Less than a month after losing her adored brother, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg offered a moving tribute at the funeral of their cousin Anthony Radziwill yesterday, saying he and John F. Kennedy Jr. loved each other as “the brother they each didn’t have.”
It was the second time in 3 weeks that the Kennedy clan gathered in grief, this time on Long Island to say farewell to Radziwill, the only son of Jacqueline Kennedy’s sister, Lee Radziwill.
He died Tuesday at 40 after a 10-year battle with cancer.
Mourners including Diane Sawyer, Mike Nichols, Sen. Ted Kennedy, Maria Shriver, William Kennedy Smith, and Al Roker laughed through their tears as Schlossberg shared memories of the two who grew up best buddies.
“Anthony and John loved each other as best friends, best men, and the brother they each didn’t have,” she said from the pulpit of Most Holy Trinity Church in East Hampton.
“They never stopped talking, teasing, being sent off on ridiculous missions by their mothers, and – as adults – sharing each other’s professional successes and challenges.”
Radziwill “grew up as a perfect little English boy with short pants and formal manners,” she said.
“For those of us whose manners were often compared with Anthony’s and found wanting – that would be John – this was infuriating,” Schlossberg said to warm laughter.
Each served as best man at the other’s wedding – and a wheelchair-bound Radziwill attended the burial-at-sea of John Jr., his wife Carolyn and her sister Lauren Bessette after their July 16 plane-crash deaths.
Schlossberg said Radziwill, an award-winning TV producer, loved to plan elaborate practical jokes.
“I’m sure almost everyone in this church was the victim of one of Anthony’s schemes,” she said, telling how when cousin Maria Shriver was planning her wedding to Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger, Radziwill called the Schlossberg home, asking to speak to her husband, Ed.
He was “impersonating the editor of a German body-building magazine, saying that he wanted Ed and Arnold to pose together in bikinis – and that Arnold had already accepted.”
She said she only realized it was a prank when she heard Radziwill laughing.
He “managed to combine a wicked sense of humor with an unbelievable graciousness and concern for others,” Schlossberg said.
She spoke of Radziwill’s great love for his wife Carole, and his uncomplaining fight with the cancer that took his life.
“As his physical strength was stripped away through suffering, Anthony became radiant. When I went to visit him, when I always left, curiously I was the one who came away with strength and understanding.”
She did not mention her brother John’s death, but, in closing, broke down when discussing the comfort of love during times of tragedy:
“Anthony emanated love,” Schlossberg said, choking back tears.