John F. Kennedy Jr.

He was a son of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and a younger brother of U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy.

Three days after his father was assassinated, he rendered a final salute during the funeral procession on his third birthday.

From his childhood years at the White House, Kennedy was the subject of much media scrutiny and later became a popular social figure in Manhattan.

Trained as a lawyer, he worked as a New York City assistant district attorney for almost four years.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. (November 25, 1960 – July 16, 1999), often referred to as John-John or JFK Jr., was an American attorney, journalist, and magazine publisher.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. was born on November 25, 1960, at Georgetown University Hospital two weeks after his father and namesake, Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy, was elected president.

His father was sworn in as president two months after John Jr. was born.

His parents had a stillborn daughter four years before John Jr.'s birth.

John Jr. had an older sister, Caroline, and a younger brother, Patrick, who died two days after his premature birth in 1963 of respiratory distress syndrome.

His putative nickname, "John-John", came from a reporter who misheard JFK calling him "John" twice in quick succession; the name was not used by his family.

John Jr. lived in the White House during the first three years of his life and remained in the public spotlight as a young adult.

His father was assassinated on November 22, 1963, and the state funeral was held three days later, on John Jr.'s third birthday.

In a moment that became a famous scene of his life, John Jr. stepped forward and rendered a final salute as his father's flag-draped casket was carried out from St. Matthew's Cathedral.

NBC News vice president Julian Goodman called the shot "the most impressive...shot in the history of television", which was set up by NBC director Charles Jones, who was working for the pool.

Lyndon B. Johnson wrote his first letter as president to Kennedy and told him that he "can always be proud" of his father.

Stan Stearns, who took the image, served as chief White House photographer during the LBJ White House years and over the years, showed Johnson the image of Kennedy saluting the casket sine the salute was a symbol of what Johnson said in his letter to him.

The family continued with their plans for a birthday party to demonstrate that the Kennedys would go on despite the death of the president.

After President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy moved her family, after a brief residency in the Georgetown area of Washington, to a luxury apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, where Kennedy Jr. grew up.

In 1967, his mother took him and Caroline on a six-week "sentimental journey" to Ireland, where they met President Éamon de Valera and visited the Kennedy ancestral home in Dunganstown.

In 1968, Jackie took Caroline and John Jr. out of the United States, saying: "If they're killing Kennedys, then my children are targets ... I want to get out of this country."

The same year, she married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, and the family went to live on his private island of Skorpios.

Kennedy is said to have considered his stepfather "a joke".

In 1971, Kennedy returned to the White House with his mother and sister for the first time since the assassination.

President Richard Nixon's daughters gave Kennedy a tour that included his old bedroom, and Nixon showed him the Resolute desk under which his father had let him play.

Kennedy attended private schools in Manhattan, starting at Saint David's School and moving to Collegiate School, which he attended from third through tenth grade.

He completed his education at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

After graduating, he accompanied his mother on a trip to Africa.

He rescued his group while on a pioneering course, which had gotten lost for two days without food or water, and won points for leadership.

When Onassis died in 1975, he left Kennedy $25,000, though Jacqueline was able to renegotiate the will, and acquired $20 million for herself and her children.

In 1976, Kennedy and his cousin visited an earthquake disaster zone at Rabinal in Guatemala, helping with heavy building work and distributing food.

The local priest said that they "ate what the people of Rabinal ate and dressed in Guatemalan clothes and slept in tents like most of the earthquake victims," adding that the two "did more for their country's image" in Guatemala "than a roomful of ambassadors."

On his 16th birthday, Kennedy's Secret Service protection ended and he spent the summer of 1978 working as a wrangler in Wyoming.

Kennedy was initiated into Phi Psi, a local social fraternity that had been the Rhode Island Alpha Chapter of national Phi Kappa Psi fraternity until 1978.

In 1979, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston was dedicated, and Kennedy made his first major speech, reciting Stephen Spender's poem "I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great."

Kennedy attended Brown University, where he majored in American studies.

There, he co-founded a student discussion group that focused on contemporary issues such as apartheid in South Africa, gun control, and civil rights.

Visiting South Africa during a summer break, he was appalled by apartheid, and arranged for U.N. ambassador Andrew Young to speak about the topic at Brown.

By his junior year at Brown, he had moved off campus to live with several other students in a shared house, and spent time at Xenon, a club owned by Howard Stein.

In 1995, Kennedy launched George magazine, using his political and celebrity status to publicize it.

He died in a plane crash in 1999 at the age of 38.