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Twenty-seven years after his tragic death, JFK Jr.’s chief of staff still wonders what life would be like if he were alive.
“The ‘what if’ never goes away, no matter what. It’s always that feeling of like, ‘Where would I be now? What would I be doing?'” RoseMarie Terenzio told The Post ahead of the anniversary of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s death on July 16, 1999.
“My guess is I’d probably be helping to build a presidential library in New York.”
Terenzio, who worked for JFK Jr. for five years at George magazine, learned of his presidential aspirations when she asked him why he wasn’t running for NYC mayor.
“And he said, ‘Well, how many mayors do you know who become president?'” she recalled.
The Bronx native, who penned the memoir “Fairy Tale Interrupted: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss,” said Kennedy, who became her close friend and confidant, was looking to serve as governor of New York first.
“I think he wanted to, at some point, run for governor when they wanted him to run for the Senate. We talked about that,” she said.
“His thing was, as a governor, you’re like a CEO, you’re running a state. And he felt that as a senator, you couldn’t make your own decisions.”
Terenzio was actually staying at the Tribeca loft where Kennedy lived with his wife, Carolyn Bessette, when the plane he was piloting to his cousin’s wedding crashed, killing them and Bessette’s sister, Lauren.
Kennedy had invited her to stay at the apartment on North Moore Street that weekend after he overheard her on the phone trying to get her air conditioner fixed on a 90-degree Friday.
“He’s like, ‘Who are you yelling at?’ I’m like, ‘I’m not yelling, I’m just freaking out. I have no AC,'” she recalled.
“He was like, ‘Well, why don’t you just stay at our place, because we’re not gonna be there.’ It was really nice.”
A little after midnight, she received a call at the apartment from Carole Radziwill, the wife of Kennedy’s cousin and best friend, Anthony, saying the couple never arrived at the airport.
It took a while for Terenzio to face the gravity of the situation.
“It took me longer than it should have because it just seemed so unfathomable,” she said.
Terenzio recalled traveling to Kennedy’s funeral, held at the Church of St. Thomas More on the Upper East Side, and asking a police officer why Park Avenue was shut down.
“I was with one of my co-workers, and we didn’t understand why the street was closed,” she said.
“And he was like, ‘For the funeral, the whole city is in mourning.'”
She was asked to read at the service, which was a nerve-wracking experience.
“I remember looking up and seeing [then President] Bill Clinton sitting there, and I’m like, ‘What the f–k am I doing up here?'” she said.
Terenzio recalled how Kennedy always had her back — and made sure she was given respect in her assistant position.
“I remember one time there was this woman who was the executive assistant for some big finance lady. She called and reamed me out for something and she was really nasty. He overheard it and he went upstairs, right up to her desk,” she said.
“And he was like, ‘I heard you on the phone with Rosie and we don’t talk to each other that way.'”
She also recalled humorous parts about her job, like when she was unsure of how to refer to John F. Kennedy International Airport in his presence.
“Oh God, I had no idea. So I just said, ‘Well, what airport did you want to fly out of?’ And he was like, ‘Oh, I’ll fly out of Kennedy.’ I was like, ‘OK, it’s Kennedy!'”
English (US)