LISA DEPAULO

Last summer, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. John said, "You have no deadlines. Go home, be with her." He also gave me the best advice in the world, which was, "While you're frantically searching for a cure, remember that this is precious time. You're going to have conversations with her that'll sustain you for the rest of your life." He helped me through the hardest time in my life. He would call while I was at the hospital, and I'd tell my mother, "John called," and she'd light up and say, "I'm so glad you're working for him." I can still see my mother's face lighting up at the time when she was most sick because he was on the phone.

DONATELLA VERSACE
Designer

When John was starting George, he was coming to Milan a lot and stopped in Gianni's office very often. But I first met Carolyn about four years ago, when she came to Milan with John and spent time with me and Gianni on Lake Como. She was very similar to my brother, both entertainers. Gianni would usually go to bed very early, but Carolyn kept him up. Of course, I was a little envious of her, too -- who wouldn't be? She said, "I'm never going to give up my friends, but at the same time, I will be the best wife for John." She said John had a completely open mind about her fashion friends, who were different from his friends. He adored her personality, her outlook on life.

Any entrance Carolyn made, she made a statement. Apart from the clothes she wore, she had a way of moving her head and smiling, and her eyes were so expressive, she would always seem to be looking right at you. I thought that if anyone could take the place of his mother in the family, it could be her. After Gianni died, we went to a beautiful dinner at the home of Countess Crespi. You couldn't smoke inside it, so Carolyn and I went upstairs and smoked in the balcony outside, and then we couldn't get back in. The door had locked. John finally came by looking for her and he let us out.

Recently, I saw her in my shop on Fifth Avenue. I said, "Carolyn, what are you doing here?" I never saw her more happy. She was full of projects. I was making fun of her, saying, "What do you do all day, sit at home just waiting for the next party? That's not you." She said, "You just wait and see."

KENNETH COLE
Designer

John came to my show last year. We told him we'd send over a car, but he turned us down -- he insisted on arranging his own transportation. The morning of the show, my people were waiting for him outside, and suddenly, right before the show, they see this guy, all dressed up, pedaling over on a bicycle. It was John. He got on his knees, locked his bike to a post, and just walked in.

DOMINICK BOTTE JR.
Owner, New York's Finest French Cleaners & Tailors

He always brought in his dry cleaning himself, always on his Rollerblades. There was one time I remember very well. When he was still living on Hudson Street and working for the D.A., he called me looking for a Giorgio Armani suit that had been specially designed and tailored for him. He was terrified that it had been lost, because it was missing from his closet and he wanted to wear it to an event that evening. Usually, he picked up his dry cleaning at the end of every week, so it was unlikely that we still had anything of his. But he begged me: "Do me a favor, just look for it." And when I did, I discovered his suit in the back of the store. He came running through the rain to pick it up, and by the time he arrived, he was completely soaked. But he couldn't have been more gracious. He was grateful that I had found it for him.

PETER ALSON
Writer

In Thanksgiving 1995, I went to Honduras with a group of twelve people that included John Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette. We stayed together for ten days at a secluded resort in Guanaja. One morning, I found myself alone with him at breakfast. I said, "So if you weren't spending Thanksgiving here, where would you be right now?" For a moment he stared at me without saying anything; 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 and a half since Jackie had died. He was turning 35 in a couple of days, and 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. I felt bad that my thoughtless question had upset him, but moved, too, that he could, even for a moment, be so vulnerable.