JFK's Caroline: keeper of family flame, diplomat

The family's nanny gently informed Caroline that her father had been shot “and they couldn't make him better.”


With that, Caroline's world was shaken, not for the first time or the last.

Three months earlier, a little brother, Patrick, had died shortly after birth. Then Robert F. Kennedy, the uncle who stepped in to serve as a sort of surrogate father after JFK's assassination, was himself shot and killed five years later. After losing her mother to cancer in 1994, Caroline lost her brother John in a 1999 plane crash at age 38.

Through it all, level-headed Caroline soldiered on, lending her support to the causes and ideals her parents and brother had championed.

She's served as president of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and chaired the senior advisory committee of the Institute of Politics at Harvard, set up as a memorial to Kennedy,
Trey Grayson, director of the institute, describes Kennedy as quiet and down to earth, willing to be blunt when needed, and gracious at managing the daily challenges that come with nurturing her father's legacy.