Word: took
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...stood in the fray and treated them graciously. "He assumed the best about people and never became cynical about their motives," his close friend Dave Eikenberry told TIME, "and that's amazing, given the sycophants and leg humpers he had to deal with every day. It took enormous fortitude for him to stay well grounded in the face of his bizarre celebrity, but he did it. Besides which, he was just the best guy to do stuff with I've ever known. I'm going to miss him for the rest of my life...
Everyone has to work through hard questions of identity and self-image; Kennedy had to work through his while trapped inside a brightly lit media fun house with distorted mirrors all around. And so he took advantage of an elaborate system that allowed him to cope: a family that had been through hell in public and knew how to guard its privacy--and to make life as normal as it could be. On his own, he developed a band of fiercely loyal and discreet friends who helped create a secure zone around him, who were always glad...
...Kennedy was free to conduct his real life's work: not the magazine he launched, or the charities he volunteered for, or the law, but the cultivation of a basic, good-humored decency--an ordinariness that was his last defense against the extraordinary role life had handed him. He took the subway or rode a bike to work, hanging out mostly with friends who weren't at all famous, using his unparalleled celebrity mostly on behalf of good causes. At the same time, he went out of his way to joke with the tabloid reporters who watched his every move...
Kennedy and Berman worked their way through the New York media circuit, exploiting the desire of media heavies to meet J.F.K. Jr., picking the brains of people who knew magazines. One of their sessions took place in the offices of Ed Kosner, then editor of Esquire. "It was very vague," Kosner says. "He asked a lot of questions. I couldn't tell from that conversation what the magazine was going to be about. He just came over to schmooze, and he was great...
Stoical about scandalmongering books about his family and gossip-column misinformation about himself, he was as determined as his mother to protect his personal privacy. That is why he took up flying. When he traveled on commercial aircraft, fellow passengers would ask questions, seek autographs, exchange memories. He understood that they were people of goodwill, and he could not bear to be impolite, but the benign interest of others was a burden. Once he got his flying license, he seemed a liberated man, free to travel as he wished without superfluous demands on time and energy...