[Senate Document 103-32]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
First Lady
JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS
Memorial Tributes
in the
One Hundred Third Congress
of the United States
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TD32.001
First Lady
JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS
1929-1994
Memorial Tributes
in the
One Hundred Third Congress
of the United States
Printed by authority of S. Res. 235, 103d Congress
Senate Document 103-32
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 1995
Compiled under the direction
of the
Joint Committee on Printing
C O N T E N T S
Biography.............................................
vii
Proceedings in the Senate:
Resolution of Respect..............................
1
Prayer.............................................
2
Remarks by:
Senator George Mitchell, Senate Majority Leader
3
Senator Bob Dole, Senate Republican Leader.....
4
Tributes by Senators:
Biden, Joseph R., Jr., of Delaware.............
5
Bradley, Bill, of New Jersey...................
6
DeConcini, Dennis, of Arizona..................
7
Dodd, Christopher J., of Connecticut...........
8
Feingold, Russell, of Wisconsin................
9
Glenn, John, of Ohio...........................
10
Hatfield, Mark O., of Oregon...................
11
Heflin, Howell, of Alabama.....................
12
Hollings, Ernest F., of South Carolina.........
14
Hutchison, Kay Bailey, of Texas................
15
Kerry, John F., of Massachusetts...............
15
Lautenberg, Frank R., of New Jersey............
17
Levin, Carl, of Michigan.......................
18
Lieberman, Joseph I., of Connecticut...........
19
Mathews, Harlan, of Tennessee..................
19
Moynihan, Daniel P., of New York...............
20
Pell, Claiborne, of Rhode Island...............
22
Pressler, Larry, of South Dakota...............
23
Riegle, Donald W., Jr., of Michigan............
24
Roth, William V., of Delaware..................
26
Sasser, Jim, of Tennessee......................
27
Simon, Paul, of Illinois.......................
28
Smith, Robert C., of New Hampshire.............
28
Wellstone, Paul David, of Minnesota............
28
Tributes by Representatives:
Andrews, Robert E., of New Jersey..............
30
Bilbray, James H., of Nevada...................
30
Blackwell, Lucien E., of Pennsylvania..........
31
Bliley, Thomas J., Jr., of Virginia............
32
Borski, Robert A., of Pennsylvania.............
33
Brown, Corrine, of Florida.....................
34
Costello, Jerry F., of Illinois................
34
de Lugo, Ron, Delegate of the Virgin Islands...
35
DeLauro, Rosa L., of Connecticut...............
35
Engel, Eliot L., of New York...................
36
Eshoo, Anna G., of California..................
37
Foley, Thomas S., of Washington................
39
Gilman, Benjamin A., of New York...............
39
Goodling, William F., of Pennsylvania..........
41
Hilliard, Earl F., of Alabama..................
42
Kaptur, Marcy, of Ohio.........................
42
Kennelly, Barbara B., of Connecticut...........
43
Levin, Sander M., of Michigan..................
44
Lewis, John, of Georgia........................
44
Lowey, Nita M., of New York....................
44
Maloney, Carolyn B., of New York...............
45
Mazzoli, Romano L., of Kentucky................
47
Rangel, Charles B., of New York................
48
Reed, Jack, of Rhode Island....................
48
Romero-Barcelo, Carlos, of Puerto Rico.........
49
Rush, Bobby L., of Illinois....................
50
Slattery, Jim, of Kansas.......................
50
Stupak, Bart, of Michigan......................
51
Zeliff, William H., Jr., of New Hampshire......
53
Statements by:
President William J. Clinton.......................
55
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton..................
57
Memorial Services:
St. Ignatius Loyola Church
Special Tribute by Senator Edward M. Kennedy...
58
Poem by Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg...........
61
Reading by John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr.........
61
Poem by Maurice Tempelsman.....................
62
Arlington National Cemetery
Eulogy by President William J. Clinton.........
64
Commentary and Tributes:
Above Everything, A Special Mother, Newsday
Magazine.........................................
85
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, 1929-1994, Beloved
First Lady is Dead at Age 64, Boston Herald......
86
Her Lasting Gift Was Majesty, Boston Globe.........
88
America's Queen, Boston Globe......................
90
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, 1929-1994, America's
Only Monarch, Boston Herald......................
91
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, 1929-1994, Classy First
Lady Won Over Even This Diehard Republican,
Boston Herald....................................
92
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, 1929-1994, It
Leaves an Empty Place, Boston Globe..............
93
Behind Onassis' Charm Lay Irony, San Francisco
Examiner.........................................
95
O, Jackie, You Were Wonderful!, Boston Herald......
97
Jackie Was a Model of Dignity to the End . . .,
Boston Globe.....................................
102
. . . And There Are Five Ways We Can Honor Her,
Boston Globe.....................................
103
A Private Life Defined by Wit, Compassion,
Newsday Magazine.................................
104
The Eternal Jackie, Washington Post................
106
Jackie, New Yorker; Friends Recall a Fighter for
Her City, New York Times.........................
108
She Graced Our History, Nation Remembers Jackie,
Who Held Us Together, USA Today..................
109
Farewell to a First Lady, A Role Model, A Mystery,
A Legend, USA Today..............................
111
Great Gifts and Great Burdens, Washington Post.....
114
A Day of Farewells to a First Lady, In a Somber
Spotlight, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is Buried,
Washington Post..................................
115
Death of a First Lady, The Overview; Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis is Buried, New York Times........
117
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, 1929-1994,
Onassis to be Buried Monday; Resting Place Next
to JFK at Arlington Set, Boston Globe............
120
Jackie's Washington: How She Rescued the City's
History, Washington Post.........................
121
Portrait of a Friendship, Time Magazine............
124
Once, in Camelot, Time Magazine....................
125
America's First Lady, Time Magazine................
126
The Essence of Style, Town & Country Magazine......
129
B I O G R A P H Y
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was born July 28, 1929, to Janet and
John Bouvier III in Southampton, Long Island, New York. She
enjoyed the country life with her parents and her younger
sister Lee. In what became life-long interests, she developed
an expertise at horseback riding, an enduring love of books,
and a great delight in writing poetry. Throughout her life, she
chronicled special family events by combining her creative
talents in a unique, and often whimsical way, to produce
illustrated journals, scrapbooks, and paintings.
After her parents divorced and her mother remarried Hugh D.
Auchincloss, the family expanded to include his children and a
new baby half-sister and -brother, Janet and Jamie Auchincloss.
Jacqueline attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington,
Connecticut where she excelled academically. She was accepted
at Vassar and attended for 1 year. She then studied in Paris,
becoming fluent in French, before transferring to George
Washington University in Washington, DC where she earned a
degree in French literature in 1951.
Following her graduation, Jacqueline took a job as the
``Inquiring Camera Girl'' for the Washington Times-Herald, and
met then-Congressman, soon-to-be-Senator, John F. Kennedy, at a
dinner party. ``I leaned across the asparagus and asked her for
a date'' he quipped. They were married on September 12, 1953.
Their early years together were marked by the great sadness of
a stillborn daughter, and life threatening back surgery for
Senator Kennedy. But in 1957, their adored daughter Caroline
was born. ``I used to sit and wonder how it could be possible
to be any happier,'' Jackie said. In November of 1960, after
the successful campaign for the Presidency, their happiness
doubled with the birth of John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Jacqueline Kennedy became, at 31, the century's youngest
First Lady and from the moment of her magnificent debut at the
Inauguration, captivated the Nation and the world. She began a
complete restoration of the White House and encouraged
Americans to take special pride in their Nation's heritage and
the effort to preserve it. Her televised tour of the restored
mansion was watched by 50 million viewers, and the resulting
increase in tourists who bought her newly created ``White House
Guide Book'' has continued to fund White House preservation and
acquisitions to this day. She established the first office of
White House Curator, and is credited with saving the historic
townhouses and heritage of Lafayette Square. She promoted an
awareness and appreciation of culture and the arts by
showcasing the finest in those professions at special White
House events. Intellect was honored with a dazzling dinner for
all the Nobel Prize winners. The state occasions she hosted
with President Kennedy continue to be remembered for their
sparkling originality, exquisite taste, and classic elegance.
She intuitively understood that the White House belonged to all
the people, and she wanted it to be an expression of pride in
American achievement. She said simply, ``I just think that
everything in the White House should reflect the best of
America.''
President Kennedy summed up her impact abroad when he
introduced himself as ``the man who accompanied Jacqueline
Kennedy to Paris.'' Her natural style, gracious personality,
and ability to speak numerous languages, created an outpouring
of affection. At home, during a time of civil rights tension,
she quietly made her position clear by integrating Caroline's
White House preschool group. In August of 1963, she and the
President shared the great sorrow of the tragic loss of their
prematurely born son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who died a few
days after his birth. But the Nation, and the world, truly came
to understand and appreciate her valiant strength in November
of 1963. During the agonizing 4 days of her husband's
assassination and funeral, her majestic example of remarkable
courage and fortitude has never been forgotten. At a time of
unbearable grief, she held the country together.
In 1964, she reestablished her life in New York City and
devoted herself to her children. She campaigned for Robert F.
Kennedy during his bid for the Presidency and his tragic loss
brought additional grief to her family.
In October of 1968, she married Aristotle Onassis, and she
and the children divided their time between Greece and New
York. She became a widow again, when he died in 1975.
Concentrating on her love of books, she went to work and
became a respected professional in the field of publishing, as
an editor at Doubleday. She continued her efforts on behalf of
historic preservation and was especially proud to have helped
to prevent the destruction of New York's Grand Central Station.
In 1980 she helped Senator Edward Kennedy in his campaign for
President, and the John F. Kennedy Library continued to benefit
from her ongoing devotion and involvement in its programs and
such events as the Profile In Courage Award.
Jacqueline found tranquillity and joy in the companionship
of her close friend, Maurice Templesman. But of all her
accomplishments, she was most proud of having been a good
mother to Caroline and John, often in the most difficult of
circumstances. ``It's the best thing I've ever done,'' she
said. She exulted in their successes and became a doting
grandmother to her three grandchildren.
In her final year, she set an example yet again of uncommon
courage and spirited grace, as she battled illness. In her
final days she was, as she had become to the Nation throughout
her life, an inspiration.
Memorial Tributes
to
First Lady
JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TD32.002
RESOLUTION OF RESPECT
Wednesday, June 29, 1994.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 235, a
resolution to authorize the printing of statements made in
tribute to the late First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
submitted earlier today by the distinguished Senator from Maine
[Mr. Mitchell] and the Republican Leader [Mr. Dole], and
others, and that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to
reconsider laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
So the resolution (S. Res. 235) was agreed to, as follows:
S. Res. 235
Resolved, That there shall be printed as a Senate
document a collection of statements made in tribute to
the late First Lady of the United States, Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis, together with appropriate
illustrations and other materials relating to her
death.
PROCEEDINGS IN THE SENATE
Monday, May 23, 1994.
PRAYER
The Chaplain, The Reverend Richard C. Halverson, D.D.,
offered the following prayer:
Let us pray.
Let us observe a moment of silence in memory of Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis, her family, her friends, and the whole world
which mourns her loss.
For there is no power but of God: The powers that be are
ordained of God.--Proverbs 16:3.
Eternal God, we thank Thee for the sovereign order of God--
that those who hold public office do so, not simply because
they sought it and won--but because God had ordained them for
His purpose and plan. And we thank Thee that Thou hast promised
to establish their thoughts as they commit their works unto
Thee.
Omniscient Lord, Thou knowest each Senator and each staff
member in microscopic detail, the circumstances from which each
comes; the future unto which each goes, and the present
condition of each. And You have a purpose and plan for each.
Forgive us, gentle, gracious God, for our indifference, our
rejection of Your love, Your care, Your guidance. Awaken us to
our need of Thee, our poverty of spirit without Thee, our
blindness when we do not walk in Thy light.
We pray in His name who is the Light of the World. Amen.
The Honorable George J. Mitchell
Senate Majority Leader
Mr. President, last month, our Nation mourned the passing
of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whose style,
grace, dignity, and elegance made her a much admired American.
Her influence is difficult to overstate. As First Lady,
Jacqueline Kennedy used her position to raise the stature of
the arts in America. She encouraged donations of important
pieces of art and furniture and raised private funds to restore
and redecorate the White House. Mrs. Onassis also worked to
preserve the beauty of Lafayette Square and its surrounding
historic residences. She invited prominent artists to perform
at the White House, as part of her effort to transform
Washington into a cultural center.
Her influence was not confined to the United States. Few
will forget her trip to Paris with President Kennedy. Said the
President at the time ``I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline
Kennedy to Paris--and I have enjoyed it.'' The French were
charmed by Mrs. Kennedy. Her wit and charisma captivated France
and the world.
Although she became a virtual living legend, Jacqueline
Onassis most treasured her private family life. She took great
pains to shield her young children from the insatiable
curiosity of the public. She understood that the most precious
gift she could give to Caroline and John, Jr., was the gift of
time, and she gave it as generously as she could.
Mrs. Onassis never asked to be a legend. But once she was
thrust into the national and international spotlight, it was
something she could not avoid. She conducted herself with grace
and dignity that others could only emulate. Her contributions
to the cultural heritage of this Nation are numerous, and we,
as Americans, owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude.
Mr. President, at this time, I ask unanimous consent that
the remarks of Senator Kennedy which were made at the funeral
service for Mrs. Onassis be printed in the Record.
[Reference appears on page 71.]
The Honorable Bob Dole
Senate Republican Leader
Mr. President, few Americans ever received more public and
media attention in their adult life than Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis.
And few Americans ever handled that attention with as much
dignity and grace as Mrs. Onassis.
I join with all Members of the Senate in mourning the
untimely passing of Mrs. Onassis, and in extending our
sympathies to her family, and to her brother-in-law, our
colleague, Senator Edward Kennedy.
Like all Americans, I will always remember the remarkable
courage Mrs. Onassis exhibited in the very emotional days
following the tragic death of President Kennedy.
Instead of Mrs. Onassis leaning on others for support
during her time of grief, she provided support for an entire
nation.
Mrs. Onassis will also be remembered for the style she
brought to the White House during her years as First Lady. Her
vision of the White House was that it should be a showplace for
American culture. All the First Ladies who have followed Mrs.
Onassis have acknowledged the difference she made.
Again, Mr. President, I join in mourning the passing of a
woman who graced history, and, who touched the hearts of
millions of men and women around the world.
TRIBUTES BY SENATORS
The Honorable Joseph R. Biden, Jr. of Delaware
Mr. President, as the Nation mourned, and continues to
mourn, the death of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, many of
us have tried, in private and public reflections, to define and
explain her enduring place in our common history and our shared
consciousness. It is a difficult, if not an impossible task, as
it always is when we try to put into words the meaning of a
life that has touched our very spirit and left us forever
changed.
It never was the ambition of the woman we knew, and will
always remember, as ``Jackie'' to have the kind of fundamental
public influence. It was a part of her style that she did not
cherish celebrity, a part of her grace that she did not succumb
to its temptations, and a part of her dignity that she did not
surrender to fame, but sought--in the end, it seemed,
successfully--to make peace with it on her own terms.
Certainly, Mrs. Onassis did seek throughout her adult life
to make public contributions, and did so successfully and very
meaningfully. The legacy of her passion for the arts, for
history, and for the beauty of the landmarks and places of
refuge she cherished so deeply is very tangible and valuable,
and cause enough for our lasting respect and gratitude.
Yet there is more we remember. We remember that at the age
of just 31, then-Jacqueline Kennedy seemed the living
expression of the inspiration so many of us felt on that cold
January day in 1961. When ``the torch was passed to a new
generation of Americans,'' it quickly seemed to us that Jackie
was among the most worthy to receive it, that she represented
part of what was best in us, part of what we aspired to be. We
were simply fascinated by her.
Initially, it may have been the glamour, the elegance in
appearance, and manner that President and Mrs. Kennedy
introduced over the still-young medium of television, which
fascinated us in itself. But there was something deeper in the
images. The couple in the White House looked like a promise,
like the embodiment of hope as well as of style.
As time passed in all its fateful twists, our admiration
for Jackie grew deeper. We came to know and respect her
devotion to her children, her complete and uncompromising
commitment to them, and her growing pride in their achievements
and their characters. We learned about the seriousness and
sincerity of all her passions, and about her determination to
remain true to them--despite criticism, despite challenges,
despite losses that would have cracked a less noble heart.
It was in times of loss, and especially during those
wrenching days of November 1963, that Jackie touched this
Nation's spirit most profoundly. She was 34 years old, with two
very young children, when President Kennedy was killed. She
must have felt that the eyes and the weight of the world on her
added to her personal and family grief, her justified anxiety
about her children's future, and what must have been a rage
almost as great as her sadness.
What she did was remarkable. She carried this Nation to the
Capitol Rotunda, along the route of the funeral procession and
for days and weeks afterward, with a strength that was both
incomprehensible and undeniable. Again, now in the darkest as
before in the brightest hour, she seemed the embodiment of
hope--hope that the unendurable could be endured, that the
future still mattered and demanded our attention, that dreams
were still possible.
That may have been the greatest gift that Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis gave to this country, an enduring sense of
hope. She gave it to us not through conscious effort, but as a
natural result of her transcendent grace and dignity. And it is
right that we should honor her for it, now and always.
The Honorable Bill Bradley of New Jersey
Mr. President, Jacqueline Kennedy was 34 when she became a
widow--34 years old when she stood next to Lyndon Baines
Johnson and witnessed him taking the oath of office upon the
assassination of her husband in November 1963.
She behaved at that moment in history with the dignity that
she brought to the White House as its First Lady, with the
strength she evidenced in the ensuing months while a nation
mourned, and with the poise she possessed throughout the course
of her life.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis was not a woman for that time, but a
woman for all time--she endured, and moved beyond that period
of crisis in our Nation's history, to become more than the
grieving widow of John F. Kennedy. She was her own strong
woman, and that is how the Nation will remember her.
She will be remembered as a woman who fought for causes
that were important to her and won: The preservation of
Lafayette Square in Washington and the fight to save Grand
Central Terminal in New York are but a few examples. She will
be remembered for having built a successful career for herself
in publishing: Bill Moyers, a colleague of hers for whom she
edited three books and a resident of my State, said that she
was ``as witty, warm, and creative in private as she was grand
and graceful in public.'' Perhaps most of all, she will be
remembered for the two beautiful children she left behind,
whose success and happiness must be attributed in part to their
mother's effort to shield them from the public's never-ending
fascination with the Kennedy family.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis was an intensely private person in a
world which viewed her as a living legend. In pursuit of that
elusive privacy she became a sometime-resident of New Jersey,
escaping from New York on weekends to her summer home in
Bernardsville. There she indulged in her favorite pastime of
horseback riding, and lived among people who respected the
privacy that she came for. The residents of her adopted
Bernardsville miss her, and mourn her passing as the Nation
does.
They mourn her passing as we in the U.S. Senate do. I could
not be more eloquent than her brother-in-law, Senator Edward
Kennedy, was in the eulogy he delivered at her funeral:
``Jackie was too young to be a widow in 1963, and too young to
die now . . . she graced our history, and for those of us who
knew her and loved her, she graced our lives.''
The Honorable Dennis DeConcini of Arizona
The same words have been used over and over to describe
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: dignity, beauty, courage. The style
and grace she brought to the White House helped us to take
pride in ourselves as a nation. She was our shining example of
what we at our best could become. As Senator John Glenn has
pointed out, those who have described the Kennedy years as
Camelot know that a very large part of the reason was the class
and elegance Jacqueline Kennedy brought to the Nation's
Capital.
Single-handedly, it seemed, she transformed Washington, DC,
into a cultural center. She brought the greatest artists to the
White House. One Presidential dinner in particular, honoring
the Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere, prompted
John Kennedy's famous remark: ``I think this is the most
extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that
has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the
possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.''
Jacqueline Kennedy restored and redecorated the White
House; preserved Lafayette Square; saved Pennsylvania Avenue;
and kept Grand Central Station an historic landmark, when its
owners were threatening to construct a skyscraper office
building over the roof of its starry concourse.
When this Nation was plunged into grief during those dark
November days in 1963, it was Jacqueline Kennedy who taught us
how to face our loss. She was a profile in courage for an
entire nation--and she was only 34 years old.
She was also an example of strength in the courageous way
she rebuilt her life. She began a new career in the publishing
business and excelled in her profession. One day one of her
employees phoned in to tell her that he would not be at work
that day because he would be accompanying his son on a school
event. He was almost apologetic in his tone, but Jackie
commended him on his decision to put his family first. This was
a priority by which Jackie lived her own life, raising two
well-adjusted and outstanding children amid the most difficult
of circumstances. It was, she said, her greatest achievement.
At her funeral service, Senator Ted Kennedy called
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis a ``blessing to the Nation--and a
lesson to the world on how to do things right, how to be a
mother, how to appreciate history, how to be courageous.'' She
indeed ``graced our history,'' as Senator Kennedy stated, and
she will be deeply missed.
The Honorable Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut
Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis, a woman whose extraordinary journey through
life recently came to an end. Like everyone, I was saddened by
her passing, and my sincerest condolences go out to her family
and friends.
In remembering Mrs. Onassis, many have focused on her grace
and on her beauty. And to be sure, she was graceful, and she
was beautiful. But to stop there in describing this woman is to
sell her short. For the fact is that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
was more than anything else a woman of character.
This was most starkly illuminated after the terrible
tragedy of Dallas, when she stood alongside Lyndon Baines
Johnson as he was sworn in as President. She put aside the
shock and grief long enough to fulfill her final, and perhaps
most important duty as First Lady: Providing the Nation with an
indispensable symbol of the peaceful transfer of power.
But we honor the memory of Mrs. Onassis not because she was
a former President's wife, but because she was a unique
individual and an authentic American. She loved this country;
she was proud of its culture; and she dedicated much of her
life to spreading that pride among her fellow citizens.
She lent her talents to the cause of historical
preservation; Lafayette Square in Washington, and New York's
Grand Central Terminal, stand today as monuments to her work,
enduring gifts from her to the people of this Nation.
After a person has left us, the best test of her life is to
ask the question, did she make a difference. Was the world a
better place than it would have been had she not been born?
In the case of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the answer to
these questions is unquestionably ``yes.'' In the lives of her
children and grandchildren, in the lives of the millions of
Americans she touched, in the life of this Nation, Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis did make a tremendous difference, and it was a
difference for the better.
She will be sorely missed, and she will be fondly
remembered.
The Honorable Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin
Mr. President, with the death of Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis, the final curtain has been drawn on one of the most
inspiring and exciting eras in our Nation's history. She
represented and meant so much to us. Dedicated and glamorous
First Lady, accomplished editor, loving mother, and role model
to millions are just some of the labels that have been affixed
to this truly unique woman over the decades. But she really was
more than just the sum of all her roles.
We grieved for Mrs. Onassis not just because she was taken
too young, leaving behind two wonderful and accomplished adult
children, and because she was such an important part of the
history of the last five decades. We grieved for Mrs. Onassis
because she reminded us of a time when we were more sure of
ourselves and of our place in the world.
When she burst onto the American scene in the late 1950s
and early 1960s it seemed as though people had more faith, not
just in themselves but also in their Federal Government.
Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and Whitewater were a long way
off and there was a sense during the Kennedy era that we could
accomplish almost anything if we set our minds to it. That
sense carried on into the triumphs of the Great Society and
ultimately to our victory in the cold war, but along the way we
seemed to lose some of that sense of optimism.
The various crises we have faced since the death of
President Kennedy have left the American people more cynical
and distrustful than they were in the early 1960s. This change
is understandable, given all that has transpired in the past 30
years. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis reminds us of how we were
before this change and because of the power of nostalgia, her
death makes that time seem further away than ever before. We
have all lost an important part of our past. She remains one of
America's most beloved First Ladies, whose grace and courage
during the dark days following President Kennedy's tragic death
will long be remembered.
The Honorable John Glenn of Ohio
Mr. President, I think it is good that the Senate
leadership has seen fit to set aside some of this time this
morning for tributes to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
When she passed away in New York, America lost a heroine,
and Annie and I certainly lost a very good friend.
I was privileged to first meet Jackie over 30 years ago,
shortly after my orbital flight, when she and President Kennedy
were in the White House. There were so many good times back
then that it would be hard to recount all of them.
Those who have described those years in the White House as
Camelot surely know that a very large part of the reason was
the style and the class and the elegance that Jackie brought to
her duties as First Lady.
Along with all other Americans who lived through that
period in history, Annie and I stood literally in awe--utter
awe--of the dignity, the grace, and the courage that she
displayed in those sad and awful days following the President's
assassination in Dallas.
But following that, Jackie refused to live the rest of her
life as a frozen frame in history, as a single snapshot. She
regrouped, she remarried, she began and sustained a highly
successful career in the publishing industry. And all the while
she nurtured and raised her two children to be well adjusted
and outstanding young adults, an achievement that she herself
regarded and said was the best and most important thing that
she had ever done.
Through it all, Jackie remained an intensely private person
of whom the public could simply not get enough. Though she
shunned the spotlight, she was generous with her time and
always remembered her friends. I will never forget when I was
first running for office for the Senate, getting a call one
day. She volunteered to help me campaign in Ohio for a seat in
the Senate, and did radio spots for us back in that campaign.
The swiftness of Jackie's passing left all of us shocked
and even a little bit numb. It seemed we just heard she had a
problem and she was gone. For three decades she has been a
fixture in our national consciousness. It is hard to believe
she is really gone. After all, in so many ways and for so many
years, she was not just a First Lady, but for many Americans--
for most Americans, I think--she was ``the First Lady of our
Nation.''
For her grace, for her courage, and, above all, for her
unfailing dignity, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis will be
remembered as a woman not just for her time but for all time,
and we shall miss her greatly.
The Honorable Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon
Mr. President, few First Ladies have impacted the country
in the manner of the late Mrs. Jacqueline Onassis. It is a
distinct honor to join my colleagues in recognizing her
contributions to our Nation which, because thanks and praise
were not her motivations, too often went unnoticed.
Perhaps the most fitting and most lasting tributes to Mrs.
Onassis exist already. They are found in the buildings she
herself worked to preserve in Washington and in New York. Mrs.
Onassis will be remembered for redecorating the White House,
but should be remembered also for instigating its restoration
and preservation. In addition, were it not for her efforts the
stunning Old Executive Office Building next door would not be
still standing. Her foresight in preserving the architecture of
years past is reflected for us all in the elegant buildings
which grace Pennsylvania Avenue today.
We must also not overlook her passion for books and later
for publishing. It was due to her efforts that an array of
distinctive books were made available to the rest of us. She
was known for searching out new authors and ideas. The arts
were a personal passion she brought with her to the White House
and which engaged her for the remainder of her life. The
influence on the rest of the country of this beloved interest
will be lasting.
Nineteenth century author Mary Ann Evans, known to the
world as George Eliot once wrote:
Ideas are poor ghosts until they become incarnate
in a person.
Then, they look out through eyes of compassion,
They touch with warm, redemptive hands,
And then,
They shake the world like a passion.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, with a manner which was subdued
but never frail, shook this Nation. Ironically, without ever
intending to do so. Her work to both preserve our Nation's
history and to foster its ever-evolving artistic culture
deserves tremendous credit and thanks. She will remain an
inspiration for generations to come.
The Honorable Howell Heflin of Alabama
Mr. President, America and the world lost an icon and
living legend on May 19, when former First Lady Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis died after a battle with cancer. Even now, over
a month after her sudden passing, people everywhere are still
trying to articulate what she meant to them personally and to
assess her place in history. The most striking aspect of her
death to me has been the tremendous outpouring of love and
affection from all over the world, accompanied by descriptive
terms like style, grace, elegance, dignity, and class. This
remarkable woman was indeed all of these things and more, and
she embodied the very best things that we like to think
characterize America itself.
