Like Father, Like Son, JFK Jr. Lived Recklessly and Left Us to Ponder What Ifs

By Dave O’Brien

The parallels between father and son, although decades apart, are so painful to recall, it is said that America’s psyche has yet to heal.

The two John Kennedys are forever linked by two contrasting images. Thankfully, there is the joyful picture of young ‘John John’ at play in the Oval Office with his father tending to the country’s business.

Sadly, the second image of little John bravely saluting the passing casket of his slain father is forever etched into our minds as a grim reminder that while the nation lost a President, a child lost his dad.

As an adult, John Jr. would tell friends that if that heart-wrenching picture did not exist, he wouldn’t have a recollection of it.

He claimed not to have many memories of his famous and powerful father, instead relying on photographs, articles, books and stories told to John and Caroline by their mother Jackie.

And yet, as he grew before our curious eyes, he captured his father’s GQ looks, some of his gestures and an almost presidential-like aura.

When death strikes a famous person way too early, especially the way it took President John F. Kennedy from us, the lines separating the myths from the man become blurred. We want our heroes to stay that way.

Young John F. Kennedy Jr. was born into myth. Therefore, his challenge, more than the average fellow, was in defining himself as his own man.

It’s not that he wanted to escape his last name or the family business of politics. It was more out of respect for his mother, who had sacrificed enough to the Kennedys and the country.

He thought he had found the ideal compromise when he introduced the world to ‘George’ in September of 1995 – a political magazine that allowed him to dabble in the goings on at Capital Hill while sharing his father’s love of the written word.

Before becoming President, JFK won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Profile’s in Courage which detailed the bravery and heroics of eight U.S. Senators during difficult times in history.

PRINCE OF CAMELOT

Throughout his brief life, JFK Jr. was forever wooed by the Democratic party as the heir apparent to his father’s legacy.

1988 put him in the political spotlight when he introduced his uncle Ted Kennedy to a thunderous two-minute ovation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.

His introduction evoked memories of his father accepting the nomination 25 years earlier. And with Ted Kennedy already having lost a presidential bid to Jimmy Carter in 1980, the JFK look-alike and act-alike became the President-in-waiting after Michael Dukakis lost the election to Republican George H.W. Bush.

A natural first step would have been to seek elective office in New York, but he simply could not do it with his mother alive. Just five years after his father was assassinated in Dallas, his uncle Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed in Los Angeles while seeking the highest office in the land.

Even after Jackie Kennedy died of cancer on May 19, 1994, JFK Jr. preferred to live politics through the pages of George.

There is no indication that John F. Kennedy Jr. ever gave serious thought to following his father’s steps into the White House.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF RECKLESS

One word associated with both Kennedys named John was ‘reckless,’ although they went about it differently.

The President was physically hampered by a back wound suffered during World War II, as well as chronic Addison’s disease.

One of his fixes was a steady dose of steroids that emboldened him in other ways. The treatments enhanced his sexual appetite, which contributed to a reckless parade of women into his bed.

As the first ever Catholic President, had the ever-knowing Jackie decided to divorce him, it would have been both morally and politically devastating. For the sake of John and Caroline, she tolerated her husband’s sexual dalliances.

The one exception was Marilyn Munroe. She actually called Jackie to announce the affair as well as her plans to oust her as First Lady, to which Jackie had quite the response (see article on this site titled Did the Kennedy Brothers Have Marilyn Munroe Killed)?

Although JFK Jr. had plenty of girlfriends that were splashed on the covers of the tabloids, all indications are that once he found love in the name of Carolyn Bessette, he did not follow in the unfaithful footsteps of his father.

And there are no indications that Carolyn had any designs on becoming The First Lady.

While the real-life ‘Barbie and Ken’ had problems avoiding the public spotlight, she shunned it at every opportunity while he learned to deal with it.

NOT SO FRIENDLY SKIES

Yet, his favorite activity outside of business was taking to the skies in his Piper PA-32R-301, Saratoga II. Up there, friends revealed, John Jr. found solitude from the constant spotlight.

He loved to fly solo, which is fine, except that he brought a clinical definition of risk-taker’s personality with him into the cockpit.

How else are we to explain his chosen method of escapism when his own family history reveals that airplanes and Kennedys don’t get along?

The so-called Kennedy curse, beyond assassinations, a drug overdose and death by sports-related accidents, includes the following plane tragedies:

• During World War II, his oldest uncle Joe was on a combat mission over the English Channel when his plane was shot down. He was 29.

