u/StellaOC

On May 12, 1999, John visited Mount Rushmore National Memorial to pose for a USA Weekend cover story on “Making America Better”. Photographs taken by Brian Smale.

Rosemarie Terenzio: “He went to Mount Rushmore to promote 250 Ways to Make America Better, the first in a series of George books. He thought it would be really cool to go to the top and rappel off, but they said it was against park rules. I still have the message pad from his office calls, where a Parks and Recreation woman called to say, "No rappelling." He was bummed.”

**Mike Pflaum (National Park Service ranger): “**He was a very nice guy, pleasant and unassuming. He arrived that morning, got out of his car, and said, ‘Hi, I’m John.’ We conversed just as I would with any other person. I spent five or six hours with him that day. You don’t get to know anyone extremely well in that time, but you do get a snapshot.

One poignant moment came inside the monument restaurant, where several granite columns along the walls bear the photos and biographies of the nation’s presidents. He walked up to the column with his father’s picture and spent several minutes looking at the photo and reading a brief biography.

Originally, photo editors wanted Kennedy to rappel off the top of the monument and hover in front of the faces. We, being the National Park Service, did not allow that, but we did get some shots up close to the monument. At the time, I was the chief park ranger at Mount Rushmore National Memorial. That was an instant ‘no’ from the park superintendent. It is simply illegal activity and would not have been a good fit for that park. There was the visual concern, the unlikely but potential damage to the sculpture, and the unlikely but potential risk to people. Who is allowed to do that? The maintenance crew.

What did I think? I thought there was no way this was going to happen.

He had questions about Mount Rushmore. He talked a little about geography in the West, and he wanted to know about Native Americans, their population, and where they lived. I asked questions about his life in New York, nothing personal, and he did not speak about anything personal either.”

Pam Smith: “I spoke to the park superintendent about John rappelling. They turned us down because it had never been done before, but they said he could walk on top of the presidents' heads. We had to be off the heads by 7:30 a.m. so we wouldn’t interfere with tourists.

Photographer Brian Smale, two park rangers, a photo assistant, and I met the day before the shoot to scout sites. It was chilly, with a gray sky and flecks of snow. The cover was for a June issue, and I was concerned it would look like winter. On the day of the photo shoot, John was almost ready to meet me at 4:30 a.m. He came running out to the hotel lobby a little flustered because he didn’t have all of his climbing gear. John said his wife had packed his suitcase more for a business trip than an outdoor hiking trip, and he was laughing about it.

John and I drove to Mount Rushmore together. It was his first visit, so I was playing tour guide. I was surprised that he didn’t have an entourage with him. He said he tried to be as normal as possible.

John said he had second thoughts when he had to deal with the hardship of traveling to South Dakota the night before. But he was glad he made the trip and was looking forward to seeing the monument. I was lucky enough to be there when he got his first glimpse.

It was really early, but the morning light was hitting the presidents’ heads, making them golden yellow. It was breathtaking, and John was awestruck. I remember him saying, “There’s George.”

As editor of George magazine, he was full of questions: How big are they? When was the monument constructed? How did they sculpt it? The park rangers told him nearly the entire history.

We were in for a gorgeous day, with blue sky and sunshine. We hiked straight up for 30 minutes. The lead ranger said we made great time. Everyone was in shape and didn’t have any difficulty, especially John.”

Do you or do you not agree with Michael Bergin that Carolyn would have been proud of his book, and that Ann Freeman should thank him for it?

From Michael's interview with Fox News reporter Paula Zahn in 2004:

ZAHN: And if Carolyn were alive today --you say you wanted to write a book that was sympathetic about her. You wanted people to know the truth. How could she possibly be happy about this book and the invasion of her privacy?

BERGIN: She'd be proud of the book and she'd be proud of me. She would say thank you.

In the 2004 Apollo Male Models Magazine Winter, Michael also said:

"I would love for Carolyn's mom to read the book, and say; "Thank you, Michael, for being Carolyn's only friend to come forward and say nice things about my daughter".