Of course, we don't have royalty in this country, and
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis never wanted to be our Queen. She
just wanted to raise her children and live her life in her own
way, pursuing the things she enjoyed and devoting herself to
causes about which she felt strongly. Even decades after she
left the White House, she marveled at the exalted place she
occupied in the eyes of the public, once remarking to a friend
that she couldn't understand why anyone would care what she did
or said.
Perhaps Jackie herself didn't understand her fame, but to
millions of people, she was the closest thing America has ever
had to royalty, and they were intensely interested in her and
everything she did. Ironically, while her celebrity was
unparalleled, she could be spotted in Central Park spending
quiet times with her grandchildren or strolling along the
streets of Manhattan alone. Her public, for the most part,
respected her privacy, admiring her from afar.
Maybe it was her mystery that made her so appealing to so
many. After leaving the White House, she gave no public
interviews, wrote no memoirs, and did no talk shows. Many
wished she had. But somehow it was appropriate that she
remained private to the end, because that mysterious and
private image is, to a large degree what made her who she was.
She felt no need to involve herself in politics other than to
lend her support to her family whenever they needed it. Jackie
just wanted to live her life in quiet dignity, surrounded by
her close friends and family.
Her children, Caroline and John, Jr., were Jackie's
greatest passion, and are certainly her greatest legacy. A
large part of her life over the last three and a half decades
was devoted to the task of making sure her children were raised
the right way. She deserves a great deal or credit for the job
she did, especially since she succeeded so well in spite of the
unique challenges faced by single parents. The glare of the
media spotlight certainly didn't make her job any easier.
Cultural pursuits were Jackie's other great passion. She
was always fascinated by the arts and literature, and for the
last decade and a half of her life as a book editor in New
York, she was responsible for the publication of some
remarkable works. I had the privilege of working with her while
she was editing former Alabama Congressman Carl Elliott's book
``The Cost of Courage: The Journey of an American Congressman''
a few years ago. Congressman Elliott was the first recipient of
the JFK Profiles in Courage award, and she took an abiding and
personal interest in his life and the sacrifices he made in the
name of principle. Last December, she sent him a bouquet of
flowers for his 80th birthday. Her accompanying note read,
``Pretend that I'm there holding your hand because I wish I
could be.'' In January, he received another letter from her
saying how much she had enjoyed seeing a televised documentary
about his life. Stories abound about such selfless and simple
acts of kindness on her part. These were among her trademarks.
Jackie was an international figure, loved around the world,
yet she was quintessentially American. It made us proud when
she charmed de Gaulle and Khrushchev. She proved to an often
skeptical world that refinement and culture were not strangers
to us. She spoke several languages fluently, and was treated as
royalty wherever she went.
As First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy has a unique position in
a changing world. She and John Kennedy were partners in the
reinvigoration of America. She brought youth, vitality,
intelligence, and, of course, a new style to the White House.
We owe her a great deal of thanks for restoring the White House
to its place as a showplace of American design and
architecture, and for working to make the Federal Government a
source of support for the arts in our country. The National
Endowments for the Arts and Humanities are direct results of
her efforts to enhance the place of culture and literature in
our society.
It is an understatement to say that America has never
known--and will probably never know again--anyone else like
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. When she died, people who had never
met her spontaneously broke into tears, unable to explain
exactly why. Perhaps it was because she was our last link to
Camelot and all that it symbolized, a living symbol of an all-
too-brief slice of the past during which anything seemed
possible. Or perhaps it was because of the way she held the
Nation together that dark weekend after her husband's tragic
death. Or maybe it was that she was such an integral part of
us--an American original--despite her intensely private nature.
Jackie's final resting place next to John Kennedy and the
eternal flame she lit over 30 years ago is both fitting and
poignant. Even though she lived over three decades after the
assassination, we still feel cheated because she died so
suddenly and untimely. She was active and vibrant until the
very end. There was so much more that we looked forward to from
this extraordinary woman, just as was the case with her
husband. And yet as sad as her death was, it is somewhat
fitting that she is finally reunited with him, because visitors
to that special sight will now come to focus more on them as a
team and what they meant together to our Nation.
They will remain symbols of hope for generations to come,
and will continue to remind us of the very best things about
ourselves and our country. Through her style, grace, elegance,
dignity, and class in the aftermath of one of the greatest
tragedies to ever befall the Nation and world, Jackie secured
her rightful place in history. Her strength and determination
comforted us, and taught us a great deal about ourselves. We
will miss her, and will be forever grateful to her.
The Honorable Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina
Mr. President, when Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis passed away
last month, it was a former First Lady who died, but the Nation
mourned as though it had lost a beloved former President.
Certainly, those of us in this body who were privileged to know
her feel a profound sense of loss. However, I would not say
that our grief is any greater than that of millions of
Americans who never met her, yet who revered her in a very
special and personal way.
As First Lady, Jackie Kennedy was not politically active on
the model of Eleanor Roosevelt or Hillary Rodham Clinton.
However, I dare say that she served the country more intensely
and profoundly than any First Lady in history. She did so in
the course of those dark days in November. At a time of
unspeakable personal loss, when we should have been supporting
and steadying her, it was she who supported and steadied us. It
was a veiled and valiant Jackie Kennedy who supported and
steadied an entire nation. For that act of sustained courage
and fortitude, our beloved former First Lady will be remembered
and honored for centuries to come.
The Honorable Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas
Madam President, the leadership has designated today for
tributes to the sister-in-law of our colleague from
Massachusetts, so I rise to remember an elegant First Lady and
a lost national treasure, Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
While she rarely spoke in public and protected her privacy
throughout her life, her effect on the spirit of the American
people was great, because of her strength, and because of her
love of beauty.
President Kennedy once praised Robert Frost, saying that
``because he knew the midnight as well as the high noon,
because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the
human spirit, he gave his age strength with which to overcome
despair.'' When President Kennedy's own death threatened our
Nation with despair, his widow's strength helped us to overcome
the midnight of that ordeal.
Madam President, I was just a college student during the
Kennedy Administration. Our generation of young women was
profoundly affected by the grace and dignity of the First Lady.
We were fascinated by her--as was the world.
The Kennedys celebrated art and beauty in many ways, and
she was the leader in that great effort. She preserved the
historic stateliness of Lafayette Park, restored the
magnificence of the White House, and filled its halls with the
music of great artists like Pablo Casals.
When she left the White House, her work as a doting mother
and a steadfast champion of the arts became quieter, but she
lost none of her zeal for either role, and she built a great
legacy in both.
She was like a vision who moved, in Edmund Burke's words,
``just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated
sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like the
morning star full of life and splendor and joy.''
When that joy was shattered, she preserved that splendor,
and her morning star continued to enrich our lives.
Madam President, today I offer the condolences of all
Texans to my colleague from Massachusetts and to the other
relatives and friends who survive her. May she rest in peace.
Thank you, Madam President.
The Honorable John F. Kerry of Massachusetts
Mr. President, the most effective leaders are not only
those people who lead in policy and in action, but those who
lead by example. Jacqueline Kennedy was a dignified, educated,
well-rounded person who inspired the emulation of millions of
people, and who had a profound effect on this world just by
being herself.
Jackie had a clear vision of herself, and also of us.
Whether or not we are aware, the image she defined of her
husband--by characterizing his Presidency as Camelot--forever
changed the standard for leaders in this country, and in fact,
the world. She and her husband affected this period of history
with enlightenment and idealism, making us all believe that
collectively we were capable of great things, and making us
more determined to pursue such potentials. Jackie set all of
our sights a little higher.
Jackie realized what President Kennedy and our entire
country were before we realized it ourselves. Even though he
was the leader of the free world, Jack was a young President,
and Jackie's substantial presence legitimized his role. For
example, it was she, not her husband, that awed the imposing,
chauvinistic Charles de Gaulle--along with his entire country.
She successfully established an environment and an atmosphere
that validated her husband's position. Such a function may be
another generation's view of what a woman should aspire to be,
but recall that Jackie was not to be pigeon-holed. A working
woman when her husband met her and a working woman after he
died, Jackie Onassis lived almost every role among which women
choose: homemaker, supporter of her husband, success in her own
right, mother, individual. And she accomplished these
objectives without making speeches, she communicated a
meaningful message to us without using words. Through her
choices and her actions, she advocated a life of dignity,
culture, and strength.
Her strength was at times monumentally important. Her
solemn, collected presence at Lyndon Johnson's side, while her
husband's blood still dried on her dress, was the only sign
that convinced the Nation and the world that this country's
leadership was intact. Her composure kept us together
politically as well as emotionally. But think about how
difficult it must have been to have been part of the moment
that officially pronounced her husband, who was alive and
vibrant only hours earlier, to be a part of history--to
participate in the transfer of the title he had died for to
another man. The sorrow surrounding Jack's death had the
potential to engulf her and this entire country. Had she not
such tremendous reserve, had she not so responsibly hid her
tears from us, we might well have been torn apart.
Jackie was a wonderful person to know. Those of us who
spent time with her were truly fortunate. There was something
about Jackie that was too beautiful for this world. There was
also a part of her that was unbearably sad. That one enchanting
soul had to endure so much heartbreak is tragic. She outlived
two husbands, a baby boy, Patrick, and gave birth to a
stillborn daughter. In the most painful of ways, time and
again, Jackie proved that she was a survivor.
Jackie, much of this country was in love with you, but for
all our collective concern, we couldn't keep tragedy from
claiming those around you. All that we offered you was
attention, which at times increased your pain. But, graciously,
you never made us feel our adoration to be unrequited. Even as
you conducted your life and raised your children in private,
you never made us feel rejected. You gently presented us with
your previous vision, and left us with a cherished legacy of
idealism and elegance. You created and cultivated a perfectly
intact and proud moment in our history that continues to define
us, and in your absence, we will always strive to recreate
that. We will never forget you.
The Honorable Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey
Mr. President, on Thursday, May 19, in the year of 1994, a
woman who had influenced the style of the country, given
comfort to our people, and always demonstrated dignity and
grace, passed away. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis was a
woman who touched many people--Senators and citizens,
executives and blue-collar workers, Americans and people
throughout the world. In the words of one woman, Kristin
Cabral, who paid her respects during the cavalcade along
Washington's streets, ``[Jackie] was not just some plastic
icon, but a very strong person and woman. I very much believed
in her.''
I, too, very much believed in her and that which she
accomplished. As the First Lady, Jackie worked hard to create a
cultural atmosphere in the White House and the Capital by
promoting the arts. Through these efforts, she brought an
appreciation for the arts to the United States as a whole.
Later, as an editor, she continued this work, bringing many
wonderful books to the printing press and to the public.
Dealing with pain and tragedy is a most difficult
experience, and it becomes almost unbearable when it occurs in
the public eye. Jackie's courage during those horrible days
after November 22, 1963, gave the country strength. Instead of
giving comfort to her, we drew courage from her. At that time,
I was a businessman in New Jersey, active in civic affairs, but
not yet involved in the political world in which Jackie found
herself. I felt the enormous blow that struck the whole
country, and also took comfort from Jackie's stoic countenance
and composure.
My father was a cancer victim, as was Jackie. I knew
something of the pain she must have felt. But even in her last
hours, she was a figure of grace and courage. She chose to
spend those final moments enjoying the company of her loved
ones. As a fellow Martha's Vineyard vacationer, I often
witnessed Jackie's complete devotion to her children and
family. I know that her children, John and Caroline, will
always remember the graceful, loving, and dedicated woman that
all Americans have come to admire and love from afar.
Indeed, the memory of this strong woman will live on in the
minds of all the people she touched. The indelible mark that
she left upon the American people, and people throughout the
world will only be deepened by her passing. Our memories of her
will burn as bright, and as long, as the eternal flame which
marks the grave of President Kennedy, next to whom she now
rests in peace.
The Honorable Carl Levin of Michigan
Mr. President, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis touched a deep
chord in the American people--from the day she married young
Senator John Kennedy to her days as First Lady, through the
tragedy of President Kennedy's assassination and finally
through her withdrawal into private life. She remained a figure
greatly admired by the public for many more years than she
spent in public life. She had an allure that was seemingly
irresistible, and a polish and refinement that one hopes would
be models for us all.
She was a modern woman whose life in many ways personified
the changing role of women in America during the second half of
the 20th century. Her interests were cultural, artistic and
many, and her good taste governed everything in which she
involved herself. Protecting her children from the limelight
that was forced upon her was probably the primary focus of her
young life, and she raised them to be the fine young people
they are today.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was taken from her family and
loved ones far too soon and the loss for them is surely
immeasurable. It is also a loss to those who may not have known
her personally but who had great admiration for this woman
whose nobility of conduct displayed a consistent and
extraordinary grace as she dealt with the severe pressures and
demands placed on her.
Her passing leaves a void that will not easily be filled
and also leaves us diminished as a nation.
The Honorable Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut
Mr. President, ``Many women do noble things, but you
surpass them all,'' writes the author of Proverbs, Chapter 31.
The life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was a life of nobility,
in the finest sense of the word. She elevated a nation,
especially so during a time of great crisis, and now that she
is gone, we keenly feel the loss, as if a member of our family
had passed away.
What is especially poignant about her life is that she
never sought the kind of fame she attained. Rather, it was
thrust upon her, first through marriage to a Senator with a
growing national reputation. Then as First Lady, when Senator
John F. Kennedy became President. But Jacqueline Kennedy was
not content to simply suffer the limelight she never wanted.
She went to work, in public ways and private, to the benefit of
all the American people. She transformed the White House from a
place to a national treasure; from an address, to a
destination. Its beauty today and through the ages to come are
due in no small measure to Jackie Kennedy's sense of history,
art and style.
Perhaps most important, Jacqueline Kennedy held a nation
together at a time when the tragedy of John Kennedy's
assassination threatened to pull us apart. Hours after holding
her dying husband in her lap, she stood by the side of the new
President, as he was sworn into office, symbolizing the
peaceful continuity of democracy that is at the heart of
America's greatness. And in the difficult days that followed,
the First Lady not only bore herself with grace and strength,
she directed the funeral that will be remembered throughout
history for its power, emotion, and meaning.
In the years since the triumph and tragedy of the
Presidency of John Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
dedicated her life to what she would probably consider her
greatest accomplishment: Loving and raising two wonderful
children, whose own lives carry on the legacy of service
exemplified by John and Jackie Kennedy.
The life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is in itself a
profile in courage, and a grateful nation will never forget her
courage and all that she meant to us. ``Give her the reward she
has earned,'' it says in Proverbs 31, ``and let her works bring
her praise at the city gate.''
The Honorable Harlan Mathews of Tennessee
Mr. President, I would like to take just a moment this
morning to pay tribute to the memory of Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis.
As a young assistant to then Governor of Tennessee, Frank
Clement, it was my privilege to get to know President Kennedy
as we put together a program for the Appalachian region of this
country, which has proven to be very advantageous and very
helpful to the people of this Nation.
I never knew Jacqueline Kennedy. Of course, I knew of her.
But, Mr. President, I, like many Americans, came to feel that
she was a member of my family.
The passing of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis left our Nation
poorer in grace, elegance, and dignity. The example of her life
has left us an ideal to honor and to hold.
Two generations of Americans remember personally the
terrible events that she met with incredible measure and
presence. From her, a nation learned how to face the loss of
our President. But we who remember that time, also learned from
her how to find composure and steadiness when we faced tragedy
in our own lives. She taught us again--and she taught us more--
in the way she confronted her own death.
We still speak of Camelot, and we still ask ourselves what
might have been. We will do so throughout the years to come.
And when we do, we will remember the woman who remains the
Nation's First Lady in more ways than we can recount. She will
always be with us.
The Honorable Daniel P. Moynihan of New York
Mr. President, Jacqueline Onassis touched the lives of
millions through her remarkable conduct as First Lady, her
courage during a shattering national tragedy, and her ability
to then raise two beloved children and succeed brilliantly in a
career in publishing.
Yet there is even more to be added to the Senate's account
of her achievements--her many contributions to the life of
America's two greatest cities--New York and Washington, DC.
Characteristically, she never sought recognition for these
efforts, but they were significant ones and ought to be
recorded for history.
In New York City, which was her home and which she loved,
Mrs. Onassis was for the last two decades a member of the
Municipal Art Society, the 102-year-old organization dedicated
to historic preservation and the furtherance of civic art in
New York.
As Senator Kennedy observed in his eulogy, she was much
involved in the society's efforts to preserve Grand Central
Terminal. Senators may recall the news photographs of her
outside Grand Central with the architect Philip Johnson and
others in 1975. She led the fight to stop an awful proposal to
erect a 53-story office tower atop the magnificent 1913 Beaux
Arts Terminal, and ultimately prevailed when in 1978, the U.S.
Supreme Court upheld the New York City landmarks law that
protected the station.
She also applied her considerable energies and talents to
the revitalization of Times Square; to efforts to revive
Manhattan's West Side riverfront; to the preservation of St.
Bartholomew's Church, and to the protracted fight against a
plan to build a skyscraper at Columbus Circle that would have
cast a giant shadow over Central Park.
Her influence on the city of New York was profound, yet her
legacy in the area of civic improvement is perhaps even greater
here in the Nation's Capital.
During his Inaugural parade in 1961, President Kennedy
looked at the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue, then lined
with an assortment of structures in varying states of
dilapidation and the unfinished Federal Triangle on the south
side, and decided that something had to be done with it. He
gave this task to Arthur Goldberg, then Secretary of Labor, who
in turn assigned it to me, then Secretary Goldberg's assistant.
This led to the creation of the President's Commission on
Pennsylvania Avenue--later the Pennsylvania Avenue Development
Corporation--which produced the plan for developing the 1.1-
mile stretch of the avenue between the White House and the
Capitol.
One of the last instructions President Kennedy gave before
departing for Dallas was that a coffee hour be arranged for the
Congressional leadership in order to display the model of the
Pennsylvania Avenue plan and seek their support. Bill Walton,
Charles Horsky, and I, were at lunch discussing this on
November 22, 1963, when the White House operator called with
the news that the President had been shot. We made our way to
the White House; the final word came. We left with this task
undone. Or would have had it not been for the intervention of
Mrs. Kennedy.
Soon after President Kennedy's funeral, she met with
President Johnson in the Oval Office. Their conversation was
later recounted by Mrs. Kennedy in an interview she gave on
January 11, 1974, to Professor Joe B. Franz of the University
of Texas at Austin. Professor Franz conducted the interview in
Manhattan for an oral history of the Johnson administration.
Here is an excerpt from the transcript of Mrs. Kennedy's
remarks:
I remember going over to the Oval Office to ask him
for two things. They were two things I thought that I
would like to ask him as a favor. One was to name the
space center in Florida ``Cape Kennedy.'' * * * And * *
* there were plans for the renovation of Washington and
there was this commission, and I thought it might come
to an end. I asked President Johnson if he'd be nice
enough to receive the commission and sort of give
approval to the work they were doing, and he did. It
was one of the first things he did.
Jacqueline Kennedy asked for Pennsylvania Avenue, for the
continuation of the President's Commission on Pennsylvania
Avenue. And coming from Mrs. Kennedy, this request
understandably made a claim on President Johnson and on his
administration. As it did on me. The enterprise soon acquired
official sanction, having been wholly informal under JFK. And
it moved forward. By the time President Nixon left office, the
Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation had been
established by act of Congress. Today, with construction of the
Federal Triangle building at 14th Street well underway, one-
third of a century's work is nearly complete--and Jackie made
it all possible.
A few years back, as the last major features of the
redevelopment fell in place, I received from her perhaps the
most precious letter I will ever receive from anyone. ``Twenty
five years,'' she wrote, ``is a long time not to give up on
something.'' Then this:
I will be forever grateful dear Pat, for your message
to me along the way, for the spirit you brought to
something Jack cared about so deeply, and for this
happy ending.
The poet Yeats said of a man that he was blessed and had
the power to bless. Those few lines of Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis suggested how very blessed she was in spite of all that
came to her as she traveled, in Maurice Tempelsman's words, to
Ithaka.
On the morning of May 23, Liz and I attended her funeral at
the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on East 84th Street in
Manhattan, the same church where she was baptized as a child.
We knew and loved Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis all these many
years, and never more than of late when she so wondrously,
luminously contributed to any enterprise that might add grace
and beauty to the city of New York. She adorned New York as she
had adorned Washington before, much as she embellished our age.
The Honorable Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island
Mr. President, the memory of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
already has become a treasured jewel in our national history.
Her grace and presence and her wonderful sense of proportion
made her a model that will surely endure for generations to
come. We knew her since her childhood when she spent many happy
summers at her family home at Hammersmith Farm on Narragansett
Bay. Her marriage to our then colleague and future President
John Kennedy took place in Newport.
Later, Jackie Onassis brought to the White House her sense
of harmony, beauty, and style. It was reflected not only in the
uncompromising good taste of the restoration of the Executive
Mansion itself, but also in the elegance and verve of the
parties and events that she hosted there.
Her sense of style extended into affairs of government as
well. I particularly recall her influence on the legislation
which I sponsored creating the National Foundation on the Arts
and the Humanities.
In her later years, after the trauma and tragedy of Dallas
had long receded and after the Onassis era was over, she
resumed a life of her own in New York. This was particularly
admirable because it was so true to her own instincts and
values. She retained her privacy and she brought up her
children marvelously well. And she worked as an editor at a
craft that she enjoyed and at which she excelled. Her mordant
wit and humor often gave laughter and pleasure to her friends.
Jackie remained a beautiful person to the end. Her life
ended too soon, and we miss her immensely. But she will remain
in our hearts, and in the memory of the Nation, a bright spirit
of elegance and style that may not soon be equaled.
I know that my wife and I already miss her immensely,
immensely.
The Honorable Larry Pressler of South Dakota
Many tributes have been written about Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis . . . all of them ring true. She was elegant,
beautiful, strong, and courageous. But more importantly,
Jacqueline, the public icon, was a very real person.
Refusing to simply bask in the social limelight, she
epitomized what is important to so many American women today.
Jacqueline chose to live a life filled with devotion to her
children and grandchildren, career, and personal development.
Jacqueline's children and grandchildren were her priority.
She constantly made this clear, in the face of relentless
public intrusions. For that I applaud her.
Jacqueline also forged a career she loved. I have heard
that she treated her staff with maternal kindness, and always
was concerned about their well being. She was creative,
intelligent and inquisitive and developed a sterling reputation
in the publishing world on her own professional merits.
No one thinks of Jackie as just ``President Kennedy's
wife.'' She became a household name in her own right. Fiercely
loyal, not only to those around her, but also to herself, and
armed with a vast reservoir of inner strength, Jackie lived her
life as she desired.
Of all the wonderful things I will remember about
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, I will remember most the lesson she
taught us in her own quiet way: The most important things in
life are your family, your contributions to society, treating
others well, and remembering to be yourself.
Recently, I have come to know and respect her good friend
Maurice Tempelsman. I extend my sympathies to both him and her
many loving family members.
The Honorable Donald W. Riegle, Jr. of Michigan
Mr. President, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis has aptly been
called a national treasure. Throughout her life, Mrs. Onassis
devoted herself to preserving our Nation's historical treasures
before everything slips away, before every link with the past
is gone. And now, she herself has slipped away from us.
Because she embodied some of our Nation's most magnificent
moments, and some of its most tragic, her passing has touched
all of us in a very personal way.
Her own words best explain how she was able to live with
the joys and the tragedies which characterized her life:
We must give to life at least as much as we received
from it. Every moment one lives, is different from the
next. The good, the bad, the hardship, the joy, the
tragedy, love and happiness are all interwoven into one
single indescribable whole that is called life. You
cannot separate the good from the bad. And, perhaps
there is no need to do so either.
Mrs. Onassis lived her life with zeal, dignity, and grace.
She was guided by her unique vision of life's possibilities and
an understanding of the role history would play in judging our
actions.
For the few brief years that she graced this city as our
Nation's First Lady, she raised our Government's support for
the arts and historic preservation to a higher level. The White
House became a living monument to America's rich history and
culture, where the Nation's best artists and musicians came to
perform.
The historic preservation crusade, begun during her White
House years, continued throughout her life. Aiding in the
rescue of Washington's historic Lafayette Square and New York's
Grand Central Station from demolition, are among Mrs. Onassis'
best known achievements.
None of Mrs. Onassis' efforts, however, were as dear to her
as the raising of her two children. She referred to that
successful effort as the best thing she ever did, and her wish
was to be remembered and emulated for that achievement more
than for any other.
Mr. President, in his book ``The Bouviers,'' John Davis
writes:
President Kennedy's administration had captured the
public imagination in a way few Presidents in the
Nation's history had done. His youthful sincerity and
enthusiasm had inspired men everywhere with hope for a
better world. In the last analysis, his major
contribution to his country was spiritual rather than
political, and after his death, it was primarily his
widow who kept that contribution alive, who perpetuated
it. Her majestic conduct at his funeral, from the march
to St. Matthew's to the lighting of the eternal flame,
her influence in changing the names of national
landmarks to Kennedy, her helping with the design of
his tomb, her role in founding the John F. Kennedy
Center for the Performing Arts and the John F. Kennedy
Library, all these contributed immensely to keeping the
bright spirit of the slain President alive.
Closely allied with her efforts to perpetuate John F.
Kennedy's memory is what may well prove to be her most
significant contribution of all, as well as the most
ephemeral: The presentation of an image of beauty,
courage, and grandeur to the world during three of the
most shameful and humiliating days in her country's
existence. As an incomparable artist in life, it was
her supreme privilege and achievement to grant an
entire nation, at the time of her husband's funeral,
some of the finest moments in its history. It is upon
the enduring quality of those moments * * * that her
place in history will ultimately rest.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis provided the quote from
Shakespeare used by Robert F. Kennedy in his tribute to the
President at the 1964 Democratic National Convention:
When he shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
I believe the words of Shakespeare are equally appropriate
in memorializing her.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
And so, the architect of the eternal flame at Arlington--
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis--will now be immortalized by
it. It will forever evoke the memory not only of a fallen
President, but of the lady who served beside him and did so
much to define his Presidency during what was, in the words of
the poet Robert Frost, ``an age of poetry and power.''
The Honorable William V. Roth, Jr. of Delaware
Mr. President, there is not a lot that can be said about
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis that has not already been said in
these past few weeks. Certainly the place this woman held in
the consciousness of America was--and remains--somewhere very
near our heart. Those who knew her cared deeply for her. We
have heard many of their heart-warming remembrances. Those who
did not know her personally admired from afar as she brought
grace and elegance to a period Americans came to know as
Camelot.
Indeed, she was a fitting Guinevere, a beautiful and noble
woman who enriched the lives of those around her; a woman who
believed in her husband and his vision--and who supported that
vision in a quiet, regal way. In the process, she forever
changed the role of First Lady and even the character of
Washington.
About the same time America's political story was
beginning, the German poet, Friedrich von Schiller was writing
about the importance of art, beauty, and aesthetic education on
democracy. A part of his conclusion was that, ``Art is the
daughter of Freedom . . . . If man is ever to solve the problem
of politics in practice, he will have to approach it through
the problem of the aesthetic, because it is only through Beauty
that man makes his way to Freedom.''
In a profound yet subtle way, Jacqueline Kennedy understood
this, that ``it is aesthetic culture that leads to moral
nobility, and moral nobility is the precondition of a truly
free society.'' Her successful efforts to bring art and culture
to Washington forever bless our Nation. Not only was it
ennobling, but at a very critical time in our history, it eased
the realpolitiks of the tense cold war with softness, beauty,
and joy.
It would be a grave mistake, however, to appreciate
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis only for the artistic contributions
she made. Indeed, she did so much more. In fact, I believe it
was in crisis that Americans fell in love with their First
Lady. None who were alive and old enough to understand, will
ever forget the courage of this woman as she stood beside
Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One as he took the oath of
office only hours after the assassination of her husband. At
that moment, Jackie became a legend. And the life she led
thereafter as a mother, concerned about living, nurturing, and
raising her children beneath the stark glare of media light,
only confirmed what we had already come to understand: This was
an exceptional woman.
