“What he discovered in those last couple of years was that politics was a part of his DNA,” says historian Steve Gillon, a friend of John’s
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President John F. Kennedy with his son, John F. Kennedy Jr., one month before JFK’s assassination in 1963.
Would John F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the 35th President of the United States and his wife Jackie Kennedy, have entered politics and eventually run for president himself?
Twenty-five years after his death at age 38, on July 16, 1999, it’s a question John’s friends address in a new book: JFK JR: An Intimate Oral Biography, by RoseMarie Terenzio and PEOPLE editor-at-large Liz McNeil, exclusively excerpted in this week’s PEOPLE.
The book, based on more than 200 interviews, explores John’s thoughts and feelings about entering “the family business” of politics.
Historian Steve Gillon, a friend of John’s who had been his professor at Brown University, often spoke to John about politics — and his father’s presidency.
“John wanted to run for governor of New York,” says Gillon, “but his ultimate goal was to return to the White House, no doubt.”
John F Kennedy Library/Zuma Wire/Shutterstock
President John F. Kennedy and son John F. Kennedy Jr. at the White House on Oct. 10, 1963.
“He had spent his whole life trying to figure out who he was and what he wanted to do,” notes Gillon, also the author of the JFK Jr. biography America’s Reluctant Prince. “John did not want to enter politics because of his last name … And what he discovered in those last couple of years was that politics was a part of his DNA. This was his calling. And he was ready to answer that call.”
The last few weeks before John’s death were hectic. He was trying to find new financial backing for his struggling magazine, George, dealing with marital stress with his wife Carolyn and in despair over the impending cancer death of his cousin Anthony Radziwill. He was also contemplating a run for the New York governor’s seat after Hillary Clinton declared her intention to run for the Senate.
What would have happened if he did remains a lingering what-if.
Historian Neal Gabler, author of the two-part Ted Kennedy biography, Catching the Wind and Chasing the Wind, told the authors about Ted’s heartbreak over the death of his beloved nephew and his thoughts on the family legacy.
Anne Marie Fox
John F. Kennedy Jr. photographed at ‘George’ headquarters in New York City in 1996.
“Carrying the Kennedy legacy meant being a voice for the voiceless, the power for the powerless, the conscience of the country, the force that would do right,” reflects Gabler.
“I think Ted felt that John was the prince; he was the individual who is going to carry on the legacy,” says Gabler. “These other Kennedy kids, whatever one thinks of them, they don’t have what John had — the combination of gravitas and unpretentiousness, the sensitivity to how to live within that narrative. They screw up the narrative. And I think Ted, who’d screwed up the narrative himself so many times, absolutely understood. It’s over.”
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JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography by RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil is on sale July 16, and available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.
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