Caroline Kennedy

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Caroline Kennedy was a small girl riding a pony named Macaroni when a news photograph of her became the seed of a pop song. The picture showed her circling the White House grounds. It inspired singer-songwriter Neil Diamond to write "Sweet Caroline." He revealed the connection only when he performed the song for her 50th birthday.

  Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, born in 1957, is the daughter of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. A childhood that public leaves a strange inheritance. Strangers arrive already feeling that they know you, and the name opens doors you never knocked on.

  What does a person do with an inheritance like that? How did she build a working life as a lawyer, author, school fundraiser and diplomat? And what happened when she reached for elected office herself?

  7854

• 2. A Girl in the White House

  ›

  Lee Radziwill, her mother's sister, and Caroline Ewing Bouvier, a maternal great-great-grandmother, gave Caroline her name. She was born at New York Hospital, while her father was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. A year before her birth, her parents had lost a stillborn daughter named Arabella.

  Her brother, John Jr., arrived in 1960, two days before her third birthday. In 1963 another brother, Patrick, died two days after being born prematurely. Until her father became president, the family lived in Georgetown, in Washington, D.C.

  At the White House, gifts for the small daughter arrived from around the world. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev sent a puppy, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson sent a Yucatan pony. A short-lived comic strip was drawn about her. In 1964 a British pirate radio station took her name and became Radio Caroline.

  Historians described her as "a trifle remote and a bit shy at times" yet "remarkably unspoiled." Her paternal grandmother, Rose Kennedy, explained why. Caroline's cousins, said Rose, did not let her take special precedence, because some of them danced and swam better than she did.

  On the 22nd of November 1963, Caroline was five years old and her father was assassinated. Her nanny, Maud Shaw, took her and John Jr. to the home of their maternal grandmother, Janet Bouvier Auchincloss. Auchincloss insisted that Shaw be the one to tell Caroline. That evening the children went back to the White House, and Shaw broke the news while Caroline was in bed.

  Jacqueline had wanted to tell the children herself. When Shaw learned this, it opened a rift between the nanny and the widow. On the 6th of December, Jacqueline, Caroline and John Jr. left the White House for Georgetown. Their new house became a tourist attraction, so the family moved on again, to a penthouse apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue.

  89101411

• 3. Years of Upheaval

  ›

  In 1967, Caroline christened the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy in a widely publicized ceremony at Newport News, Virginia. That summer her mother took the children on a six-week "sentimental journey" to Ireland. They met President Eamon de Valera and visited the Kennedy ancestral home at Dunganstown.

  Photographers crowded around Caroline and John as they played in a pond. Their mother telephoned Ireland's Department of External Affairs and asked for a statement that the family wanted to be left in peace. After that, photographers who kept trying to photograph the three of them were arrested by local police and jailed.

  Her uncle Robert F. Kennedy became a major presence in the children's lives, and Caroline saw him as a surrogate father. In 1968 he too was assassinated. Jacqueline was blunt about what she felt. "If they're killing Kennedys," she said, "my kids are the number one targets." Several months later she married the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, and the family moved to his island of Skorpios.

  The next year, 11-year-old Caroline attended the funeral of her grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Her cousin David asked how she felt about her stepfather. She answered, "I don't like him."

  In 1970, Jacqueline wrote to her brother-in-law Ted Kennedy. Caroline, she said, had been without a godfather since Robert's death, and she hoped Ted would take the role. He began making regular trips from Washington to see Caroline at school in New York. In 1971, President Richard Nixon invited her back to the White House, her first visit since her father's death, to view his official portrait.

  Onassis died in March 1975, and Caroline returned to Skorpios for the funeral. Later that year she was in London finishing a year-long art course at the Sotheby's auction house. An IRA car bomb had been placed under the car of her hosts, Conservative MP Sir Hugh Fraser and his wife, Antonia. It exploded shortly before they were due to leave for the daily drive to Sotheby's. Caroline had not yet left the house. A neighbor, the oncologist Gordon Hamilton Fairley, was walking his dog past and was killed.

  1516231417

• 4. Museum, Law and Marriage

  ›

  Kindergarten for Caroline meant classes organized by her mother inside the White House. Before the move to New York she was registered at the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart. She then attended the Brearley School and the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan. In 1975 she graduated from Concord Academy in Massachusetts.

  In 1976 she worked as a photographer's assistant at the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. The following summer she interned at the New York Daily News for $156 a week, fetching coffee and changing typewriter ribbons. Reportedly she sat alone on a bench for two hours on her first day. Former News reporter Richard Licata explained why: "Everyone was too scared." She also wrote for Rolling Stone about visiting Graceland shortly after the death of Elvis Presley.