The Honorable Jim Sasser of Tennessee
Mr. President, I join with my colleagues in paying tribute
to former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Jacqueline Kennedy came to the White House in 1961, as the
third youngest First Lady in American history. In three short
years, her elegance and grace set a standard by which all
future First Ladies have been judged.
She restored the White House and made it a national
treasure. Under her guidance, sources of historic pieces of art
and furniture were returned to the White House. She also made
the White House a showcase for the arts--featuring the work of
such world-renowned artists as Pablo Casals.
When developers threatened Lafayette Park, across from the
White House, Mrs. Kennedy stepped in. Lafayette Park was saved
and the historic setting of the White House was preserved.
Equally important, however, she made a secure and happy
home for her family in the White House, giving her children the
privacy and security that all children need.
It is difficult now to recreate the feeling of idealism of
that time. It was as if a New American Age had dawned and
anything was possible. That belief, and our own innocence,
ended in one shattering moment.
Those of us who lived through those terrible days in
November of 1963, will never forget the grace, and dignity, and
courage Mrs. Kennedy displayed. She quite literally held our
country together in its grief.
After President Kennedy's assassination, during her
remarriage and her career in publishing, Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis guarded her privacy zealously. She continued her
involvement and support for the arts and historic preservation.
She worked to save such historic sites as New York's Grand
Central Terminal. As a book editor, she continued her
commitment to culture, editing books on the arts and history.
Throughout her life, Jacqueline Onassis never hesitated in
saying that she considered raising her children to be the most
important thing in her life. In the past few years we have seen
just how successful she has been--raising her children to be
responsible adults with a commitment to public service.
Although Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis has been taken from us
too young, she has left us a legacy of grace and dignity and
common sense. She graced our lives with her presence and we are
the poorer for her passing.
The Honorable Paul Simon of Illinois
Mr. President, first, just in commenting on the tribute
paid by Senator Mitchell to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, he used
the word ``grace.'' That really described her, how she handled
herself so well in so many difficult situations.
The tribute paid by Senator Kennedy, as well as her friend
Maurice Tempelsman, at the funeral, I thought were both
eloquent.
The Honorable Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire
Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is one of the
world's most revered women. Her beauty, charm, grace, dignity,
and courage were an inspiration to so many.
As First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy will long be remembered
for her commitment to the arts and the restoration projects in
the White House which enhanced its beauty and grandeur. She was
a gracious hostess at home and a popular ambassador abroad.
I will always remember Jackie Kennedy for her strong
commitment to her family. Jackie was an intensely private
person and in spite of the public glare of political life, she
was able to maintain a stable and loving home for her children.
Finally, how could anyone forget the strong, courageous
widow mourning President Kennedy's death while our Nation
mourned with her. Her strength and character carried us through
those turbulent years and helped our country to face a new day.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is a national treasure. Her life
and her accomplishments have changed the course of history. We
will always be grateful for having known her.
The Honorable Paul David Wellstone of Minnesota
Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to the memory of an
American heroine, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. When Mrs. Onassis
passed away in May, she left a void in the hearts of not only
Americans, but people all over the world. We are all saddened
by her untimely death.
We mourn her loss, not just as an American icon, but for
her rich legacy. As a young First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy
fulfilled the role perfectly. But she was more than the poised
and beautiful wife of our President, John F. Kennedy. She
brought with her to the White House, a love and knowledge of
history and culture, and a desire to make the White House the
most important home in America.
She filled it with donated pieces of American furniture and
art, appropriate for the home of a President. She also brought
prominent musicians and artists to the White House and helped
to make our Nation's Capital a cultural center. Most important
of all, she made the White House a home and filled it with the
laughter of her children, Caroline and John, Jr. whom she
adored. Her desire to maintain their privacy made us respect
her even more.
And she taught a nation how to mourn. When President
Kennedy was assassinated, she orchestrated the arrangements. We
were all with her that sorrow-filled weekend, and we paid
tribute to our slain President as our Nation had honored
another assassinated President, Abraham Lincoln.
We will hold forever in our memories the sight of a
riderless horse, and a little 3-year-old boy saluting his
father one last time, and an eternal flame which still blazes
brightly at Arlington National Cemetery. With her courage and
the great dignity she possessed, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
helped our Nation heal following the loss of the President.
Over the years and in private life, she maintained her
commitment to historic preservation, and worked diligently to
save historic sites, including New York's Grand Central
Terminal. As a book editor, she continued to promote culture,
and was instrumental in the publishing of books on art,
history, and dance.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis leaves many lasting and
significant contributions, and I am honored to join my
colleagues in paying tribute to her. Admired and loved by all
Americans, we will miss this extraordinary woman.
TRIBUTES BY REPRESENTATIVES
The Honorable Robert E. Andrews of New Jersey
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was an inspiration to an entire
generation of Americans. Her grace and dignity, her bearing and
inner beauty were respected and envied by world leaders and day
laborers alike. No one who met her ever walked away feeling
anything less than honored to make her acquaintance, yet she
never used the awe in which people held her to diminish
their sense of self-worth.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was an American treasure, and
her memory will forever invoke fond images of ``Camelot'', when
the leadership of our Nation reflected its youthful image. She
was the embodiment of the values and qualities of her
generation, and those generations that follow would be well
served to make her an ideal they strive to achieve. The imprint
she has left on American society, and the world whose
imagination she captured, will never be diminished.
The Honorable James H. Bilbray of Nevada
Mr. Speaker, when I was a college student, I was asked to
be a part of the effort to help elect John F. Kennedy, a
distinguished young Senator from Massachusetts, to become
President of the United States.
I quickly accepted and became the southern Nevada
coordinator of the Students for Kennedy. I remember my dad, who
was in political office at the time, told me that John Kennedy
could not win because he was a Catholic and not a Mason. My dad
was a Baptist and a Mason. This statement made me work even
harder.
After he won the November election, I remember how proud
all of us were. The First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, gave
elegance and refinement to the White House that had not been
seen since Dolly Madison. I remember my wife, Mikey, making me
be quiet or telling me to quit blocking the TV when Jackie was
speaking or just in the picture. All of us believed we were
part of something special and when the phrase ``Camelot'' was
coined, it felt perfect. And even though I could not be
considered a knight of the round table, I felt I was at least a
page in the fabulous court.
Jack Kennedy was certainly Arthur and Jackie was his
Guinevere.
That awful day in November 1963, when Camelot came to an
end will be remembered by all of us. It will never be
forgotten. Something truly important, not only to America, but
to my wife and I personally, had come to an end. But we do have
wonderful memories.
All of us were amazed at the grace and dignity of
Jacqueline during that terrible ordeal. Over the years my wife
and I have always followed her walk through history. She was
grace and elegance beyond compare. There will never be another
one like her. So I say in conclusion, ``farewell, fair
Guinevere. We do miss you.''
The Honorable Lucien E. Blackwell of Pennsylvania
I did not know her. But, I believe she knew me. We never
met. From a distance, however, the force of her personality and
what she stood for, made her seem near. When I consider the
impact of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis' years with us, I
am reminded of the image of Daniel, and the passage, ``Dare to
be a Daniel; Dare to walk alone; Dare to have a purpose firm;
and Dare to make it known.''
In America, we have people of varied backgrounds. On the
one hand, there are far too many who are among the hungry, the
unemployed, the poor, the sick, the downtrodden, those without
education, health care, nutrition, or proper clothing, those
without hope. On the other hand, there are those who are among
the comfortable, the untroubled, those who have managed to
prosper and move into affluence. Those without hope are not
always seen by those who are comfortable. To see them,
clustered beneath the dim lights and dark streets, one must
venture out. The First Lady dared to be different. She dared to
venture out. By challenge and chance, she came to know each
kind of individual represented in America.
When she was First Lady, at the tender age of 31, she had
ascended to the top of the ladder. Many, too many, in America
remained on the lower rungs. Her's was the language of lyrics,
theirs more common. She knew what America and the World
offered. They didn't even dream about what she knew. In public,
she dressed smartly. They just dressed smart, depending on the
weather. Nonetheless, there were few who were not warmed by the
thought and feeling that she was First Lady to all America. In
the barber and beauty shops, in little towns and big cities,
they spoke of boxing, fashions, baseball, children, economics,
family, and politics, the loudest seemed the more convincing.
Competing with the noise from others, speaking loudly was a
necessity. However, when they spoke of ``Our First Lady,''
their tones softened. They were proud Americans, and they were
more proud to have her in the White House.
I am not certain why she captured the attention and
imagination of so many in this country. Perhaps it was because
she took on the task of restoring the White House, signaling
important change for our Nation. Possibly, it was the story
told of the First Lady, clad in a pullover sweater and jeans,
apparel of the ordinary, helping to remove items from a moving
truck into the White House, carrying the heaviest mirrors! Or
perhaps it was her mastery of language. She spoke in French
when in France, in Italian when in Italy, and in Spanish when
in Spain. Perhaps, it was because, with her broad language
background, they believed she could communicate, with them.
Most likely, their interest was due in large measure to the
``Jackie Look,'' a look that was fresh and new and offered
promise for a better way of life.
The reason is far less important than the result. They
believed the First Lady could see what they saw, could feel
what they felt, understood what they understood. Jacqueline
Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. I did not know her. But, she knew us.
She was a First Lady, with class.
The Honorable Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. of Virginia
Mr. Speaker, in the early 1960s I was asked as a student at
the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to be the head of the
Students for Kennedy in southern Nevada. I was so proud that I
was asked to do this as an active member of the Young
Democrats, and I worked very, very hard. Even though I cannot
consider myself a knight in Camelot, I certainly considered
myself a squire or maybe only a page, but I worked very,
very hard in that election to get then-Senator Kennedy
elected President.
For the next 3 years I watched in awe, in admiration, as
the Kennedy administration moved forward on many programs that
I as a Democrat held so near and dear. We certainly admired
President Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, and were
happy to see the progress of this administration. We were happy
when they coined the name Camelot, because again, we felt we
were part of that noble cause to bring their justice to all
mankind and America in general.
We lost that ray of light last night when Jacqueline
Kennedy died, and we will remember her forever. That light has
gone out, and we feel so bad about it, but her memory will go
on forever. We have certainly lost our fair Guinevere.
The Honorable Robert A. Borski of Pennsylvania
Calling her a ``true symbol of class and dignity and one of
America's greatest role models of courage,'' U.S.
Representative Bob Borski (3rd-PA) is mourning the death of
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who died last week of cancer at the
age of 64.
``Jackie Kennedy Onassis was a true inspiration to a
generation of Americans aroused by the spirit of youth, hope
and idealism that developed when the Nation's youngest
President--John Kennedy--was elected to office, only to have
those dreams shattered when the President was assassinated,''
said Borski.
``As a First Lady, Jacqueline brought culture and an
unending devotion to the arts to the White House, and with that
she brought worldwide artistic recognition to America,'' said
Borski.
``As a grieving widow, Jacqueline led a horrified Nation in
mourning the death of a President. Her strength of character
during those difficult days after President Kennedy's death
will forever be etched in our minds and was perhaps the
greatest sign of strength shown at that time which enabled our
Nation to heal,'' added Borski.
``Without ever seeking public adulation Jackie Kennedy
Onassis became one of America's treasures,'' said Borski.
``As First Lady, she shared her love of the arts with the
world and renovated the White House as a showplace for historic
artifacts that the world can appreciate today,'' said Borski.
``By encouraging world-class performances at the White House
she brought class and style to the American Presidency,'' added
Borski.
``Her love of art and history lasted with her throughout
her life. In recent years she is known for helping to preserve
historic landmarks in New York City so generations of people
will cherish these structures as she did,'' added Borski.
``Despite her enthusiastic devotion to the arts, Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis will best be known for her silent strength at a
time of America's greatest pain,'' said Borski. ``She touched
our hearts as a young widow and her devotion to raising her
family under intense media scrutiny was executed with such
grace and dignity that she became a model of courage,'' added
Borski.
``I never met Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, but like most
Americans raised in the Kennedy years, I shared our country's
deepest respect for the First Lady. With her husband she
brought class and charisma to our Nation when it so yearned for
youthful leadership. Since President Kennedy's assassination, I
remain awed by that same woman whose greatest strength was
restraint under the glare of media always following her. She
did not live her life in the limelight but rose above that to
live her life in silent dignity and grace, and I believe she
won the love and respect of a Nation as a result,'' said
Borski.
``Thoughts of comfort are with the Kennedy family during
this sad time which is truly the end of an era in American
history,'' concluded Borski.
The Honorable Corrine Brown of Florida
All the world is familiar with the poignant photographs of
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Every American remembers the
cataclysmic assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
in Dallas, and Jackie's grace in mourning. All of this is
deeply embedded in the historical record of the United States
and in the memory of a grateful Nation. However, there is much
more to remember about this gracious matron.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is one of those Presidential
wives who maintained a large enduring following long after she
left the White House. The public adored her performance in the
role of the First Lady and her ability to preside with regal
grace. She made a lasting contribution by revitalizing the
antique splendor of the White House casting a spell on Charles
de Gaulle and all of France during President Kennedy's visit to
Paris, and by raising her children in the public eye.
Part of America's fascination with Jackie lies in the sheer
drama of her life; First Lady at age 31; a widow at 34. She
will always be regarded as a something of an enigma. Perhaps,
what is most amazing about Jacqueline is that despite her
public and seemingly tragic life, she managed to create and
maintain an identity of her own. She closely guarded her
private life and retained an air of mystery, while remaining an
object of public adulation until her death.
Last but not least, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis will
be remembered for her many talents, her charm, her bravery and
her grace under pressure which inspired a grieving Nation. We
miss her dearly.
The Honorable Jerry F. Costello of Illinois
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to our Nation's
former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Mrs. Onassis was the living embodiment of grace, courage
and character in the face of tremendous adversity. None of us
will forget the dignity and bravery she showed after the
assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy.
She worked hard after that moment to raise her children,
John Kennedy, Jr. and Caroline Kennedy, in as normal an
atmosphere as their celebrity would allow. Her strong
commitment to family and her desire to keep them out of the
glare of the spotlight were admirable and will be a lasting
credit to her.
Mr. Speaker, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had a lasting
impact on our Nation's perception of the White House as a home
to our First Family. She dramatically altered the perception of
the American people toward the First Lady, making the White
House more accessible for generations to come. I join my
colleagues in honoring her memory today.
The Honorable Ron de Lugo, Delegate of the Virgin Islands
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was a woman of elegance and
poise who captivated our Nation with her grace and charm.
As our First Lady, her beauty and presence enchanted the
world as no other ever has.
In her time of tragedy and ours, she shared the grief of a
Nation with impeccable composure and dignity, and she reassured
us that we could, too.
In years after, though followed relentlessly by the press,
she always upheld the bond of trust with the people of this
country as our custodian of the legacy of John Fitzgerald
Kennedy.
I recall so well her visit to the Virgin Islands in 1959,
accompanying her young husband as he sought my support for the
Democratic nomination the next year. I will always remember
what a beautiful couple they were, so vibrant and so filled
with dreams for tomorrow.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis symbolized an era of boundless
promise, a time of shattered hopes, and the rekindling of faith
for an entire generation of Americans.
We owe this remarkable woman our tribute for all that she
was and all that she did for our Nation.
The Honorable Rosa L. DeLauro of Connecticut
As a woman, I owe so much to Jackie Kennedy Onassis. She
truly was the role model for my generation. As a wife, mother,
First Lady, and widow, she was the epitome of grace and style.
In triumph, she captured our imaginations, and in tragedy, she
captured our hearts.
For 1,000 glorious days of Camelot, Jackie captured our
imaginations. But, from the start it was clear that she was
more than the beautiful wife of the handsome young President.
When Jackie Kennedy moved into the White House, she
singlehandedly changed the way our country viewed First Ladies.
This was a woman who had her own identity--smart and stylish,
she captivated the world.
And, in those three awful days in November of 1963, Jackie
captured our hearts. It is for what she did then, that our
Nation owes the most to Jackie. In those dark days, her inner
strength and dignity served as a beacon of hope and her
fortitude of spirit helped heal a heartbroken Nation. Jackie
had survived and we knew that we must, too.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis lives on in our collective memory.
Her legacy reaches far beyond her children and grandchildren or
the causes that she championed throughout her life. Her
greatest legacy is the adoring Nation she left behind. We will
miss Jackie Kennedy Onassis, but we will never forget her.
The Honorable Eliot L. Engel of New York
Mr. Speaker, I wish to pay tribute to a great lady who
passed away last night in my hometown of New York. I mean, of
course, our former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
To those of us growing up in the 1960s, Jacqueline Kennedy,
along with her husband, President John F. Kennedy, personified
a new generation of energy, spirit, and hope. Indeed, my very
first calling to become involved in politics and government was
in great part inspired by the Kennedys.
To me, Jacqueline Kennedy represented a kind of royalty in
America, in a good sense. She was truly queen of our country
during the short period she served as First Lady.
Who could ever forget her televised tour of the White House
or her pillbox hats or the Jackie Kennedy hairdos? Who could
ever forget the dignity and grace with which she conducted
herself during the terrible period after the assassination?
I had the pleasure of meeting Jacqueline Kennedy only once
in 1980, when she came to my home community in the Bronx to
campaign with me for Ted Kennedy. I did not know what to
expect, but found her charming, personable, and gracious.
In her later years, she was very much a part of the New
York City spirit, involving herself in a number of causes. We
were very proud that Jacqueline Kennedy, born in New York,
chose New York City for her home.
She will truly be missed, but never forgotten. And my
condolences go out to her children, grandchildren, and all of
her family.
The Honorable Anna G. Eshoo of California
Mr. Speaker, I join my colleagues this evening to honor and
pay tribute to the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who was
called home by her Maker on May 19, 1994.
Jackie Kennedy was consistently viewed as the most admired
woman of our generation. She was the dominant symbol to
Americans--especially American women, for she was a touchstone
for the experiences of women of her generation.
In 1953, Jacqueline Bouvier married John F. Kennedy. Having
won World War II, veterans had returned home, began having
started families, and found jobs. Soon these young couples were
called on to assume positions of leadership. They were
determined to make a difference.
John and Jackie Kennedy were one of those couples. They
were part of that group of young people who John Kennedy said,
``Must step forward and provide a new generation of leaders.''
And on a frigid January afternoon in 1960, this young
couple stood before the Nation. As Jackie held the Bible, John
Kennedy took the oath of office for the Presidency. During the
campaign, Jackie had proved her mettle to the rough and tumble
Kennedy clan. In a family that demanded toughness, Jackie
showed an inner strength without sacrificing that refined
demeanor.
As one-half of the First Couple, Jackie Kennedy
demonstrated her commitment to being part of this new
generation of leadership. When Jackie came to the White House,
the residence showed a lack of care and dignity.
She changed that. With breathtaking speed she restored the
White House inside and out. Beautiful gardens and magnificent
rooms were restored and completed under her personal
supervision.
And while the White House was the private residence of the
First Family, Mrs. Kennedy knew it also represented something
important and historic to every American. She opened up the
White House to all Americans by starting White House public
tours which have allowed millions of people to visit 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue. Fittingly, today one of the most requested
features on the tour of the White House is Jacqueline Kennedy's
portrait.
Mr. Speaker, on her first day as First Lady, Jackie Kennedy
began working on bringing an artistic and intellectual
transformation to Washington. She orchestrated social events
that brought Nobel Prize winners, musical legends, and cultural
icons together at the White House. In 1961, Jackie started the
Pennsylvania Avenue Restoration project. Taking a neighborhood
of seedy storefronts and abandoned buildings, the project
turned Pennsylvania Avenue into one of the great boulevards of
the world.
Mr. Speaker, Jackie Kennedy turned the White House and
Washington into a place of beauty and interest that all
Americans viewed with pride and a confidence that it
represented what was exciting and good about our country. And
the First Couple's own elegance and grace added to the belief
of that generation that all things were possible.
But as we know that confidence was shattered in Dallas.
With those catastrophic events in 1963, Jackie once more stood
as a symbol of her generation. She singularly carried the
overwhelming grief of an entire Nation and citizens of the
world who had suffered such an incalculable loss.
And with a strength that has become mythic in its
proportion, she stood before the entire world for 4 days and
never flinched. She became a source of reverence and awe that
we would remember forever. Images from those terrible days are
etched in our minds . . . the young widow her beautiful face
filled with such pain, such grief. We endured because she did.
In the years following the loss of the President, Jackie
became what Norman Mailer called ``The Prisoner of Celebrity.''
And while she endured the paparazzi, Jackie did not allow her
children to be exposed to the destruction of publicity.
Jackie Kennedy once said, ``If you bungle raising your
children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very
much.'' It was always clear that what mattered most to Jackie
were her children.
Mr. Speaker, like many of her generation, Jackie Kennedy
was a single parent. She met that challenge as he did others--
with dedication and commitment. She gave her children her love
and her time, and supported them in their activities and life
decisions.
The results of her efforts are two-fold, centered and
successful children who adored their mother and have the values
of both their parents.
Mother, wife, First Lady, business executive, benefactor,
and philanthropist; Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was the most
admired woman of her generation. When she died all of us closed
a chapter in our lives--a chapter in our Nation's history.
Her grace and strength sustained a Nation during tragedy.
Her beauty and intellect made us proud. She not only rests next
to her husband, and the child who passed on before them, but in
the mind and heart of a grateful Nation and the world.
When she died, her son John said, ``Now she is in God's
hands.'' As her brother-in-law, and our colleague, Senator
Kennedy, said, ``She will never really leave us.''
Thank you Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for leading a life of
purpose and ennobling all of us for a lifetime and more.
The Honorable Thomas F. Foley of Washington
Mr. Speaker, I join with Members of the House of
Representatives, on both sides of the aisle in extending our
deepest condolences to the friends and family of Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis.
In 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy's steadfast strength and
courage, perhaps more than anything else during that fateful
week, led this Nation through a tragic episode in American
history. Over the years, her dignity in crisis became a symbol
of our national character; and her elegance and style changed
the look of America.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis combined intellectualism with
social tradition--professionalism with style and grace--and
created, perhaps ahead of her time, a standard for contemporary
American women.
Few people have such a profound impact on their time as did
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Her dignity, elegance, and courage
are forever etched in our collective memory as part of a unique
period in American history that reflected the best of what we
are as a Nation, and who we are as a people. Generations to
come will remember her as a standard of American culture and
character.
Mr. Speaker, I believe I speak for every Member of this
House when I say that we join the Nation in mourning Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis, and remembering what she meant to this Nation.
The Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman of New York
Mr. Speaker, I join with our colleagues in mourning the
passing of a truly remarkable woman, at too premature an age.
Each First Lady in our Nation's history--from Martha
Washington through Hillary Clinton--has enjoyed a significant
impact on our Nation. Few, however, have had as tremendous an
influence as did Mrs. Kennedy.
Today, our young people may not appreciate that, prior to
the Kennedy administration, the White House was considered a
temporary residence by its occupants, and enjoyed little
historic significance.
Mrs. Kennedy, virtually single-handedly, transformed the
White House into a national treasure. She scoured the Nation
for furnishings and trappings of by-gone eras, and in many
cases through cajolery, convinced private citizens to re-donate
to the American people items of historic significance. As a
result of her crusade, the White House became an invaluable
historic landmark during her husband's administration. As hard
as it may be to believe today, prior to Jackie Kennedy's tenure
as our First Lady the White House was not even officially
listed by the Federal Government as a historic site. She
vigorously campaigned for this designation, as she also
vigorously campaigned for the funding--the vast majority of
which was from the private sector--necessary for the
restoration and preservation of the White House.
Few of the visitors to the White House today appreciate
that it is due to Mrs. Kennedy's efforts that its value as an
informative and favorite stopping place for tourists, as well
as a historic landmark, is preserved for us and for future
generations.
We must not forget, either, that it was through her efforts
that the White House, and Washington, DC, became a cultural
center. The Center for the Performing Arts, which today is
named in memory of President Kennedy, was her inspiration.
Most Americans are well aware and quite conscious of the
fact that, during her tenure as First Lady, Mrs. Kennedy set a
style of elegance and grace in the White House which captivated
the imagination of the world, and which rapidly became the
hallmark of Americanism throughout the world. My close friend,
Oleg Cassini, served as Mrs. Kennedy's fashion designer and the
revolutionary changes he and she made on the styles of the day
reverberate to this day.
Not so many Americans are conscious of another, even more
indelible contribution made by Mrs. Kennedy: The example she
set of dignified courage in the face of overwhelming personal
tragedy. The assassination of the President, on November 22,
1963, was one of the most traumatic single events in all of
history. President Kennedy's youth and vigor made his sudden,
totally unanticipated death all the more shocking and
distressing. The fact that the United States had not
experienced a Presidential assassination in over 62 years, and
the fact that what was then the new electronic age, brought the
horror of the assassination into virtually every living room in
America, only underscored the deep emotional impact which it
had on all alive at that time. Mrs. Kennedy was only the second
First Lady in history to be present at the scene of the awesome
crime, and accordingly would have been justified in a total
withdrawal from the public eye.
Instead, with infinite grace, Mrs. Kennedy publicly led our
Nation through its period of mourning. Her grieving face,
standing next to President Johnson as he was sworn in just
minutes after the assassination, is etched in the public memory
forever. She, in fact, is the focal point of all our shared
memories of that tragic weekend: Her kneeling at the coffin in
the Capitol Rotunda; her urging her small son to salute his
daddy's casket; and her accepting the folded American flag at
Arlington National Cemetery--all of these images are forever
frozen in the national consciousness and were indispensable in
allowing us to cope with this monumental tragedy.
The assassination of President Kennedy was the first single
event in all of history which was known by over 90 percent of
all Americans within an hour of its occurrence. Her strength
and dignity throughout the 4 days of memorial services did much
to keep the Nation united during this time of uncertainty and
dread.
Her conduct throughout the remainder of the 1960s set an
example which all of us in the future should use as an
appropriate role model. Although the tabloid press and the
sensationalist elements in our society attempted to utilize her
persona to their own ends, she remained above all controversy
and criticism in silent dignity, pursuing her own grace and
charm while protecting her children from the glare of needless
publicity.
Throughout the twilight of her life, Jacqueline Kennedy
chose to die with dignity. Her courage in the face of fatal
illness, her refusal to be kept alive by artificial means, and
her insistence in passing away in the presence of her dearest
loved ones have humbled us all. The manner of her passing was
an example to all of us on death with dignity, and is tragic
only because, at the relatively tender age of 64, we appreciate
that she had so much more to contribute and to be with us.
We extend our condolences to her children, John, Jr. and
Caroline, to her grandchildren, and to the many family members
and loved ones who were touched by the life of this remarkable
woman.
The Honorable William F. Goodling of Pennsylvania
She was the epitome of grace. Beautiful, charming, and
intelligent, she was a model First Lady. And she was a devoted
mother who raised two very fine children under difficult
circumstances. Through her inner strength, she set an excellent
example which helped bring the Nation through a tragic time.
The Honorable Earl F. Hilliard of Alabama
Mr. Speaker, John Doone, the 14th century English poet,
wrote about the democracy of death, and I quote:
It comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal
when it comes. The ashes of an oak in the chimney are
no epitaph of that oak, to tell me how high or large it
was; it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it
stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of a
great person's grave is speechless too, it says
nothing. It distinguishes nothing.
What does distinguish us are the good deeds we do in life,
and how we handle the darkest moments of our existence. During
one of the saddest moments of our Nation's history, the spirit
and strength of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis illuminated our
hearts and souls. Her image will be forever etched in all of
our minds. To say she was memorable is superfluous. But
whomever is old enough to remember Mrs. Kennedy in 1963,
dressed in black, attending her husband's funeral, just two
rooms over in this Capitol's rotunda, will never forget her.
