Brought Up to Be a Good Man

How far might he have gone? There has always been a tendency to see John F. Kennedy Jr. as John-John, the sobriquet the press bestowed on him when he was a little boy in the White House. Those bewitched by the John-John idea saw the grown man as a frivolous young fellow floating carelessly on the pleasures of life. In fact, J.F.K. Jr. detested the nickname and was not a man fulfilled by pleasure-floating. But he cherished his privacy and disdained defensive self-publicity.

Jacqueline Kennedy was a wonderful single mother. She was determined to maintain her children’s privacy in order to make their lives as normal as possible. They were brought up unspoiled, modest, hardworking, well-mannered, friendly to their contemporaries, courteous to their elders. And they had on their own an abundance of vitality, charm and good looks.

Educated in private schools, young John Kennedy went on to Brown, where he seemed to contemplate a career on the stage, and then, changing course, to New York University Law School. He worked for Robert Morgenthau in the district attorney’s office, had trouble passing his bar examination, frequented downtown night spots and figured in gossip columns. He was a magically handsome young man, irresistible to women–“the hunk,” the press called him. People dismissed him as a charming lightweight.

This was his protective pose. Underneath he was an earnest fellow with a high sense of legacy and responsibility. In any case, the Kennedys have always been late bloomers. I once ran into him on the shuttle to Washington. He was going to a meeting at the White House on the problem of access to higher education for boys and girls from the slums. He talked about this with surprising knowledge and enthusiasm.

I had not heard anything previously about his interest in such matters. I learned later that he also headed Reaching Up, an organization dedicated to helping hospital orderlies, nursing aides and others. He was genuinely concerned about the young, the disabled and the homeless. His instinct was to do good by stealth, lest people think he was doing good for publicity.

He grew to be an impressive young man–intelligent, articulate, judicious, persuasive, well defined but never full of himself, exceptionally attractive. He invented George as the Vanity Fair formula applied to politics, and he steered the magazine in a resolutely nonpartisan course. He loved the editorial work, loved conducting interviews with everyone from Fidel Castro to George Wallace, loved the variety and eccentricity of American politics. He was not a front man but patrolled every aspect of the job. His staff admired and adored him. But one felt it was a transitional stage for him.

He seemed to be edging into politics. His father had begun as a journalist; it is not a bad introduction to the American political labyrinth. J.F.K. Jr. cared too much about the state of the nation, especially about the increasing disparities of wealth and opportunity in American life, to live out his life as a spectator. He was a cautious man, methodically feeling his way, but I think he sensed an evident opportunity and acknowledged a dynastic responsibility. He was destined, I came to feel, for political leadership.

Stoical about scandalmongering books about his family and gossip-column misinformation about himself, he was as determined as his mother to protect his personal privacy. That is why he took up flying. When he traveled on commercial aircraft, fellow passengers would ask questions, seek autographs, exchange memories. He understood that they were people of goodwill, and he could not bear to be impolite, but the benign interest of others was a burden. Once he got his flying license, he seemed a liberated man, free to travel as he wished without superfluous demands on time and energy. Nor was he a reckless pilot. The mystery of his death remains.

It is one more stab at the heart of America. There is an echo of Greek tragedy about the succession of blows striking a single American family. So many Kennedys have been cruelly cut off before they had fulfilled themselves–Joe Jr., my Harvard classmate, killed in the war; John and Robert, cherished friends, assassinated; two of Robert’s sons dead; now John’s son, the golden boy.

The night that John Kennedy died, a friend took Robert Kennedy to his bedroom. “God, it’s so awful,” Robert said. “Everything was really beginning to run so well.” He seemed under control. The friend closed the door, then heard Bob break down and cry, “Why, God?”

Was there no sense, no purpose, to the universe? Later R.F.K. scrawled on a yellow sheet, “The innocent suffer–how can that be possible and God be just?” He found solace in Aeschylus, memorizing the lines from the Agamemnon that he would use when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed: “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”

For the Kennedys, faith comes as the ultimate solace. As President Kennedy once told a press conference, “Life is unfair.”