ROGER BLACK

I must say that of all of the publishers that I've worked with as an art director, he was in the top rank. He wasn't acting the part. He admitted that he was a complete amateur and said that he didn't know anything -- but let's go from there. Of course he got everyone to work for him for nothing. The fact that it leaked to "Page Six" that he was hanging around my offices was payment enough for me.

DAVID PECKER

When we finalized the deal to finance George in February 1995, we had a dinner at Rao's, at 114th Street and Pleasant Avenue in East Harlem. After dinner, he just walked over to his bicycle and put his cap on. As he was going down 114th Street in the middle of the night, the photographers were all chasing him.

SUSANNA HOWE

One time he showed up at work in the afternoon and he had this huge German shepherd named Sam -- Sam Shepherd. He was like, "Hey, I got a dog!" And then this dog proceeded to bite everybody. It bit me on the nose. It bit everyone in the park every time he went to the park. It finally had to be put down. He got a new dog and named it Friday.

LISA DEPAULO
Writer

I handed in my first story for George, and he said, "Come up. I want to talk to you." Meeting him -- this thing hangs over you, that he's John Kennedy. Of course, he knew that everybody he met had this anxiety, and he was good at defusing it. He asked me, "Where are you from?" I said, "Scranton, Pennsylvania," and he said, "Oh, that's a very special place to me, because my father's last stop before the 1960 election was Scranton." So he managed to take that big elephant out of the room.

PETER HERBST
Editor-in-chief, Family Life

At Hachette, George was down the corridor from us on the forty-first floor. John really did edit the magazine. He was very much a hands-on boss. George was the focus of his life. Nobody ever said no to him, so he did things his own way. I'd tell him that the magazine should be more confrontational, that they should do investigative articles, they should do articles with a greater edge -- I don't mean nasty, but that they call politicians into account in no uncertain terms. He agreed, but he was reluctant because he really empathized with what it was like on the other side. He laughed about it; he understood that this was a limitation on his part. And he'd say, "Look, I can't do it. I can't come down hard on somebody." It's just not something he could do.

LISA DEPAULO

Late one night, I was going home after handing in another story. I'm sort of in a fog on the subway, and I remember saying to myself, "That guy over there looks like John." He's reading the New York Post on the subway. Nobody noticed him, because nobody would think he'd be there. I inched over and whispered, "John," and he had that reaction, like, "Oh, no." Then he saw me and said, "Hey, sit down. I just read your piece." He didn't think I'd been tough enough on my subject -- and in that particular case, he was right. He had great instincts. I always counted on him in the most important stage of the writer-editor relationship, which is before you write, when you need to think and talk and thrash it out.

IAIN CALDER
Former editor-in-chief of The National Enquirer

One of my secretaries comes rushing in and says, "John F. Kennedy on the line." He said, 'Mr. Calder?' He was very polite. I said, 'Well, this is a little bit of a change of modus operandi, you to be calling me." He laughed and said, "Yeah, that's the very point of this. Your people usually are running after me. I'd like to interview you. It's like turning the tables." A few months later, I went to his office for the interview.

I didn't know what to expect -- I thought he might be just a pretty face. But I was pleasantly surprised. The whole thing took about five hours, and he really listened. A few weeks later he called me and said, "I now have an advance copy of the magazine. Would you like me to send it to you?" And I told him, "We already have one." He said, "How did you get it?" And I answered, "You forget, we're The National Enquirer."