Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of John F. Kennedy, dies at age 35

Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of former US President John F. Kennedy, has died at the age of 35.

Her family announced her death in a social media post shared by the John F Kennedy Library Foundation, writing: “Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts.”

In November, Schlossberg, climate journalist, announced his diagnosis with an aggressive form of cancer. She said in an essay that she had less than a year to live.

Schlossberg was the daughter of designer Edwin Schlossberg and diplomat Caroline Kennedy.

In an article published last month in the New Yorker titled “A Battle With My Blood,” Schlossberg revealed that she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in May 2024, after giving birth to her second child.

“My first thought was that my children, whose faces live permanently inside my eyelids, would not remember me,” she wrote.

Schlossberg described the treatments she received, including chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, but said doctors did not give her a good prognosis.

She also wrote about the pain she feared his death would cause her family, who endured multiple personal tragedies. His grandfather, President Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963, and his uncle, John F. Kennedy Jr., died in a plane crash in 1999.

His younger brother, Jack Schlossberg, is running for Congress in New York.

“All my life I have tried to be good, to be a good student, a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never upset or make her angry,” Schlossberg wrote.

“Now I have added new tragedy to his life, to our family’s life, and there is nothing I can do to stop it,” she said.

In his essay, Schlossberg also expressed disappointment with the appointment of his relative Robert F Kennedy Jr to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

Another close friend, Maria Shriver, a journalist and former first lady of California, paid tribute to her “sweet and beloved Tatiana” as someone who “loved her life”.

“She created a beautiful life with her extraordinary husband George and children Eddie and Josie. She fought like a warrior. She was valiant, strong and courageous.”

“Tatiana was a great journalist and she used her words to educate others about the Earth and how to save it,” Shriver wrote on Instagram.

Before his widely read essay on his diagnosis, Schlossberg forged a successful career as a climate journalist.

Schlossberg is the author of the book “Discreet Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have.” She has also written on climate and other topics for The New York Times.

In December 2021, she reported on local experiments to harness energy from the London Underground to provide heating to homes, in a bid to combat climate change.

“I think climate change is the biggest story in the world, and it’s a story about everything,” she told NBC News in 2019. “It’s about science and nature, but also politics and health and business. For me, as a journalist, it seemed like a very important story to tell.”

“And if I could help communicate this topic, it might inspire other people to get involved and work on this topic,” she said.