  In 1980 she earned a Bachelor of Arts in fine arts from Radcliffe College. She had considered photojournalism, but realized she could never make her living observing people who were too busy watching her. Instead the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York hired her as a research assistant in its Film and Television Department. She became the liaison between museum staff and outside producers shooting footage there. She helped coordinate the Sesame Street special Don't Eat the Pictures and was credited as its coordinating producer for the museum.

  On the 4th of December 1984, a man telephoned the museum, gave his name and address, and reported that a bomb had been planted there. Kennedy was threatened by the call. He was arrested three days later. In 1988 she earned a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, graduating in the top 10 percent of her class. She passed the New York State bar exam the following year.

  Before settling down, Kennedy was romantically linked to Mark Shand, Sebastian Taylor and Jonathan Guinness, of the Guinness family. At the Met she met exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg. They married in 1986 at Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville, Massachusetts. Her cousin Maria Shriver was matron of honor, and Ted walked her down the aisle. She kept her own surname.

  The couple had three children: Rose, born in 1988, Tatiana, born in 1990, and John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, known as Jack, born in 1993.

  3032333725

• 5. Family Ties and Losses

  ›

  Because Caroline and John Jr. were raised in Manhattan, they were somewhat separated from their cousins in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. The two grew very close, especially after their mother died in 1994.

  In 1999, John Jr. died in a plane crash. Caroline became the only survivor of her father's immediate family. She preferred not to hold a public memorial service. His remains were cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the Atlantic Ocean off Martha's Vineyard, where he met his fate.

  John Jr. had left her his half ownership of George magazine. Caroline believed her brother would not have wanted it to continue without him. The magazine ceased publication two years later.

  Her mother's 375-acre estate, Red Gate Farm, sits in Aquinnah, formerly Gay Head, on Martha's Vineyard. Caroline owns it today.

  In January 2025, she wrote a letter to U.S. senators, with an accompanying video, opposing her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services. She called him a "predator." She described his views and actions on vaccinations as "hypocritical" and financially motivated. Her son Jack posted the letter on his Instagram page, and other Kennedy family members supported it.

  On the 30th of December 2025, her daughter Tatiana died of leukemia at the age of 35. Jack is the most public of her three children.

  4250535654

• 6. Books and Public Schools

  ›

  In 1991, Kennedy and co-author Ellen Alderman published In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action. In an interview about it, Kennedy said the pair wanted to show why the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution was written. Their second book on civil liberties, The Right to Privacy, followed in 1995.

  Kennedy also edited four New York Times best-selling volumes. The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis appeared in 2001, and Profiles in Courage for Our Time in 2002. A Patriot's Handbook came out in 2003, and A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children in 2005. She wrote A Family Christmas in 2007, and in April 2011 she launched She Walks in Beauty, a poetry collection, at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Dorchester.

  From 2002 through 2004, Kennedy directed the Office of Strategic Partnerships for the New York City Department of Education, appointed by School Chancellor Joel Klein. The job was three days a week and paid a salary of $1. Its goal was to raise private money for the city's public schools, and she helped raise more than $65 million. She became a vice chair of the board of The Fund for Public Schools and is now its honorary director.

  In 1989, Kennedy and other family members created the Profile in Courage Award, for public officials whose politically courageous leadership echoes her father's book Profiles in Courage. In 2001 she presented it to former president Gerald Ford for his controversial pardon of Richard M. Nixon, nearly 30 years earlier.

  She serves as president of the Kennedy Library Foundation and as an adviser to the Harvard Institute of Politics. She sits on the boards of the Commission on Presidential Debates and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She is honorary chair of the American Ballet Theatre.

  Often she also stands in for the whole family. She represented the Kennedys at the funerals of Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Lady Bird Johnson, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush. She attended the 1997 dedication of the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and the November 2004 dedication of the Bill Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock. On the 28th of August 2013, she marked the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

  6362666768

• 7. Politics Calls

  ›

  At the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, Kennedy spoke in support of Al Gore, with whom she felt a kinship because their fathers had served together in the Senate. The city echoed 1960, when the party nominated her father there.

  On the 27th of January 2008, a New York Times op-ed titled "A President Like My Father" announced her endorsement of Barack Obama. Her uncle Ted Kennedy backed him as well. She closed with these lines: "I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president." She went on to campaign for Obama in Florida, Indiana and Ohio.

  Federal Election Commission records show she had given $2,300 to Hillary Clinton's presidential committee in June 2007. In September 2007 she gave the same amount to Obama's. On the 4th of June 2008, Obama named her, with Eric Holder and Jim Johnson, to co-chair his Vice Presidential Search Committee. Johnson withdrew a week later.