Mrs. Kennedy's composure, was America's composure. Mrs.
Kennedy's strength, was our strength. Mrs. Kennedy's loss, was
our loss, and Mrs. Kennedy's dignity was America's pride.
A door was closed in the history of our Nation when she
left us. After all, she was a link to our glorious past, as
well as to the legacy of the Presidential years of her beloved
husband Jack Kennedy, our late, fallen President. In closing,
let us remember the words of the verse that she so often
quoted:
Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot,
for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.
God bless you Jackie, and God bless your family. We will
never forget you or Camelot.
The Honorable Marcy Kaptur of Ohio
Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to commemorate Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis who devoted her life to the enrichment of the
human spirit and for this, we will always be indebted to her.
Throughout her life, Jacqueline continually gave to others,
never losing her sense of self. Following President Kennedy's
assassination, during times of uncertainty, Jacqueline's
inspirational strength and quiet courage provided a tower of
strength to guide our Nation through the dark winter of 1963.
Jacqueline overcame her own personal loss in order to
selflessly bind the country together as a family.
During the following years, she raised two children with
character, while founding the Kennedy Library. She hoped that
this library would be a living legacy to her husband.
Jacqueline's love of excellence, perpetual optimism, and hope
enriched the lives of millions. She never cashed in her life's
story, nor wore her life on her sleeve. In this day of tell
all, she protected her privacy and her children's privacy. She
exemplified excellence by her determination to promote the arts
and all that is fine in life. Her adventurous spirit and
tireless search for a new and better world brightened all our
lives. Her life, including her research and contributions to
her husband's Pulitzer prize winning ``Profiles in Courage,''
have truly earned her a chapter in that famous book.
Throughout history Jacqueline's spirit of fortitude,
adventure, and courage will always live on and fill the hearts
of America.
The Honorable Barbara B. Kennelly of Connecticut
Mr. Speaker, I would like to honor the memory of a truly
great woman: Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
My parents knew her well during her years in the White
House. They knew her as a woman of intelligence, beauty, grace
and charm, who captivated the Nation. And in the years
following her time in the White House, I watched in admiration
as she became well respected in publishing and carried out her
philanthropic works in New York.
But I will also remember her as a mother who raised her
children very well, in remarkably difficult circumstances.
In 1963, I was the mother of a young child in Hartford,
Connecticut. Like so many others in this country, I was
captivated by Jackie. I watched her on TV, I read about her in
the paper. I followed her every move. And I grieved for her
when the President died.
It didn't seem possible that the years of Camelot could
come to an end. That she would end up a widow. That her
children had lost their father.
But she met this tragedy with strength, and helped all of
us make the transition to the next era. In the ensuing years
she protected her children, helping them lead as normal a life
as possible.
There were many reasons why we admired Mrs. Onassis: Her
intelligence, her beauty, her charm. But it was her ability to
face tragedy head on, her strength to build a new life for her
and her children, that I will always remember.
On behalf of my mother, and the rest of my family, I would
like to extend my deepest sympathy to the family of Mrs.
Onassis. The Nation once again grieves with you.
The Honorable Sander M. Levin of Michigan
Mr. Speaker, the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis evokes
flashes of memory, first and foremost November 22 and its
aftermath, her grace, her dignity, her strength.
But as we watched television last night and this morning,
my wife and I, there were also memories of those days before
November 22, their excitement, their sense of decency, and
their sense of the worthiness of public service. Some might
call those memories illusion. I would call them hope.
May that hope not pass on with Jackie Kennedy; instead, may
it be rekindled.
The Honorable John Lewis of Georgia
Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a deep sense of sadness and
sorrow over the passing of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Our
prayers are with her children, her grandchildren, and other
members of her family.
Many of us came of age when this beautiful and gifted woman
and President Kennedy held the attention of a hopeful nation.
In Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, we had the most gracious First
Lady to occupy the White House in modern times. She was the
epitome of grace, charm, intellect, and beauty. Anyone who can
remember the week of November 22, 1963, cannot forget how she
led us through that difficult period following the
assassination of President Kennedy.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis represented the very best of
America. She was a source of inspiration to millions of
Americans. For many of us, her passing means the loss of a dear
and special friend.
Mrs. Onassis was always charming and generous. She was a
great supporter of the arts and historic preservation. Many
historic buildings in New York City, Washington, DC, and all
around the country are standing because of her tireless
efforts.
Mrs. Onassis will be missed by millions of Americans. Her
passing is a great loss.
The Honorable Nita M. Lowey of New York
Mr. Speaker, this evening I join my colleagues in paying
tribute to the life and memory of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Her days, filled with great triumph and great tragedy, remind
us that, in the end, character rises above circumstance.
Jacqueline Bouvier was very young when she enchanted the
people of Massachusetts as the bride of their junior Senator.
She was pregnant with her second child, and needed to be
shielded from the campaign trail's wind and rain when her
husband sought the Presidency. But in her own unique way, she
still captured the Nation's imagination.
As First Lady, she made individuality fashionable,
displaying a grace borne not of pretense, but of confidence.
She seemed the embodiment of the Nation we hoped to be--a dream
made real, at least for a time. And on that terrible fall day
in 1963, it was her image which most touched us, reaching to
grasp the empty air, standing beside the new President, blood
stains on her suit, to affirm the endurance of our democracy,
and directing a tribute to her husband which enabled all of us
to face the awful news, and yet move forward.
Since then, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis has been less before
our eyes, but perhaps more in our hearts. Those of us from New
York thought of her as the city's first citizen, concerned
always with preserving New York's special vitality, made
visible in the brick and mortar of countless structures and
monuments. She was a patron of the arts whose personal
commitment to beauty and expression enriched the cultural
experience of our entire community. She was an editor, an
author, a mother, a dreamer, and a doer.
And though she never sought the glare of a public life,
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis never denied to us the warmth of her
personality, or the inspiration of her example.
Mrs. Onassis lives on in our memories as a model of grace,
intelligence, and integrity. Through trials that would break
many men and women, she remained always true to herself, never
losing sight of the values she thought so important to our
Nation, never dimming the spirit that shined through even the
darkest experience. We will miss her.
The Honorable Carolyn B. Maloney of New York
Mr. Speaker, I have called this special order and rise to
pay tribute to a constituent of mine who recently passed away.
Her name is Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
From the day an assassin's bullets desecrated Camelot until
her stroll in Central Park the weekend before she died, Mrs.
Onassis embodied the strength, resilience, and independence
that is the very essence of America.
We live in an age when our leaders and icons are brutally
assaulted by character assassins. Gentility has steadily
declined into an abyss of cynicism and tabloid commercialism.
Somehow, with her graceful manner, philanthropic spirit and
infinite cultural breadth, Mrs. Onassis symbolized the last of
American royalty. The end of her life brought the end of an
era.
Today, Mrs. Clinton is transforming the role of the First
Lady in the White House. In the early 1960s, Mrs. Jacqueline
Kennedy transformed the White House itself.
For the first time, she invited the American people inside
the White House, making it our house instead of a remote
Government bastion shrouded in mystery. With her impeccable
aesthetic sensibility and expansive grasp of history, she
populated the White House with elegant artifacts of the past,
which brought an exalted spirit to the present.
Jacqueline Kennedy's artistic passion gave rise to a White
House fine arts commission, and even wowed typically cool
Parisians, who embraced her with open arms. After their trip to
France, President Kennedy referred to himself as ``the man who
accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris . . .''
Mrs. Kennedy's grand elegance in Washington and blossoming,
barefoot motherhood on the beaches of Martha's Vineyard,
contributed to 1,000 days of nostalgia that many of us equate
with our innocence.
Surviving a miscarriage, a stillbirth, and the
assassination of her husband and his brother, Mrs. Onassis
looked fate square in the eye, and steadfastly refused to be
pitied by anyone.
Still, she was not invulnerable. Five years after her
husband's assassination, when she became engaged to Aristotle
Onassis, she told a friend: ``You don't know how lonely I've
been.''
In an age when seemingly everyone wants to broadcast their
inner secrets on TV talk shows, Mrs. Onassis treasured and
guarded her privacy after leaving the White House, turning down
thousands of interview requests.
How ironic that a woman who began her career as an
inquiring photographer, would shy away, when the lens was
turned toward her.
Mrs. Onassis believed that her life was a precious
possession that was not to be trivialized. She refused to
become anyone's property.
In everything Mrs. Onassis did, she gave a great deal of
herself, but she never gave herself away.
As a book editor in later life, she was described as a
writer's editor who worked with painstaking sensitivity and
close interaction with the author. In an age of narcissism, she
realized that there were stories worth telling other than her
own.
She did create two of her own masterpieces. Their names are
John and Caroline.
I feel particular gratitude to Mrs. Onassis for the many
contributions she made to local causes in the community where
she lived and which I am privileged to represent in Congress.
She was a driving force in her support for the historic
preservation of the East Side of Manhattan. She showed
unwavering dedication to the preservation of Grand Central
Station, and strived for the preservation of low-cost housing,
one of New York's most dire needs.
In her final years, Mrs. Onassis had the good fortune to be
joined in life by Maurice Templesman, a wonderful, caring man
whom many in this Chamber have the privilege of knowing.
To the world, Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Onassis lived a life of
majesty and tragedy on a grand stage. But she never bought into
that image of herself. Millions wanted her to live a public
life, but instead she chose an inner life. Perhaps that is why
so many private citizens identify with her so closely. Unlike
most of the rich and famous, she was not one of them. In that
regard, she was one of us.
Thank you, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, for all you gave us,
and all you showed us. May you sleep in heavenly peace.
The Honorable Romano L. Mazzoli of Kentucky
Mr. Speaker, today we pay tribute to Jacqueline Bouvier
Kennedy Onassis, an extraordinary woman who lived in
extraordinary times.
In 1960, she swept into the light of the cameras and
dazzled America and the world with her charm, beauty, and
elegance. As First Lady, her restoration of the White House was
done with intelligence, sensitivity, and an excellent sense of
history. And, today, millions of Americans can be proud of the
house that belongs to all citizens of this Nation.
She was never considered average, but she strived to live a
quiet and unassuming life amid all the clamor and glamour of
political life in Washington. Mrs. Onassis' joys in life were
simple: Her family, her friends, her books, and her work. The
world watched her, studied her, and admired her because of her
serenity and simplicity in the midst of anxiety and complexity.
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis touched the lives of all
Americans with her style, grace, and intellect. Mrs. Onassis
will be most remembered, however, for the public courage she
displayed after the assassination of her husband, the President
of the United States. As the world mourned our Nation's
tragedy, she bravely continued her role as mother to her
fatherless children. For that act of courage, Americans will
remain eternally grateful.
The Honorable Charles B. Rangel of New York
Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to the floor at this
time, special words of tribute for one whom we hold so dear, to
a woman who epitomized courage and grace, and to one who will
forever remain in our hearts--the lady of which I speak is
Jacqueline Kennedy, our former First Lady.
Long admired for her beauty, style, and grace, Jacqueline
Kennedy was certainly a most gracious First Lady. Her charm was
insatiable and everyone loved her, for it was easy to observe
her outer beauty, and a pleasure to know the inner beauty that
was there.
From her love of family to her passion for the arts,
Jacqueline Kennedy was a treasure to behold. She brought vision
and dignity to the White House and forever changed the way we
came to think of that special residence. It wasn't long after
she arrived at the White House that she focused on its
restoration, and with a talent and style that could match no
other, made it a cultural showpiece and shared it with all
Americans as she later hosted, ``A Tour of the White House with
Mrs. John F. Kennedy.''
While she had much tragedy in her life, it was certainly
not tragic. She would rise above that dreadful day in Dallas,
to enjoy a successful career in the publishing world. For all
her genuineness, nobility, and depth of character, Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis will be missed--her contributions to American
history never forgotten--and her legacy--an inspiration.
Thank you Jackie.
The Honorable Jack Reed of Rhode Island
Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my condolences on the death
of an extraordinary American, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had a special place in the
hearts of Rhode Islanders. Her youthful summers in Newport, her
joyous wedding at St. Mary's Church, all of these affiliations
with Rhode Island gave us a particular pride. This pride grew
with each passing year as we saw her claim an equally special
place in the hearts of all the world.
For those of us who grew up in the exciting days of the New
Frontier, she will always be part of our consciousness. Along
with President Kennedy, she brought a special energy and style
to the national scene. In those heady days, with two youthful
vigorous and accomplished residents of the White House, we felt
that anything was possible.
Jacqueline Kennedy brought to the White House a
sophistication and charm that endeared her to everyday
Americans and world leaders alike. President Kennedy remarked
after his historic trip to France that he would be remembered
simply as the man who brought Jackie Kennedy to Paris.
She radiated a special beauty and serenity that captivated
us all. I remember, as a young boy, watching her televised tour
of the White House. I was enthralled with her evocation of our
history. She conveyed not only the importance of the White
House as a symbol of our political heritage and her commitment
to recognizing American arts; she also made us feel at home in
her home and the home of her family.
When one stops and considers her life, we are struck with
myriad images. I recall her interview with President Kennedy on
Ed Morrow's ``Person to Person.'' She was a young woman whose
soft-spoken grace and obvious love for her husband provided a
spark of magic in the otherwise dreary routine of politics. I
recall the extraordinary evening in the White House when she
hosted Robert Frost, Igor Stravinsky, and Pablo Casals. She and
her husband made the arts and culture fashionable not just in
the salons of the privileged but throughout the land.
Sadly, it was the tragic death of President Kennedy that
transformed her into a historic figure of courage and strength,
whose example calmed and reassured a grieving nation. No one
can forget her quiet dignity as she endured the unendurable.
Her life after the White House was full of accomplishment.
She remained to her last day an image of grace and elegance. We
mourn her passing and express our sincerest condolences to her
family.
The Honorable Carlos Romero-Barcelo of Puerto Rico
Mr. Speaker, I rise to join in this special tribute to
former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
The widow of former President John F. Kennedy brought a
special charm to the White House during the Kennedy years. She
became a legendary part of the Presidential aura. As an
individual with her own special skills, sense of culture and
knowledge of American history, the former First Lady continued
on in her own unique career after the President's tragic
assassination.
She put her children and her family first in her order of
priorities, continuing to be the gracious and loving mother she
always was until the end.
In the public eye, she was different things to many
Americans and throughout difficult periods in her life she
never lost sight of who she was and what, in the history of
this country, she meant as a public figure.
Her buoyancy in life, her appreciation of what the
Presidency meant to the American people and to our traditions
and values, never left her, not in the years when the youth and
vigor of the Kennedy administration resonated throughout the
country, nor in the tragic aftermath of the President's
passing.
We still miss her and shall have her in our prayers
forever.
The Honorable Bobby L. Rush of Illinois
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis will always be remembered and
revered with great fondness and affection from millions of
people here in the United States, and from around the world. I,
too, will also remember her poise and steadfastness during
times of great emotional upheaval in this country. Through her
gracious manner, she affected millions who were touched by her
loving devotion to her family, friends, and country.
Perhaps no other former First Lady arouses such great
sentiment and deep feeling than she. Thus, it is a sad day that
we come to mourn for her loss. Yet in this time of grief we
should look to her as an inspiration in overcoming our great
sorrow and despair. Throughout her life, she encouraged others
to look forward, to rejoice in life's wonderful treasures. We
should recall her words, and look ahead toward a life that is
full of love for our families, our friends, our country, and of
hope eternal.
The Honorable Jim Slattery of Kansas
Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to have this opportunity to
pay tribute today to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She was a
woman of immeasurable intelligence and strength, who traveled
life's journey on an often long and arduous path. Her
distinguished sense of self, love of family, commitment to
country, and belief in God forged a bond with our Nation, and
carried her through her journey with dignity and grace.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was a true student of history
with a love of culture and a desire to bring out the best in
America. She sought the beauty in life and sought to live life
to the fullest. I was young, a part of the generation of hope.
I admired the vision of John Kennedy. I also admired young
Jacqueline Kennedy and her strong sense of human decency. Her
poise and radiance, displayed even during the most adverse
circumstances, inspired Americans everywhere, and gave us
strength.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis once stated that ``Everything in
the White House must have a reason for being there.'' I truly
believe that there was a reason she was with us. She taught us
about courage, faith, and values, a reminder for today of all
that is necessary for the foundation of our dreams.
The funeral of President John F. Kennedy was a somber
reminder of the vitality of youth and the seconds it takes to
have it stripped away. We should all live our lives to the
fullest, as if every hour on Earth may be our last. We should
follow the example of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, remembering
to seek out the beauty in life and to put faith and family
first. These are the bonds which remain strong, even in death.
Individually, and as a Nation, we should be extremely
grateful for all of her life that was given to us.
The Honorable Bart Stupak of Michigan
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis transformed the way Americans
view the First Lady, the First Family, and the White House. Her
endearing legacy is one of grace, beauty, and elegance.
She transformed the role of the First Lady and the image of
the White House. She and President Kennedy were the first
couple in the 20th century to have young children living at
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She interjected a breath of fresh air
into a stale and dull White House by redecorating it with early
19th century furnishings. She invited the American people into
her living room by providing a guided tour for us that was
broadcast by all three networks. Everything she did as the
First Lady was in sharp contrast to the Cold War period that
the American people experienced in the 1950s.
She mesmerized us with her beauty and grace. But, the
American people weren't the only ones to admire her. In France,
where her ancestors were from, she captured the attention of
the French people. During a Presidential tour of France, French
men and women would yell at her: ``Vive Jacqui.'' After the
Paris tour, President Kennedy was quoted as saying: ``I am the
man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris--and I enjoyed
it.'' The first 1,000 days of the Kennedy administration
produced a different kind of Presidency to the American people.
Images of youth and change filled our TV screens, and hearts,
as we watched the Kennedy family. Jacqueline Kennedy was as
much a part of that image as her husband. She helped change
America, and it was changed for the better.
She was only 34 when an assassin's bullet sharply altered
the course of American history. Not nearly old enough to be a
widow, the image most of America will always remember is Jackie
Kennedy as a woman of strength, honor, and grace. She never
waivered and she never flinched. With more weight on her
shoulders than anyone can possibly comprehend, she displayed
the qualities that caused the American people to fall in love
with her. When America mourned our slain President, we turned
to look at Jackie and we watched how Jackie conducted herself.
We based our own behavior and our own actions on the actions of
Jacqueline Kennedy--and we were not disappointed. She was
always the epitome of strength. For that we will always be
indebted to her.
I believe to fully appreciate the life of Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis, we must also discuss her life and work after
President Kennedy was killed. In 1978, she became an editor for
Doubleday Books. When you read some of the quotes that authors
bestowed on Mrs. Onassis, we can, once again, remember what
made her so fascinating. Authors usually don't have very kind
words for editors, especially wealthy editors that have lived
in public life. But the accolades that we bestowed on her in
the White House followed her to the editing world. She was
known as a thoughtful and unassuming colleague who wanted to be
treated as all the other editors were treated at Doubleday.
The American people may have thought she was highly
intellectual as the First Lady, but those in New York's editing
world were made aware of her intelligence and extensive worldly
knowledge while she was at Doubleday. She edited 10 to 12 books
a year on performing arts and many other subjects. She
published Bill Moyer's ``Healing and the Mind,'' and Edward
Radzinsky's ``The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas
II.'' She published children's books and inspired Doubleday and
Noble Prize Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, to translate his
Cairo Trilogy, ``Palace Walk,'' ``Palace of Desire,'' and
``Sugar Street'' to English to be enjoyed by millions and
millions of readers.
Her work as an editor has largely gone unknown to the
American people, but it gives us another glimpse into her life.
She really was a truly amazing person.
We all know that the epitaph of the Kennedy administration
is Camelot. But, few people realize that it was Jackie Kennedy
who created that epitaph. It happened in an interview, a rare
interview, that Jackie Kennedy requested herself. She told
author Theodore H. White, who was a Kennedy confidant, and at
that time writing for Life Magazine, that after the President's
death the title song of the musical ``Camelot'' has become an
``obsession with me'' lately. She said that at night before
bedtime, her husband had often played it, or asked her to play
it, on an old Victrola in their bedroom. Mr. White quoted her
as saying: ``And the song he loved most came at the very end of
this record, the last side of Camelot, sad Camelot . . . Don't
let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief
shining moment that was known as Camelot. . . . There'll never
be another Camelot again.'' And so it was born, and it will
never die--The Kennedy Presidency--America's Camelot.
The Honorable William H. Zeliff, Jr. of New Hampshire
Mr. Speaker, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, or Jackie,
as America adoringly called her, came into our lives and
charmed not only a nation, but an entire world as well. She
symbolized an America that was wide-eyed and young and fresh,
and by the side of JFK she not only captured America's heart,
but, said Charles de Gaulle of her remarkable composure
following the assassination of her husband, ``She gave an
example to the world of how to behave.''
Beautiful and demure, the aura of mystery which surrounded
her was like an unquenchable thirst of the public who adored
her. We watched as this new chapter of American history
unfolded, a young, handsome President, his charming, beautiful
wife and the children America has doted over almost as much as
did their mother. This woman we called Jackie once said of
these two, whom she adored and fiercely protected, ``I want
John and Caroline to grow up to be good people.'' An image
which will be forever etched in the minds of all Americans is
of young John, saluting his father, beside a beautiful,
courageous widow.
Ironically, the one thing coveted above all else by this
adored public figure was her privacy. She spent her lifetime
shielding both herself and her family from the public who
cherished them. She gracefully acknowledged the adoration of
the world, often with only the flash of her brilliant smile.
John Kennedy, Jr. said his mother had died ``surrounded by
her friends and her family and her books. She did it in her own
way and in her own terms.'' Her image is synonymous with beauty
and elegance. She has left not only America but the world as
well with unforgettable memories of a time gone by, a time of
innocence and charm in our country's history which will never
be forgotten, a time called Camelot.
STATEMENTS DELIVERED FROM
THE WHITE HOUSE
President William J. Clinton
Washington, DC, May 20, 1994.
On this sad occasion, Hillary and I join our Nation in
mourning the loss of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Jackie Kennedy
Onassis was a model of courage and dignity for all Americans
and all the world.
More than any other woman of her time, she captivated our
Nation and the world with her intelligence, her elegance, and
her grace. Even in the face of impossible tragedy, she carried
the grief of her family and our entire Nation with a calm power
that somehow reassured all the rest of us.
As First Lady, Mrs. Onassis had an uncommon appreciation of
the culture that awakened us to all the beauty of our own
heritage. She loved art and music, poetry and books, history
and architecture, and all matters that enrich the human spirit.
She was equally passionate about improving the human condition.
She abhorred discrimination of all kinds. And through small,
quiet gestures, she stirred the Nation's conscience. She was
the first First Lady to hire a mentally retarded employee here
at the White House. And she made certain for the first time
that minority children were all welcome in the White House
nursery.
She and President Kennedy embodied such vitality, such
optimism, such pride in our Nation, they inspired an entire
generation of young Americans to see the nobility of helping
others and to get involved in public service.
When I became President, I was fortunate enough to get to
know Mrs. Onassis better, and to see her and her children as
friends as well as important American history models and good
citizens. I can say that, as much as anything else today, I am
grateful for her incredible generosity to Hillary and to
Chelsea, the way she shared her thoughts on everything from how
to raise children in the White House to ideas about historic
preservation, to her favorite current books.
We hope that Mrs. Onassis' children, John and Caroline, and
her grandchildren, find solace in the extraordinary
contribution she made to our country. Our thoughts and prayers
are with her children and grandchildren, and her entire family,
as we grieve over the passing of a cherished friend.
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
Washington, DC, May 20, 1994.
I just wanted to say, personally, that every day, this
Nation owes a great debt to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The
Nation has lost a treasure, and our family has lost a dear
friend.
We stand here in one of the many legacies that she has
given to this House and to our country; in this garden, which
is named for her, which she helped to realize.
If she taught us anything, it was to know the meaning of
responsibility--to one's family and to one's community. Her
great gift of grace and style and dignity and heroism is an
example that will live through the ages.
As a mother, she was selflessly devoted to her children and
never wavered in the value she placed on being a mother, and
more recently a grandmother. She once explained the importance
of spending time with family and said: ``If you bungle raising
your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very
much.''
She was a great support to me, personally, when I started
talking with her in the summer of 1992 about the challenges and
opportunities of being in this position, and how she had
managed so well to carve out the space and privacy that
children need to grow into what they have a right to become.
She will always be more than a great First Lady. She was a
great woman and a great friend. And all of us will miss her
very much.
SPECIAL TRIBUTE BY
SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY
St. Ignatius Loyola Church, New York City
May 23, 1994
Last summer, when we were on the upper deck of the boat at
the vineyard, waiting for President and Mrs. Clinton to arrive,
Jackie turned to me and said, ``Teddy, you go down and greet
the President.''
I said, ``Maurice is already there.''
And Jackie answered: ``Teddy, you do it. Maurice isn't
running for re-election.''
She was always there, for all our family, in her special
way.
She was a blessing to us and to the Nation, and a lesson to
the world on how to do things right, how to be a mother, how to
appreciate history, how to be courageous.
No one else looked like her, spoke like her, wrote like
her, or was so original in the way she did things. No one we
knew ever had a better sense of self.
Eight months before she married Jack, they went together to
President Eisenhower's inaugural ball. Jackie said later that
that's where they decided they liked inaugurations.
No one ever gave more meaning to the title of First Lady.
The Nation's capital city looks as it does because of her. She
saved Lafayette Square and Pennsylvania Avenue.
Jackie brought the greatest artists to the White House, and
brought the arts to the center of national attention. Today, in
large part because of her inspiration and vision, the arts are
an abiding part of national policy.
President Kennedy took such delight in her brilliance and
her spirit. At a White House dinner, he once leaned over and
told the wife of the French Ambassador: ``Jackie speaks fluent
French. But I only understand one out of every five words she
says--and that word is `de Gaulle.' ''
And then, during those four endless days in 1963, she held
us together as a family and a country. In large part because of
her, we could grieve and then go on. She lifted us up, and in
the doubt and darkness, she gave her fellow citizens back their
pride as Americans. She was then 34 years old.
Afterward, as the eternal flame she lit flickered in the
autumn of Arlington Cemetery, Jackie went on to do what she
most wanted--to raise Caroline and John, and warm her family's
life and that of all the Kennedys.
Robert Kennedy sustained her, and she helped make it
possible for Bobby to continue. She kept Jack's memory alive,
as she carried Jack's mission on.
Her two children turned out to be extraordinary, honest,
unspoiled and with a character equal to hers. And she did it in
the most trying of circumstances. They are her two miracles.
Her love for Caroline and John was deep and unqualified.
She reveled in their accomplishments, she hurt with their
sorrows, and she felt sheer joy and delight spending time with
them. At the mere mention of their names, Jackie's eyes would
shine brighter and her smile would grow bigger.
She once said that if you ``bungle raising your children
nothing else much matters in life.'' She didn't bungle. Once
again, she showed how to do the most important thing of all,
and do it right.
When she went to work, Jackie became a respected
professional in the world of publishing. And because of her,
remarkable books came to life. She searched out new authors and
ideas. She was interested in everything.
Her love of history became a devotion to historic
preservation. You knew, when Jackie joined the cause to save a
building in Manhattan, the bulldozers might as well turn around
and go home.
She had a wonderful sense of humor--a way of focusing on
someone with total attention--and a little girl delight in who
they were and what they were saying. It was a gift of herself
that she gave to others. And in spite of all her heartache and
loss, she never faltered.
I often think of what she said about Jack in December after
he died: ``They made him a legend, when he would have preferred
to be a man.'' Jackie would have preferred to be just herself,
but the world insisted that she be a legend, too.
She never wanted public notice--in part I think, because it
brought back painful memories of an unbearable sorrow, endured
in the glare of a million lights.
In all the years since then, her genuineness and depth of
character continued to shine through the privacy and reach
people everywhere. Jackie was too young to be a widow in 1963,
and too young to die now.
