JFK Jr.'s short life and daring choices: 'Someone who lives in a cage, finding a way to escape'

For five days in July, 1999, America was on the edge of its seat -- and on the fifth day, the nation's heart broke.

On July 16, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and her sister Lauren Bessette had taken flight from New Jersey in Kennedy's small Piper Saratoga plane en route to Massachusetts for his cousin Rory's wedding -- and seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

On July 21, the worst fears of Americans and Kennedy fans around the globe were realized. The three bodies were retrieved by U.S. Navy divers from the broken plane on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

“It was earth-shattering,” Kennedy's personal assistant and ABC News consultant RoseMarie Terenzio said. “It was unbelievable. It was as [if] the earth had cracked in half somehow. And I could not understand how this could happen. To him of all people.”

The tragic plane crash brought an all-too-soon end to a remarkable public life that began playing out when Kennedy was only a small child.

Three-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr.'s heartbreaking and iconic salute to his murdered father, President John F. Kennedy, on Nov. 25, 1963 is seared into the nation's collective memory. From that day forward, Kennedy became something of a living national treasure.

“That is the moment when John Kennedy [Jr.] became who he was,” said Paul Wilmot, who knew him.
The life of John F. Kennedy Jr.

According to JFK biographer Christopher Andersen, while Jackie did attend her son's performances in college, “she did not think this was the life for him."

Kennedy entered law school at New York University in 1986, and went on to work at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. 

In 1994, America learned that Jackie Kennedy Onassis had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. She died that May.

After her passing, Kennedy did his best to live up to her advice of forging his own path.- Read More

JFK Jr.'s short life and daring choices

JFK Jr.'s short life and daring choices: 'Someone who lives in a cage ...