Tragic Details About Caroline Kennedy's Life

During the second half of the 20th century, the only real American equivalent to Britain's royal family would have been the Kennedys. Thanks to the efforts of patriarch Joe Kennedy, the family became a powerful political dynasty due to the political success of his three sons. After serving as a congressman and then senator, John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States in 1960. His brothers, Robert and Edward "Teddy" Kennedy, also entered politics.

While Teddy enjoyed a long and distinguished career in the Senate, both JFK and RFK were felled by assassins. As the family became beset by myriad misfortunes over the years, the public began referring to a so-called "Kennedy curse" in the wake of the tragedies that continued to plague the family, decade after decade. 

No member of the family has felt that more acutely than Caroline Kennedy, daughter of JFK and wife Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (who took on that name when she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968). Ever since her father's murder, she's borne witness to the tragedy surrounding the Kennedy family and has certainly not escaped it herself.

Caroline Kennedy was all of three years old when she, her parents, and her infant brother John F. Kennedy Jr. (nicknamed John John) moved into the White House. During her father's brief presidency, he and his wife, Jacqueline, revealed the happy news that they were expecting another child. 

In the summer of 1963, the Kennedys were in Cape Cod when the first lady went into labor, five weeks ahead of schedule. The baby, named Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, was born in distress, suffering severe respiratory problems. Despite the best efforts of doctors, the baby survived for just 39 hours. The newborn's burial in Massachusetts took place during a private ceremony, attended only by members of the immediate family — except the baby's mother, who was still hospitalized in Cape Cod.

"At one point at the end of the funeral, Jack would not let go of the tiny little coffin containing his son. He held it in his arms and refused to move," Christopher Anderson, author of "These Few Precious Days: the Final Year of Jack with Jackie," told Inside Edition. The newborn's death was impactful on the first family, and young Caroline would have clearly experienced her parents' grieving their tragic loss. However, she had no idea that an even greater loss was on the horizon.

Caroline Kennedy's life was changed inextricably on November 22, 1963, when assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's bullets took the life of John F. Kennedy while he visited Dallas, Texas. While Americans mourned the loss of a beloved president, the grief the six-year-old experienced was far more personal. 

In various interviews over the years, Kennedy has taken the public inside her relationship with her dad, and she's made it clear that the pain of losing her father was something she'd never truly been able to escape. "I've thought about him and missed him every day of my life," she said in a video (via YouTube) produced for the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation to commemorate what would have been her father's 100th birthday. "But growing up without him was made easier by all the people who kept him in their hearts, who told me that he inspired them to work and fight and believe in a better world, to give something back to this country that has given so much to so many."

After John F. Kennedy's murder, his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, stepped up to play a paternal role in the lives of Caroline and her younger brother. "He was very, very good to them," Kathy McKeon, who'd written the memoir "Jackie's Girl," about her experience as Jackie Kennedy's longtime assistant, told People of RFK. 

When RFK was shot dead during a 1968 event for his presidential campaign, his niece and nephew were left heartbroken. "It was a very sad day, it was a sad day for everybody," recalled McKeon. Her other uncle, Edward "Ted" Kennedy, did whatever he could to fill what had become two voids in their young lives.

Caroline praised her uncle when she introduced him during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. "In our family, he has never missed a graduation, a first communion, or the chance to walk one of his nieces down the aisle," she told the audience, as reported by NCPR. "He has a special relationship with each of us, and his 60 great nieces and nephews all know that the best cookies and the best laughs are always found at Uncle Teddy's."

After her father's assassination and her mother's marriage to Aristotle Onassis, Caroline Kennedy's childhood was far from typical. While growing up, she was constantly under the watchful camera lenses of stalking paparazzi, the cross she had to bear as the daughter of one of the world's most famous celebrities. That said, Jackie Kennedy Onassis tried to ensure her children grew up as normally as possible under what were undeniably abnormal circumstances. That was evidenced in her decade-long legal battle with notorious paparazzo Ron Galella, taking him to court twice in an effort to prevent him from photographing Caroline and her brother.