Here's a question: can anyone point to a single nice thing Michael actually said about Carolyn in his book? He claims he spoke kindly about her, but somehow none of those comments seem to have made it into print. Somehow, most people who read his book come away with a negative impression of Carolyn and a favorable one of Michael. If his goal was to challenge Ed Klein's narrative about her, why does his book end up reinforcing it? So which is it?

In my opinion, I don't agree that Carolyn would have been proud of his book or that she would have thanked him, nor do I think Ann Freeman has anything to thank him for. I'm not here to argue about his alleged affair; what interests me is whether people genuinely believe Carolyn would have approved of this. Given how private she was and how hard she fought to protect her personal life, I don't believe she would have been proud of it. If Michael truly thinks otherwise, it suggests he didn't really understand her.

Sharing intimate details like the abortions was inappropriate. Even if one of those experiences allegedly involved him, it was still Carolyn's private matter and she never chose to discuss it publicly. And the other abortion, which had nothing to do with him, why did he think that was his story to tell at all? It clearly wasn't.

He also goes so far as to insinuate that John had erectile dysfunction. Whether he did or didn't doesn't matter, the fact that he would write that down is disgusting and suggests Michael had a bone to pick with John, even though John had no issues with him.

As for Ann Freeman, what exactly would she be thanking him for? What has he done for her to thank him? If it weren’t for Carolyn and John’s names, he would never have been able to sell a book.

John found what he was looking for in Carolyn; she met all the criteria his friend mentioned—lots of toxicity, turmoil, and heartache. His friends described him as someone who got bored easily, which is why he gravitated toward Carolyn, because she kept him on his toes and that she come with a lot of “weather”. One friend described them by saying they fought hard and loved hard, and that “no matter how their fights began, they ended in only one way.”

This type of dynamic was never going to last or make for a long-lasting relationship. I think Carolyn knew this to an extent and didn’t believe she would stay married to John for very long. John told his friend that Carolyn looked at marriage “like a man does, that it's not necessarily a lifetime thing,” because of the way her mother was hurt. It made her cynical about marriage”. But John didn’t want her to think that way and tried to convince her that their marriage would be different, not like her parents’ or his cousins’ marriages.

She knew she was going to divorce John one day, which is one of the reasons she hesitated to have children. Her close friend shared that Carolyn “worried she could lose the children she had with John in the same way her father had lost her. It was an unbearable thought.” It’s interesting that she was even thinking about co-parenting with John before she even had kids.

This is why I don’t think they would have lasted, and if John kept looking for a woman to fill the void Carolyn would leave behind, he was never going to be in a long-lasting, stable relationship. Maybe he needed someone more “boring” instead of a partner with a lot of baggage.

I came across a book titled Wild Love by Daryl Hannah. It doesn’t appear to have been published, one listing gives a publication date of January 1, 2050 by Blue Rider Press, which is odd given that the imprint was shut down in 2017. On Amazon, the book is listed with a different publication date—April 3, 2018—and 320 pages, but it isn’t actually available for purchase

Here's the description:

From actress and environmental activist Daryl Hannah, an enchanting and fascinating memoir as told through her chance encounters with different wild animals.

Ever since she was a young girl growing up in the forty-second floor of a Chicago high rise, Daryl Hannah felt a deep connection to the animals that roamed the world below. Though she went on to become a celebrated Hollywood actress, her deep engagement with nature and wildlife remained central to her life. In Wild Love, Hannah recalls her chance encounters with various wild creatures, and how they ultimately helped to share the trajectory of her remarkable life. Beginning with her introverted youth, Hannah details the challenges of personal relationships, her work in film, and her move towards outspoken, impassioned advocacy and activism.

The stories that make up Wild Love include fascinating facts about each species, such as their roles in our ecosphere, unusual behavioral traits, and the spiritual significance of these animals to indigenous cultures. Hannah found that their symbolic meaning often paralleled the events in her own life. In "Dragonfly," Hannah describes the grief following the death of her beloved stepfather and her gentle pet horse; in "Wolf," she ponders her earliest romantic relationships as she recounts the first time she interacted with a wolf pack.