Her grandchildren were bringing new joy to her life, a joy
that illuminated her face whenever you saw them together.
Whether it was taking Rose and Tatiana for an ice cream cone,
or taking a walk in Central Park with little Jack as she did
last Sunday, she relished being Grand Jackie and showering her
grandchildren with love.
At the end, she worried more about us than herself. She let
her family and friends know she was thinking of them. How
cherished were those wonderful notes in her distinctive hand on
her powder blue stationery!
In truth, she did everything she could, and more, for each
of us.
She made a rare and noble contribution to the American
spirit. But for us, most of all she was a magnificent wife,
mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend.
She graced our history. And for those of us who knew and
loved her, she graced our lives.
POEM READING BY
CAROLINE KENNEDY SCHLOSSBERG
Daughter of President Kennedy and
Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
The poem I'm going to read comes from a book my mother kept
on a special bookshelf in her room. The front of the book reads
``Marie McKinney Memorial Award in Literature, First Prize.''
Presented to Jacqueline Bouvier, June 1946. And the poem is
called ``Memory of Cape Cod'' by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
The wind in the ash tree sounds like surf on
the shore at Truro.
I will shut my eyes.
Hush. Be still with your silly pleading
sheep on Shilling Stone Hill.
They said, come along.
They said, leave your pebbles on the sand
and come along.
It's long after sunset.
The mosquitoes will be thick in the pine
woods along by Long Neck.
The winds died down. They said, leave your
pebbles on the sand and your shells too
and come along.
We'll find you another beach like the beach
at Truro.
Let me listen to the wind in the ash.
It sounds like the surf on the shore.
READING BY JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY, JR.
Son of President Kennedy and Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Before reading a passage from the Book of Isaiah, he said
that in choosing the readings for the service, ``we struggled
to find ones that captured my mother's essence.'' He said three
attributes came to mind. ``They were the love of words, the
bonds of home and family, and her spirit of adventure.''
______
READING BY MAURICE TEMPELSMAN
Beloved Friend
``Ithaka'' By C.P. Cavafy
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon--don't be afraid
of them:
you'll never find things like that on
your way
as long as you keep your thoughts
raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon--you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside
your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in
front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer
morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the
first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading
station
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber
and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind--
as many sensual perfumes as you
can,
and may you visit many Egyptian
cities
to gather stores of knowledge from
their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are
destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you
reach the island,
wealth with all you have gained on
the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you
rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous
journey.
Without her, you would not have
set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka
won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become,
so full of experience,
you will have understood by then
what these Ithakas mean.
Then, he concluded with his own words:
``And now the journey is over, too short, alas, too short.
It was filled with adventure and wisdom, laughter and love,
gallantry and grace. So farewell, farewell.''
EULOGY DELIVERED AT ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY
May 23, 1994
PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON
We are joined here today at the site of the eternal flame,
lit by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis 31 years ago, to bid farewell
to this remarkable woman whose life will forever glow in the
lives of her fellow Americans.
Whether she was soothing a nation grieving for a former
President, or raising the children with the care and the
privacy they deserve, or simply being a good friend, she seemed
always to do the right thing in the right way.
She taught us by example about the beauty of art, the
meaning of culture, the lessons of history, the power of
personal courage, the nobility of public service and, most of
all, the sanctity of family.
God gave her very great gifts and imposed upon her great
burdens. She bore them all with dignity and grace and uncommon
common sense. In the end, she cared most about being a good
mother to her children, and the lives of Caroline and John
leave no doubt that she was that and more.
Hillary and I are especially grateful that she took so much
time to talk about the importance of raising children away from
the public eye, and we will always remember the wonderful,
happy times we shared together last summer.
With admiration, love and gratitude, for the inspiration
and the dreams she gave to all of us, we say goodbye to Jackie
today.
May the flame she lit so long ago, burn ever brighter here
and always brighter in our hearts.
God bless you friend, and farewell.
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COMMENTARIES AND TRIBUTES
[From Newsday Magazine, May 20, 1994]
Above Everything, A Special Mother
(By Jim Dwyer)
When the world had dried its tears and moved on to other
things, Jacqueline Kennedy was still a mother raising two kids
by herself. One day in 1965, a phone call came to Peter
Clifton. He was then the assistant headmaster of St. David's
School on the upper east side of Manhattan, a few blocks from
the Kennedy apartment on Fifth Avenue. ``Hello Mr. Clifton,''
said the soft voice on the phone. ``This is Jacqueline Kennedy.
I wonder if I could come and see the school.''
Peter Clifton thought back to that call yesterday, when
word came that Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis had been
administered the sacraments of the sick in that same Fifth
Avenue apartment.
``What kind of mother was she?'' said Clifton. ``We all
found that she was an absolutely sensational mother.''
No one knows the hour, the Bible advises, but Mrs. Onassis
decided Wednesday that when it came, she would be at home in
the big apartment on the park. The tricks of the medical trade
had all too quickly lost their magic on her behalf. So she went
home to the dignified quiet that she carved for herself in an
age of rising babble.
For those of us who were children when the pageant of
national funeral was played across our black-and-white TV's, we
expected only that Mrs. Kennedy would do what moms do: Just
take care of business. To awaken as adults, nearly 31 years
later, is to realize for the first time what she faced: She
left the White House as a widowed mother, age 34, with two
children and the world hounding them every step of the way.
``She was involved with everything that we needed her
for,'' said Peter Clifton. ``Not active in the Parents
Association, but for anything involving John, she would be in
touch with the teachers or myself.''
Mrs. Kennedy did not land on the couch at Johnny Carson's
or Oprah's, doing private therapy on public time. So today, the
assassination generation has no idea what her voice sounds
like. Now, raising our own children, it is plain that she spoke
forcefully in more important ways.
``You can see the results of her motherhood,'' said Peter
Clifton. ``Those two kids have grown up to be great adults.''
St. David's is a Catholic school for boys, a few blocks up
Fifth Avenue from the Kennedy apartment. It is run by a lay
board of trustees and has no formal affiliation with the
Archdiocese of New York. Caroline went to a private girls
school.
``Everybody was scared to death at the school,'' Clifton
remembered. ``At the time, we had about 300 students. Who knew
what would be involved?''
At the school, young John Kennedy was another 6-year-old
boy, with cousins ahead of and behind him in the same
classrooms--Chris Lawford, Steve and Willie Smith, Anthony
Radziwill. ``That was a help to John, to have a lot of family
around,'' said Clifton. ``There was no one sweeter than John--
he had no guile in him. He's still like that. I have to give
her a lot of credit for that.''
She had moved to a neighborhood in New York that would
allow her, she hoped, the gift of privacy; she never got it.
But she was near to family, and they all had Central Park as
their front yard. Of course, she was rich. That might be a few
percent of the struggle in raising kids. She could hire help,
but she did not contract out her heart.
``She was always very calm when she came to school,
extremely sympathetic to the teachers, especially when there
were some difficulties with the Secret Service,'' said Clifton.
``We never really had problems with John, but I always had the
feeling that if there were any, she would make great good
sense.''
Raising kids is a crapshoot, but she did whatever she could
to improve their odds. Her son and daughter have conducted
themselves as adults with propriety equal to the mother.
Idleness worms its way through the lives of the rich and poor,
at different angles, but destructively all the same. When her
kids got old enough, Mrs. Kennedy went to work. Her children
noticed. With a firm, loving hand, she led them away from the
bedlam of celebrity.
``I remember taking John to Harvard football games--Penn-
Harvard, Columbia-Harvard, and she was enormously thankful for
someone paying attention to him,'' said Clifton. ``John also
had a tremendous relationship with the head of the Secret
Service detail, a terrific guy. Mrs. Kennedy always appreciated
that.''
Her daughter Caroline, a lawyer and author, has three
children. One of them, Rose, was in a nursery school last year,
with the children of Art Garfunkel and Sigourney Weaver and the
granddaughter of the late Richard Burton.
Of all the grandparents in the class, Jacqueline Onassis
was the only one to show up for a class trip--a big outing for
the nursery school set, down the block and across the street to
the lawns of Central Park. She came in sneakers and jeans, and
chatted kid stuff with the other parents, who expected her to
be tinny and distant in a pillbox hat. They found her warm and
sweet. ``Which one is yours?'' she demanded. ``Show me.''
She came home the day before last to the apartment on Fifth
Avenue, to spend her last hours overlooking the park where her
children and grandchildren skipped in the peace she won for
them, and richly earned for herself.
[From the Boston Herald, May 20, 1994]
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, 1929-1994
Beloved First Lady Is Dead At Age 64
america loses a legend with passing of jackie o
(By Joe Battenfeld, Andrew Miga, and Joe Mallia)
NEW YORK--Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, 64, died in her Fifth
Avenue apartment late last night, spending her final hours
alone with her two children as the Nation mourned the passing
of one of Camelot's most dashing and dignified figures.
She died at 10:15 p.m., according to an Onassis
spokeswoman. Her son, John Kennedy, Jr., and daughter Caroline
Kennedy-Schlossberg, and longtime companion, Maurice
Tempelsman, were at her bedside when she passed away.
``Jackie was part of our family and part of our hearts for
40 wonderful and unforgettable years, and she will never really
leave us,'' Senator Edward M. Kennedy said in a statement from
Washington. ``Our love and prayers are with John and Caroline
and Ed (Schlossberg) and their three children.
Kennedy will fly to New York tomorrow.
Funeral arrangements were incomplete, but President Clinton
and his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton, who became close to
Onassis, were expected to attend.
In a statement released last night, President Clinton said,
``Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was a model of courage and dignity
for all Americans and all the world. More than any other woman
of her time, she captivated our Nation and the world with her
intelligence, elegance, and grace.''
The President noted, ``Even in the face of impossible
tragedy, she carried the grief of her family and our entire
Nation with a calm power that somehow reassured all of us who
mourned.''
Onassis had been clinging to life in a coma at her New York
apartment yesterday after receiving last rites. She had
reportedly been in a coma after the cancer had spread to her
brain and liver, according to a family source.
Onassis nephews Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Kennedy
arrived at her apartment about midnight to share their grief
with family members. The first funeral bouquets and other
expressions of sympathy began arriving at her apartment.
The flag at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston was
immediately lowered to half-staff.
Reaction from government leaders was immediate and heavy
with praise.
``Few women throughout history have touched the hearts and
shaped the dreams of Americans more profoundly than Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis,'' former President Reagan said in a statement.
``Nancy and I have always admired this remarkable woman, not
only for her grace and dignity, but also for her tremendous
courage.''
Former President Bush hailed Onassis as a woman who brought
special strengths to the White House--and the Nation.
``Jackie Onassis brought great dignity and grace to the
White House and was, indeed, a charming and wonderful First
Lady,'' said former President Bush. He said he and his wife,
Barbara, ``join her many friends and admirers around the world
in mourning her loss.''
Senator John Kerry (D-MA) said he was moved by Onassis'
remarkable life.
``I am deeply saddened,'' Kerry said. ``She was a
remarkably graceful and courageous woman who helped the Nation
through some of its most difficult moments.''
Kerry and President Clinton reminisced yesterday about the
President's trip to Martha's Vineyard last summer when he took
a boat ride with Onassis and the Kennedy clan.
``He said it was a very special moment in his Presidency
and he cherished it,'' Kerry said.
Onassis had disclosed 4 months ago that she was diagnosed
with lymph cancer.
A family spokesman had announced yesterday that any
additional treatment would be futile.
``She will not have any further treatment,'' Onassis
spokeswoman Nancy Tuckerman said. ``The disease has progressed
and there is nothing they can do for her . . . How long it will
go on, we don't know.''
Onassis had been lingering in a coma near death after the
cancer had spread to her liver, according to today's edition of
the New York Times.
She was also suffering from pneumonia and had refused
antibiotics, the Times reported.
Somber family members and close friends maintained a watch
yesterday that stretched into last night.
Senator Kennedy (D-MA) and his wife Victoria Reggie Kennedy
spent more than an hour at Onassis' bedside last night and
afterward spoke to reporters outside her Fifth Avenue apartment
building at 8:30 p.m.
Kennedy learned of Onassis' death shortly after he arrived
back in Washington last night.
The former First Lady--surrounded by family members,
including children John Jr. and Caroline--was given rites known
as ``sacrament of the sick'' by her priest as her condition
worsened during the day.
``She has her children around her and that's the way it
should be,'' Tuckerman.
Tuckerman yesterday had said the cancer that struck
Onassis, the former wife of slain President John F. Kennedy,
was no longer treatable.
Onassis had asked to receive Catholic rites while she was
still conscious at her home yesterday, Kennedy family sources
said.
``It was an issue for her and she made it clear she wanted
to be conscious for her last rites,'' a family source said.
Onassis' priest, Monsignor George Bardes of St. Thomas More
Church, administered the sacrament and Communion and heard her
confession.
Onassis earlier this week developed serious complications
from her disease, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph
nodes.
Officials did not elaborate on the complications, but
Kennedy family sources said the cancer had spread to other
parts of her body.
For the Kennedy clan, Onassis' fast-moving illness is the
latest in a long series of tragedies and personal setbacks.
Kennedy has assumed many of the patriarchal duties of the
family since the death of JFK, and another brother, former
Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
The Senator has remained close to Mrs. Onassis and her
children, according to aides.
He became a father figure to the children of Robert, after
he was assassinated in 1968, and assumed the same role for the
children of his sister, Jean, and brother-in-law, Stephen
Smith, after Mr. Smith died.
An exercise enthusiast, Mrs. Onassis jogged regularly in
Central Park until she became ill. She was seen as late as last
weekend walking around the park reservoir on the arm of her
longtime married companion, Maurice Tempelsman.
She was born Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, July 28, 1929, in the
Long Island resort community of Southampton to stockbroker John
``Black Jack'' Vernous Bouvier III and Janet Lee Bouvier.
Her parents divorced when she was 11 and her mother married
Washington, DC, broker Hugh D. Auchincloss.
A socialite by birth, and debutante in her youth, she
attended Vassar College and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris
before earning a degree in French literature from George
Washington University in 1951.
[From the Boston Globe, May 20, 1994]
Her Lasting Gift Was Majesty
(By David Shribman, Globe Staff)
WASHINGTON--Jacqueline Onassis is dead, but for millions of
Americans she will forever be Jackie Kennedy, she will forever
be young, and she will forever be frozen at Love Field in
Dallas in a pink dress with gold buttons and a blue collar.
And if at this sad, sobering moment a second image or maybe
a third crowds in, it will not be of the woman who later
married a Greek shipping magnate or hid from the public behind
big black sunglasses.
It will be of how her dress was set off by red roses on
that November morning in 1963, and by red blood on that
afternoon, or how she reached back in the open convertible to
help Clinton Hill, the Secret Serviceman, into the Lincoln, or
how she stood--dignity personified, bearing the unbearable
grief of a mourning nation--in black at Arlington National
Cemetery, hugging the folded flag to her breast.
At the funeral, French President Charles de Gaulle saluted
an American flag and Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie marched
in a kelly green sash with gold braiding and a raft of medals,
but it was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy we remember, standing
bravely alone and then comforting her children.
She was speechless, and her silence spoke for the Nation.
``Jacqueline Kennedy,'' the London Evening Standard wrote
at the time, ``has given the American people from this day on--
one thing they have always lacked--majesty.''
But though she was a woman of great privilege, with perhaps
more continental influence to her than some purists might have
liked, there was something very democratic, very American,
about how she comported herself that awful weekend and about
the sort of farewell she planned for her husband, President
John Kennedy.
The premiers and potentates were there, to be sure, but the
people were there, too, along the funeral route, in the line of
mourners at the Capitol (a quarter of a million of them), in
every nook and cranny of every public event.
It was, of course, the biggest funeral gathering in the
world since the death of King Edward VII in London in 1910.
More than two dozen heads of state joined the mourners here.
But the thing that lingers in memory is how the people whose
names we will never know cried in the night, or lined up for
hours in the chill to pay their respects to the man whose body
lay in state in Lincoln's catafalque.
Later she would be known as Jackie O, or sometimes Jackie
O!, and she would be the object of lurid fascination, and of
annoying photographers. She would be the subject of nine cover
stories in People magazine; only five people, princesses and
movie stars, had more.
But this is now, and that was then--and it was different
then.
Jack Kennedy met Jacqueline Bouvier, an ``inquiring
photographer'' for a Washington newspaper, at a dinner. The
young senator later explained that he ``leaned over the
asparagus and asked her for a date.'' The phrase became one of
the classic courting lines of its time. The two were married in
Newport, R.I. She was storybook beautiful, he was dashing. She
loved the ballet and horses, he was more taken with the
Harvard-Yale game and his sailboat. Together they swept the
country off its feet.
They were public people, their exuberance hiding a slim but
durable contemplative strain. They knew something of history,
and they knew the importance of symbol. No one told her that
she should walk the half-mile behind the caisson to St.
Matthew's Cathedral for the funeral. She decided that herself.
She was the one who chose the Black Watch Royal Highland
Regiment to accompany the cortege. She was the one who invited
the chorus boys from the Irish Military College in County Clare
to Washington; she recalled that the President, only 6 months
earlier, had watched them perform the Irish funeral drill.
The irony of Jacqueline Kennedy is that she will be
remembered for those days of death, because the life she
brought to the White House has not been replicated in the three
decades since she left it.
She brought classical musicians, artists, and writers to
the executive mansion. The performance of the cellist Pablo
Casals was especially memorable. But she also brought the
American people to the White House as well, in a much-watched
television special that invited the public behind the most
exclusive walls in the Nation. Their two children were
everywhere, sometimes even under the desk in the Oval Office.
They were all so young then. The snapshot of Jacqueline
Kennedy, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Senator Edward
M. Kennedy walking to the funeral, in mourning clothes, is a
reminder of how long ago all of this was. There is grief in
their eyes, but no gray in their hair.
In the days after the assassination, in Hyannis Port, she
talked, more stream-of-consciousness than conversation, saying
that she could not rid her mind of a silly line from a musical
comedy. She had heard it hundreds of times--it was Jack's
favorite, she told Theodore H. White--and it came at the very
end of a record he used to play just before falling off to
sleep: ``Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot,
for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.''
Jackie Kennedy wasn't the President, she was his wife. But
she had the power of making Camelot last 3 extra days--the
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday after her husband died, the 3 days
leading to his burial at Arlington and the lighting of the
eternal flame, like the one at the Arc de Triomphe that she was
determined to win for him on the gentlest, most stirring hill
in the whole country.
[From the Boston Globe, May 20, 1994]
America's Queen
(Editorial)
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis was American royalty.
Crowned in 1960 at age 31, she remained possibly the most
glamorous, most photographed and most intriguing woman of her
time until her death yesterday at age 64.
She was an original who came into the public consciousness
on the arm of John Kennedy when women were little more than
``wives of.'' Yet she maintained an independence and dignity in
her designer suits and matching pillbox hats.
She was not a Kennedy clone and refused to play touch
football. She was not the dutiful political wife. She wore fur
during the Presidential campaign and had no interest in trying
to compete with Pat Nixon's cloth coat.
In his book ``Profile of Power,'' Richard Reeves reports
that Angier Biddle Duke, chief of protocol, sat down with her
to ask what she would like to do as First Lady. ``As little as
possible,'' came the answer. ``I'm a mother. I'm a wife. I'm
not a public official.'' She was fierce about maintaining a
private life and keeping her children out of the klieg lights.
Her husband called in the photographers to take pictures of the
kids when his wife was away.
But the woman America came to know as ``Jackie'' also
filled a stellar public role at the White House. She used her
knowledge of the arts to bring in Pablo Casals, Igor
Stravinsky, George Balanchine, and other greats for concerts.
She used her talent to redecorate and hang French paintings on
the historic walls. Dinners at the White House featured gourmet
cuisine, and the menus were printed in French.
``I'm the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to
Paris,'' said the President returning from the trip where she
spoke French, charming Charles de Gaulle and a nation. She
spoke Spanish in Latin America, too, and the crowds cheered her
there.
She was the perfect queen for Camelot and the perfect wife
for a husband with a wandering eye. She was cool, strong, smart
and willing to keep up appearances as long as she could raise
the children her way and maintain her lifestyle. She struck
another bargain of independence when she married Aristotle
Onassis. Nobody owned her. As the years passed, it was evident
that her abilities as a parent to Caroline and John Jr. were
more than a match for the obvious threats to a healthy and
relatively normal upbringing for her children.
What came through in all phases of her life was her
intelligence. Whether conducting a televised tour of the White
House, looking at the camera through a widow's veil as she
accepted the folded American flag, attending a horse show with
her children, greeting well-wishers at the Kennedy Library,
learning to be a book editor, or fighting to save green space
in New York City, she was never a cliche.
She had class without being arrogant. A reporter who met
with her to discuss a book idea recalls her as ``gorgeous,
smart and unpretentious.'' He says she displayed keen business
acumen as well as creative flair at the meeting. She didn't
fuss about the details of the lunch or demand special treatment
from the waiter. ``She seemed shy in a lot of ways,'' he said.
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis was an unmistakable
profile in huge sunglasses. Ever slim and elegant, with thick,
dark, often wind-blown hair, she seemed ageless until the past
year. She was photographed thousands of times, and America
never tired of looking at her, probably because she didn't want
them to look. She did not do the talk show circuit. She did not
write the tell-all autobiography. She wanted to live her life
quietly and well. And that she did.
[From the Boston Herald, May 20, 1994]
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, 1929-1994
america's only monarch
(Editorial)
A generation of American women grew up attempting to
imitate her style, which was at its core inimitable. Oh, they
might copy her trademark bouffant hairstyle or the pillbox hat
or the smartly tailored suit. They might even make an effort at
copying the soft lilt of her voice.
But, in the end, there could be only one Jackie. Ah, and
how many public figures would be so well known as to be
referred to by just one name?
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was at once the most public of
figures, and the most private and reclusive. A reluctant
celebrity, yet one whose very presence made any event special.
As the young wife of one of the Nation's youngest
Presidents, she brought energy and glamour, charm and culture
to the White House--French food, Italian designer clothes,
internationally renowned musicians.
She was as close as America would ever have to a reigning
monarch, and yet part of her appeal was her humanity, her grace
in the face of enormous loss and pain. When a child died
shortly after birth, a nation was touched. And when the First
Lady became a widow, a nation wept not just for its own loss
but for hers too.
Even her remarriage--to a man average Americans determined
was too old, too unattractive, too foreign, and much too rich
to be right for their Jackie--failed to knock her off the
national pedestal. After all, she who was raising two wondrous
young heirs to the Kennedy legacy could be forgiven most
anything.
Amidst the constant public adoration and celebrity,
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis managed somehow to make a new life
for herself--becoming a respected editor in the heady world of
New York's publishing industry--and for her children of whom
she was quite rightly enormously proud. Doing so took a
strength of will we had come to admire long after bouffant hair
and pillbox hats went out of style.
That strength, that courage, that quiet grace which endured
even until her final moments on this earth, are her most
lasting legacy.
May Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis find at last the peace and
serenity too long denied her here on earth.
[From the Boston Herald, May 20, 1994]
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, 1929-1994
classy first lady won over even this diehard republican
(By Joe Fitzgerald)
The admiration didn't come early, and at first it didn't
come easily because, truth be told, it's hard to give up our
prejudices, and a prejudice existed here, a resentment really,
for just about everything the lady represented.
And yet it wasn't her fault.
She just happened to be married to the candidate who beat
the candidate favored here in the Presidential election of
1960, the first one in which this writer took an active and
rooting interest.
So that resentment, albeit unmerited, followed her to 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue and for many years it festered, though it
became harder and harder to sustain.
When her husband, sweeping Paris off its feet, identified
himself as the man who'd accompanied Jackie, there was an
involuntary rush of pride in the face the two of them showed
the world, the face of a young, attractive America able to poke
fun at itself.
And when she hosted state affairs with elegance, when she
led a TV tour of the White House with grace, she was making
even those who'd regretted her arrival now happy she was there.
It was so hard to find fault with her reign as First Lady
that eventually the effort was ceased and, before long, this
recalcitrant young Republican actually started liking her.
And then--just like that--she was gone, widowed in a moment
none who lived through it will ever forget.
We didn't know how much we'd miss those days until we lived
through the ones that followed, through Vietnam and Birmingham,
through a convention in Chicago, from a motel balcony in
Memphis to a hotel kitchen in L.A., places that now conjure up
devastating memories and will forever more.
Along the way she got lost in the shuffle, at this address
anyway, paparazzi notwithstanding, even through her marriage to
a Greek tycoon.
But as the years went by, another image of Jackie began to
emerge and this one couldn't be ignored. Indeed, it was admired
here and would have been applauded if we'd ever met.
She'd gotten older, so had I, and tribal instincts had long
since faded, giving way to a new awareness born of the passage
of time.
Her kids, having no more choice than she did, lived in a
fishbowl not of their own design, not of their own choosing,
simply the price society extracted from them for being the
widow, son, and daughter of a martyred icon.
They were children of privilege, to be sure, but nothing
about them suggested they were filled with their own
importance. Others of their generation, sharing their station
in life, wandered in and out of headlines, sometimes for minor
indiscretions, occasionally for major transgressions.
But Jackie's kids were different. No one could find fault
in them, and not for lack of trying.
Some time back a scrap went public when, word had it, she
hit the roof over son John's intention to set up housekeeping
with Daryl Hannah, sans the swapping of ``I do's'' at the
altar.
It seemed so . . . so, Republican, though that's certainly
lost its meaning over the years. What it was, really, was the
admiration of one who knows how challenging parenting can be,
for another who'd clearly done it magnificently well.
Colleague Gayle Fee, now of Inside Track renown, remembers
her days on the staff of the Cape Cod Times when young John was
part of the crew employed by skipper Barry Clifford in his
celebrated attempt to salvage the Whydah.
``I went to him one day and asked if we could talk for a
few minutes,'' she recalls. ``He was nice. He laughed and said,
`I'd love to help you, but my mother would kill me.' And he was
no kid. But that's the kind of respect he had for her.''
It's a wonderful story, a wonderful memory, a wonderful
tribute to the lady who was accompanied to Paris by an American
President in what now seems, more than ever, to have been a
lifetime ago.
No, the admiration didn't come early at all, but when it
did it sure came easily, and now it's been replaced by an ache,
a void, a sense of loss, because this was not only a lady of
style but also a lady of substance.
Like the Biblical mother whose ``children rise up and call
her blessed,'' Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was a class act in
areas that truly matter, areas having nothing to do with party
lines, and her death is being mourned by an ardent fan at this
address.
Better believe it.
[From the Boston Globe, May 21, 1994]
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, 1929-1994
``it leaves an empty place''
(By Joseph P. Kahn, Chris Black, and Michael Kranish)
Reaction poured in yesterday from the world of politics
from Russia to Boston, as well as from the arts, fashion, and
family friends.
HILLARY CLINTON, wife of the President, ``If she taught us
anything, it was to know the meaning of responsibility--to
one's family and to one's community. Her great gift of grace
and style and dignity and heroism is an example that will live
through the ages.''
LADY BIRD JOHNSON, became First Lady after assassination.
``It leaves an empty place in the world as I have known it. We
shared a unique time and I always thought of her as my
friend.''
BEN BRADLEE SR., Kennedy friend and former Washington Post
executive editor, ``She was a classy young lady. Perhaps her
greatest contribution was getting this country through those 3
or 4 days. I'm not so sure I could have done it without her.
She was 35 (when Kennedy was assassinated). She found an inner
strength at a time in her life when most people haven't had to
prove themselves at much of anything.''
FRANK MANKIEWICZ, Robert Kennedy's press secretary, ``She
changed the view of the First Lady. As someone said, she was
the first one who didn't look like your grandmother. I think
what probably will be remembered is dignity, privacy, class, as
in high-class; high style, not just fashion or decoration, but
the way she lived. We haven't seen her for over 30 years really
in any TV interview, no posed picture for 31 years, and yet she
is probably the best-known woman in the world. She did that by
holding herself aloof and leading her own life.''
