For Carole Radziwill, Meghan Markle’s tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey drew an eerie comparison to her friend Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s tragic last few months alive. The former “RHONY” star tweeted that Meghan Markle marrying into the royal family in 2018 sadly reminded her of Carolyn Bessette becoming a Kennedy by marrying John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1996. “I just watched the M&H sit down,” Radziwill tweeted early Monday. “Wow. I love how people say Meghan knew what she was getting into… people said the same thing about Carolyn Bessette when she married into the Kennedy family. You could never know. Meghan said it right, the perception is nothing like the reality.” Carole Radziwill’s late husband, Anthony Radziwill, was JFK Jr.’s first cousin; Anthony’s mother was Lee Radziwill, the younger sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
In the bombshell interview with Winfrey that aired Sunday night, Meghan Markle and husband Prince Harry came out swinging against Buckingham Palace after leaving their official duties and the UK behind for California last year. The couple described facing racist press attacks and Markle, whose mother is African American, receiving death threats. Markle further said the royal institution didn’t do enough to protect her—and even ignored her pleas for help after she became suicidal while pregnant with the couple’s son, Archie. In 2019, Radziwill detailed the media frenzy that often surrounded her close friends Bessette and Kennedy before their tragic deaths in a 1999 plane crash. “There were times when I went to their apartment on Moore Street, and you would see the paparazzi just waiting outside, behind cars, in cars, just on the sidewalk for her to leave her apartment,” Radziwill told Vanity Fair. “A lot of times we wouldn’t leave. We would order foods from Bubby’s on the corner. Who wanted to leave and have to go walk through that? That was, like, every day of John and Carolyn's life for the first year or more.” Source: pagesix.com
Buckingham Palace has responded to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's revealing interview with Oprah Winfrey. "The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan," reads the statement, which was released on Tuesday by Buckingham Palace on behalf of Queen Elizabeth. "The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning," the statement continued. "While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately. Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members." Source: people.com
Carole Radziwill and Hamilton South released their statements after Ed Klein's and Michael Bergin's books were published. Hamilton South, a former publicist for Ralph Lauren, in his eulogy for Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, praised her graceful bearing and special allure: "As one of the persons who eulogized Carolyn Bessette Kennedy at her funeral, I was appalled by Ed Klein's latest exercise in low-rent tabloid titillation. Quality has always been an essential part of what Vanity Fair publishes, and even more than truth, quality is the missing ingredient in Mr. Klein's piece. Instead, he supplied nothing more than an unrecognizable portrait of two people made to sound more like soap opera characters than the generous, admirable people they really were. Mr. Klein's piece is riddled with factual inaccuracy and lacks substantive reporting. His intimate knowledge of their lives is untrue; to the best of my knowledge he never met either one of them. Surely publishing this kind of vile character assassination should require something more than anonymous quotes and a few on-the-record stories from a scorned ex-boyfriend and an eaves-dropping stylist. Stating that Carolyn gave keys to the Tribeca apartment to her fashionista friends so they could come and go as they pleased is so patently absurd that it's laughable. The notion of John recommending that Carolyn seek psychiatric help is also false; in fact, Carolyn had been seeing a psychiatrist on a weekly basis long before her marriage to John, who, for the record, also saw a psychiatrist on a weekly basis. Mr. Klein refers to the spare room where John stored his exercise equipment, where he alludes Carolyn slept, when in fact no such room existed in what was always a one bedroom loft. I know they slept together and sometimes they had breakfast on bed in the morning. Klein rants on cocaine and constant fights. In all the time I spent with them, considerably more than Mr. Klein or any of his other sources did I never saw anything of the sort. Most important, Mr. Klein ignores one fact that matters most. John and Carolyn were two people deeply in love who had a profound effect on each other. This effect spread on everyone who knew them well, and this effect not was related to their fame, but rather to their kindness, generosity, and humility. Had Mr. Klein taken the time to do his own moral inventory instead of someone else's and some decent reporting, he would have learned the truth, nor stupid stories out of thin air."
In 1996, Kenneth Corn met John Kennedy Jr. at Howe Independent School District in Oklahoma. Kenneth Corn worked as public servant and won bids as a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives and the Oklahoma State Senate. He was an active contributor to vital community service endeavors, having served on various executive boards and legislative committees. Eager to take on new challenges—leveraging political experience to champion best practices in public service—among his key accomplishments, he ensured State Legislature on all matters relating to public benefits, funding investment and administration of retirement systems, earning his reputation as a good steward of the taxpayers’ dollars. He provided oversight for Oklahoma’s seven pension systems and investments of assets valued at more than $15.5 Billion. Corn served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1998 to 2002. He ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor of Oklahoma losing to Republican Todd Lamb on November 2, 2010. In 1996, Kenneth Corn was a member at Howe Independent School District, when he was asked to serve on the National School advisory committee. John Kennedy Jr was also serving on the committee. "He was at the signing ceremony for the school-to-work opportunities act in 1994 and I told him 'John, we really appreciate you being on the Council as an employer.' Kennedy Jr was supporting the school-to-work program by allowing young people interested in publishing and journalism to intern and even work at his company (George magazine). People who knew him say Kennedy Jr. wanted all children to have a fair chance in education." Corn says he felt that Kennedy knew why that wasn't happening across America.