In 1970, 12-year-old Caroline spoke to the New York Times about what her life was like, insisting she was nonplussed by all the attention. "I don't think of myself as famous," she said. "I'm not really [bothered by too many reporters or photographers. It seems they're only around when I'm with my mother." She was also not someone prone to wallow in the misery of her past tragedies. "She is most at ease talking about subjects that are not too personal," one of her mother's friends told the Times. "It's an unspoken thing that you only bring up light, amusing subjects when you are together."

However, Caroline's classmates admitted to a certain degree of anxiety when considering including her, with one recalling a possibly apocryphal account of Caroline being forced to be accompanied by her nurse when invited to a slumber party. "I don't think I would like her life," the girl observed.

Given the tragedy she experienced in childhood, Caroline Kennedy was understandably close to her mother and brother. In 1993, Jackie Onassis took a nasty spill off her horse while foxhunting. When she was seen by a doctor in an ER, she received a surprising diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Sadly, the disease was in its advanced stages. In May 1994, the disease took her life, when she was just 64 years old. By that point, Caroline had already gotten married (she and husband Edwin Schlossberg tied the knot in 1986) and was raising three children of her own.

"I know my mother so well, so it's hard for me to remember that people have a certain image of her, but they don't really know her personality," Caroline said in a 2011 interview with Parade, paying tribute to her late mother. "I think a lot of her courage, strength and dignity came from within. She had a very strong moral code, self-discipline and commitment to me and John and to my father's memory that made her able to continue."

Just five years after her mother's death, Caroline Kennedy experienced another heartbreaking loss when her brother, John F. Kennedy Jr., died alongside his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, bringing their heartbreaking love story to a fatal end when the small plane they were flying crashed en route from Cape Cod to Martha's Vineyard. He was 38 years old. 

When looking back on the complicated life of JFK Jr., one thing that remained steadfast throughout his life was his tight relationship with his sister. Bonded by the multiple tragedies they experienced, losing her brother at such a young age was clearly a devastating blow for Caroline. She has seldom spoken of her brother since his death, but shared some rare comments in 2003, during the dedication ceremony for the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard's Institute of Politics (via YouTube).

"More than anyone that I've ever known, John had a way of looking at the world that was all his own, and he was not afraid to go his own way," she said when honoring her late sibling, reminding the audience that he'd turned down the opportunity to attend Harvard — where his father and uncles went — and instead went to Brown University. "John would also get a giant kick out of this event, and I know the joke would be at my expense somehow. 'You went to Harvard and now they're naming half the building after me,'" she added.

While her brother was being groomed to enter the family business before his tragic death cut those plans short, Caroline Kennedy also decided to enter the political arena. When Hilary Clinton vacated her New York Senate seat in 2008 in order to make a failed bid for president, Kennedy threw her hat into the ring to run for the seat that had once been held by her late uncle, Robert F. Kennedy. Just two months after launching her campaign, Kennedy announced that she was withdrawing.

In a statement (reported by ABC News), she cited "personal reasons" for her decision to drop out of the race. Her about-face reportedly irked New York's governor, David Paterson, and sources close to him allegedly leaked stories to the press claiming her withdrawal had been due to a "tax problem and a potential nanny issue." However, Ted Sorensen, who'd once been special counsel and adviser to Caroline's father, told ABC News he believed that she dropped out because she was reluctant to open herself up to the level of scrutiny that a Senate run would generate. "Kennedy all her life has, like her mother, cherished first and foremost her family and her privacy," said Sorensen.

Meanwhile, her uncle Ted Kennedy had been undergoing treatment for brain cancer and had just been recuperating from seizures he'd been suffering. However, a source told the outlet that her uncle's medical issues had no bearing on her decision. He died not long after that, passing away at 77 in August 2009.

Just a few months after abandoning her Senate campaign, Caroline Kennedy was in line for another high-profile job when she was put forward by new President Barack Obama to become the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. While her family bona fides would seemingly have made her a shoo-in — her father was famously America's first-ever Catholic commander in chief — she was ultimately spurned by the Vatican before Obama formally nominated her.

The reason had to do with some previous statements she'd made supporting abortion rights and lifting a ban on stem cell research, which placed her squarely in opposition to church dogma during the tenure of ultra-conservative Pope Benedict XVI. As The Guardian reported, conservative Catholic associations in the U.S. criticized her potential appointment as "inappropriate" and "a calculated insult to the Holy See."

