New Details About JFK Jr.’s Final Days Are Revealed

A close friend of John F. Kennedy Jr. has just come forward to reveal some details about the final months of the young man’s life before his tragic death in a 1999 plane crash.

Fox News reported that historian Steven M. Gillon first met Kennedy in 1981, and the two quickly became best friends. Gillon wrote Kennedy’s biography “America’s Reluctant Prince,” and he just opened up about him in the new documentary “Biography: JFK Jr. — The Final Year,” which airs on A&E tonight.

“We don’t want John to be remembered as ‘the hunk flunks’ or ‘the sexiest man alive,’” Gillon said. “John was a very complicated guy. And I think for the first time this documentary captures that complexity and shows John as a man of many different dimensions, a guy who had problems in his relationships just like we all do, but a man who was full of life. A man who was enormously generous and kind. And I think that’s the image of John that we wanted to present.”

“I taught John,” he added. “I had numerous conversations with John. I was surprised by how well-read he was, especially about modern politics and his father’s presidency. John’s issue was he had a really short attention span, and that was one of the reasons why I think he struggled with the bar and he struggled on other standardized tests. But… he was passionate about civil rights, he was passionate about the Supreme Court. He could be as engaged and as thoughtful as any person I’ve ever met.”

Gillon said that in Kennedy’s final months, he was preparing to follow in his father’s footsteps by entering politics.

“About a year or so before he died, we were having dinner after we had played a game of racquetball,” Gillon said. “And it was during the winter. He had spent the afternoon working with underprivileged youth in Harlem on a skating rink, and he was describing how they just clung to him as he’s skating around. And he said to me, ‘Stevie, what these kids need is hope. They need to know that tomorrow is going to be better than today.’ He paused and said, ‘I can do that. I can give them that hope.’”

“And it was at that moment… John, who had kept politics at a distance, realized that it was in his DNA,” he continued. “He understood that he had something he could offer people. And I think from that point forward, it was just a matter of looking for the right opportunity.”

Kennedy’s Marriage Troubles

Just before their death, Gillon said that Kennedy’s wife Carolyn Bessette was struggling to deal with the media scrutiny on them.

“I think that’s one of the reasons why, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan resigned his Senate seat and that became open — that was one of the reasons why John did not go for it,” Gillon said. “He didn’t think Carolyn was ready for a campaign of that nature.”

He went on to say that Kennedy was determined to save his marriage.

“The paparazzi created an environment that made it very difficult for Carolyn and she oftentimes directed a lot of her frustrations towards John,” Gillon explained. “So the marriage was really spiraling downward, but neither one had completely given up. And I think Carolyn’s fateful decision to get on that plane that Saturday and going to [Rory Kennedy’s] wedding was a sign that she was still working on the relationship. And I know John was as well. We just don’t know how the relationship would have ended up. It was in a very difficult place, but I think both John and Carolyn both wanted to make it work.”

Gillon said that he last spoke to Kennedy on the Tuesday before his death, and that they made plans to play racquetball together the following Monday.

“Instead of playing racquetball on Monday, I was flying to New York to plan for his memorial service,” Gillon said.

In the end, Gillon is hoping that people will remember the legacy that Kennedy left behind.

“What surprised me is just how humble he was,” he said. “John grew up with all these expectations imposed upon him by the public, by his family, that he was going to be the heir of Camelot, and there were expectations. It was a burden that would have crushed most people. And what was remarkable to me was how John dealt with it with such enormous grace. The fact that John, despite the circumstances in which he grew up, turned out to be such a decent, kind, down-to-earth, unpretentious human being is probably the greatest testament to his character.”