With personal photographs and art throughout, Wild Love is Hannah's singular look back at her life.

…I hope this book is eventually released, it sounds like it would be a great read.

link: https://www.abebooks.com/9780399575037/Wild-Love-Subtitle-TK-Hannah-0399575030/plp

For anyone interested in watching the complete episodes:

Episode 2 (aired 3/30/1994): https://nycrecords.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO\_80e58c32-3858-4186-8ff4-2239af72636f/

Episode 3 (aired 4/6/1994): https://nycrecords.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO\_08e464af-fbee-4604-9228-e63ec5605c95/

The story was shared by Laura Raposa of the Boston Herald and featured in Celebrity & Spectacle: The Making of a Media Event. Laura was a columnist for the Boston Herald’s “Inside Track”. It was at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner on April 26, 1997:

*“*He knew who we were. “Oh hi Laura,” you know, kind of like, “Hello Newman.” But he’d always stop, and he’d always chat. He knew us, and he yelled at me once. He had a short temper. It’s also always hard not to speak ill of the dead. He was a daredevil, as I pointed out, and he also had a very nasty temper. People were saying he was such a kind and gentle soul, and I’m thinking, you know what? He really wasn’t. He had a nasty temper, and I thought he was going to hit me once.

Remember that scene in Central Park where he and Carolyn were in a big brawl – we experienced that, and it wasn’t very nice. Actually, I’ll tell you what it was, just so you’ll know. We were at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and the thing that you try to do is get a really good guest and that year we had Frank McCort, who wrote Angela’s Ashes, and Senator John Kerry, and we were way in back for the Herald. That’s what you do – you try and jockey to get a really good guest. So I saw John and Carolyn and I said, “Who’d you guys get as a guest?” We were talking and joking about it with him, and we said we had Frank McCort.

I thought, “Well, John Kennedy, he’s going to get a really good guest, like Barbra Streisand, Cindy Crawford, someone that was on the cover of that magazine.” He said, “Oh no, it’s just Carolyn and me. I said, “C’mon John, you can’t do any better than that?” All of a sudden, the veins started coming out of his neck, and he started shaking. I said, “What’s the matter with you?” He said, “That is the rudest thing you have ever said!” He started pointing his fingers and yelling at me in the lobby of the Capitol Building. I said, “Hey buddy, I was joking.” He said, “You weren’t joking. That was really nasty.”

The next day, I had a piece on Inside Track in which the headline said, “John Kennedy and the family buckling under the stress of the Michael Kennedy sex scandal.” I thought, “Don’t ever do that to me again! I got you back!”. ….

This reporter came across as very disrespectful. John did the right thing by standing up for himself and his wife, that was completely justified. Her behavior was quite rude.

These quotes come from Ed Hill in Four Friends by William D. Cohan, and his remarks caught me off guard. Ed was one of John’s high school friends, and was close enough to be invited to their wedding.

Although he said he got along fine with Carolyn, his comments about her are strikingly harsh. He said that “If you listen to the way I'm talking about her now, you can see that if push had come to shove in a given situation, I would have thrown her under the bus in a heartbeat. Because you're so f*cked up and you do and don't love the guy. You see him more as a conquest than a person. But even in your heart of hearts, if you love him and it's what you wanted, and you've managed to get beyond the game that led you to him in the first place, you're still so f*cked up you can't stop. You're like an addict.”

Why such animosity toward a woman who had been dead for decades? What could she have done to provoke that level of hostility, especially from someone who claimed to have had a good relationship with her?

Ed also said that Rosemarie Terenzio called him and insisted that he come to John's apartment to help her. "I flew into New York and went to his apartment. There was a Macintosh computer sitting there as he left it, open to flight simulation software. Oh, nice effort, John, but it's a little more complicated than that."

