John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr. (November 25, 1960 – July 16, 1999), often referred to as John F. Kennedy, Jr., JFK Jr., John Jr., John Kennedy or John-John, was a journalist, lawyer, pilot, and socialite. He was the first son of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, and the younger brother of Caroline Kennedy and the older brother of the deceased Patrick Bouvier Kennedy. He was known as the "American Son"[1] for he was one of the few presidential children to actually be raised in the White House. He died in a plane crash along with his wife and sister-in-law in mid-1999.
Contents[hide]
1 Early life
2 Education
3 Career
4 Personal life
5 Death
5.1 Memorial tributes and services
5.2 Wrongful-death lawsuit
6 References
7 See also
8 External links
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[edit] Early life
Born at Georgetown University Hospital sixteen days after his father was elected to the presidency, John F. Kennedy, Jr., was in the public spotlight from his infancy in early 1961 until his death in mid-1999. For most of the first three years of his life he lived in the White House. His nickname "John-John" came from a reporter mishearing JFK calling him ("John" spoken twice in quick succession). He was often referred to publicly as "John-John", although members of the Kennedy family themselves did not use the nickname. [2] When he began school, he got in a fight on his first day when a classmate insisted on calling him John-John.
His father was assassinated on November 22, 1963, and the funeral procession took place on John, Jr.'s third birthday three days later. In a moment that became an emotional and iconic image of the 1960s, young JFK, Jr. stepped forward and rendered a final salute as the flag-draped casket was carried out from St. Matthew's Cathedral.[3] Following his father's assassination, he grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. In 1968 his mother married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, whom she had met in the early 1960s. The marriage lasted eight years until Onassis' death in 1975, when John, Jr. was fourteen years old.
Generally considered exceptionally handsome and athletic, People Magazine named Kennedy its "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1988 at the age of 27 (the youngest "sexiest man" to date). He is the only person so named who was not a working actor and is the only one who is now deceased.

[edit] Education
Kennedy attended the Collegiate School in New York City for the third through tenth grades, and later graduated from the Phillips Academy (also known as Andover). Foregoing his family legacy of attending Harvard University, Kennedy opted to attend another Ivy League school, and graduated from Brown University in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in History. While at Brown, Kennedy was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
After Brown, he took a working break, traveling to India and spending some time at the University of Delhi where he met Mother Teresa. He also worked with some of the Kennedy special interest projects, including the East Harlem School at Exodus House and Reaching Up. From 1984-1986 he worked for the New York City Office of Business Development. He served as deputy director of the 42nd Street Development Corporation in 1986. He also did a bit of acting during that time, which had been one of his passions, having appeared in many plays while at Brown.
In 1989, he earned a J.D. degree from the New York University School of Law. He failed the New York bar exam twice before passing on the third try. According to Robert Littell's book after the second failing he drove his GMC Typhoon to a motel in Lake George and spent the weekend drinking and listening to self help tapes[4]. He hired a tutor and arranged for special accommodation for his third try, wherein he took the examination alone (as the sole examinee) in a private room, accompanied by a proctor and looser time restrictions.[citation needed]

[edit] Career
Kennedy interned for the Reagan administration's Justice Department in Washington D.C in the summer of 1987. He spoke at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. He worked as a paralegal for Charles Manatt at Manatt, Phelps, Rothenberg & Phillips in LA the summer of 1988. He was an assistant district attorney in Manhattan from 1989 to 1993. Not long after joining the DA's office he was offered work in the Justice Department during Clinton's administration but declined. He was good at his job as a DA, winning all 6 of his cases but later confided that he had 2 big problems working for the DA's; the media circus that surrounded him and the defendents he prosecuted seemed to want to confess to him. He didn't seem to have the passion for law and later abandoned it.
After the end of his law career he set up Random Ventures. Being an avid outdoorsman he even considered setting up a kayak business before settling on George. In 1995, he founded George, a glossy politics-as-lifestyle monthly which sometimes took editorial aim even at members of his own family. He controlled 50 per cent of the company's shares. After Kennedy's death, the magazine was bought out by Hachette Filipacchi Magazines[5] his partners in George and continued for over a year. With falling advertising sales,[5] the magazine folded in early 2001.[6] Before Kennedy died, however, he had conceded that he "might have to wind it up by the end of the year"[7] When he died the magazine had been in negotiations. His backers at Hachette had threatened to pull out and he was having trouble raising funding for the magazine. He had planned on turning George into an internet project and was set to have a meeting in Hyannis Port the night he died.

[edit] Personal life
Through the 1980s until his death, Kennedy was an often-seen and much-photographed personality in Manhattan. He lived at 309 West Eighty-Sixth Street (between Brown and NYU Law), a hotel apartment when he attended NYU and later famously at 20-26 N. Moore Street Apartment 9E in Tribeca[8]. He could usually be seen around Manhattan riding his bike (his bikes were constantly stolen so he had to get a new one every few months) and was famous for wearing his wallet clipped to a chain on his belt (he would absentmindly lose it quite often).
His ex-girlfriends include Jennifer Christian (his high school sweetheart at Andover), Sally Munro (his girlfriend at Brown, they dated for 6 years), Julie Baker (a model he dated in the late 80's on and off for a few years), Christina Haag (a Brown alumna and actress he'd had a crush on while there, they started dating in 1985 for a few years), Ashley Richardson (a model and actress), Sarah Jessica Parker (they dated in 1988), Daryl Hannah (they dated on and off from 1989-1994 and lived together briefly at Hannah's Upper West Side apartment) and had a brief fling with Madonna during an on and off point in his relationship with Hannah. Soon after his mother's death he met Carolyn Jeanne Bessette in late 1994. She had apparently resisted John's proposal for a year before finally accepting. When speaking of her to a friend, Kennedy was quoted as saying "she's the best shot I got" and they married on September 21, 1996 on Cumberland Island in Georgia. His sister Caroline acted as the matron of honor and his cousin Anthony Stanislas Radziwill acted as best man.

[edit] Death
On July 16, 1999, at the age of 38, Kennedy was killed along with his wife and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette when the aircraft he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. He was flying a Piper Saratoga II HP from Essex County Airport in New Jersey to Martha's Vineyard. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of the crash was: "The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation."[9]. Although the weather was officially listed as VFR (Visual Flight Rules), allowing Kennedy to fly that night despite his lack of an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) rating, the visibility was poor and at least one pilot interviewed by the NTSB in the subsequent crash investigation canceled his flight to Martha's Vineyard that night due to the poor visibility[10]. Kennedy and his wife were traveling to the wedding of his cousin Rory Kennedy in Hyannis, Massachusetts, which was then postponed. Lauren was to have been dropped off at Martha's Vineyard en route.

[edit] Memorial tributes and services
During the memorial service on July 23, 1999, Kennedy's uncle, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, stated, "We dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair, with his beloved Carolyn by his side. But, like his father, he had every gift but length of years."[11] Then-U.S. President Bill Clinton attended the funeral and ordered that the flag at the White House be lowered to half-staff in honor of JFK, Jr.
At President Clinton's orders, warships of the United States Navy assisted in the search for the downed plane. With the permission of Secretary of Defense William Cohen, a memorial service for the three victims was held aboard the Navy ship USS Briscoe. The cremated remains of Kennedy, his wife and sister-in-law were later scattered from the ship off the coast of Martha's Vineyard.

[edit] Wrongful-death lawsuit
A wrongful death lawsuit brought by the Bessette family against the Kennedy estate concluded with an undisclosed out of court settlement.[12] The settlement avoided the publicity of a public trial.