10 Years Later: Remembering JFK Jr.
Kennedy's Friend Tells of a Man Who Wanted to Be President and a Father
A decade has elapsed since an ill-fated flight ended in the death of Camelot's son.
The media and the nation watched intensely as rescuers searched for 38-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr.'s lost plane. He had piloted the aircraft that carried his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette.
"I didn't have any hope. Planes don't get lost, so I had this terrible sense of horror for my friend and I also had a personal sense of, 'Oh, my God, I'm going to be mourning my friend my whole life,'" said Kennedy's friend of 20 years Rob Littell.
Littell's intuition was correct. Kennedy and his passengers died when their plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean as it made its way toward Martha's Vineyard for a Kennedy cousin's wedding.
Once again the country had to mourn the untimely death of a Kennedy -- one who had come to represent a critical link to the nation's favorite fairy tale. Even today, Kennedy's close friends, like Littell, still grieve for what could have been.
"He wanted to go home. He wanted to go to the White House. He wanted to become the president of the United States," Littell said. "Over the years that I knew him he had been preparing for that."
Who Was JFK Jr.?
Kennedy had been in the spotlight almost since birth. He was born just 17 days after his father won the White House and was still an infant when his father and namesake became president.
The nation was captivated by the Kennedys and their small children.
But the glare intensified following John F. Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. The image of a 3-year-old JFK Jr. saluting his father's casket on his young birthday was ingrained in the nation's cultural collective memory.
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