Caroline Kennedy: What we know about America’s next ambassador to Australia

The only surviving member of the White House Kennedy family looks set to begin a new chapter in Australia where she first touched our hearts in 1963.

Caroline Kennedy was just days away from her sixth birthday when she forever became etched into the hearts of Australians.

In November 1963, Australians gathered around their black and white television sets, sitting in stunned silence as the little girl – dressed, heartbreakingly, in her Sunday best – stood stoically beside her stricken mother, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and her younger brother, John Jr, as the coffin carrying her assassinated father, President John F Kennedy, passed by. (Watching grainy black and white footage of then three-year-old John Jr – on his birthday – saluting his dad’s coffin will break your heart.)

The funeral of US President John F Kennedy in Washington on 25 November, 1963. Son John Jnr salutes the casket with his mother Jackie and sister Caroline, uncles Robert and Edward by his side.

A presidency that had begun as a shining beacon of hope for Americans yearning for a brighter, less divided future had ended in shocking tragedy and despair.

Now, Australians will have the chance to once again welcome Caroline Kennedy into our hearts after US President Joe Biden announced that she would become America’s next ambassador to Australia, pending Senate confirmation.

The 64-year-old Kennedy has long been considered a leading candidate for a high-profile diplomatic position after she threw her heavyweight support behind Mr Biden’s successful presidential campaign.

Caroline Kennedy has been named as the US ambassador to Australia. Picture: AFP

It is the latest political move for a family, considered America’s greatest ever political dynasty.

The Kennedys were America’s royal family; a square-jawed clan who rode horses, rocked polo shirts and sailed boats on Cape Cod who looked as if Ralph Lauren modelled his entire design aesthetic on them. This was Camelot and this was what Americans aspired to be.

John F Kennedy had been the second youngest president in American history and he had brought power and glamour to the White House in a way that American presidents had never done before.

Images of Caroline and John Jr running around the Oval Office and hiding underneath their father’s famous desk as he worked brought a levity and relatability to the White House, captivated not only Americans, but the rest of the world, too.

President-elect Kennedy walks with his daughter Caroline on their way to church services on her third birthday, Washington DC, November 27, 1960. Picture: Underwood Archives/Getty Images

Senator John F. Kennedy relaxes with his wife Jacqueline and daughter Caroline.

“I miss him every day of my life”, Caroline told CNN in 2017, during a commemoration to mark what would have been her father’s 100th birthday.

“But growing up without him was made easier thanks to all of the people who kept him in their hearts.”

But the familial legacy has been a heavy one. In 1995, John Jr told Larry King that being the child of a revered yet martyred father and a mother considered globally as a cultural icon had been “complicated”.

While John Jr led a more public life editing his own magazine (the ill-fated political glossy, George, which was shuttered after his death), dating movie stars, models, and even Madonna, Caroline forged a quieter path of her own.

Outside the White House's Oval Office, American President John F. Kennedy and his children, John and Caroline, play with pony Macaroni, on June 22, 1962. Picture: Getty Images

US President John F Kennedy clapping his hands as daughter Caroline, 4, and son John Jnr, 2, dance in Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC, in October, 1962.

She studied at Harvard where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree after which she took a job at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. It was there she met her husband, designer and author Edwin Schlossberg, with whom she shares three children, Rose, Tatiana and John. (Though never officially confirmed, Caroline reportedly separated from Schlossberg in 2015.)

She later returned to school, studying law at New York’s Columbia University.

Caroline was also heavily involved in non-profit work and, in the early 2000s, was named as director of the Office of Strategic Partnerships for New York’s Department of Education where she was famously paid $1 per week.

During her tenure, she helped raise $US65 million ($A90 million) for New York’s public schools.

In 2009, she mulled a New York senate run to replace Hillary Clinton as the former First Lady vied for America’s top job, but withdrew citing “personal reasons” for her exit. (There were suggestions that she did not have the votes to pull off a win.)

John Kennedy, Jr. and sister Caroline at the JFK Profile in Courage Award Ceremony. Picture: Brooks Kraft LLC/Sygma via Getty Images

Caroline was a fierce advocate for former President Barack Obama who placed her on a committee to help pick his presidential running mate, Joe Biden and, in 2013, Mr Obama tapped her to fill the role of America’s ambassador to Japan, a post she held for four years.

In recent years, she has campaigned heavily for the Democrats, speaking at the Democratic National Convention and staunchly backing now-president Biden.

If that wasn’t enough, she is also a published author and has edited a book of her mother’s poetry.

Then there’s the Kennedy cash. Aside from her own various assets, Caroline owns her mother’s estate known as Red Gate Farm in Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard.

In 2008, the New York Daily News estimated her net worth at over $US100 million ($A138 million).

During her 2013 nomination to serve as ambassador to Japan, financial reports said her net worth was between $US67 million ($A93 million) and $US278 million ($A386 million), including family trusts, government and public authority bonds, commercial property in New York, Chicago and Washington, and holdings in the Cayman Islands.

Caroline Kennedy thanks Vice President Joseph Biden after he spoke during an event to honour her father's inauguration on Capitol Hill on January 20, 2011 in Washington, DC. Picture: Getty Images

But despite the wealth and privilege, tragedy has long shadowed the famous clan. In 1969, Caroline’s uncle Teddy Kennedy said he wondered if “some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys”.

Joseph Jr (considered the family’s shining star and a mooted future president) died in a plane crash during World War II.

Presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968 on the night of his victory in the California Democratic presidential primary.

In 1969, Teddy Kennedy crashed his car into a pond in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, which resulted in the death of his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne.

Caroline has also endured her own tragedies. Two of her siblings died in infancy: Arabella was stillborn in 1956 and Patrick died two days after his premature birth in 1963.

Jacqueline Kennedy Reading to Her Daughter Caroline

And her brother John Jr was just 38 when he died in 1999 after the plane he was piloting to cousin Rory Kennedy’s wedding crashed into the Atlantic off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. John Jr’s wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, 33, and her sister Lauren Bessette, 34, also died in the crash. (Caroline had her brother’s ashes scattered at sea off the coast of Massachusetts, near to where he died.)

Now the only surviving member of the White House Kennedy family looks to begin a new chapter in Australia.

In a statement, Caroline called Australia “a country that is as vital to our future security and prosperity”.

“I look forward to collaborating with the government of Australia to strengthen our alliance, improve global health and increase vaccine access during this terrible pandemic and to address the urgent climate crisis,” she said.

“I am excited to get to know the Australian people, learn about their fascinating country and share with them what I love most about America.”

Australia can’t wait to welcome her.

Originally published as Caroline Kennedy: What we know about America’s next ambassador to Australia