GEORGE BUSH, former President, ``Jackie Onassis brought
great dignity and grace to the White House and was indeed a
charming and wonderful First Lady.''
JOHN T. FALLON, Chairman and chief executive officer of
R.M. Bradley & Co. and a Kennedy family friend, ``Her greatest
legacy is the impact of a caring mother on her children,
Caroline and John. They are the finest examples of a widowed
parent who kept her children on an even keel despite the
terrible trauma of their father's death, all the national
attention and curiosity they had to deal with. They were the
greatest rewards of her lifetime.''
SAMUEL HUTCHINSON BEER, political scientist, professor
emeritus Harvard University, active in Massachusetts Democratic
politics during the Kennedy administration, ``The way she
assumed the duties of the widow of an assassinated President so
bravely and so intelligently is what really made her. Majesty
is not the right word. She had poise. She demonstrated what a
widow can do to heal the wounds of a country.''
POLLY FITZGERALD, Wayland resident, veteran Kennedy
campaign aide who organized the famous ``ladies teas'' during
Kennedy's campaigns. ``At the first reception in Kenosha,
Wisconsin, Senator Kennedy was late arriving. The people were
all there waiting. Some music was playing so she was asked to
go to the microphone and welcome the people and thank them for
coming. She didn't like to do much public speaking but she did.
After asking the crowd to vote for her husband, she said, `Why
don't we have some singing? Does anyone know Southie is My
Hometown?' She just thought that it was a song everyone would
know in politics. We all laughed.''
MICHAEL STERN, author, ``Encyclopedia of Pop Culture,''
``Jackie had access to the best, and had it in a way that made
all of us seem to have it, too.''
BETTY BOYD CAROLI, author, ``First Ladies,'' ``Many First
Ladies have had an enormous effect on how women act and dress
and what they think is important. She had a particularly large
effect because of television. Getting to see her so much
changed the idea of what femininity was. We saw a woman in the
White House . . . who was young and glamorous but also very
intelligent, who spoke three or four languages and seemed
genuinely interested in dance, art, and history.''
SALLY QUINN, author, ``I admire most the way she evolved as
a woman. Imagine being married to Jack Kennedy, with all that
energy and charisma! People forget how young she was, too. As
unofficial White House curator, she managed to turn a fusty old
mansion into a beautiful museum, besides being both wife and
mother. In that sense Jackie was way ahead of her time. She
evolved in a way that any self-respecting feminist would
consider brilliant: Raised her children, had a successful
publishing career, devoted herself to her grandchildren. Yet
here is a woman who lost a baby and a husband in the space of 3
months.''
BILLY NORWICH, Vogue editor at large, ``She became a modern
pop icon at a time when the media was growing bigger, period.
With her came the advent of the paparazzi, and because the best
shots of her captured Jackie in motion--on a sailboat, riding a
horse--she transformed the fashion photography industry by
giving it a sense of youthfulness and motion it never had
before. Later, in New York, it was a given that if you got
Jackie Onassis on your fund-raising committee, the event was a
sellout. A done deal. Nobody else in the city had that clout.''
JOHN GLENN, Senator from Ohio, former astronaut, ``America
lost a heroine and I lost a friend.''
GIP HOPPE, playwright, ``Jackie: An American Life'' ``Her
type of celebrity is something we'll probably never see again.
When you look at who we have for celebrities today--Madonna,
Roseanne--it doesn't take a genius to see a kind of de-
evolution there. What endeared me to Jackie was that she never
went on the couch with Barbara Walters, talking about chemical
dependency or incest or whatever. It was her gift to us in many
ways. It preserved her sense of mystery.''
GEORGE PLIMPTON, author, ``Jack Kennedy once looked around
a roomful of Nobel Prize winners and called it the greatest
collection of talent in the White House since Thomas Jefferson
dined alone. Well, Jackie was part of that feeling. She brought
Pablo Casals and Andre Malraux to the White House, among many
others. In New York, she was enormously influential in saving
Grand Central Station. She also edited two of my books. . . .
One thing about having Jackie as an editor, she could pick up
the telephone and get absolutely anyone in the world on the
line.''
CAROLINA HERRERA, designer, ``With her grace, charm and
elegance, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis captivated the world like
no other woman of her time. She epitomized fashion and style in
America and was copied by millions of women around the world.
Her contribution to fashion was to introduce naturalness to
elegance.''
PIERRE SALINGER, Kennedy press secretary, ``She was
extremely kind. In the 2 days after John Kennedy was
assassinated, she gave every counselor to the President a
private present, something she'd taken out of Jack's files or
something. She gave me this wonderful leather thing, two cigars
I can put into it, and on it it says ``JFK.'' She wanted me to
remember that.''
NATOLY KRASIKOV, deputy spokesman, Russian President Boris
N. Yeltsin, ``We remember the tragic image of the young widow
at the funeral and her remarkable dignity and composure. She
will always be remembered for that courage.''
MARY ROBINSON, President of Ireland, ``She will be
remembered with great affection and admiration by Irish people
everywhere.''
CARDINAL BERNARD LAW, ``I wish to offer my prayerful
sympathy to the daughter, son and all the family of Mrs.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at this moment of loss. The American
people mourn her passing and remember especially her dignity,
grace and courage during our time of national trauma caused by
the assassination of President Kennedy. . . . She set an
example which helped to bring the country through one of its
darkest hours.''
NANCY REAGAN, former First Lady, ``She was very kind to me
when my husband was shot, and when we didn't know whether he
was going to live or not. . . . She wrote me a very sweet,
sensitive note and called me. . . . She couldn't have been
nicer to me at that time when I really needed it.''
[From the San Francisco Examiner, May 22, 1994]
Behind Onassis' Charm Lay Irony
(By Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.)
She was a woman of fierce independence. Of course she was
famously beautiful and elegant, and she fascinated and
enchanted her age. But one recalls above all the quiet but
implacable determination, amid the uncontrollable blazes of
publicity, to live her own life.
Her father, ``Black Jack'' Bouvier, was a swashbuckler. Her
mother was a very proper society matron. She was brought up at
a time--the 1940s--and in a place--Newport, RI--where young
ladies were taught to conceal their intelligence lest it
frighten young men away. She observed the conventions, but
underneath a shy exterior developed cool judgment of people and
an ironic slant on life.
In the early 1950s, she met another ironist, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy. Their marriage was a notable moment in the
social history of the United States: At last the Irish were
accepted in Newport.
Jacqueline Kennedy took to her new political life more
easily than her Newport friends expected. Like her husband, she
was an idealist, and, like him, an idealist without illusions.
She came to like politicians and their free and easy talk, and
she came to like campaigning. Bursting upon the electorate in
1960, the handsome couple seemed the embodiment of youth, and
rather daring in a nation ruled by tired old men. Private
missions.
She added more than decoration. Jack Kennedy always sought
her assessments of people, and sometimes asked her to carry out
confidential missions. When, for example, he wanted to talk to
the economist John Kenneth Galbraith and me, but did not want
to disquiet his possessive and overworked campaign staff,
Jacqueline would make the call and set up the meeting.
Once her husband had been elected President, she wondered
how she could best play her role as Presidential wife (she
detested the term ``First Lady,'' regarding it as
undemocratic.) Her expertise lay in the arts, and her aim was
to use the White House to honor artistic achievement. Soon
Casals, Stravinsky, Robert Frost, Isaiah Berlin, and Leonard
Bernstein were Presidential guests. Jacqueline saw the White
House itself not as a private residence but as a possession of
the American people, and she very efficiently organized a
redecoration and refurnishing that served to renew the
historical continuities.
To those of us on the White House staff, the Kennedys
appeared an affectionate couple, delighting in each other, and
their two attractive children. No one can know the inwardness
of a marriage, but despite latter-day tales of women parading
through the White House, their relationship seemed increasingly
close. The President could be a solicitous husband. I remember
his asking me, after the loss of their third child, whether I
could get Adlai Stevenson to send a note of condolence:
``Jackie is very fond of Adlai and hasn't heard a word from
him.''
Then came Dallas. In the dark weeks and months afterward,
Jacqueline and her brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy, were drawn
together in grief. He became the protective element in her
life. Seeking privacy for her children and for herself, she
moved to New York and began a new career as an editor in a
publishing house, a job for which her critical eye and flawless
taste admirably equipped her. She was proud of Robert Kennedy
in his opposition to the war in Vietnam, but hated it when he
decided to run for President. ``They will do to him what they
did to Jack,'' she said to me in March 1968. In June, ``they''
did as she predicted. Three months later, seeking a new
protection, she married Aristotle Onassis.
After Onassis died, Jacqueline returned to her quiet,
highly disciplined life: Winter in New York; riding in New
Jersey or Virginia in spring and autumn; summer in Martha's
Vineyard. An excellent mother, she taught her children how to
elude the paparazzi.
In her middle years, Jacqueline was more fascinating than
ever. Her finely modelled face resisted age. She always had the
seductive habit of giving undivided attention to the person
with whom she was talking. Her humor gleamed, and her zest for
life never flagged. She was a great reader and loved the
theater. Illness was sudden.
She followed politics and remained an ardent liberal
Democrat to the end. In 1992, she acquired a new friend in
Hillary Rodham Clinton. They lunched together a couple of times
during the campaign, hit it off at once and kept in close touch
thereafter.
The illness struck unexpectedly last December. Doctors
diagnosed it as lymphoma in January. She seemed cheery and
hopeful, perhaps to keep up the spirits of her friends. ``I
feel it is a kind of hubris,'' she told me. ``I have always
been proud of keeping so fit. I swim, and I jog, and I do my
push-ups, and walk around the reservoir, and I gave up smoking
40 years ago--and now this suddenly happens.''
She laughed as she talked. Chemotherapy, she added, was not
too bad; she could read a book while it was administered. The
doctors said that in 50 percent of cases lymphoma could be
stabilized.
She bore the last ordeal with characteristic gallantry, and
with never a word of complaint. She died as she lived, in grace
and in dignity--``a very classy dame,'' as they say in New
York. Henry James would have understood her, and could have
portrayed her.
She will be remembered as the American woman at her best:
Brave, disciplined, ironic, imperturbable, filled with a vivid
sense of the potentiality and the sadness of life.
[From the Boston Herald, May 22, 1994]
O Jackie, You Were Wonderful!
first lady gave strength to ailing nation, young widow carried on jfk's
vision, personal tragedy pulled pair together, she found happiness in
books, children
(By Wayne Woodlief)
Behind Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' Mona Lisa smile, First
Lady poise and clotheshorse image lay an indomitable will that
allowed her to survive great grief, protect her children, serve
her country and find an independent way through a majestic
life.
After dying as she insisted she wanted to, not in the
coldness of a hospital but at home, surrounded by family and
friends, she will be buried tomorrow in Arlington National
Cemetery beside her assassinated husband, near the Eternal
Flame she ordered to mark his grave.
But the memories of her wondrous time on Earth and her
reign with Jack Kennedy over the second ``Camelot'' will, as
she virtually ordained, not be ``forgot.''
On the morning of November 22, 1963, President Kennedy
returned to his suite in Fort Worth's Hotel Texas after a
morning rally in that city to prepare for his next stop:
Dallas.
First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy listened to her husband read
aloud a hate-filled anti-Kennedy ad from that day's Dallas
Morning News.
She felt sick, according to historian Michael R. Beschloss'
``The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-63,'' as the
President told her, ``We're heading into nut country today.''
``Last night would have been a hell of a night to
assassinate a President,'' he continued. ``There was the rain
and the night, and we were all getting jostled. Suppose a man
had a pistol in a briefcase.''
She could not stop the rifle bullets that indeed would kill
the President that afternoon, nor could she control the hatred
that also would take away her beloved brother-in-law Bob, 5
years later.
Jackie Kennedy couldn't control the things that caused her
the sharpest pain: The blatant adulteries of her father and
husband, her still-born daughter, the death of her 3-day-old
infant Patrick Bouvier Kennedy.
But she found some things she could control, if she exerted
her most salient yet most publicly concealed feature: That
will, that determination that some things would be done right.
She was able to preserve her children's privacy from the
press. And, for the most part, she kept Caroline and John away
from the corrosive Palm Beach, FL, atmosphere that so damaged
some of their cousins.
Jackie Kennedy had been an ``inquiring photographer'' for
the Washington Times-Herald years before. She had learned to
dole out a photo opportunity here and there--thus making them
prized for their rarity--while allowing her children to grow up
as free from prying as possible.
In her later years, she would insist on a pre-nuptial
agreement with Greek shipping tycoon Ari Onassis that left her
very wealthy--with an estimated $20 million settlement--after
his death.
Despite her fortune, she took a job, carving out her own
identity as a well-regarded editor with the Doubleday
publishing house. She brought Egyptian Nobel Prize winner
Naguib Mahfouz's ``Cairo Trilogy'' to the United States and
drew praise from Bill Moyers and other distinguished authors.
But it was her behavior in the aftermath of JFK's
assassination for which she will most be remembered.
Through her shock and sadness, she meticulously planned the
3 days of mourning that kept a country together, enabled
Americans to lay aside their divisions and join a lovely ritual
of remembrance and restoration.
Aides researched the Lincoln funeral for her at the Library
of Congress and the ``black crepe, catafalque, caisson and
muffled drums of the Nation's tribute to Abraham Lincoln thus
became the blueprint for the world's farewell to John F.
Kennedy,'' wrote a Kennedy biographer, Nigel Hamilton.
She determined who would eulogize the slain President at
the funeral, and at the grave. And as Kennedy lay in state at
the Capitol rotunda, she had whispered to her daughter
Caroline, ``We're going to say goodbye to Daddy, and we're
going to kiss him goodbye and tell Daddy how much we love him
and how much we'll always miss him.''
The two of them moved forward, Jacqueline kneeling
gracefully, Caroline kneeling as her mother had, hesitating for
a moment, until Jackie Kennedy said, ``You know. You just
kiss.''
With their lips, they lightly touched the American flag
that draped the coffin, a moment that shook the hearts of
millions watching on television, and of the battle-hardened
politicians and potentates in the great hall.
It was Jacqueline Kennedy who reminded her son John-John,
3, to snap the salute to his slain father that symbolized to
their countrymen they had lost a leader but the country carried
on.
She walked head-high during those sad days.
And at age 34, she enabled a nation to grieve in a way that
purged much of its poison, helping mold a national mood that
allowed successor President Lyndon B. Johnson to achieve
landmark civil rights laws and other goals Kennedy sought.
In a touch of genius and myth-making, Jackie Kennedy also
created the name that would give an enduring gauzy mist to her
husband's time in office, a title even the most lurid
revelations about JFK would stain but not destroy--``Camelot.''
Theodore H. White, author of the ``Making of the
President'' series, had interviewed her the week after JFK's
death. As he later wrote, she told him she was concerned about
how to ``rescue'' Jack's memory and reputation ``from all these
`bitter people' who were going to write about him in history.''
Her mind kept returning that week, she said, to the song
from a musical Jack Kennedy loved and often played on an old
Victrola in their bedroom.
The part he loved most, she said, was King Arthur's
imploring a young messenger from the battlefield to remember
the lore of the kingdom:
``Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for
one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.''
White wrote the story for Life Magazine, and it became the
catch-word for an era.
Yet life for Jack and Jackie Kennedy never was as beautiful
and noble and true as she might have wished it--but could not
will it--to be.
John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier first met in 1951,
at a dinner party given by Kennedy's old friend, newsman
Charles Bartlett. The dashing young Senator, he later recalled,
``leaned over the asparagus'' to pay court to the 23-year-old
brunette with deep-brown eyes, thin waist, and almost-hushed
voice.
She was the daughter of society woman Janet Bouvier and
John Bouvier III, the notorious ``Black Jack,'' who would break
many a woman's heart and his daughter's, too, when he openly
pursued women in front of her, and when her parents divorced.
Jackie Kennedy went to the best schools, the best parties,
rode thoroughbreds and enjoyed wealth and privilege, especially
after her mother's second marriage to millionaire Hugh
Auchincloss.
Yet it was something else that bound her to Jack Kennedy.
``In fact what Jack and Jackie had in common had less to do
with the wealth and privilege of their backgrounds than with
the loneliness that each of them had experienced as a child,''
wrote Doris Kearns Goodwin in ``The Fitzgeralds and the
Kennedys.''
The young John Kennedy had spent weeks, sometimes months,
in bed at home or in hospitals, plagued by a variety of
illnesses. According to historian Nigel Hamilton's
controversial biography, he received little warmth from his
mother, yet was given too much modeling in womanizing by a
lustful father.
Jack Kennedy, in his solitude, learned to love books and
writing. So, too, did Jacqueline Bouvier.
``Jackie was 6 when her parents first separated and 9 when
they divorced,'' Goodwin wrote. ``A vulnerable and sensitive
child, she was left from this trauma with feelings she could
not easily share with anyone else.
``Trusting less in people than in animals and in nature,
she sought her deepest pleasures in solitary acts, reading a
book, listening to music or taking a long walk on the beach.''
Young Jack had had a wide choice of women, but his lifelong
friend Lem Billings told Goodwin, ``Jackie was different . . .
She was more intelligent, more literary, more substantial.''
Both Jack and Jackie came from families that scrapped their
way into society by reshaping their images over the
generations.
Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., Jack's father, was the son of a
saloonkeeper, descended from Irish immigrants and, it was
widely suspected, made some of his early fortune in rum-
running.
The Bouviers sprang from tailors, farmers, and domestic
servants in France--not the noble ancestry Jacqueline's
grandfather had claimed--according to documentation in a book
by a cousin, John Davis, titled ``The Bouviers.''
As Lem Billings told another biographer, Jack and Jackie
``had both taken circumstances that weren't the best in this
world when they were younger.''
``(They) learned to make themselves up as they went
along,'' he said.
Their marriage in September 1953, at her stepfather's
Hammersmith Farms estate at Newport was one of the political
and social events of the year.
And Jackie learned to live with, and make her own way
within, the boisterous, sometimes-intimidating Kennedy clan.
Years later, she would express regret she had not counseled
Joan Kennedy on how to handle the in-family competition. She
liked Joan, friends said, even though Joan had once publicly
blurted out that Jackie ``has three wigs and wears them a
lot,'' a secret the First Lady would have preferred to keep.
``If only she (Joan) had realized her own strengths instead
of looking at herself in comparisons with the Kennedys,''
Jackie told friends.
``Why worry if you're not as good at tennis as Eunice or
Ethel when men are attracted by the feminine way you play
tennis? Why court Ethel's tennis elbow?''
Instead, Jackie Kennedy would talk about movies and operas
on the porch with patriarch Joe Kennedy, or read ``Proust'' on
the lawn while her in-laws bruised themselves in touch
football.
But her husband's apparently compulsive lust for other
women was something far harder to accept or ignore.
``While on one level Jackie must have known what she was
getting into by marrying a 36-year-old playboy, she never
suspected the depth of Jack's need for other women,'' Lem
Billings once recalled.
``Nor was she prepared for the humiliation she would suffer
when she found herself stranded at parties while Jack would
suddenly disappear with some pretty young girl.''
Perhaps the most painful such incident for Jackie Kennedy,
one that nearly caused a separation from Jack, is described in
Beschloss' book on Kennedy's foreign policy, ``The Crisis
Years.''
``In July 1956, after Kennedy lost his bid to run for Vice
President with Adlai Stevenson--(a bit of drama at the
Democratic National Convention that thrust Kennedy onto the
national stage)--he and (Florida Senator George) Smathers flew
off to the Riviera, where they and female guests relaxed aboard
a yacht,'' Beschloss wrote.
``During the cruise, Kennedy's wife lost their first child,
a girl (born dead), in Newport. Hampered by bad communications,
he did not fly home for several days. The columnist Drew
Pearson wrote that `for a long time, she wouldn't listen to his
overtures for a reconciliation. He blamed himself for the
estrangement.' ''
That wound took time to heal. Jack Kennedy grieved, too,
affected by the loss of the child more than he had been by his
own long illness of the past, his father wrote to a friend.
Jackie Kennedy worried whether she'd ever have a child,
``blamed her problem on the crazy pace of politics'' and the
demands to take part in the Kennedys' relentless activities,
Billings said.
She began to demand distance from the clan, insisting that
instead of the ritual gatherings at her father-in-law's house
in the Cape Cod compound, that she and Jack have dinners alone.
Caroline Bouvier Kennedy was born in November 1957, and by
1960, Jackie was pregnant again, with the child who would be
John F. Kennedy, Jr., ``John-John.''
At the time, Jack was deep into his campaign for President,
Jackie by his side as often as possible.
``Jackie stole the show'' at a big rice festival down in
Crowley, LA, speaking French to thousands of Cajun revelers,
recalled longtime Kennedy aide and Kennedy Library Curator
David Powers.
On the day after Kennedy's extraordinarily narrow win over
Richard Nixon, she was beside Jack, glowing in her expectancy
of a new child and of a new administration.
In a TV interview at the White House that seems dated in
this era of feminism, the new President's wife said, ``The
major role of a First Lady is to take care of the President so
he can serve the people.''
She launched a refurbishing of the White House at a then-
unprecedented cost of nearly $200,000 and, though she quietly
ordered an end to ``disruptive'' afternoon public tours through
her new home, she personally conducted a much-watched TV tour
for millions of viewers of CBS.
In a blizzard of memos to staff, uncovered by biographer
David Heymann, author of ``A Woman Named Jackie,'' she ordered,
``No Mamie (Eisenhower) pink on the walls except in Caroline's
room, no Grand Rapids reconditioned furniture, no glass and
brass ashtrays . . . I intend to make this a grand house.''
``Maud (the British nanny hired to take care of Caroline)
won't need much in her room. Just find a wicker basket for her
banana peels and a little table for her false teeth at night.
``All 18 bedrooms and 20 baths on second floor must be
tidied; 147 windows kept clean; 29 fireplaces laid ready for
lighting'' each day, she instructed the staff.
Yet Jacqueline Kennedy did far more than see to it that the
President was comfortable at home and prepared to handle the
affairs of state.
She accompanied the President to Paris for an important
summit during his first year in office, charming the imperious
French Premier Charles de Gaulle with her knowledge of his
language--better than most Frenchwomen, he observed--and her
stunning beauty.
Jackie also read passages from de Gaulle's memoirs to Jack,
and the President memorized them to quote to the vain Frenchman
at their meetings.
She helped bring reconciliation and healing when she flew
with the President to Miami's Orange Bowl, after the Christmas
Eve ransom of the last of the Cuban Bay of Pigs prisoners had
been completed.
In Spanish, she told them she hoped her son would grow up
to be as brave as they were. They wept and shouted, ``Guerra,
Guerra, Guerra.''
Behind the scenes, she did not keep silent as the body
count mounted in Vietnam.
Robert S. McNamara, Kennedy's Secretary of Defense,
recently recalled that she confronted him at the White House.
``She literally beat on me with her fist,'' he said. ``She
said, `You've got to stop the killing.' ''
The woman who brought Pablo Casals to the White House had
urged her husband to create a Cabinet post for the arts. He
said he would do it after he returned from Texas.
After his death, she persistently urged Lyndon Johnson to
do the same. Eventually, he created the National Endowment for
the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The death of the Kennedys' son Patrick in August 1963,
deeply saddened them both and drew them closer, according to
biographer Heymann.
Jack Kennedy began to show more concern for his wife's
wants. He told friends that after his second term, he'd enjoy
being named Ambassador to Italy ``because Jackie would like
it.''
Then came Dallas, first of the hammer blows that would
drain her. Five years later, when Robert F. Kennedy was
assassinated, she went to the airport to meet the plane
bringing his body to New York.
Trembling as she mistook the huge Air Force Boeing 707 for
Air Force One, she whispered to a crewman, ``I couldn't go on
that plane again,'' wrote author Lester David.
For 5 years after Jack Kennedy's death, Jackie was ``The
Widow,'' the continuing symbol of Camelot.
But in October 1968, she wed Greek shipping magnate
Aristotle Onassis, who had been a generous friend. Asked by an
interviewer if she wasn't concerned she'd lose her place on
America's pedestal, she replied, ``It's cold up there.''
Mr. and Mrs. Onassis gave each other room in their
marriage. ``I never question her and she never questions me,''
he once said. She traveled, bought the latest Givenchy
offerings, went to plays and operas with friends, with or
without Onassis. He would cruise or dine at Maxim's, with
soprano Maria Callas.
Jacqueline did not fly to Onassis' side when he died in
1975, remaining in New York. His daughter Christina did, and
later sued to keep Jackie from the bulk of Onassis' fortune.
They settled out of court on $20 million for the widow. In
later years, the last man in her life, diamond merchant Maurice
Tempelsman would help her make investments that gave her an
estimated net worth of at least $100 million at her death.
In 1975, she went to work as a consulting editor for Viking
Press in New York, quitting after the company brought out a
novel in which her brother-in-law, Senator Edward M. Kennedy,
becomes President and a target of an assassination attempt.
But in 1978, she became an editor at Doubleday, where she
worked for 16 years, bringing about a dozen books a year to
publication, most of them stylishly printed and illustrated.
``I'm drawn to books that are out of our regular
experience, books of other cultures, of ancient history,'' she
said last year in a rare interview with Publishers Weekly.
She became familiar with Egyptian author Mahfouz's mystical
novel, even though it wasn't available in the United States,
because ``It was available in French translation and I read
that.''
Veteran aide Dave Powers said, ``She captured the
imagination of the world. She had elegance and style. She made
you proud to be around her.''
Tomorrow, all the family members and friends and admirers
of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who were proud to be around her,
will say farewell as she returns to John Kennedy's side
forever.
Herald reporter Christie George contributed to this report.
[From the Boston Globe, May 22, 1994]
Jackie Was A Model of Dignity to the End . . .
(By Ellen Goodman)
She went home to die. There would be no strangers coming
down her hospital corridor, whispering outside her door. No
paparazzi angling to get at her bedside.
The spokesman for the hospital had said, as spokesmen have
said so many times before, ``Mrs. Onassis and her family have
asked that her privacy be respected at this time.'' The
reporters, the curious, the well-wishers were kept at arm's
length for one last time.
Jacqueline Bouvier. Jacqueline Kennedy. Jackie O. It was a
malignant cancer indeed that killed this most private of public
women at 64 years old.
The woman's image was seared into our national photo album
half her lifetime ago. She was 34 years old--only 34--on that
day when she flew back from Dallas, still dressed in a pink
suit stained with the blood of her husband.
In the days that followed, Jacqueline Kennedy become the
icon of national mourning. She set a standard for the stoicism
we call dignity in the face of death. She did this as she did
everything--with courage, in public, under a veil.
Jacqueline Bouvier. The daughter of Black Jack. The 18-
year-old who was chosen the Debutante of 1947. The diffident
Vassar and George Washington student who became the ``inquiring
camera girl'' for the old Washington Times-Herald. The wife of
the young Senator from Massachusetts. The First Lady.
At times she looked like a deer caught in the Kennedy
headlights. She hadn't voted before her marriage, didn't care
much for politics, was more attracted to art than policy and
liked shopping more than touch football.
We thought we knew her. We thought she belonged to us. She
has been on more magazine covers than Madonna. We followed
every move, every hairstyle and lifestyle change. We knew her
favorite diet dinner--baked potatoes with caviar--and her
favorite designers.
But it was a compliment she didn't return, an intrusion she
lived with but didn't welcome.
As a single mother, the most famous widow with the most
famous children in America, she chose to raise Caroline and
John as well and as far from the spotlight as possible.
Once, after Jack died, she said she was reading essayist
Thomas Carlyle, ``and he said you should do the duty that lies
nearest you. The thing that lies nearest me is the children.''
She did that duty and had that pleasure.
