"I wish there was more time," RoseMarie Terenzio tells PEOPLE of her late friend, who she remembers as a "fun single girl in New York City" despite her successful investment banking career
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NEED TO KNOW
- Lauren Bessette, the elder sister of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, had been enjoying a fresh start in New York City before her death
- “When she left work, she was going out to have fun,” says RoseMarie Terenzio, JFK Jr.’s former executive assistant and a friend of the Bessette sisters. “She wasn’t being an ‘executive,’ she was being, like, a fun single girl in New York City”
- Lauren moved back to New York after spending time abroad for work one year before she tragically died in a plane crash alongside her sister Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and JFK Jr. in 1999
Lauren Bessette, the older sister of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and sister-in-law of John F. Kennedy Jr., was settling into a new chapter in New York City when her life was cut tragically short in the summer of 1999.
“Lauren was amazing,” RoseMarie Terenzio, JFK Jr.'s executive assistant during the last five years of his life and a friend of the two Bessette sisters, tells PEOPLE. “She was really fun and funny and really smart.”
Terenzio was introduced to the elder Bessette sister by Carolyn, with whom she had formed a friendship, and was in the early stages of getting close to Lauren when she died.
“I wish there was more time,” Terenzio says.
Lauren had only been back in New York for a year when she was killed in a plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard alongside Carolyn and John in July 1999. She'd spent four years abroad in Hong Kong working for Morgan Stanley and had recently been promoted to principal when she died.
Veteran BBC correspondent Fergal Keane wrote shortly after her death that Lauren, whom he met while working and living in China, “had the gift of a formidable intellect” and was “one of the most vibrant women I’ve ever met.” He recalled marveling at her knack for haggling during a trip to an antiques market in Beijing in 1995 — Lauren was fluent in Mandarin — and lively debates between the two about Asian politics that stretched from late at night to early in the morning.
“It was a pleasure to argue with her,” he wrote.
Lauren left Hong Kong for New York in early 1998, where she bought an apartment just two blocks from Carolyn and John’s two-bedroom loft in Tribeca. She immersed herself in New York City culture, expanding her palette at new restaurants in the East Village and catching ballet and opera performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
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Chip Arndt, who worked with Lauren in New York and Hong Kong, told Town & Country in 1999 that the two would attend fundraisers in the Hamptons and galas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art together. They’d go dancing at Webster Hall, he said, and linger over dinners at Cowgirl in the West Village, one of their favorite spots.
“She’d always get there five or 10 minutes early. It would drive me crazy. She’d have a big smile on her face,” Arndt told the magazine. “I say this as delicately as possible, but if I weren’t gay, I would have married her.”
Lauren “had a huge heart,” Adam Clammer, another friend and former co-worker in Hong Kong, told Town & Country after she died. “She had time for everybody.” But perhaps more than anyone, Lauren had time for her sister, Carolyn. (Lauren’s identical twin sister, Lisa Bessette, was working on her Ph.D. in medieval art history several time zones away in Munich.)
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The two sisters trusted and confided in one another, Terenzio tells PEOPLE, and John saw Lauren as a “voice of reason” in his relationship with Carolyn.
“John had a lot of respect for Lauren,” Terenzio says. “I think he trusted her judgment, for the most part. I think he felt like she knew Carolyn — her family knew her better than anybody — and I think he felt like Lauren had really good insights."
"She was very level-headed, she wasn't drama, and I think he liked that about her,” Terenzio adds. But that wasn’t to say Lauren took life too seriously.
“When she left work, she was going out to have fun,” Terenzio says. “She wasn't being an 'executive,' she was being, like, a fun single girl in New York City.”
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“We used to go out to dinner, we would go out for drinks, we would meet with a group of her friends, Carolyn’s friends, my friends — we’d all get together. Even if Carolyn wasn’t there, Lauren would come out,” Terenzio says about their time together in New York.
She still remembers one of Lauren’s favorite drinks: vodka on the rocks with a few olives and a splash of the brine. “‘You don’t need the whole martini,’ she would say,” Terenzio recalls, laughing.
“It’s the best drink recipe ever, and I still do it to this day,” she adds. “It’s my little homage and cheers to Lauren.”
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