Is the so-called "Kennedy Curse" a collection of cruel coincidences, or a truly tragic hex looming large over America's greatest political dynasty? After learning what happened to JFK's kids, you might start to believe the latter.
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00:00Is the so-called Kennedy curse a collection of cruel coincidences, or a truly tragic hex
00:05looming large over America's greatest political dynasty?
00:08After learning what happened to JFK's kids, you might start to believe in the latter.
00:13The Kennedy family has had its fair share of misfortune.
00:16Most famously, John F. Kennedy, the 35th U.S. president, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas
00:21in 1963.
00:23Kennedy married First Lady Jackie Kennedy, born Jacqueline Bouvier ten years earlier,
00:28and the couple had four children together.
00:30Among them, only one, their second child, Caroline Kennedy, lives on, avoiding the Kennedy
00:35family curse, which took numerous other family members.
00:39JFK and Jackie's first child, Arabella, was stillborn, according to Irish Central.
00:44In 1956, shortly before Arabella was due, Jackie was rushed to a Rhode Island hospital,
00:50near where she was staying at the time with her mother and stepfather, according to The
00:53New York Times.
00:55Medical staff did what they could, but the baby, never officially named, was stillborn
00:59via cesarean.
01:00The name Arabella never appeared on any documents or on a birth certificate, and the stillborn
01:05child's gravestone next to her father at Arlington National Cemetery simply reads,
01:10"'Daughter.'"
01:11It's written that Jackie later referred to the child by the name, but it's unclear if
01:15Jack ever used the name Arabella for his stillborn daughter.
01:18After her first miscarriage, Jackie was informed all further pregnancies would likely be difficult
01:23for her.
01:24JFK adviser Ken O'Donnell, who was close with the couple, later said, quoted by The
01:28Huffington Post,
01:29"...by 1957, Jackie was pregnant once more.
01:33But this time, there was a much happier ending for the young couple."
01:37Caroline Bouvier-Kennedy, the only living child of John and Jackie Kennedy, was born
01:41in 1957.
01:43Biographer Stephen Livingston writes that the healthy birth of JFK's first daughter,
01:48Caroline, inspired a newfound sense of duty and responsibility in the Massachusetts senator
01:53at the time.
01:54Caroline was three years old when her father became president, and six years old when he
01:58died.
01:59And although she has yet to run for elected office, Caroline has followed her family's
02:02legacy into politics.
02:04Caroline graduated from Radcliffe College in 1980 and Columbia University in 1988.
02:10A lawyer and author, she married Edwin Arthur Schlossberg in 1986, and served as U.S. ambassador
02:16to Japan and, more recently, U.S. ambassador to Australia.
02:21In 2008, she formally endorsed Barack Obama for president, maintaining the Kennedy family's
02:26influence on the Democratic Party via CNN.
02:29In a video created for the JFK Library, Caroline referred to her famous father when she said,
02:35"...I've thought about him and missed him every day of my life.
02:38But growing up without him was made easier thanks to all the people who kept him in their
02:42hearts."
02:43After the birth of Caroline Bouvier-Kennedy, John and Jackie had a son, John F. Kennedy
02:48Jr., while his father was president-elect in 1960.
02:52As a small child known as John John, he was photographed saluting his father's funeral
02:56procession in 1963.
02:59Although JFK Jr. survived childhood and lived into adulthood, the Kennedy family curse caught
03:04up with him when he and his wife, Caroline Bissette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bissette,
03:09died in a plane wreck on their way to Martha's Vineyard.
03:13Before he died, JFK Jr. graduated from Brown University and New York University Law School.
03:18He worked as an assistant district attorney before shifting his focus to publishing, founding
03:23the now-defunct George magazine in 1995.
03:27Handsome and charismatic, he also tried his hand at acting, and in 1988, People magazine
03:32named him Sexiest Man Alive.
03:35In an interview just a few years before he died, JFK Jr. reflected on his famous last
03:40name.
03:41He admitted,
03:42It's hard for me to talk about a legacy or a mystique.
03:44It's my family.
03:46The fact that there have been difficulties and hardships or obstacles makes us closer."
03:51The final child of John F. and Jackie Kennedy, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, was born in 1963,
03:57the same year his father was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas.
04:01Reportedly, he was born with respiratory distress syndrome, or RDS, which causes breathing issues
04:07in newborn children.
04:08Today, RDS is highly treatable, but it was less so in 1963.
04:13Patrick, who lived just 39 hours, was at first buried in Brookline, Massachusetts, The New
04:19York Times reported in 1963.
04:21Today, he is buried alongside his mother and father and stillborn sister Arabella at Arlington
04:27National Cemetery.
04:29According to Vanity Fair, a clearly distraught JFK said of his son's passing,
04:34He put up quite a fight.
04:36He was a beautiful baby.
04:38Mimi Beardsley, an intern with whom JFK had been romantically intimate, later said that
04:43Patrick's death filled Kennedy,
04:45not only with grief, but with an aggrieved sense of responsibility to his wife and family.