JOHN F Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, leaving his wife and children behind.
Here we take a look at the lives and times of the Kennedy kids.
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Who are John F Kennedy’s children?
JFK and Jackie Onassis had four children: Caroline, John Jr, Patrick and Arabella.
Following a miscarriage in 1955, Jackie gave birth to a stillborn baby girl in 1956.
They named the baby Arabella.
In 1957, she gave birth to Caroline, and in late 1960, the couple had a son, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr, who was given the nickname “John-John” by the press.
In 1963, months before JFK’s assassination, the couple had their son Patrick.
Where are the children now?
Caroline is the only surviving child of the couple.
Arabella was stillborn, while Patrick died just two days after he was born due to complications from birth.
John Jr died in 1999 when the small plane he was piloting crashed en route to Martha’s Vineyard.
Who is Caroline and where is she today?
Born on November 27, 1957, in Manhattan, New York, Caroline Bouvier Kennedy is an American author, attorney and diplomat.
She served as the United States Ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017 and is the only surviving child of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.
She is currently the United States Ambassador to Australia, a position she has held since 2022.
Caroline was described as a “remarkably unspoiled” child by her maternal grandmother, Janet Lee Auchincloss.
She was just five days away from her sixth birthday when her dad was assassinated.
Two weeks later, the Kennedys moved to Georgetown, with their new home becoming a popular tourist attraction.
The following year, Caroline, her mother and brother relocated to New York, settling in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
She attended Radcliffe College and worked at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
It was while working at the Met that she met her future husband, Edwin Schlossberg, an exhibit designer.
She went on to receive a J.D. degree from Columbia Law School.
Most of Caroline’s professional life has been dedicated to law and politics, as well as education reform and charitable work.
She also acted as a spokesperson for her family’s legacy and co-authored two books on civil liberties with Ellen Alderman.
During the 2008 Presidential election, she endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama, later serving as co-chair of his Vice Presidential Search Committee.
In 1968, when her mother married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, the family relocated to Skorpios – Onassis’ private island.
When she returned to the US a year later for the funeral of her granddad, a then 11-year-old Caroline confided in her cousin David that she did not like her stepfather.
She went back to New York to continue her studies, then returned to the White House in 1971 for the first time since her father’s death following an invitation from President Richard Nixon for the family to view the official portrait of JFK.
In 1975, Caroline was visiting London to complete a year-long art course at the Sotheby’s auction house, when a car bomb placed under the car of her hosts, Conservative MP Sir Hugh Fraser and his wife, Antonia, exploded.
The bomb detonated shortly before she and the Frasers were due to leave for their daily drive to Sotheby’s.
Caroline had not yet left the house, but a neighbor, oncologist Professor Gordon Hamilton-Fairley, was passing with his dog and was killed by the explosion.
Caroline married her husband Edwin Schlossberg in 1986 at Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville, Massachusetts.
The couple had three children: Rose Kennedy Schlossberg (born 1988), Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg (born 1990), and John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, known as Jack (born 1993).
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Who was John Jr?
John Jr was born on November 25, 1960 in Washington, D.C.
He was an American lawyer, journalist and magazine publisher.
His dad was assassinated just three days before his third birthday. JFK’s state funeral was held on John Jr’s birthday.
In what became an iconic image of the 1960s, John Jr stepped forward and rendered a final salute as his father’s flag-draped casket was carried out from St Matthew’s Cathedral.
The family continued with their plans for his birthday party to demonstrate that the Kennedys would go on despite the death of the late president.
John Jr attended schools in Manhattan and Massachusetts before going to Brown University to major in American studies.
He took a break from working after his graduation in 1983, and travelled to India, where he met Mother Teresa.
He also worked with some Kennedy special interest projects, including the East Harlem School at Exodus House and Reaching Up.
Like his sister Caroline, he disliked his stepfather Aristotle Onassis and allegedly considered him “a joke”.
In 1976, John Jr and his cousin visited an earthquake disaster zone at Rabinal in Guatemala, helping with heavy building work and distributing food.
The local priest said that they “ate what the people of Rabinal, ate and dressed in Guatemalan clothes and slept in tents like most of the earthquake victims,” adding that the two “did more for their country’s image” in Guatemala “than a roomful of ambassadors”.
On his 16th birthday, Kennedy’s Secret Service protection ended and he spent the summer of 1978 working as a wrangler in Wyoming.
From 1989, Kennedy headed Reaching Up, a nonprofit group that provided educational and other opportunities for workers who helped people with disabilities.
William Ebenstein, executive director of Reaching Up, said: “He was always concerned with the working poor, and his family always had an interest in helping them.”
That same year, he earned a J.D. degree from the New York University School of Law.
He then failed the New York bar exam twice before passing on his third try in July 1990.
After failing the exam for a second time, Kennedy vowed that he would take it continuously until he was ninety-five years old or passed.
On August 29, 1991, Kennedy won his first case as a prosecutor.
He later went on to work as a journalist.
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How did he die and who was he with?
John Jr married Carolyn Bessette in 1996 in a private ceremony on Cumberland Island, Georgia.
In April 1998, he received his pilot’s license, which he had dreamed about since he was a child.
On July 16, 1999, Kennedy departed from Fairfield, New Jersey, at the controls of his Piper Saratoga light aircraft.
He was traveling with his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette, to attend the wedding of his cousin Rory Kennedy at Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Carolyn and Lauren were passengers sitting in the second row of seats.
The 38-year-old had checked in with the control tower at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport, but the plane was reported missing after it failed to arrive on schedule.
On July 19, 1999, fragments of his plane were recovered from the Atlantic Ocean after being detected by sonar technology.
The next day, divers found part of the shattered plane strewn over a broad area of seabed 120 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
On July 21, 1999, three bodies were recovered from the ocean floor by Navy divers.
Divers found Carolyn and Lauren’s bodies near the twisted and broken fuselage, while John Jr’s body was still strapped into the pilot’s seat.
They all died on impact.
His last will and testament stipulated that his personal belongings, property, and holdings were to be “evenly distributed” among his sister Caroline’s three children, who were among fourteen beneficiaries in his will.
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