Years later, when her son, John, made a toast at his
sister's engagement, he said: ``There were always just the
three of us. Now there will be four.'' And now there will be
one less.
America wanted Jacqueline Kennedy to remain frozen in time,
circa 1963, circa 34 years old. When she married Aristotle
Onassis, the country reacted as if some marauding Visigoth had
made off with America's trophy widow. But she did what she
wanted.
When she went to work as an editor, she was criticized as a
rich woman who had gone slumming at the workplace. But she made
her own coffee, xeroxed her own pages, edited her own books.
She made her own life.
The world changed enormously in the years after Jackie was
First Lady. Gradually the zone of privacy we allow public
figures became smaller than a shower stall.
Judith Exner and the girls showed up in Camelot revisions.
The President's widow became the extravagant wife of a shipping
magnate feuding with her stepchildren. Unauthorized biographers
came along slinging their stuff in the name of openness and the
right to know . . . the worst.
Now psychobiographies written in psychobabble fill the
shelves and turn lives into miniseries. Fame means living long
enough to have an actress play you in someone else's script
about your life. Jackie O.
In the 1990s even politicians are expected to reveal their
childhood traumas to talk show hosts. Wives are called upon to
do confessional interviews about their inner feelings about
everything, including their marriage. Everyday people line up
for the chance to discuss dysfunctional families and 12-step
horror stories in the name of ``sharing.''
But Jackie didn't ``share.'' Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy
Onassis remained the most famous and the most private of women.
She didn't comment. She didn't write her memoirs or do
interviews about her disappointments.
Call it distance. Call it shyness. Call it reserve,
aloofness. Choose your word on the continuum of privacy. May I
suggest dignity? At this end of an era, Jacqueline Bouvier
Kennedy Onassis did it her way. She died with dignity.
[From the Boston Globe, May 22, 1994]
. . . And There Are Five Ways We Can Honor Her
(By Thomas Oliphant)
WASHINGTON--The living testimony to her inspiring triumph
is stunning enough--Caroline Schlossberg and John Kennedy, Jr.
They are not icons; they are individual, rounded and
grounded adults who have their own mature identities and
secure, essentially private, lives.
Above all, and before all, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was a
magnificent mother. Under circumstances of indescribable
difficulty, she protected her children, nurtured them and
fought to give them the space within which they could grow to
be themselves.
As a huge wave of emotion sweeps over the country on which
she made such a deep and lasting impression, this essential
part of her stands out most prominently as the ultimate legacy
and tribute. There are few of her words that stand out, so
great was her commitment to her own and her children's privacy,
but I will never forget her observation that if you have failed
your children, nothing else you have done with your life can
compensate.
Her victory mattered greatly, and legitimately, to the
country. In their infancy her children were in the center of
the picture of youth and optimism and activism and possibility
that ushered in the 1960s. When their father was murdered,
every heart in America literally ached for them, and the prayer
that the children would turn out all right was fervent. Well,
they did, but not as martyred symbols; they turned out all
right as people.
There needs, however, to be more of a public remembrance,
for this was as significant a female life as has been lived in
American history, and its impact will be with us permanently.
Five ideas come quickly to mind:
1. The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington
bears her husband's name, appropriately, but it is in equal
part her memorial. In less than three White House years, she
singlehandedly gave previously self-conscious American culture
its public and international confidence. One of the center's
venues is the Eisenhower Theater, politically correct if
culturally oxymoronic; the opera house or the concert hall
should now bear the name of the woman who brought Pablo Casals'
cello, Isaac Stern's violin, and Carl Sandburg's voice to the
White House.
2. Every tourist who passes through the White House gets a
booklet that admirably describes the place and its history.
That was her doing, as was the establishment of the curator's
position to make restoration an ongoing responsibility. Other
President's wives redecorated; she restored, and in the future
the booklet should contain her picture and a summary of her
accomplishment.
3. There should be a plaque, or, better, a bust in
Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White
House. Thanks mostly to her last-minute intercession,
development on this important open space was blocked and a
nascent movement that came to be called historic preservation
was given a major boost. She was its indefatigable soldier for
the rest of her life.
4. If I were rich, I would endow a program in journalistic
ethics somewhere in her name. We live in an increasingly crude,
Peeping Tom age in which the daily paper often reads like
People magazine and uses the standards of the National
Enquirer. Mrs. Onassis fought to have her privacy respected,
and it was. We have an often unpleasant job to do, but every
public life deserves a private zone, and we need to learn how
to behave responsibly to save what's left of the high ground in
our national conversation.
5. If I were President Clinton, I would ask Richard Nixon's
family for understanding to allow an extra day for his official
mourning period. On Monday, I'd order every flag raised to the
top of every pole in salute to Mrs. Onassis, and in gratitude
for her courage during a week in 1963 that still hurts so much.
In the first hours after President Kennedy's murder, there
was horror, true shock, fear, irrationality, blind anger. But
from the instant she emerged from Air Force One at Andrews Air
Force Base, her carriage helped the country maintain the
dignity of sorrow against the pull of aimless emotions while
the entire world watched.
Amazingly, she was just 34 years old, and for that alone
her country will be grateful forever.
But there was so much more, and she did it all her way.
[From Newsday Magazine, May 22, 1994]
A Private Life Defined by Wit, Compassion
(By Pete Hamill)
We were on a train heading south through the June
afternoon, carrying another Kennedy in a coffin to the dark
permanent earth of Arlington. I was sitting in one of the
crowded cars with Jose Torres, who had been the light-
heavyweight champion of the world. He had torn his achilles
tendon in the gym and his right foot was in a cast and we were
talking, and trying to make jokes to erase grief, glancing out
at the ruined faces standing beside the tracks.
I was drinking then. I saw an old man standing at
attention, saluting, and I turned away and sipped my whiskey
and then, coming down the aisle, there was Jackie Kennedy.
She was moving slowly, stopping to murmur words of
consolation to this person and that; and then came to us. Jose
introduced himself and then me. She shook our hands and asked
about Jose's leg.
``I know Bobby loved you guys,'' she said. ``I'm so
sorry.''
The words were simple and correct, of course; so was the
stoic grace, the refusal to weep in public, cry to Heaven for
vengeance, or issue some gushing demand for pity. But there was
something unstated too, moving around in her eyes, present in
the coiled tension of her stance. She was bitterly angry. In
1968, with Martin Luther King gunned down and now Robert
Kennedy, she wasn't alone.
That morning in St. Patrick's Cathedral, anger stained the
air; it was here on the funeral train too, impossible to tame
with either words or whiskey. The murder of Jack Kennedy
provoked horror and grief, the killing of Robert Kennedy, a
generalized absurd fury.
Jackie Kennedy, as everyone called her then, had been to
King's funeral in April; now she was part of still another,
less than 5 years after the bloody finality of Dallas. American
public life was beginning to resemble a death cult, and in her
eyes, and the slight tight-lipped shake of the head, she seemed
to be wondering if the killing would ever end.
The train rocked slightly; she didn't lose her balance. She
turned to console someone else and then she was gone. Four
months later she married Aristotle Onassis.
``I wanted to go away,'' she told me once. ``They were
killing Kennedys and I didn't want them to harm my children. I
wanted to go off. I wanted to be somewhere safe.''
After the marriage to Onassis, of course, much bitterness
was directed at Jackie herself. Three public versions of the
same woman emerged, often warring with one another: Jacqueline
Bouvier, Jackie Kennedy, Jacqueline Onassis. By refusing to
play forever the role of Jackie Kennedy, Grieving Widow, by
resisting the demands and hypocrisies of the cult she'd helped
create by telling Theodore White it was like Camelot, by
insisting instead on her right to live, Jacqueline Bouvier
invited the pikes and lances. In the process, she made a brave
and difficult life.
A decade after Robert Kennedy's death, after Onassis had
died, and after Jackie had begun to build her life in New York,
we went around together for a while. I don't know of any public
figure whose public image was at greater variance with private
reality. ``I picked up the newspaper today,'' she said one
evening, ``and read this story about this absolutely horrible
woman--and it was me.''
She did not retail herself, of course, did not work the
talk show circuit or give interviews or issue press releases.
The absence of information was filled with gossip, rumor, the
endless human capacity for malice. She was able to immunize
herself from most of this with irony and detachment, laughing
at the more overblown printed fevers. She understood that she
was the stuff that tabloid dreams are made of, combining in one
person the themes of sex, death, and money. But she could be
wounded too.
``I just don't understand sometimes why they work so hard
at hurting me,'' she said. ``There are so many more important
things to do.''
Books have been written about her; more will come in a
ceaseless flood. I hope they all make clear how much she loved
her children and the man she once described to me as ``this
young handsome guy who later became President.'' Loved them:
And the geometries of the French language, the marbled acres of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the lanes and green surprises
of Central Park, the light of the Mediterranean. She loved
riding horses through the fields around Bernardsville in New
Jersey and loved rogues, too, men who reminded her of her
father, Jack Bouvier. She is one of the few women I ever met
who could be equally comfortable with Jimmy Breslin and Andre
Malraux.
Her intelligence was subtle and surprising. She could
discuss characters from Proust and dances by Fred Astaire. She
had a wicked sense of humor, saw sham when it appeared, had
little patience for fools, expressed herself with wit.
She worked hard at editing, reading more manuscripts at
home than ever were published, urging people into good work.
And she could write too. Her notes were models of grace and
precision. The most appalling thing about the suddenness of her
death is that she apparently never wrote her memoirs, she who
had so much to remember. ``Sometime, when I'm old and
creaking,'' she said, ``may be I'll write some of all that.''
Instead, she wrote notes to people who were in trouble, to
men whose wives were dying, to women who'd lost their men. The
world was full of the wounded. She had the gift of sympathy,
which is rarer than we all care to admit, and brought it more
often to the hurt than to the triumphant. She was gracious with
strangers, particularly people astonished by the sight of her,
amused by the absurdity of her own celebrity, but never cruel
or dismissive to those who thought it was important. She used
that celebrity for decent causes: The saving of Grand Central,
the campaign to rehab 42nd Street, the curbing of Mort
Zuckerman's skyscraper on the edge of Central Park. In those
and other endeavors, she wasn't assembling scrapbooks; she was
being a citizen. Most of the time, she hung the celebrity in
the closet like a dress, and lived her life.
She didn't need to do any of these things. She could have
lived out her days in icy exile in Europe, hugging some
mountain in Switzerland, walled away from the world in some
personal fortress on the Riviera. She chose instead to live in
New York, a city as wounded as she was.
In the last decade, when every sleazy rumor about Jack
Kennedy was treated like fact, she maintained her silence. And
silence, of course, is communication.
Now, in silence, she will make her own final journey to
Arlington. To be forever with the man she loved, long ago. God
bless.
[From the Washington Post, May 22, 1994]
The Eternal Jackie
(By Mary McGrory)
She was a First Lady like no other. She was improbably
beautiful, she rode to hounds, did exactly as she pleased and
knew just what she wanted.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis wanted babies and fine arts in
the White House. She would pose with the occasional poster
child, but not with county chairmen. She was a perfectionist
who poured over histories and other old tomes to find out
exactly how the White House was supposed to be and then set
about restoring it. She had the State Dining Room painted nine
times before she got the right shade of white.
The country was not sure what to make of her. She was half
of the handsomest couple ever sent to the White House. Whether
to dismiss her as a Newport irrelevant or a clothes horse
occupied much speculation until she went with the President to
Europe in June 1961, and created a sensation. In Paris, the
French, contemplating the wide-set eyes, luxuriant black hair
and delicate nose, forgot to be superior and sniffy. By the end
of the second day, Kennedy was presenting himself as ``the man
who brought Jackie Kennedy to Paris.''
In Vienna, they lined the streets murmuring ``suess''
(sweet) in such volume that it sounded like a giant, enveloping
hiss. She stood next to Khrushchev's bulky wife, Nina, on a
balcony--a referendum on the Cold War, and the West won in a
walk. The President had a rough time with Khrushchev, but
Jackie came home to glory--and to new respect from her Irish
in-laws, having proved herself world-class.
Jackie Kennedy was not into issues like Eleanor Roosevelt
was. In her rare public statements, she stressed the importance
of raising one's children well. She didn't hold press
conferences, didn't give interviews. People told her she had
to, but she knew better. Her silence added to her glamour. She
kept her children out of camera range and gave elegant parties.
Grown men cried if not invited. Poets and musicians came to
dinner. There was waltzing in the foyer.
In Dallas, the First Lady became a queen. Her bearing
during the traumatic weekend when the young President lay in
state in the Rotunda and the country sobbed was an above-and-
beyond demonstration of noblesse oblige, worthy, many said at
the time, of royalty. The 34-year-old socialite understood that
she had a shattered country on her hands, and that she had to
hold it together. She made her tragic rounds with dignity and
grace. She planned her husband's funeral to the last trumpet
and piper. She researched the hanging of crepe on the White
House. She oversaw the funeral invitation list to St. Matthew's
Cathedral. She saw to the eternal flame. She walked down the
aisle holding daughter Caroline's hand. The child felt the sobs
and reached over and patted her mother's arm. Outside, 3-year-
old John saluted the casket. She had taught her children love
and manners.
When it was over, after she had seen off the last head of
state, she did something else. She put her own spin on the
Kennedy years. Reticence set aside, she summoned Teddy White,
the romantic chronicler of Presidential campaigns, to Hyannis
Port, and told him what it was all about. It had been Camelot,
she told him. And for a generation, while tales of Presidential
philandering filtered out of Congressional committees and
revisionism broke through the vale of tears, Camelot was the
theme.
She was mobbed, revered, pestered by paparazzi and reckoned
a saint by some who had originally judged her a snob. She lived
in New York, supported cultural causes, tutored a Harlem high
school student, enjoyed her children and her job, as a book
editor.
The tranquility came to a screeching halt in October 1968,
when she married Aristotle Onassis, an obscenely rich and
somewhat primitive Greek shipping magnate. People were shocked,
furious that she should step down from her stained-glass
window. She never explained, never apologized. She was again,
her friends said, about the business at hand. Bobby Kennedy's
death had made her see her vulnerability, her need for
protection and financial security.
Onassis died as they were planning a divorce. Onassis's
family settled a fortune on her. Her life seemed peaceful. She
attended gatherings of the clan. She observed the scene with
the attention and wit of another daughter of New York, Edith
Wharton. She watched as the Governor of New York came down the
path at Hickory Hill at the wedding of Kerry Kennedy and Andrew
Cuomo. ``Somehow,'' she said, ``I think the Cuomos will hold
their own as in-laws.''
Her suffering during her last illness seemed gratuitous,
totally inappropriate for someone who had had much trouble. She
was cheerful through it all, they say. She saw friends and
family and adored grandchildren who called her ``Grand
Jackie.'' She conversed as long as she could. Once again,
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was showing us how to behave. We
shall miss her exquisite tutelage.
[From the New York Times, May 22, 1994]
Jackie, New Yorker; Friends Recall a Fighter For Her City
(By Robert D. McFadden)
On a weekend of nationwide mourning and tributes from
around the world, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was remembered by
her colleagues and friends closer to home yesterday as, after
all, a New Yorker who loved and enjoyed and fought for her
glittering, frustrating city.
All over town--at a Grand Central Terminal she helped to
save, outside her Fifth Avenue apartment building, in Central
Park where she jogged, in comments from those who had known and
worked with her--people recalled her campaigns for treasured
buildings, her work as a book editor, her affection for art,
her quiet presence in church, and mostly her friendship.
New York, which confers a measure of privacy on
celebrities, had counted her among its own for many years. Mrs.
Onassis, who died Thursday at the age of 64, had spent much of
her childhood here, and it was here she returned in 1964 after
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and here she
went back to work in 1975, after the death of her second
husband, Aristotle Onassis.
``She had this tremendous enthusiasm--it was almost
childlike at times--and when she talked about a book, you knew
she was completely engaged,'' said Stephen Rubin, the president
and publisher of Doubleday, where Mrs. Onassis had been an
editor for the last 16 years.
``a wicked sense of humor''
Mrs. Onassis, who edited about a dozen books a year on the
performing arts, history, and a wide variety of other subjects,
had a small office at Doubleday, at Broadway and 45th Street,
where she attended editorial meetings, worked with manuscripts
and authors, helped design book jackets and art layouts, and
even helped develop sales and marketing strategies, Mr. Rubin
said.
``Every single person on the staff adored her,'' he said.
``She was not just accessible, she was genuinely caring. She
also had a wicked sense of humor and was a lot of fun. She
really connected with the authors, too, once they got over the
idea that their editor was Jackie Kennedy Onassis. She was
warm, engaging, smart--a friend.''
One of her authors, Bill Moyers, for whom she had edited
three books, recalled her yesterday in similar terms: ``As a
colleague, working closely on my books, she was as witty, warm
and creative in private as she was grand and graceful in
public.''
Nancy Tuckerman, a lifelong friend and confidante who had
been Mrs. Kennedy's White House social secretary, recalled
roller-skating with Jackie Bouvier as children in New York in
the 1930s, when they were fellow students at the Chapin School.
jogger, church-goer, lobbyist
``Going back to our childhood days, she always loved New
York and everything about it--the museums, the parks, the
people,'' Ms. Tuckerman said. ``She was always drawn back to
New York. She chose to bring up her children in the city. She
got into publishing because she knew it would be an educational
experience--she would learn something every moment--and she
became a superb editor.''
Mrs. Onassis was intensely private, but did not live in
seclusion, Ms. Tuckerman noted. She jogged around the reservoir
in Central Park nearly every day, took cabs to work, went to
church, attended dinner parties and went to countless meetings,
lunches, even out-of-town lobbying trips, in her work on behalf
of campaigns to save buildings like Grand Central Terminal.
At the terminal yesterday, people from all over the world
gathered in the newly restored South Hall to sign and scribble
their feelings in a memorial book to Mrs. Onassis. Nearby, a
spotlighted plaque read: ``Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis led the
fight to save this beautiful terminal. The victory won in the
U.S. Supreme Court in 1978 established the public's right to
protect landmarks in cities and towns all over America.''
Kent L. Barwick, president of the Municipal Art Society,
remembered the day in 1975, when Mrs. Onassis called him and
volunteered to join what then looked like a losing fight to
save the terminal from a plan to put up an office tower that
would obscure its facade.
``Jackie brought an enormous visibility to the campaign,''
Mr. Barwick recalled. ``By standing up and speaking out for the
terminal, she made it a success. And she made it not just a
struggle involving New Yorkers, but people all over the
country, who sent in $5 bills and notes of support.''
At a crucial stage of the campaign, when the issue rested
before the U.S. Supreme Court, Mrs. Onassis and other
supporters boarded a train to Washington to join a public
demonstration, Mr. Barwick said. She gave it such
respectability that some U.S. Senators joined in.
Mr. Barwick also recalled how Mrs. Onassis fought a plan to
construct a huge tower on Columbus Circle, one that would cast
an enormous shadow over Central Park; plans for the building
have since been scaled down. And, he said, she was instrumental
a decade ago in persuading legislators in Albany to block the
construction of an office tower beside St. Bartholomew's Church
on the East Side.
faithful parishioner
``Jackie got on the train to Albany, met with assemblymen
and senators and the Governor all day, gave testimony and at
the end of the day, when the rest of us were exhausted, she
stood for well over an hour while virtually every important
legislator had a picture taken with her,'' Mr. Barwick
remembered.
The Reverend George Bardes, the pastor of St. Thomas More
Roman Catholic Church, at 85 East 89th Street, who administered
last rites to Mrs. Onassis on Thursday, remembered her as a
faithful parishioner who quietly attended services with her
family. ``She would usually stop after Mass to exchange
pleasantries with the priests,'' he said, and he spoke of the
sad passing of a woman of courage.
Like many New Yorkers, Mrs. Onassis got away occasionally--
on weekends to her horse farm in New Jersey, in the summer to
her estate on Martha's Vineyard, where she and her companion of
recent years, Maurice Tempelsman, entertained President Clinton
and his wife, Hillary, last summer.
But, her friends said, she was always glad to come home to
New York.
[From the USA Today, May 24, 1994]
``She Graced Our History''
Nation Remembers Jackie, Who ``Held Us Together''
burial private, but many feel her loss
(By Andrea Stone, Mimi Hall)
ARLINGTON, VA--The woman who taught a nation how to mourn
and then to go on living was buried here Monday, beside the
eternal flame she lit 31 years ago for her slain husband.
In ceremonies as private as her life, Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis was remembered for her style and strength, a woman
whose death seems to define the end of an era.
At a small graveside service in Arlington National
Cemetery, President Clinton praised the former First Lady as a
``remarkable woman whose life will forever glow in the lives of
her fellow Americans.''
Earlier, at a funeral Mass in New York, Senator Edward
Kennedy eulogized his sister-in-law as ``a blessing to us and
to the Nation. . . . She graced our history. And for those of
us who knew and loved her--she graced our lives.''
Onassis died Thursday at 64, of cancer, in New York.
To many of the sad and curious who flocked to her Fifth
Avenue apartment building or watched retrospectives on
television, Jackie's death seemed too abrupt and too soon. She
had lived three decades beyond the spotlight, yet the grainy
black and white images of a too-young widow streamed back like
a worn refrain from Camelot.
In 1963, the Nation buried its murdered President, John F.
Kennedy, with muffled drums, slowly moving caissons and funeral
marches--as planned by his widow. Monday, she was mourned the
way she would have preferred: In private.
Then, a little girl reached beneath a flag to touch her
father's casket. Monday, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg kneeled
to place a white lily on her mother's bier.
Then, a little boy called John-John whirled to salute his
father, buried on the day he turned 3. Monday, John F. Kennedy
Jr. said goodbye to his mother, before laying his hand, for a
poignant moment, on his father's grave marker.
Gathering hours before Monday morning's funeral, thousands
stood outside St. Ignatius Loyola Church in New York as a
hearse carrying the mahogony casket, covered with ferns and a
cross of white flowers, arrived.
In the same church where Jacqueline Bouvier was baptized
and confirmed, old Kennedy hands like Pierre Salinger, Dave
Powers, and McGeorge Bundy gathered. Hollywood figures Daryl
Hannah, romantically linked to John Jr., and Arnold
Schwarzenegger, married to a Kennedy, mingled with First Ladies
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Lady Bird Johnson.
And for the first time, many heard Onassis' first name
pronounced as she preferred it: ``Jock-leen.''
John Jr. told the 1,000 invited guests that he and Caroline
had struggled to choose readings that ``captured my mother's
essence.'' They settled on her ``love of words, the bonds of
home and family, and her spirit of adventure.''
Onassis' children planned the simple, 90-minute funeral
Mass, down to the white flowers and candles on the altar. John
Jr., 33, read from the prophet Isaiah. Schlossberg, 36, invoked
her parents' beloved Cape Cod as she read ``Memory of Cape
Cod'' by poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Onassis' longtime
companion, Maurice Tempelsman, read from a favorite poem,
``Ithaka.'' Opera singer Jessye Norman sang ``Ave Maria.''
There was no mention of Aristotle Onassis, the Greek
billionaire Jackie married in 1968--to the horror and dismay of
her Kennedy kin. Nor was there mention of the court fight over
Onassis' fortune, in which Jackie settled for a reported $26
million. Monday, an Onassis family foundation announced it
would donate $50,000 to a U.S. charity as a tribute to Jackie.
In his eulogy, Edward Kennedy skipped over the Onassis
chapter in Jacqueline Onassis' life. Instead, he spoke of what
impressed and fascinated a nation:
``During those 4 endless days in 1963, she held us together
as a family and a country. In large part because of her, we
could grieve and then go on. She lifted us up, and in the doubt
and darkness, she gave her fellow citizens back their pride as
Americans. She was then 34 years old.''
``I often think of what she said about Jack in December
after he died: `They made him a legend, when he would have
preferred to be a man.' Jackie would have preferred to be just
herself, but the world insisted that she be a legend, too.''
Perhaps, the last Kennedy legend.
That seemed clear as eight honorary pallbearers lined the
church steps. Members of the next generation--Robert F. Kennedy
Jr., Timothy Shriver, Christopher Lawford, William Kennedy
Smith, Edward Kennedy Jr.--their youth and varied troubles a
reminder of how heavy a legacy can be.
There were also reminders of how loving and well-loved the
family is. Former Secret Service Agent Jack Walsh, who
protected Caroline and John Jr. as children, was a pallbearer.
And among the guests: Roosevelt Grier, former football star
and one-time bodyguard to Robert Kennedy. ``She meant a lot to
me,'' he said simply.
The man who discreetly shared Onassis' last years bade his
own goodbye. Said Tempelsman: Her life ``was filled with
adventure and wisdom, laughter and love, gallantry and grace.''
And then a final journey back to Washington, the city she
charmed and transformed and fled so many years ago.
President Clinton met the family's chartered jet at
National Airport. A 28-car motorcade passed thousands baking in
the heat under blue skies as it made its way to Arlington
National Cemetery. Some held signs: ``Jackie--We Loved You,
Too.''
``I was in this exact spot 31 years ago,'' said Charles
McAree, 56, of Arlington, standing outside the cemetery gate
where he watched the President's funeral cortege go by in 1963.
``I was just thinking about how much has gone by in the last 35
years.''
Norman Reno, 64, of Oak Lawn, IL, took a break from
sightseeing to pay his last respects. ``I'm part of that
Kennedy generation,'' he said. ``It feels like a family member
lost. They really had a connection with the people.''
Just 100 family members and the Clintons attended the
graveside ceremony, held at the breathtaking spot high above
the Potomac River across from Washington that draws millions of
tourists each year. Monday, no visitors were allowed. And
mourners at 23 other funerals scheduled at the 612-acre
cemetery were carefully screened.
The Onassis service lasted but 14 minutes. The bells of
Washington's National Cathedral tolled 64 times.
``God gave her very great gifts and imposed upon her great
burdens,'' said Clinton, who spoke briefly. ``She bore them all
with dignity and grace and uncommon common sense.''
When it was over, John Jr. and Caroline--whom their uncle
called Jackie's ``two miracles''--knelt in prayer, approached
the casket for the last time and bid farewell.
[From USA Today, May 24, 1994]
Farewell to a First Lady
a role model, a mystery, a legend
(By Mimi Hall, Peter Eisler)
ARLINGTON, VA--They came to the gates of Arlington National
Cemetery from everywhere--a mix of generations, a mix of races,
drawn by a woman and a memory.
They came to say goodbye to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,
each using this last moment on a sunny Monday afternoon to
somehow recapture the legacy of her era.
Howard Riddick made the sad journey, much as he had in
1963, when he waited and wept with thousands of others for more
than 11 hours to pay his last respects to John F. Kennedy at
the Capitol.
He had been to slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers'
funeral just months earlier. He would later attend the funerals
of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.
``I came for what they stood for and what they were trying
to do and how they disappeared,'' Riddick said as he waited.
``I sort of felt I should be here, too.''
Jim Goudie, a retired Air Force sergeant who was at Andrews
Air Force Base when JFK's casket arrived from Dallas, came to
honor the legacy of the civil rights movement.
``She was always the First Lady to me, and to black people
in general,'' said Goudie. The Kennedys ``really set the trend
for us, and they passed that to LBJ, who carried on what I'm
sure President Kennedy would have done (in civil rights) if he
were alive.''
Norman and Florence Reno, of Oak Lawn, IL, came,
remembering the election that put the first Catholic couple in
the White House.
``My wife and I are Catholics, . . . so there's a real
connection there,'' said Reno, 64. ``It feels like a family
member lost.''
Shelley Walker came to honor a role model, a woman she
watched and admired as girl.
``I was 13 years old when the President died, and watching
her made me grow up,'' said Walker, 44, a staffer at the
Clinton White House. ``I really admired her, all the things
everybody says, the strength, the grace, the mystery.''
John Clizbe, 32, an unemployed engineer from Burke, VA, is
too young to remember the turbulent 1960s.
