In the 30 years since I’ve known John Travolta, there was one subject that was always taboo and that was his son, Jett.
So when I heard the news that Jett had died while on holiday in the Bahamas, I couldn’t even begin to imagine the hurt and the pain John must be feeling.
Because despite the fact that he is one of the world’s most successful film stars, John was also a father, and a man who would do anything to protect his family.
It was an instinct which became even more important to the actor after Jett was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease, an illness that would burden him with a troubling predisposition to seizures and which ultimately led to his death, last Friday morning.
snip
For John, the loss will be devastating. I first met the actor - or Johnny as he is to family and friends - in 1978 on the set of “Grease.”
Even though he was feted the world over, he was the most down-to-earth person on set. At the time I was an author and journalist living in Hollywood and would go on to interview John more than fifteen times over the course of the next three decades.
John has always been a private, enigmatic, character - we always got on well; he did with most people. I don’t think there’s a bad bone in his body. He was an intriguing biography subject for my book ‘Fever.’
It was during the interviews that I realised just how much fatherhood meant to John. He himself had come from a very close family.
Snip
Weighing 8lb 12oz, Jett was named not just because of his father’s love of flying but in a combination of John’s initials and those of his sister Ellen, Jett’s godmother.
Thank you for posting this WCG.
“an illness that would burden him with a troubling predisposition to seizures”
Seizures are not part of Kawasaki disease,” said Dr. Stanford Shulman, a specialist in the disease at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
or
It is unlikely that Kawasaki is connected with the death if a seizure was involved, says Nathan Litman, chief of infectious disease and director of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx, N.Y. “You’d have to go some distance to explain a connection to Kawasaki Disease,” he says.
or
Q. Jett Travolta apparently had Kawasaki disease. Could this have caused the seizure?
A. Probably not, Wright says. Kawasaki disease is an inflammation of the blood vessels that can damage the heart but doesn’t affect the brain.
`Wendy Wright, a neurologist at Emory University in Atlanta.
Over and over and over again Doctors are debunking the Travolta theory.
Now just stop and think for a minute about that.
Of course, no one here wants to do that.
By the way, there are many reports that he named his son Jett after one of Hubbards characters. I am not familiar with their names so don’t know if that is true.
Nice post. Thank you.