"During Thanksgiving 1995, the writer Peter Alson went with a group of 12 people, including John & Carolyn, to a secluded resort in Guanaja, Honduras. They were all together for 10 days. One morning, Alson found himself alone at breakfast with John.

'So, if you weren't spending Thanksgiving here, where would you be right now?' he asked John. He quickly realized he hadn't thought through the question carefully enough. 'For a moment he stared at me without saying anything.' Alson recalled. 'Then he looked down, and I saw tears in his eyes. I hadn't been thinking. The date was November 22, the anniversary of his father's assassination, and a year & a half since Jackie had died. He was turning 35 in a couple of days, & it would be one of the first Thanksgivings he would spend without her.

The fact that I, an almost stranger, knew all these things about him, made me understand his need for the self-protective force field he always seemed to have.'"
--"Four Friends," by Wm. D. Cohan