He was the one. Or, to put it more accurately, he would be the one, someday, we just knew it.
John F Kennedy jnr was the face of Camelot's unfulfilled promise, living proof that the hope and idealism extinguished that sunny afternoon of November 22nd, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, would one day rise again in the body of the son.
We hoped, sometimes secretly, that he would mature slowly, learn what he needed to learn, learn what we hoped he could teach us, and that someday he would run for elected office, ushering us into the future with a nod to our past.
We might even do something we haven't done in decades in US politics: we might even trust him.
Americans live with that hope, that mythology every day, and it can be a peculiar thing for non-Americans to understand. This past week has seen a celebration of the 30th anniversary of Apollo 11, the mission which took mankind to the moon, a preposterous folly on paper which only happened because President Kennedy had promised it, and a national consensus took hold in the wake of his assassination that his promise would be fulfilled before the end of the 1960s.
Mr Kennedy jnr was the first infant to live in the White House since 1893. The images of the toddler are burnished in our minds; the little boy hiding under his father's desk in the Oval Office, the youthful President playing with his son. A reporter mistakenly thought he heard a family member call the boy "John John" - he was wrong, the family never called him that - and the moniker stuck.
He first broke America's heart on his third birthday when he stepped away from his mother, raised his right hand and saluted his father's casket during the funeral of the President.
Jacqueline Kennedy left the White House and later married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, in part, friends later said, to avail herself of the resources which would protect her two children's privacy.
The Kennedy clan was not pleased with the marriage, and the US didn't like losing their former First Lady to a foreigner. But eventually we understood and approved of her fierce protectiveness, especially as the children of Robert Kennedy became increasingly troubled. A nation watched in awe as Jackie Kennedy succeeded in her determination to raise two normal children despite a phalanx of photographers which trailed them everywhere.
America's heart was broken again over the weekend with the news that Mr Kennedy jnr's plane had crashed into the sea near the famed Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port.
The outpouring of grief, the spectre of a nation gathered around its televisions watching round-the-clock accounts of the search for his plane, can seem baffling.
"Come on. It's sad, but he was just a rich kid who had a famous father," said one man in a pub in Co Cork. "What did he ever do on his own?"
A friend in Britain couldn't understand the US reaction, sighing and likening the whole thing to the death of Princess Diana.
At first glance the comparison is apt, and there is no question that the seduction of iconography is also at work here. But Mr Kennedy jnr came to symbolise something important, not just because of who his father was, but because of the kind of life he was leading.
Like many other Kennedy children born to wealth and privilege, he could have led a frivolous life or a blatantly self-destructive one. Or he could have snuggled into the zeitgeist, becoming a venture capitalist or Internet guru.
But he did not. He and sister Ms Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg are the two most unique Kennedy children precisely because of their adult accomplishments, their values, their attraction to public service, though not elected office.
Caroline, happily married with children, has written two well-regarded scholarly books on law. There would be no drug overdoses, no sex scandals, no drunken public escapades from these two.
After John graduated from Brown University, he went to India to work with Mother Teresa's group.
"The three days I spent in her presence was the strongest evidence this struggling Catholic has ever had the God exists," he later wrote.
He spent several years working as an unglamorous assistant district attorney, prosecuting criminal cases in Manhattan.
Then he started George magazine, a publication which aimed to increase interest in politics by making it entertaining. According to those who worked there, John Kennedy was not just a sparkly name on the masthead.
He worked hard promoting the magazine but also doing the nuts and bolts job of an editor. He laid out copy, chose stories, argued with writers, all the time using his celebrity to drum up interest among advertisers and readers.
He fretted that circulation hovered around 400,000 and frequently called colleagues in the publishing field for ideas, determined to reach the 600,000 circulation mark which would make the magazine minimally profitable.
Two years ago, he was asked on CNN about running for office. His response was thoughtful; it was not out of the question, he indicated, but the time for elected public service was perhaps later in life, after one had accumulated wisdom and experience, after one had something substantial to bring to the task.
They were not the words of a rich brat imbued with entitlement or arrogance. They were the words of a man whose life was decanting, and who understood that wisdom could not be rushed. We were pleased.
And yet, there was something else. Some call it the "Kennedy curse", others call it the Kennedy stupidity. The tragedies in this family often look like the offspring of fate, bad judgment and lust for risk.
In 1995, Mr Kennedy jnr broke his ankle in the gym. His passions included rock climbing. He once flew an ultralite, a device which is little more than a kite with a seat attached.
Last month, he broke his leg paragliding in Martha's Vineyard. On Friday night (local time), he soared into the night in a single-engine plane despite being an inexperienced pilot, using no navigational instruments, and under conditions described as hazy.
"This flight was not prudent," said Mr Jim Burnett, former chairman of the National Transportation and Safety Board, echoing the feelings of other pilots at the small New Jersey airport who declined to fly the same evening.
No one knows yet what happened but there is speculation among expert pilots. Several feel that Mr Kennedy lost his horizon.
It's an interesting term, isn't it? It is a phrase which is used by pilots to describe a particular disorientation. It happened most tragically several years ago on a commercial India Air flight with several hundred people aboard.
It was a dark, moonless night, and the pilot was flying over a dark sea. Unknown to the pilot, the instruments were faulty and the pilot refused the admonishment of his co-pilot, who insisted that what appeared to be dark sky was actually the sea. Without a trace, the plane vanished off the radar. When the wreckage was found, reduced to dust by the impact, no one could figure out why the pilot had confidently flown full throttle into the ocean.
He had lost his horizon. On a dark night over the ocean off Massachusetts, Mr Kennedy may have lost his. Surely the nation which now mourns the loss has also lost theirs.