• 

  In 1948, his aunt, Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish, died in a plane crash in France.

His aunt Ethel, married to Bobby Kennedy, lost both her parents in a plane mishap near Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1955.

• Just seven months after JFK Jr.’s father was assassinated, his uncle Edward Kennedy, with whom he was most close, suffered serious injuries in a plane crash after a campaign stump in Massachusetts.
• In 1966, his aunt Ethel’s brother, George Skakel Jr., died in a light plane crash in Idaho.

Before taking flying lessons, his mother cautioned him about his daredevil antics when it came to things like paragliding and begged him not to pursue a pilot’s licence. He obediently complied while she was alive.

RISK CATCHES UP

However, tragedy would intersect with irony and figure in John F. Kennedy Jr.’s death on July 16, 1999.

Just weeks before his tragic accident, JFK Jr. broke his ankle while paragliding. The cast was removed shortly before his fateful flight.

Despite only 50 hours of flying time, in less than ideal flying conditions, an aching foot that was still healing, he, along with wife Carolyn and her sister Lauren, took off from Essex County Airport in New Jersey for Martha’s Vineyard Airport.

His first mistake was deciding to fly without an experienced co-pilot.

A second risk he took was to fly manually rather than rely on the sophisticated flight equipment in is Piper Saratoga.

Despite encountering worsening weather conditions that blinded him from lights that would normally guide him along the eastern coastline, JFK Jr. sought no assistance from air traffic control as he became disoriented.

The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the disorientation caused JFK Jr. to lose his bearings. He likely crashed into the Atlantic Ocean at full speed, killing all aboard instantly.

‘Pilot error’ by an inexperienced aviator would become the official wording of the recklessness that JFK Jr. exhibited, causing the death of himself and two others.

Years later, the Kennedy family would settle a multi-million-dollar lawsuit with the Bessette family.

WHAT IFS

The much too early deaths of both John F. Kennedys leave us to ponder several what ifs.

In the presidential list of what ifs, the two that stand out are:

1. Vietnam – Under JFK, just over 200 U.S. troops died in the Vietnam conflict. After he died in 1963, an additional 58,000 Americans would perish under Presidents Johnson and Nixon.

Kennedy insiders say he was making plans for a full withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of 1965.

1. Re-election – Would President Kennedy have been re-elected in 1964? His popularity at the time of his passing suggest he would have won handily over Republican Barry Goldwater.

However, there were indications that his infidelities were beginning to catch up with him.

At the time, the mainstream media tended to overlook all matters outside the Oval Office, but Hollywood gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen reported his affair with Marilyn Munroe in the New York Journal-American.

JFK was assassinated shortly after, leaving us to wonder if this scandal would have metastasized and kept him from a second term.

As for John Jr., we can never assuredly know what his future may have entailed, either in or out of politics.

He spent the last days of his life trying to secure financing for his struggling political magazine, which remained his passion.

DAD’S FATAL LAST RISK

The father and son are forever united by an intriguing ‘what if.’

What if JFK had survived Dallas and went on to serve the maximum eight years as President of the United States?

Would he have mentored his son in the world of politics and the family’s commitment to public service?

Would JFK Jr. also be famous today as a beloved President and torchbearer of an iconic political family?

We will never know the answer to that ‘what if’ because of one final reckless act by the senior John F. Kennedy that occurred on his son’s third birthday.

On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy decided to have the transparent roof removed from his presidential Lincoln limousine so he could be even more visible and accessible to his adoring public.

The roof was not bullet-proof, but could have possibly deflected a bullet just enough or at least made it more difficult to be seen by an assassin in the glaring sun.

After all, the trip to Dallas was made with the pending election in mind. With a beaming Jackie at his side, it was important to show that all was well in the political land known as ‘Camelot.’

However, not all was well in the city of Dallas. It was hostile territory for the Democrats despite native Lyndon Johnson serving as Vice President.

Just a few weeks earlier, Democrat Adlai Stevenson was physically jostled and spat upon during a visit to Dallas.

Not all of Kennedy’s inner circle thought Dallas was worth the trip. His secretary Evelyn Lincoln begged him not to go, but he felt it was a risk worth taking.

As a result of Dallas, the President’s limousine is now a non-convertible with multiple layers of armor that would stop much more than a bullet from Oswald’s rifle.

Were JFK and JFK Jr. reckless risk takers or was it all mere coincidence?

If not senseless risks, the ultimate coincidence is that they both died tragically and directly as a result of unnecessary risks they took on the last day of their lives.