Remembering John F. Kennedy Jnr and Carolyn Bessette
Twenty years ago, John F. Kennedy Jnr and his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy died in a plane crash. Now, Carolyn’s best friend, Carole Radziwill, opens up about her “secret friend forever”.
It was one of the most famous images of the 20th century: a three-year old John F. Kennedy Jnr saluting the casket of his father just three days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.
Thirty-three years later, the world rejoiced when Kennedy Jnr renounced his status as America’s most eligible bachelor in marrying 30-year-old former fashion publicist Carolyn Bessette.
The photo of them leaving the small church after tying the knot — in a top-secret ceremony on September 21, 1996 — would also become an iconic image; seemingly capturing a blissfully happy triumph to the tragedy that had marked Kennedy Jnr’s childhood.
Yet, less than three years later, tragedy would strike once again when Kennedy Jnr and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, along with Bessette Kennedy’s older sister Lauren, were killed in a plane crash on July 16, 1999.
With this coming Tuesday marking the 20th anniversary of their deaths, journalist and former The Real Housewives Of New York City star Carole Radziwill — Bessette Kennedy’s “secret friend forever” whose late husband Anthony Radziwill was Kennedy Jnr’s cousin and close friend — reflects on her fondest memories of her much-loved and deeply missed confidante.
Meet me at Tiffany’s,” she said in her secret-agent voice, the one she used when she was up to something fun.
I told her I was running late to work. “It’s important,” she said. These were the years my husband was sick with cancer and it was Carolyn’s mission there still be light and joy, and sneaky little adventures.
I met her there. I always followed her instructions, mostly because I suspected I would love where they led.
We were the first to the store, waiting as the security guard opened the doors. Peering into the unlit windows like Audrey Hepburn, minus the Givenchy.
Out of the blue, on a Tuesday, she’d decided on friendship rings. We picked matching gold bands with amethyst stones and had them inscribed with our initials and a sentiment that only we understood: cdr — cbk — sff “secret friends forever”.
We were running a covert operation, in a way. Anthony was dying, but he didn’t want anyone to know.
We lied about where we were during hospital stays, made up stories to explain his post-surgery limps.
I abetted and Carolyn was my eager co-conspirator every step of the way. We wore the rings every day. We wore them on the beach that summer.
Ten months after the morning at Tiffany’s, though, she was dead. You should never have to read a tribute to your 33-year-old best friend at her funeral.
I was 26 when I met Carolyn Bessette. She had just started seeing Anthony’s cousin, John, and we were sharing a beach house with him.
We got there late on a Friday one weekend and the next morning, she was at my door. “Hi! I’m Carolyn,” she said, and asked to borrow toothpaste.
That was almost 30 years ago, which is hard to believe, because some days a memory will crop up so vivid and intense that I get the familiar urge to call as if I’d just seen her yesterday.
Something fleeting will remind me of her and I’ll want to share the inside joke, go right into our shorthand.
“What are you doing?” was the first thing she said when she called. In a mischievous way, like she had a caper lined up.
We thought we’d make a great Lucy and Ethel, arguing over who would be Lucy. Sometimes I like to imagine she’s a close friend I’ve simply lost touch with over the years, and that any day now we’ll cross paths and pick right back up.
The pain of losing her, once so acute it was unbearable, has eroded over time. Somewhere along the way, her death became a thing I am able to live with.
She has remained 33, while I turned 40 and then 50 and now 55. Nothing has changed and everything has. I still feel every day like we are in the middle of a conversation and I’m waiting for her reply.
People play different roles in our lives. Some are here to love, some to test our patience, some as they say, to teach a lesson. Carolyn taught me to persevere. She taught me that I mattered.
Her husband called her Mouse; she called him Mousy. She called her close friends Lamb. She could be as gentle as a kitten, but a lioness, too.
She was fiercely protective of her husband, her family, her friends. She’d never let anyone hurt you, and she’d never betray a trust.
There was no-one else like her and there won’t be. She was curious, smart, self-deprecating, kind. She was the most beautiful woman in any room she walked into and the least likely to see it.
She devoured culture, books, words, people, and balanced the line in her life between the absurd and the real.
She was a minimalist and it showed in her style. She was lauded for her sense of fashion, her chic look, and she had a good laugh at that, like she’d pulled something over on someone.
She jokingly referred to her particular look as lazy: vintage Levi’s and white button down by day, tailored and black by night. She rarely wore colour; she didn’t need to.
For formal occasions she wore a touch of Bobbi Brown Ruby Stain on her lips, pulled her long, ivory hair back, and slipped into a Yohji Yamamoto dress.
She could go from a long day at the hospital with me and Anthony, in jeans and a flannel shirt, to a dinner at the White House in 10 minutes. She was vivid in the way most people are dull.
She wore colour on her toes in the summer — coral, her husband’s favourite. She wore her hair two ways — down and mussed or a smooth chic bun.
She wrote countless notes to people, always on the same blue Tiffany stationery. She never wore stockings. Ever.
She wore Manolo Blahnik heels at night, flats during the day; Tretorns on the vineyard and Nikes to the gym.
She had long, strong slender fingers and her nails were always neutral or nothing at all; buffed and impeccable, but simple.
She had strong, sure hands and she used them. There was always one on your arm or shoulder when she talked to you. She grabbed people with them impulsively; she wasn’t shy about intimacy. If you were having a conversation with her, her hands were moving. A long index finger punctuating her words.
She wore little jewellery, and when she did it was understated but unique. She hardly ever even wore her engagement ring, preferring the understated comfort of her plain gold wedding band instead.
She was a fearless woman, but she had fears. She worried about not measuring up to who she thought she should be.
She worried at times about not being able to cut it as the wife of the most famous man in the world.
She had an idea of the conventional life expected of her, but she insisted on living her very original own.
She was wild and vivid in a cautious and pale world, always burning a little more brightly than anyone around her. Her husband was beguiled by the dazzle she left in her wake.
She made people into happier, bolder versions of themselves. She made her husband into a better man.
Henry James wrote a story about a young girl named Isabel in The Portrait Of A Lady; a girl as brave as she was beautiful, as pure of heart as she was unafraid to love. He was writing about Carolyn, more than a century before she was here.
Those who were lucky enough to know her will never forget her. We were touched by the light of her sun.
The morning of her funeral, her mother approached me at the back of the church. In her hand was a small blue Tiffany’s box. I knew instantly what was inside. cbk — cdr — sff. Secret friends forever.
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