John F. Kennedy Jr.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. was born on November 25, 1960, at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. He was the son of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, and Jacqueline Kennedy. His older sister, Caroline Kennedy, was born three years prior. Kennedy's family experienced significant loss with the stillbirth of a sister, Arabella, in 1956, and the death of his brother Patrick two days after birth in 1963. His father was elected president less than three weeks before Kennedy JR.'s birth, and he was born two weeks after the election.

During the early years of his life, Kennedy lived in the White House for the first three years until President Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963. He was three years old at the time and participated in the funeral procession, where he gave a final salute to his father's flag-draped casket. Photographs capturing this moment, including one by UPI photographer Stan Stearns, have been widely recognized. Following his father’s death, the Kennedy family moved to Georgetown, Washington, D.C., and subsequently to an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City.

In 1967, Kennedy and his mother and sister traveled to Ireland, where Kennedy met President Éamon de Valera and visited the Kennedy ancestral home in Dunganstown. After the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, Jacqueline Kennedy took Caroline and Kennedy Jr. out of the United States temporarily, expressing concern over the safety of her children amid political violence. That same year, she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, and the family moved to his private island, Skorpios. Kennedy considered his stepfather to be "a joke." After Onassis’s death in 1975, Jacqueline Kennedy inherited a substantial income and continued to manage her family's affairs.

Kennedy returned to the White House with his mother and sister in 1971 for the first time following his father’s death. He attended private schools in Manhattan, initially Saint David's School, then the Collegiate School, and later Phillips Academy in Massachusetts. During his youth, he participated in various extracurricular activities, including leadership roles during a trek in Africa and charitable work in Guatemala following an earthquake. Kennedy’s Secret Service protection was withdrawn on his 16th birthday in 1976.

He enrolled at Brown University, majoring in American studies, where he co-founded a student discussion group on contemporary issues and engaged in activism, notably opposing apartheid in South Africa. Kennedy graduated from Brown in 1983. He also studied at the University of Delhi in India, where he engaged in postgraduate work and met Mother Teresa.

Kennedy pursued a legal education at New York University School of Law, earning his Juris Doctor degree in 1989. He took the New York bar examination multiple times, passing on his third attempt in July 1990. He worked as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan from 1990 to 1994, handling cases related to consumer fraud and landlord-tenant disputes.

In addition to his legal career, Kennedy worked as a journalist, contributing to The New York Times and considering the creation of a magazine titled George, which he launched in 1995. He was a prominent social figure in Manhattan, often covered by the media, including for his marriage to Carolyn Bessette. Kennedy's personal life and career were consistently under media scrutiny.

Kennedy died on July 16, 1999, in a plane crash involving his private aircraft.