"John was the type of person that wanted every child in America to not be left behind to have an opportunity to achieve their dreams. He had a substantial knowledge of past American history, and like his father, he wanted to renovate the school system." Corn also added that Kennedy had qualities very few other renowned people had, such as empathy and a sense of community. "John was easy to talk to and made everyone comfortable. He was really down to earth," said Corn. "You could talk to him about anything. Sometimes when you meet some important name like him, that's an impossible task. John Kennedy Jr. may have thought he was just like everyone else, but the rest of the world knew differently." Source: oksenate.gov
Carolyn Bessette turned the World’s Sexiest Man into the World’s Happiest Man. “It was beyond love at first sight,” close friend Paul Wilmot told The New York Post. “She worshiped him. He worshiped her.” Carolyn Bessette was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was voted “The Ultimate Beautiful Person” by classmates at St. Mary High School. She attended Boston University, where she appeared on the cover of a calendar called “The Girls of B.U.” and dated future hockey star John Cullen, who played for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Bessette eventually went to work at a Calvin Klein boutique in Boston, and was contacted by Wilmot, an executive at the fashion company, who was so impressed he offered her a job as a personal shopper in New York “on the spot.” Her first assignment was to handle celebrity clients and get them their clothes. “She had a lot of patience, because those people weren’t easy to deal with,” Wilmot said. In New York, Bessette dated Alessandro Benetton, of the Italian fashion company, and Calvin Klein model Michael Bergin for a time.
John F. Kennedy Jr., who People magazine named “The Sexiest Man Alive” in 1988, had a long series of public romances. He had lengthy relationships with college classmate Sally Munro, aspiring actress Christina Haag and “Splash” star Daryl Hannah, as well as shorter flings with actress Molly Ringwald and, reportedly, Madonna. John and Carolyn both didn’t know what they were looking for – until they found each other. “The moment they met, their eyes locked. And neither of them ever dated anyone again,” Wilmot said.
Wilmot called Bessette’s beauty captivating. “She was striking. And those eyes – they were the color of the Caribbean sea,” he said. “No wonder the guy took one look at her and flipped.” Kennedy was also drawn to her “sharp sense of humor,” Wilmot said. “She was very funny, and had an enormous sense of warmth about her.” Despite the slew of paparazzi who tried to keep track of Kennedy’s every move, the couple managed to keep their relationship out of the press – at first. “They were very successful at keeping it quiet,” Wilmot said. “It was months before anyone caught on.” The secret came out after Bessette moved into Kennedy’s Tribeca loft, and was greeted one morning by scores of photographers staking out the building. “She was stunned. She didn’t know they’d be there,” Wilmot said. While Kennedy had been one of the world’s most-photographed men for almost his entire life and was used to living under a microscope, Bessette wasn’t. “She had a difficult time adjusting. It was much more difficult than she expected. He was very nurturing, and helped her try to deal with it.”
When Bessette and Kennedy were seen together in public, they were so focused on each other they seemed oblivious to the cameras that followed them. They were just as loving in private, the friend said. “They were deeply in love. They were completely faithful to each other and doting. They anticipated each other’s thoughts and moods, and supported each other through difficult times,” Wilmot said. Just over a year into their relationship, Kennedy asked Bessette to marry him – a secret that was revealed to the public only after Bessette was photographed wearing a diamond and emerald ring. Like the engagement, the public learned about their wedding only after it happened. John Kennedy Jr. wore a single-breasted blue wool suit and his father’s watch. His bride wore a pearl-colored silk crepe gown. After the ceremony, the wedding party moved to the nearby Greyfield Inn, where Kennedy and his wife shared their first dance to the Prince song “Forever in My Life.” “I’m the happiest man alive,” Kennedy said afterward the wedding ceremony. Wilmot said Carolyn tried to “outfox” the press by wearing the same outfit when she’d go to public events, hoping they’d lose interest in taking her picture. “Needless to say, it didn’t work,” he said. While Kennedy spent much of his time indoors working at his political magazine, George, the couple still managed to enjoy the outdoors together and would often go up and stay at his mother’s old estate on Martha’s Vineyard.
“They loved to go out to the Vineyard and relax,” Wilmot said. “They would invite friends over. They were great entertainers and dinner companions. Carolyn was always lively and fun. There was never a dull moment around her.” A neighbor on the Vineyard, Beth Kaeka, 43, said it always seemed the two had “a fairy-tale marriage.” “They were very affectionate. Every time I’d see them, they were holding hands. I used to see them walking down Menemsha Beach. He was always giving her kisses on the cheek. It was so romantic,” she said. “I’d always joke with my husband, ‘Why can’t you be more like John Jr.?'” Albert Fischer, the caretaker of the Kennedys’ Gay Head home since Jacqueline Onassis bought it in 1978, said the relationship between JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette was magical. “Their’s was a love affair. They were so much in love. You could see it in their eyes,” Fischer said. “That’s what makes this even more of a tragedy.” Source: nypost.com
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