“There’s probably no one who’s ever walked this earth that was the focus of such media attention their entire life,” Gillon says.
Twenty years after the plane crash that killed John, his wife,Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and sister-in-lawLauren Bessette, Gillon’s biography,America’s Reluctant Prince, which is excerpted in this week’s PEOPLE, reveals a JFK Jr. more complex, more introspective and more human than the world ever knew.
With his confidence and charm, John carried the weight of history with an uncommon grace. But, as Gillon reveals, those expectations also led him to question who he really was and he was in therapy almost his whole life.
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“John was pretty open about his therapy,” Gillon tells PEOPLE. “There was one day a week where you knew where John was. There were two things John always had scheduled: his massage and his therapy appointment.”
Still, John had his struggles. While he had a very close bond to his sister, Caroline Kennedy, Gillon’s book details the mounting tension between them. In the final months before John was killed, the two were barely on speaking terms.
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There was friction over their spouses: Caroline’s husband, Ed Schlossberg, and John’s wife, Carolyn. “John just never liked Ed [Schlossberg]” a friend told Gillon. “And Carolyn told John that his sister and her husband, Ed, viewed him as ‘the family f— up.’ ”
There were other arguments as well, says Gillon, who notes “John believed that he and Caroline were the only two Kennedys, the only descendants of their mother and father, and the only two who could make decisions related to the family.”
In the days before he died, John had one last conversation with his sister.
“She was gracious,” Gillon says. “They agreed they needed to do a better job of staying in touch. John loved Caroline. I think they probably both thought they had time to work it out.”
John F. Kennedy Jr.David Hume Kennerly/Getty
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In the book’s final chapters, Gillon illuminates how, despite the challenges in his life, there was a resolve to John as he became more clear about his future and was finally able to answer a key question: What was he here to do?
“John didn’t want to enter politics because of his last name and not because people expected him to,” Gillon says. “He wanted to develop his own identity, and what he discovered was politics was part of his DNA.”
In his last months, Gillon says, “John was becoming more comfortable with his political ambitions. He wanted to run for governor of New York and his ultimate goal was to return to the White House.”
Gillon describes a moment, years earlier, when John was watching the 1989 presidential inauguration of George H. W. Bush on television with a close friend.
Looking back, he says, “I think in the year before he died, John planned to be president of the United States at some point.”
source: people.com