However, a spokesman for the Vatican told The Times that it was inaccurate to describe the situation as a rejection of Kennedy, given that the U.S. government hadn't officially submitted any candidates, "and therefore it is not true that they have been rejected." Raymond Flynn, a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, explained that Kennedy's pro-abortion stance ensured she would be a "problematic" candidate. "It's imperative, it's essential that the person who represents us to the Holy See be a person who has a pro-life values," Flynn told the Boston Herald.

While Caroline Kennedy's ambassadorship to the Vatican was dead on arrival, President Barack Obama had another gig in mind for her. In 2013, Obama nominated Kennedy to be America's first female ambassador to Japan, and she served in that capacity until 2017. Despite a lack of diplomatic experience, Kennedy was admired by her Japanese counterparts and established a solid rapport with President Shinzo Abe.

As Kennedy told The New York Times, she felt that her trailblazing role would help other women similarly break the glass ceiling in the world of diplomacy. "I think visible women in positions of leadership does help change attitudes," she said in January 2017. The election of Donald Trump in November 2016 put an end to her tenure as ambassador to Japan. The following January, shortly before Trump was sworn in, she announced her resignation. 

When Joe Biden succeeded Trump, America's 46th POTUS nominated her as U.S. ambassador to Australia. History didn't quite repeat, however, when she announced in September 2024 that she was planning to leave her post the following year, regardless of who the next president would be.

In November 2025, Caroline Kennedy's daughter, writer Tatiana Schlossberg, published an essay in The New Yorker. Titled "A Battle With My Blood," the piece revealed that she'd been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia — and that her diagnosis was terminal. In the heartbreaking essay, Schlossberg wrote about how she'd spent her life trying to insulate her mother from the many tragedies that had marked her past.

"For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry," she wrote in her heartbreaking essay. "Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family's life, and there's nothing I can do to stop it," she continued.

Tragically, Schlossberg learned of her diagnosis while she was hospitalized after the birth of her second child with husband George Moran. She lamented that her illness had prevented her from being able to take care of her newborn daughter due to the risk of infection, explaining that she was forced to miss out on her daughter's first 18 months of life. "I don't know who, really, she thinks I am, and whether she will feel or remember, when I am gone, that I am her mother," she wrote.

The second presidency of Donald Trump delivered a member of the Kennedy family into his cabinet, Caroline Kennedy's cousin, Robert Kennedy Jr. However, it's fair to say that RFK Jr. had become the black sheep of the family at that point, thanks to his abandonment of the Democratic party and his controversial anti-vaccine stance.

Ahead of her cousin's confirmation hearings to become secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Caroline went public to read a letter (via X) that she'd sent to the senators who'd be voting at the hearing. "I've known Bobby my whole life. It's no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because Bobby himself is a predator," Kennedy said, recalling how he would toss mice and recently hatched chicks into a blender, and then feed them to his hawks. "It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence," she continued.

She also accused her cousin of exploiting their fathers' assassinations to score political points for himself. "Bobby continues to grandstand off my father's assassination and that of his own father. It's incomprehensible to me that someone who is willing to exploit their own painful family tragedies for publicity would be put in charge of America's life and death situations," she added, admitting she'd found his behavior so egregious that she'd wanted to speak out sooner. "It also wasn't easy to remain silent last year when Bobby expropriated my father's image and distracted President Kennedy's legacy to advance his own failed presidential campaign and then grovel to Donald Trump for a job," she added.

Mere weeks after Caroline Kennedy's daughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, revealed her diagnosis of terminal cancer, the disease took her. On December 30, 2025, Kennedy shared the sad news in a heartbreaking Instagram post. "Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning," she wrote. "She will always be in our hearts."

She signed the note by listing the names of her widowed husband, George Moran, and their two children, Edwin and Josephine. She then listed her own name, along with that of husband Ed Schlossberg and Tatiana's siblings, Jack and Rose, and her cousin, Rory Kennedy ,whose brother, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was conspicuous by his absence.

Losing her daughter at such a young age — Tatiana was just 35 — is a blow that no parent wants to experience. For Caroline Kennedy, saying goodbye to her daughter under such fraught circumstances is something unimaginable to most, but she can take solace in the support of her close-knit family during such a tragic time.