THE LOVELY ONES: Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy

Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy

(Carolyn Jeane Bessette)

1966-1999

Did you know...

 1. She was born Carolyn Jeanne Bessette on January 7, 1966 in White Plains, New York.

2. She was the youngest child of William J. Bessette, an engineer, and Ann Messina, an administrator in the New York City public school system. She had two older sisters, twins Lauren and Lisa.

3. Her parents divorced when she was very young and her mother later remarried Richard Freeman, an orthopedic surgeon. The Freeman/Bessette family moved to Old Greenwich, Connecticut, while Bessette's father stayed in White Plains

4. She was named as the 'Ultimate Beautiful Person' in her St. Mary's High School yearbook.

5. She graduated from Boston University of Education in 1988 with a degree in elementary education but shortly after graduating, chose a job as a salesperson for Calvin Klein. It has long been rumored that Calvin Klein's former wife Kelly, orchestrated the meeting between Carolyn and John F. Kennedy Jr.

6. She first met John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1992, while he was dating actress Daryl Hannah. Bessette and Kennedy began dating in 1994 and after a somewhat tumultous courtship, got married on September 21, 1996.

7. Although she and John F. Kennedy Jr. were both Catholic, they married in a tiny Baptist chapel on Cumberland Island, Georgia to avoid the media as best as they could. The newly married Kennedy couple flew off to Istanbul, Turkey to celebrate their honeymoon.

8. It has been rumoured that the Kennedy's were having serious relationship difficulties shortly before their untimely deaths and were headed towards divorce. In “America’s Reluctant Prince: The Life of John F. Kennedy Jr.” a biography by Steven M. Gillon, the author states that the couple’s marriage was unraveling due to the constant scrutiny by the press and paparazzi. Gillon went on to say that while JFK Jr was a casual drug user (“John liked pot), he thought that Carolyn's increasing dependancy on cocaine in those last couple of years, elevated her anxiety and amplified her feelings of being 'trapped' in a life she hadn't bargained for.

9. On July 16, 1999, she was travelling by single-engine plane along with her husband and older sister Lauren, to their first stop at Martha's Vineyard to drop off her sister and then on to Hyannisport for a Kennedy family wedding. The light plane Kennedy was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the western coast of Martha's Vineyard. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that it was highly likely that "The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation" caused the fatal crash.

10. On July 21, navy divers recovered the bodies of JFK Jr., Carolyn and her sister Lauren Bessette from the wreckage of the plane, which was lying under 116 feet of water about eight miles off the Vineyard’s shores. The cremated remains of the three were buried at sea the next day during a ceremony on the USS Briscoe, a navy destroyer. A private mass for JFK Jr. and Carolyn was held on July 23 at the Church of St. Thomas More in Manhattan, where the late Jackie Kennedy Onassis worshipped.

To learn more about the iconic Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Lily Lemontree recommends What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love by Carole Radziwill