have a dog, but I can’t take care of one,’” John said. “It would be good for the dogs because they could provide at least a temporary home for strays.” He also noted that having a dog often served as a way to meet and bond with others. John, who could sometimes be oblivious to his fame, pointed out that whenever he took his dog Friday for a walk, strangers would approach him, oftentimes bringing over their spouses and kids. As they petted and admired the dog, they would strike up a conversation. Berman nixed this idea, too, pointing out that the dog was probably not the object of their attention.
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