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NEW YORK -- For one generation, he was the brave little soldier: a small boy, in a blue coat and shorts, saluting his father's casket on his third birthday.

John F. Kennedy Jr. is shown in New York in this October 1994 file photo. (AP Photo)

For another, he was The Hunk -- "the sexiest man alive," said People magazine. He was the heir to Camelot, the magazine publisher who dated Daryl Hannah and Madonna, a glitzy jet-setter who piloted his own plane.

John F. Kennedy Jr., 38, grew up in the public eye, from that sad November day in 1963 until his plane went down off the Long Island coast on Friday night. For many, he was the embodiment of the "Kennedy mystique" -- young, good-looking, seemingly invulnerable.

A biographer, Wendy Leigh, said JFK Jr. was the one member of his family who remained untarnished by scandal. It was an overstatement, but it summed up the world the world viewed him.

"It's hard for me to talk about a legacy or a mystique," Kennedy said in 1993. "It's my family. The fact that there have been difficulties and hardships, or obstacles, makes us closer."

He was born within weeks of his father's 1960 election, the only child ever born to a president-elect. He soon became known to the nation as "John-John," a name erroneously bestowed on him by a reporter who misheard a conversation.

Early in his life, he was exposed to the tragedies that seemed to endlessly beset his family. A brother, Patrick, was born on Aug. 7, 1963, but died two days later.

On Nov. 22, 1963, his father was killed by an assassin in Dallas. The enduring moment of the Washington funeral came when the little boy stood saluting his father's passing casket outside St. Matthew's Cathedral.

Three-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr., salutes his father's casket in Washington three days after the president was assassinated in Dallas in this Nov. 25, 1963 file photo. Widow Jacqueline Kennedy, center, and daughter Caroline Kennedy are accompanied by the late president's brothers Sen. Edward Kennedy, left, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. (AP Photo/File)

After his father's murder, his mother moved the family to Manhattan, where she raised John and older sister Caroline even after her marriage to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

While he was close to his cousins Mrs. Onassis kept her children somewhat apart from the rest of the family.

Unlike other family members, Kennedy never entered politics, although he was constantly questioned about a future in the political arena. He showed some talent as an actor, performing in several plays.

But any hopes of a career in acting ended when his mother turned thumbs down.

Kennedy graduated from Brown University, went to law school and joined the Manhattan district attorney's office -- but only after failing the bar twice. "HUNK FLUNKS," read one tabloid headline after one of those failures.

Kennedy was athletic; it wasn't unusual for people to see him throwing a frisbee in Central Park or roller-blading through Tribeca. After his mother died on May 19, 1994, JFK Jr. was photographed roller-blading to her apartment.

Kennedy acquitted himself well as a prosecutor, winning all six of his cases, but he wasn't fulfilled by the job. In 1995, he launched the magazine George -- subtitled "not just politics as usual." A year later, Kennedy -- once dubbed "the sexiest man alive" by People magazine -- married girlfriend Carolyn Bessette in an ultra-secret wedding.

Bessette, the blonde daughter of a Greenwich, Conn., doctor, succeeded where many women had failed. Kennedy was a gossip column fixture, demonstrating that his father's sex appeal has passed on to the next generation.

The magazine kept Kennedy in the limelight, and allowed him to do a bit of reporting. He interviewed ex-Alabama Gov. George Wallace, among others.