  Filmmaker Michael Moore urged her to "Pull a Cheney" and pick herself, as Dick Cheney had done in 2000 while heading George W. Bush's search. Instead, on the 23rd of August, Obama announced Senator Joe Biden of Delaware. At the Denver convention, Kennedy introduced a tribute film about Ted Kennedy. Topps even put her on a card in a set about Obama's road to the White House.

  She was among the 35 national co-chairs of the 2012 re-election campaign, and on the 27th of June 2012 she appeared in Nashua and Manchester, New Hampshire. Talk of a run in the 2020 primaries never turned into one.

  In December 2008, Obama's choice of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state opened Clinton's New York Senate seat. Governor David Paterson would fill it by appointment through 2010. Kennedy expressed interest in the seat that her uncle Robert F. Kennedy had held from January 1965 until his death in June 1968. Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, Assemblyman Vito Lopez, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former mayor Ed Koch backed her.

  Critics noted she had skipped a number of primaries and general elections since registering in New York City in 1988. Through a spokeswoman she outlined her positions. She supported same-sex marriage, was pro-choice, opposed the death penalty, wanted the Federal Assault Weapons Ban restored and thought NAFTA should be re-examined. She had opposed the Iraq War from the beginning and believed Jerusalem should be Israel's undivided capital. She refused to release financial details to the press unless Paterson picked her, though she did complete a confidential 28-page questionnaire.

  In an Associated Press interview she said, "I am an unconventional choice." She added that she would have to work twice as hard as anybody else. Late that December, several media outlets criticized her unclear interviews. She said "you know" 168 times in a 30-minute conversation with NY1.

  Shortly before midnight on the 22nd of January 2009, she withdrew for "personal reasons" and declined to say more. The next day, Paterson chose Representative Kirsten Gillibrand.

  In April 2009, reports said Kennedy had been rejected as ambassador to the Holy See, a post she had not publicly sought. The alleged reason was her support for abortion rights. Holy See Press Director Federico Lombardi debunked the story, saying the Vatican had received no such nomination.

  5869737482

• 8. Ambassador

  ›

  On the 24th of July 2013, President Obama announced Kennedy as his nominee for ambassador to Japan, to succeed John Roos. The prospective nomination had first been reported in February. On the 19th of September 2013, she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee her focus would be military ties, trade and student exchange. She was confirmed on the 16th of October by voice vote, the first woman to hold the post.

  Secretary of State John Kerry swore her in on the 12th of November. She reached Japan three days later. On the 19th of November, NHK broadcast live as she arrived at the Imperial Palace to present her credentials to Emperor Akihito.

  In December 2013, she visited Nagasaki to meet survivors of the 1945 atomic bombing. In February 2014 she traveled to Okinawa, home to large U.S. military bases, and was met by protesters with "no base" placards. Their concerns included sexual assaults and the environmental impact. She met Governor Hirokazu Nakaima, re-elected in 2010 in opposition to the base, and pledged to reduce the burden of the American presence.

  On the 5th of August 2014, she attended the Hiroshima memorial ceremony, the second U.S. ambassador to do so. She had first visited the city in 1978 with her uncle Ted. In April 2015 she toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, called it a "solemn honor," and planted dogwoods in a U.S. project to spread 3,000 of them across Japan.

  On the 6th of August 2015, the 70th anniversary of the bombing, she attended with Under Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, the first senior American official at the ceremony. Representatives of 100 countries were present, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reiterated support for abolishing nuclear weapons. Nine days later, Kennedy was named sponsor of the second USS John F. Kennedy, a supercarrier. She christened it on the 7th of December 2019. Navy tradition gives a person one ship, so she is a rare exception. She left her post on the 18th of January 2017, and Japan awarded her the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun in 2021.

  On the 15th of December 2021, President Biden nominated her as ambassador to Australia. Senate hearings were held on the 7th of April 2022. The committee reported her favorably on the 4th of May, and the Senate confirmed her by voice vote the next day. She was sworn in on the 10th of June and presented her credentials to Governor-General David Hurley on the 25th of July.

  At her arrival press conference, she called out a male journalist for speaking over a female reporter. In Washington she worked to win congressional support for transferring nuclear-powered submarines to Australia under AUKUS. In August 2023 she raised the prospect of a plea bargain to resolve the extradition of Australian journalist Julian Assange from Britain to the United States.

  Also in 2023, she traveled to the Solomon Islands with her son Jack. They witnessed a recreation of part of the 1.2 km swim her father made in 1943, after a Japanese destroyer rammed and sank his navy ship. In September 2024, she announced she would leave her ambassadorial post whatever the result of the presidential election.

  45149100