With friends like John’s, Carolyn didn’t need enemies. This makes me wonder if it might’ve been Ed who faxed Guy Clark’s personal letters to Carolyn to the tabloids. Do you think his claim that he wouldn’t have hesitated to throw her under the bus could be connected to the possibility that he faxed those letters—if it was him? Maybe he thought he’d uncovered something scandalous, when in reality they were just letters from Carolyn’s gay friend.

The six episode series premiered on WNYC- TV in New York on March 23, 1994. John began taping his segments in January 1994.

“He hosted a six-part documentary, Heart of the City, on New York City's unsung heroes, and while he basically had an open invitation to appear on network TV any time he'd like, he opted for the local PBS station instead. It was his way of giving back to his adopted city. The documentary served two purposes: it allowed John to brag about the city he loved while also gaining more experience in front of the camera.” - Michael Berman.

Link to watch the complete episode 1:

https://nycrecords.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO\_2f24c6f7-7683-4f2e-a8e2-e3badcc42e18/

Photos were taken at Betsy and Kenan Siegel's wedding in Miami on March 21, 1998. The photos were shared by their daughter Sophia_Zoa on TikTok. Kenan was John’s close friend from college.

Excerpt from 'Once Upon A Time' by Elizabeth Beller:

Carolyn maintained her close friendship with Betsy Reisinger, soon to be married to John's friend Kenan Siegel on March 21, 1998, in Miami. "Carolyn came down a week early to help me get ready for the wedding," Betsy remembered. "She took me shopping in Bal Harbour and guided me toward the perfect shoes and dress for the rehearsal dinner.

There was a particular pair of white satin Manolo Blahniks she had that she also wanted me to have for the wedding. She called everywhere she could think of to get them for me, but they were sold out.

"Carolyn's solution was to buy me this gorgeous pair of rhinestone and velvet Dolce & Gabbana shoes. They were absolutely gorgeous-except that I couldn't walk in them. We tried to see if I could take a couple of steps, and it was clear I couldn't.

Carolyn laughed and told me, 'Well, at least you'll always have them."

John and Carolyn had a good time at the wedding, and asked their friend Robert Curran, who was shooting photographs, to take a few of them. That's how he got the picture with Carolyn's head thrown back in laughter while John embraces her. "He was singing a song into her ear," Curran recalled.

In another, Carolyn and Betsy hug tightly while Carolyn gives Betsy a big, clutching, grandma smooch. "Our wedding was such a happy day," Betsy said. "For us, but for our friends as well. You can see from the pictures our friend Robert Curran took, Carolyn and John were deeply in love, and in love with life. That is how I remember them, when they felt safe."

From a recent People Magazine article:

A friend of JFK Jr. and Bessette's told PEOPLE that after the fight (about Carolyn taking Jack to the lobby of Caroline and Edwin’s building during a party hosted by Caroline in October 1996) , it was "a little distant, but respectful" between the couple and Caroline and her husband, Schlossberg.

A source told PEOPLE that Bessette took Jack away from the party simply because he was being "rambunctious."

"They would go over to Caroline's for dinner every few weeks," the source added. "Carolyn would always bring gifts for the kids. [...] And she always picked something special for Caroline."

Speaking of the relationship between the couple and Caroline, the source said that it was a difference in "lifestyle" versus solely "distance."

Caroline was married with three young kids, while JFK Jr. and Bessette did not have children, and were often traveling for George, attending charity events and going to dinner parties, the source said.

"But when they saw each other, they seemed to always get along," the source continued.

According to Steve Gillon : “Caroline did not think Carolyn was good enough for John—she and Ed just found her temperamental and selfish. And John despised Ed for a lot of reasons. It was either Christmas or another holiday, John and Carolyn were going over to Ed and Caroline's apartment and Carolyn was so concerned, and she had all these gifts for them. They go over and Caroline and

Ed left within an hour to go to some sporting event or something. Carolyn thought that was so disrespectful. So, there was a lot of tension there on both sides. One of the big issues in John's relationship with his sister was their spouses.”