How was Ted affected by the death of John Kennedy, Jr.?
A. That bothered him a lot. He carries a lot of scar tissue on these things. He has delivered more eulogies than anyone who is not an ordained minister that I can think of. But Ted’s role is a father figure in the family. It is more obvious when it comes to Robert’s kids. Jackie raised her children at a little distance from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis. But yet there are pictures of Ted and John and Caroline as children, and they are obviously close. Caroline took on an interest and responsibility for the Kennedy Library. John took onto the Institute of Politics at Harvard. At first, he wasn’t terribly interested in it. Ted kept getting him interested in it. John would have become head of the board of directors of the Institute this last fall had he lived. In that wonderful eulogy that he gave, someone asked John “what’s the first thing you would do if you woke up one morning and discovered that you were president,” and John replied, “I guess I would call up Uncle Ted and gloat!” Th
