The memories, both happy and tragic, of his first years were understandably few, and later in his life, Kennedy was never sure how to parse fact from fiction about his own childhood. "Sometimes I can't remember what really happened," he often told friends, "and what I saw in pictures." And sometimes, he would ask the people who took those pictures to tell him about his relationship with his father. Out of the country for many years, former First Family photographer Jacques Lowe recalls that in 1995 Kennedy asked him to come to his office at George magazine. "I hadn't seen him since he was a baby," says Lowe. "I expected that he wanted me to do some work for George. But I was showered with a barrage of questions about his father. He asked, 'How much time did I spend with him? What did he think of me? Did he ever bawl me out? What was his sense of humor like?' It was very emotional, but he wasn't crying or anything. He just wanted to know everything he could about JFK. Every little detail."
Millions had followed his story from the beginning. John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr.'s arrival on Nov. 25, 1960, a few weeks prematurely and just 17 days after his father had been elected President of the United States, became a national event. His youthful, charismatic parents were already beginning to be hailed as American royalty by the press and the public. President-elect Kennedy was going to create a New Frontier with a Camelot Round Table of the best and the brightest, while his wife, Jacqueline, would bring an aristocratic grace to the pomp and circumstance. And John Jr. was to be the crown prince.
By the time John Jr. and his sister Caroline, three years older, moved into the White House, the level of interest in the First Family had, if anything, increased. The children themselves were making news. "Kennedy Baby Put on Formula," read the headline of a breathless 1960 newspaper article. Another announced, "Kennedy Jr. Baptized in Dress Father Wore."
Around the country thousands of newborns were named John or Caroline, and stories of the first toddlers to careen through the White House since the 19th century became a rich part of the Kennedy mystique. "As [the President] sat down to his breakfast tray, surrounded by the morning papers and urgent cables and reports," Kennedy historian Arthur Schlesinger recalled of a typical morning to Jackie biographer Carl Sferrazza Anthony {As We Remember Her), "Caroline and John would rush in, greet their father, turn on television and watch animated cartoons."
There was some friction between JFK and Jackie about how the children should be brought up. Jackie, who had set up a nursery school in the third floor solarium of the White House, was determined that her children be kept away from the public glare. "Mrs. Kennedy was very strict about us staying away from [John Jr. and Caroline], letting them grow up normally," says retired Secret Service agent Robert W. Foster, who was one of the agents looking after the security of the Kennedy children. He often accompanied John on walks to Washington's Montrose Park for exercise and fresh air, but says of the children's mother, "She didn't want us hovering over them like a mother hen."
On the other hand, the children's photogenic exuberance delighted the President, a seasoned campaigner who understood that images of the vital young family could only help his Presidency—and his effectiveness. He often took John or Caroline by the hand to accompany him, sometimes past lingering reporters, on his way to work in the West Wing.
And a picture was worth a thousand words. JFK famously promised then-Look magazine photographer Stanley Tretick, who died just three days after Kennedy's plane crash, pictures of John playing in the Oval Office. The promise had to wait until a day when Jackie was out of the country. Then, Tretick was allowed to snap John worming his way under his father's desk and cavorting in the head of state's chair. "President Kennedy wouldn't have done it if she had been there," Tretick once told a colleague. "I said to him, I bet you're the only President in history to bootleg his own kids.' And he just looked at me and smiled."
Himself a product of a large family where children were indulgently underfoot on all occasions, JFK liked nothing better than to banter with the son whom the Secret Service called Lark for his ability to scamper off while they were watching him. "I remember he used to call me Sam just to annoy me," Kennedy told Oprah Winfrey of his father in a 1996 interview. "I remember getting kind of upset, you know. I'd say, 'My name is not Sam, it's John.' And he'd say, 'Oh, sorry, Sam.' "
Caroline and John Jr. were at home with nanny Maude Shaw when their world changed forever, on Nov. 22, 1963, with John F. Kennedy's assassination. Following the funeral mass three days later in St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, D.C., the youngest Kennedy became the focal point, a heartbreaking image that sealed him in the nation's memory forever. During the service the boy got fidgety, so Jackie had agent Foster take him to a small room at the back of the cathedral. There, John was entertained by an Army colonel, who described to the boy what each of the medals on his uniform was for. To thank the officer, John saluted him, something he had seen done countless times at the White House. But John used his left hand. Recalls agent Foster: "The colonel said, 'Oh, no, John, that's not the way to salute. You salute with your right hand.' And he showed him how to salute properly. Then, when we went outside, I was standing right there, and Mrs. Kennedy said as the casket passed by, 'Say goodbye to your daddy, John,' and he whipped up that salute the right way, and I just about fell over. It wasn't coached or anything. He just did it."
After the funeral, in keeping with the Kennedy family tradition of getting on with life in the face of tragedy, Jackie and the children returned to the White House to celebrate John's 3rd birthday with a small party. During the next weeks the Kennedy children were gently led to the realization that their father was not coming home. As Jackie was packing to leave the White House, agent Foster took John for one of their last walks outside. "I was getting him a drink out of the fountain," Foster recalls, "and a photographer came up and took some pictures. John looked him right in the eye and said, 'What are you taking my picture for? My daddy's dead.' The poor photographer started to cry. I cried too."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
