Caroline Kennedy

A public figure since the age of three, when she moved into the White House with her parents and baby brother, Caroline Bouvier Kennedy spent her adult life as an attorney, author, and ambassador, but, to many, she will always be best known as the eldest surviving child of U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.

Young Caroline

Caroline Bouvier Kennedy was born on November 27, 1957, in New York City when her father was the junior Democratic senator from Massachusetts. After her mother suffered a miscarriage and stillbirth, Caroline’s birth was a source of great joy for the young couple with lofty political ambitions.

November 1960 would be a pivotal month for young Caroline: on the 8th her father was elected president; on the 25th she welcomed a baby brother, John F. Kennedy, Jr.; and two days later she celebrated her third birthday. On January 20, 1961, the Kennedys moved into the White House, and Caroline and John, Jr., brought a playful energy to the presidential mansion.

Jacqueline Kennedy aimed to make life in the White House as normal and fun for her children as possible, devoting much of her time to them. “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much,” she told a reporter shortly before becoming first lady. As a result, a kindergarten was set up in the White House solarium, and, famously, Caroline was given a pet pony, named Macaroni, which she sometimes rode on the White House lawn. (Macaroni was a gift to the first daughter from Vice Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson.) Much of the American public was enchanted by the vibrant young first family.

JFK’s death

The assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, put an end to Caroline Kennedy’s idyllic White House childhood. Dressed in matching powder blue coats, she and her brother were at their mother’s side for parts of the presidential funeral, which occurred on John Jr.’s third birthday. The family first moved to a house in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., but in 1964 Jacqueline Kennedy bought an apartment in New York City and moved the children there.

Caroline Kennedy has rarely spoken about the loss of her father, but in 2017, in a video for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library marking the 100th anniversary of JFK’s birth, she said:

I have thought about him and missed him every day of my life.

Growing up and further tragedy

Caroline Kennedy attended private school in New York City. On June 6, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy, the children’s beloved Uncle Bobby, who had become a surrogate father to them after the assassination, was himself murdered while running for the presidency. Shortly after that assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, in part to provide additional security for her children. “If they’re killing Kennedys, then my children are targets,” she said after RFK’s assassination. “I want to get out of this country.”

After graduating high school, Caroline Kennedy attended Harvard University’s Radcliffe College and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1980. She went on to study law at Columbia University and graduated in 1988.

A family of her own and still more tragedy

In 1986 Kennedy married Edwin Schlossberg, a museum exhibit designer and author, but she never changed her name to Schlossberg. She walked down the aisle with her lone surviving uncle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. John F. Kennedy, Jr., was the best man. Caroline Kennedy and Schlossberg have three adult children: Rose Kennedy Schlossberg, born in 1988; Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg, born in 1990; and John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, whom the family calls Jack, born in 1993.

In 1994 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was diagnosed with lymphoma; she died in May of that year and was buried next to the president at Arlington National Cemetery. In 1999 a plane John F. Kennedy, Jr., was piloting crashed off the coast of Massachusetts, killing him; his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy; and her sister Lauren Bessette.

At the age of 41, Caroline Kennedy was the sole survivor in her immediate family.

Her own career of public service

Kennedy has spent much of her adult life trying to further the legacy of her family and its commitment to public service. In 1989 she helped create the Profile in Courage Award—named after her father’s book, which won a 1957 Pulitzer Prize—and meant to honor acts of political courage. She is involved in running the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library as its foundation’s honorary president and until 2020 served as an adviser at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She has written a number of books on topics as diverse as the right to privacy and her mother’s favorite poetry.

In the early 2000s the presidential daughter began to become more active in politics, speaking at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. In 2008 she and Sen. Edward Kennedy endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president. She called him the “one candidate who offers the same sense of hope and inspiration” that her father offered. After Obama won the presidency in 2008 and appointed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, Caroline Kennedy briefly expressed interest in being appointed to Clinton’s vacant New York Senate seat. The move surprised some, as she had no political experience beyond her family connections. In January 2009, citing personal reasons, she withdrew her name from consideration.

In 2013 Obama nominated Kennedy to be U.S. ambassador to Japan. While she lacked diplomatic and managerial experience, she was widely admired in Japan and worked closely with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. She was aware of the importance of being a woman in that role in a country where women in leadership positions continued to be rare. “I think visible women in positions of leadership [do] help change attitudes,” she told The New York Times in January 2017.

In December 2021 Pres. Joe Biden nominated Kennedy as the U.S. ambassador to Australia, a role she took up in 2022.

“Sweet Caroline”

The 1969 Neil Diamond pop hit “Sweet Caroline” was inspired by a photograph of young Kennedy and her pony. But that fact was made public only in 2007, after Diamond performed the song for Kennedy’s 50th birthday. Diamond recalled the photograph as “such an innocent, wonderful picture, I immediately felt there was a song in there.”

He had never told anyone about the inspiration for his most enduring song (it is played during the eighth inning of every Boston Red Sox home game), though he thought he might one day tell Kennedy the story. When he did, “she seemed to be struck by it and really, really happy,” he told the Associated Press in 2007.