But ``I was named after Kennedy,'' he said. ``And I came to
get a feeling of being a part of history.''
Nearly everyone standing quietly to watch the hearse pass
spoke about their memories of a time gone by.
Kristin Cabral, 28, wasn't born when JFK was assassinated.
But he ``left a legacy, most primarily, of service. That was
very vital to me growing up--that it's important to do service
for others,'' she said.
At the curbside, mourners tried to shield themselves from
the heat of the bright spring day, many stared out across the
Potomac River, wondering what had been lost.
``She kept the people's respect and that's hard to do
today,'' said Carolyn Edwards, 56, who came from Masontown, VA.
``It sounds like a cliche, but she's the closest thing to
royalty that we as Americans have.''
Could any one else have brought Riddick from his
Portsmouth, VA, home for this roadside vigil?
``In politics? No, not right now. Nobody's worthy.''
Said Theresa Gogat, 58, of Springfield, VA: ``I don't think
there'll ever be anyone like those two. It's just the end of an
era.''
excerpts from senator edward kennedy's mass eulogy
``No one else looked like her, spoke like her, wrote like
her, or was so original in the way she did things. No one we
knew ever had a better sense of self.
And then, during those 4 endless days in 1963, she held us
together as a family and a country. In large part because of
her, we could grieve and then go on. She lifted us up, and in
the doubt and darkness, she gave her fellow citizens back their
pride as Americans. She was then 34 years old.
Afterward, as the eternal flame she lit flickered in the
autumn of Arlington Cemetery, Jackie went on to do what she
most wanted--to raise Caroline and John, and warm her family's
life and that of all the Kennedys.
Her two children turned out to be extraordinary, honest,
unspoiled and with a character equal to hers. And she did it in
the most trying of circumstances. They are her two miracles.
Her love for Caroline and John was deep and unqualified. She
reveled in their accomplishments, she hurt with their sorrows,
and she felt sheer joy and delight in spending time with them.
At the mere mention of one of their names, Jackie's eyes would
shine brighter and her smile would grow bigger.
She never wanted public notice--in part, I think, because
it brought back painful memories of an unbearable sorrow,
endured in the glare of a million lights.
In all the years since then, her genuineness and depth of
character continued to shine through the privacy, and reach
people everywhere. Jackie was too young to be a widow in 1963,
and too young to die now.''
excerpts from ``memory of cape cod'' by edna st. vincent millay
``The wind in the ash tree sounds like surf on the shore at
Truro.
I will shut my eyes.
Hush. Be still with your silly pleading sheep on Shilling
Stone Hill
They said, come along.
They said, leave your pebbles on the sand and come along.
It's long after sunset
The mosquitoes will be thick in the pine woods along by
Long Neck.
The winds died down. They said, leave your pebbles on the
sand and your shells too and come along
We'll find you another beach like the beach at Truro.
Let me listen to the wind in the ash
It sounds like surf on the shore.''
maurice templesman read the poem ``ithaka'' by constantine peter
cavafy, during the mass--excerpts:
Keep Ithaca always in your mind,
Arriving there is what you're destined for,
But don't hurry the journey at all,
Better if it lasts for years so you're old by the time you
reach the islands,
Wealth with all you've gained on the way, not expecting
Ithaca to make you rich.
Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey,
Without her, you wouldn't have set out,
She has nothing left to give you now.
john f. kennedy, jr., read from isaiah 25 at the burial
``The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces. The
reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth. For
the Lord hath spoken. On that day it will be said: Behold our
God to whom we look to save us. This is the Lord for whom we
looked. Let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us.''
excerpts from the president's graveside eulogy
``We are joined here today at the site of the eternal
flame, lit by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis 31 years ago, to bid
farewell to this remarkable woman whose life will forever glow
in the lives of her fellow Americans.
Whether she was soothing a nation grieving for a former
President, or raising the children with the care and the
privacy they deserve, or simply being a good friend, she seemed
always to do the right thing, in the right way.
She taught us by example about the beauty of art, the
meaning of culture, the lessons of history, the power of
personal courage, the nobility of public service, and most of
all, the sanctity of family.
God gave her very great gifts and imposed upon her great
burdens. She bore them all with dignity and grace and uncommon
common sense. . . .
Hillary and I are especially grateful that she took so much
time to talk about the importance of raising children away from
the public eye, and we will always remember the wonderful,
happy times we shared together last summer. With admiration,
love and gratitude, for the inspirations and the dreams she
gave to all of us, we say goodbye to Jackie today.
May the flame she lit, so long ago, burn ever brighter here
and always brighter in our hearts.
God bless you, friend, and farewell.''
[From the Washington Post, May 24, 1994]
Great Gifts and Great Burdens
The following is a transcript of President Clinton's
remarks yesterday at the burial service for Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis in Arlington Cemetery:
We are joined here today at the site of the eternal
flame, lit by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis 31 years ago,
to bid farewell to this remarkable woman whose life
will forever glow in the lives of her fellow Americans.
Whether she was soothing a nation grieving for a
former President, or raising the children with the care
and the privacy they deserve, or simply being a good
friend, she seemed always to do the right thing, in the
right way.
She taught us by example about the beauty of art, the
meaning of culture, the lessons of history, the power
of personal courage, the nobility of public service,
and most of all, the sanctity of family.
God gave her very great gifts and imposed upon her
great burdens. She bore them all with dignity and grace
and uncommon common sense.
In the end, she cared most about being a good mother
to her children, and the lives of Caroline and John
leave no doubt that she was that, and more.
Hillary and I are especially grateful that she took
so much time to talk about the importance of raising
children away from the public eye, and we will always
remember the wonderful, happy times we shared together
last summer.
With admiration, love and gratitude, for the
inspirations and the dreams she gave to all of us, we
say goodbye to Jackie today.
May the flame she lit, so long ago, burn ever
brighter here and always brighter in our hearts.
God bless you, friend, and farewell.
[From the Washington Post, May 24, 1994]
A Day of Farewells to a First Lady
in a somber spotlight, jacqueline kennedy onassis is buried
(By Marylou Tousignant, Malcolm Gladwell)
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was laid to rest yesterday at
Arlington National Cemetery, next to the eternal flame she lit
over the grave of her fallen husband 30 years ago.
Church bells tolled and about 2,000 people lined the
roadway as the hearse bearing the body of the 64-year-old
former First Lady made its way from National Airport to the
cemetery. She was buried on a hillside overlooking the Potomac,
alongside President John F. Kennedy and the two children they
lost at birth.
In his eulogy yesterday morning at Onassis's funeral Mass
in New York, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), her brother-in-
law, recalled her as ``a blessing to us and to the Nation--and
a lesson to the world on how to do things right, how to be a
mother, how to appreciate history, how to be courageous.''
Onassis died Thursday of lymphatic cancer in her Fifth
Avenue apartment in New York.
The farewell to a woman whose beauty and style fascinated a
nation was, like the enigmatic Onassis herself, both intensely
private and extremely public.
Her two grown children and longtime companion were joined
by about 100 relatives and a handful of close friends by her
grave on the grassy slope at the cemetery. The cemetery was
closed to the public for the day, but television cameras,
permitted to film from a distance, brought the graveside
service to an audience of millions.
Stoic as their mother had been at the same place so many
years ago, John F. Kennedy, Jr., and his sister, Caroline
Kennedy Schlossberg, read from the Scriptures during the 20-
minute service on a hot, still afternoon.
As they led the mourners away, Schlossberg placed a long-
stemmed white flower on her mother's mahogany coffin, while her
brother knelt to kiss it before touching the black granite
marker on his father's adjacent grave. They then paused for a
moment of prayer at the grave of their uncle, Senator Robert F.
Kennedy, assassinated just a few years after President Kennedy.
Among the mourners were President and Mrs. Clinton, who
accompanied the Kennedy family to Arlington in a scene familiar
to millions of Americans. Leading the procession was Archbishop
Philip M. Hannan, a family acquaintance who had eulogized both
John and Robert Kennedy after their assassinations.
President Clinton bade Onassis goodbye in his brief
graveside remarks. ``God gave her very great gifts and imposed
upon her great burdens,'' Clinton said. ``She bore them all
with dignity and grace and uncommon common sense. . . . May the
flame she lit so long ago burn ever brighter here and always
brighter in our hearts. God bless you, friend, and farewell.''
Clinton and Edward Kennedy, who eulogized Onassis at the
funeral Mass in New York's St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic
Church, where she was baptized, made special note of her fierce
devotion as a mother caught in celebrity's relentless
spotlight.
``In the end,'' said Clinton, ``she cared most about being
a good mother to her children, and the lives of Caroline and
John leave no doubt that she was that, and more.''
When Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy moved into the White House
in 1961, she was just 31--younger than her children are today--
and the handsome and vibrant Kennedy family captivated much of
the Nation.
Yesterday, the little cousins who had played touch football
at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., were the somber
young men serving as honorary pallbearers. Joining them was
Jack Walsh, the Secret Service agent who guarded Caroline and
John Jr. for 12 years after their father's death.
Along the drive leading to the cemetery gates, people stood
on tiptoe and pointed cameras as the motorcade went by.
Rick Werth, 22, a welder from Virginia Beach, said he drove
to Washington with four friends instead of going to work. ``The
President's wife was very important,'' Werth said. ``Really, we
can't afford to have a day off, but we had to come here.''
At the conclusion of the burial service, a bell at
Washington National Cathedral tolled 64 times, once for each
year of Onassis's life.
Earlier in New York, almost 1,000 people, including First
Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, attended the hour-long funeral,
planned by Onassis's children. Thousands of onlookers crowded
behind police barricades that extended over three surrounding
city blocks as the coffin, adorned with ferns and a cross of
white lillies of the valley, was carried into the Park Avenue
church.
Across the street, an elderly woman sat in a chair on the
sidewalk, weeping, while her companion knelt in the street in
prayer.
The funeral was the coda for an extraordinary period of
public and private mourning for Onassis in New York, beginning
Thursday afternoon when scores of well-wishers gathered outside
her luxury apartment as she lay dying inside, surrounded, her
family said, by the people and books she loved.
Throughout the weekend, an ever larger and sometimes unruly
crowd maintained a constant vigil on the sidewalk outside her
apartment building. Celebrities, friends and countless more who
had never met her left flowers at the front door.
President Clinton did not attend the funeral, worried that
his presence would disrupt the family's wish for privacy. But
the First Lady who followed Jackie Kennedy into the White
House, Lady Bird Johnson, was there.
The guest list also included actress Darryl Hannah, a
friend of John Kennedy Jr.'s; Rosie Grier, former football
player and bodyguard to Robert Kennedy; retired CBS News anchor
Walter Cronkite; actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is married to
Maria Shriver, Onassis's niece; author William Styron; Jann
Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone magazine; and several former
Kennedy administration officials.
Guests received hand-delivered invitations over the weekend
and had to produce them at several security checkpoints to
enter the church.
``Getting those 1,000 people into their seats was one of
those logistic miracles,'' said Frederic Papert, an Onassis
friend. ``It's sad but true that the Kennedys know how to do
this. They've had too much practice.''
Regarding the service itself, he added, ``If Jackie was
watching, she would have smiled. You saw all her touches.''
The simple ceremony was planned around poems and readings
from the Scriptures chosen, in the words of John Jr., ``to
capture my mother's essence.''
``Three things came to mind over and over again and
ultimately dictated our selections,'' he said. ``They were her
love of words, the bonds of home and family, and her spirit of
adventure.''
Opera singer Jessye Norman sang ``Ave Maria,'' and longtime
Onassis companion Maurice Tempelsman read one of her favorite
poems, ``Ithaka,'' by Constantine P. Cavafy. ``And now the
journey is over,'' he read. ``Too short, alas, too short.''
It was a journey chronicled by historians and tabloids, the
mesmerizing story of a dark-haired debutante who married into
an American political dynasty and became a tragic heroine on
that November day in Dallas. Five years later, she stunned her
admirers and the Kennedy clan by marrying Aristotle Onassis, a
Greek shipping tycoon 23 years her senior who swept her into
his jet-set lifestyle.
After his death in 1975, Onassis settled in New York City
and surprised her public once again by entering the work force
as a book editor, a job she held until her death.
She also became a doting grandmother who enjoyed taking
Caroline's three children for ice-cream cones and walks in
Central Park.
A lifelong patron of the arts and formidable defender of
her city's landmarks, Onassis was not reclusive, tolerating but
never encouraging the public spotlight that inevitably fell
upon her.
``I often think of what she said about Jack in December
after he died,'' Edward Kennedy told mourners yesterday. ``
`They made him a legend when he would have preferred to be a
man.' Jackie would have preferred just to be herself, but the
world insisted that she be a legend too.''
[From the New York Times, May 24, 1994]
Death of a First Lady
the overview; jacqueline kennedy onassis is buried
(By R.W. Apple, Jr.)
Eulogized by President Clinton as a ``remarkable woman
whose life will forever glow in the lives of her fellow
Americans,'' Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was buried today on an
Arlington hillside next to her martyred first husband, the 35th
President of the United States.
The eternal flame that Mrs. Onassis lighted three decades
ago as a 34-year-old widow flickered in a summery breeze as the
President spoke of her courage at the time of John F. Kennedy's
assassination, when her poise and dignity helped to salve the
Nation's wounds, and of her kindness to him and to Hillary
Rodham Clinton as they searched for ways to shield their
daughter, Chelsea, from the corrosive glare of publicity.
``God gave her very great gifts and imposed upon her great
burdens,'' Mr. Clinton said. ``She bore them all with dignity
and grace and uncommon common sense.''
In keeping with Mrs. Onassis's passion for privacy, it was
a modest, 11-minute ceremony, with fewer than 100 people
standing near the grave in the midday sun. There were brief
readings by the two children, John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Caroline
Kennedy Schlossberg, whose then-tiny hands so tightly clutched
those of their mother at their father's funeral--a heart-
rending picture that is burned into the memory of every
American old enough to remember.
Finally, 64 bells rang out from the tower of the Washington
Cathedral across the Potomac River, one for each year of a life
suddenly cut short by lymphoma, a form of cancer.
At the funeral Mass at St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic
Church in Manhattan this morning, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of
Massachusetts recalled that Mrs. Onassis had once said that
``if you bungle raising your children, nothing else much
matters in life.'' She did not do so, he said, for all the
obstacles that fate had cast into her path, and her two
children, he said, ``are her two miracles.''
Despite her dazzling successes in the White House, despite
her second marriage to the shipowner Aristotle Onassis, despite
the paparazzi who dogged her steps, Senator Kennedy said that
``she never wanted public notice--in part, I think, because it
brought back painful memories of an unbearable sorrow, endured
in the glare of a million lights.''
Since she died last Thursday evening in her Fifth Avenue
apartment after a short illness, Mrs. Onassis has been praised
by politicians, historians and news commentators for her style,
her taste, her bravery in the face of crushing tragedy, her
devotion as a mother and her stubborn insistence on living by
her own lights. Her passing broke a link to a time when
politicians were often heroes, a time of sweet optimism that
was soured by Vietnam and Watergate.
In a vulgar era when celebrity is something to be cashed in
on, she seemed to many to symbolize a more refined and more
ordered way of life.
The historian Michael Beschloss argued that Mrs. Onassis
was one of the two most important First Ladies of the century,
the other, in his view, having been Eleanor Roosevelt. Pierre
Salinger, the White House Press Secretary in the Kennedy White
House, insisted that she was a figure of substance as well as
glamour. President Lyndon B. Johnson, he said, wanted to
nominate her as Ambassador to France, but she dissuaded him.
``She made a rare and noble contribution to the American
spirit,'' said Senator Kennedy. At no point did he or any other
speaker at the funeral Mass make the slightest allusion to Mrs.
Onassis's second marriage, which was widely criticized in the
news media at the time as inappropriate.
touchstone of continuity
The church, a 96-year-old neoclassic limestone structure on
Park Avenue at 84th Street, was the same one where Jacqueline
Bouvier was baptized as an infant and confirmed as a teen-
ager--a continuity rare in modern America, where people's lives
often carry them far from their origins. Perhaps in memory of
those days, the officiating priest, the Rev. Walter Modrys,
pronounced her name in the French manner, zhak-LEEN, as she
preferred when young, and not in the American way, JACK-well-
in, as became common later.
Tradition was also served in the preponderance of family
members among the readers, pallbearers and other participants
in the Mass. One pallbearer was William Kennedy Smith, a nephew
of Mrs. Onassis, who was acquitted on rape charges in December
1991, after a late-night drinking incident in Palm Beach, FL,
that March.
John Kennedy, Jr. said that the family had struggled to set
the right tone for the funeral and had finally decided that
three things ``defined my mother's essence: Her love of words,
the bonds of home, and family and her spirit of adventure.''
Maurice Tempelsman, Mrs. Kennedy's companion of recent
years, read a favorite poem, ``Ithaka,'' by the Alexandrian
Greek, C.P. Cafavy. Mrs. Schlossberg read another, ``Memory of
Cape Cod,'' by the American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Outsiders were also involved. Mike Nichols, the director,
who occasionally escorted Mrs. Onassis in New York in the
1970s, read a scriptural passage, and the soprano Jessye Norman
sang a pair of hymns, Franck's ``Panis Angelicus'' and
``Schubert's Ave Maria.''
Daryl Hannah, the actress friend of John Kennedy Jr., was
there, as were four Senators with close ties to the family:
John Glenn of Ohio, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, John
Kerry of Massachusetts, and Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island.
With the aid of a plastic cane, Lyndon B. Johnson's widow, Lady
Bird, now silver-haired and rarely seen in public, moved slowly
up the steps of the church, at Park Avenue and 84th Street.
Mrs. Clinton attended the Mass, but her husband did not. He
met the chartered plane carrying Mrs. Onassis's body to
Washington at National Airport and rode with the hearse and
members of the family to Arlington, VA.
The family arrived at Arlington National Cemetery in three
long, black limousines. The grave itself was covered in green
cloth and with greenery that was carefully arranged and sprayed
with water for freshness just before the family arrived.
The retired Roman Catholic Archbishop of New Orleans, the
Reverend Philip J. Hannan, an old family friend, conducted the
service. As auxiliary bishop of Washington in 1963, he
conducted John F. Kennedy's funeral. Today, he chose six sad
words to capture the mood. Mrs. Onassis, he said, was ``so
dearly beloved, so sorely missed.''
Mrs. Onassis' coffin was carried to the grave by
professional pallbearers who were preceded, at a steady and
somber gait, by Archbishop Hannan and the five Kennedy cousins
and another friend of the family who served as honorary
pallbearers. They were Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Timothy Shriver,
Christopher Lawford, William Kennedy Smith, Edward M. Kennedy,
Jr., and Jack Walsh, a retired Secret Service Agent who guarded
both Caroline and John throughout their childhoods.
The Archbishop's magenta surplice and skullcap and the
bright peach-colored lapels on Mrs. Clinton's black suit were
the only splashes of color in the black-clad procession.
Among the people gathered at the grave for the burial
service were Mrs. Onassis's sister, Lee Radziwill Ross; her
stepbrother, Hugh Auchincloss, and three Kennedy sisters--Jean
Kennedy Smith, Patricia Kennedy Lawford and Eunice Kennedy
Shriver--as well as Senator Kennedy, who is the only survivor
of the four Kennedy brothers.
Also at the grave were Nancy Tuckerman, who worked for
Jacqueline Kennedy in the White House and remained a friend and
sometime spokeswoman; Providencia Paredes, who was her personal
maid in the White House; Ms. Paredes's son, Gustavo, who grew
up with John Jr. and remains a good friend, and Ms. Hannah, the
actress. No relatives of the late Mr. Onassis were there.
Rose Kennedy, the family matriarch, who will be 104 years
old in July, was unable to attend.
Some members of the group dabbed at their eyes as the 11-
minute service progressed. Archbishop Hannan gently reminded
them that a funeral is as much ``for the consolation of the
living as it is for the comfort of the deceased.''
Mr. Clinton recalled his conversations with Mrs. Onassis
and the time that he spent sailing with her when he and his
family vacationed on Martha's Vineyard last summer.
``In the end she cared most about being a good mother to
her children,'' he said, ``and the lives of Caroline and John
leave no doubt that she was that, and more.''
The President concluded: ``We say goodbye to Jackie. May
the flame she lit so long ago burn ever here and always
brighter in our hearts.''
John Jr. read from Thessalonians 4:13-18, and Caroline read
Psalm 121. Thirteen white-clad Navy Sea Chanters, the same
group that sang at President Richard M. Nixon's funeral last
month, sang ``Eternal Father, Strong to Save,'' which is also
known as the Navy Hymn.
Only the second First Lady to be buried at Arlington
National Cemetery--Mrs. William Howard Taft, also interred next
to her husband, is the other--Mrs. Onassis now rests in a
cluster of Kennedys on the slope below the creamy Doric columns
of the Custis-Lee Mansion. In addition to President Kennedy,
there are his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, assassinated during
the 1968 Presidential campaign; her unnamed daughter, still-
born in 1956, and her infant son, Patrick, who died in 1963.
Afterward, Caroline and John Jr. kneeled at the grave,
selected flowers from a bouquet and kissed their mother's
coffin. Caroline went to join her husband then, but John walked
on, leaning down to touch the graves of his father and Patrick,
before he joined the family for a brief walk to Robert's grave.
[From the Boston Globe, May 24, 1994]
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, 1929-1994
onassis to be buried monday; resting place next to jfk at arlington set
(By Steve Fainaru and Michael Kranish)
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis will be laid to rest Monday at
Arlington National Cemetery in a plot next to her husband,
President John F. Kennedy. Burial will follow a private funeral
at a church two blocks from the Manhattan apartment where she
died Thursday night, a spokeswoman said yesterday.
Mrs. Onassis' grave will be near the eternal flame that
burns for her late husband, and next to the graves of two of
her children--a son, Patrick, who died in infancy, and an
unnamed daughter, who died at birth.
Helen Taft, wife of President William Howard Taft, is the
only other First Lady to be buried at Arlington.
Asked if Mrs. Onassis specifically requested to be buried
next to the former President, family spokeswoman Nancy
Tuckerman said: ``It was a decision that was made by many
different people. She had many ideas and many thoughts on the
subject.''
The body of Mrs. Onassis will be flown to Arlington after a
10 a.m. funeral Mass at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola,
Tuckerman said.
Over the weekend, Mrs. Onassis' body is expected to remain
in a casket at her apartment, where there will be a private
viewing and a wake.
Mrs. Onassis, who was 64, died of complications from
lymphatic cancer at 10:15 p.m. Thursday. Outside her apartment
yesterday, a crowd of about 800 mourners, tourists, curiosity
seekers, and reporters watched as funeral home workers carried
in an ornate casket, and family members shuttled in and out as
they put together the funeral arrangements.
Throughout the day, mourners placed bouquets of flowers in
front of the stately building. ``Now she's in God's hands,''
said her son, John Kennedy, Jr., in a brief statement outside
the building.
In Washington yesterday morning, as President Clinton
prepared to leave for California, he and his wife gathered
reporters in the White House Garden created by Mrs. Onassis--
the ``First Lady's Garden'' just across from the Rose Garden--
and paid an emotional tribute to her. Mrs. Clinton seemed near
tears. ``Jackie Kennedy Onassis was a model of courage and
dignity for all Americans and all the world,'' Clinton said.
``More than any other woman of her time, she captivated our
Nation and the world with her intelligence, her elegance and
her grace. Even in the face of impossible tragedy, she carried
the grief of her family and our entire Nation with a calm power
that somehow reassured all the rest of us.''
The President, who said his meeting with President Kennedy
in the Rose Garden inspired him to run for public office, said
that Mrs. Onassis continued to inspire him after his election.
``When I became President, I was fortunate enough to get to
know Mrs. Onassis better, and to see her and her children as
friends as well as important American history models and good
citizens,'' Clinton said. ``I can say that, as much as anything
else today, I am grateful for her incredible generosity to
Hillary and to Chelsea.''
White House officials said that Clinton had informed the
Kennedy family that he would do whatever they requested
regarding funeral plans. The Clintons are expected to attend
the burial service at Arlington. A military plane reportedly
would be made available to carry Mrs. Onassis' remains to
Washington.
Said Mrs. Clinton: ``I just wanted to say personally that,
every day, this Nation owes a great debt to Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis. And the Nation has lost a treasure, and our family has
lost a dear friend.''
Referring to the First Lady's Garden, Mrs. Clinton
continued: ``We stand here in one of the many legacies that she
has given to this house and to our country, in this garden,
which is named for her, which she helped to realize. If she
taught us anything, it was to know the meaning of
responsibility--to one's family and to one's community. Her
great gift of grace and style and dignity and heroism is an
example that will live through the ages.''
Later, after the President arrived in California, Clinton
recalled the time that he had spent with Mrs. Onassis on
Martha's Vineyard last summer. ``She was an astonishing woman
who I think did a remarkable thing in raising two very fine
children in what could have been a destructive public glare and
spotlight.''
In New York yesterday at an 8 a.m. Mass, Monsignor George
Bardes, who administered Holy Communion and the sacrament of
the sick to Mrs. Onassis just before she died, read a statement
in which he said in part: ``For all the world, she became a
symbol of courage and strength.''
Crowds were larger during Masses throughout the day at St.
Thomas More Roman Catholic Church on Madison Avenue, where Mrs.
Onassis often attended services.
No reason was given for holding the funeral services at St.
Ignatius Loyola rather than St. Thomas More. However, it was
believed that size was a consideration: St. Thomas holds about
350 people, while St. Ignatius, a city landmark that was
dedicated in 1898, holds upwards of 2,500. Rev. Walter F.
Modrys is the head pastor at St. Ignatius, but it had not been
decided who would preside at the services Monday.
As the family huddled to make final arrangements, a parade
of mourners filed by Mrs. Onassis' apartment to pay their
respects. Some even arrived before dawn.
Among them was Connie Fraizer of Brooklyn, 9 months
pregnant, who stood in a steady rain with her husband Ben, and
2-year-old daughter Ashley.
``This is a major event, I believe, in American history; I
just know I wanted to be here now,'' Ben Fraizer said, adding
that he and his wife intend to name their new baby Jacqueline
if the baby is a girl.
``I don't know why I'm standing here, to be honest with
you,'' said Joseph Rokacz, a lawyer who lives on the other side
of Central Park.
``I feel like an idiot. But I saw it on television and I
couldn't sleep. She's a woman that I grew up with my whole life
. . . there's nobody to replace her,'' he said. ``There's
nobody out there that has her kind of magic.''
[From the Washington Post, May 29, 1994]
Jackie's Washington: How She Rescued the City's History
(by Richard Moe, Leonard A. Zax)
On June 8, 1962, Jacqueline Kennedy penned a passionate,
12-page letter to a close family friend, the painter William
Walton. The specific purpose was to urge him to take an active
role in the Commission of Fine Arts, the Federal agency
authorized to review architectural and design plans for
buildings and landscapes at locations of special interest to
the U.S. Government. Today, however, the letter testifies to
something of enduring significance: Mrs. Kennedy's deep
personal commitment to preserving the beauty and history of
Washington, DC.
``I don't blame you for not wanting to be head--but if you
aren't head--you are useless--as people only listen to the
head--and it is all going to be involved with all the things we
care about--when Jack is gone--so he won't be able to help
you--and lovely buildings will be torn down--and cheesy
skyscrapers go up. Perhaps sav-
ing old buildings and having the new ones be right isn't the
most important thing in the world--if you are waiting for the
bomb--but I think we are always going to be waiting for the
bomb and it won't ever come and so to save the old--and to make
the new beautiful is terribly important.''
Saving the old and making the new beautiful: This legacy of
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis has received little mention since
her death. But the proof of it is to be seen here in
Washington. Hers was among the strongest voices urging her
husband to initiate the Pennsylvania Avenue redevelopment,
creating the magnificent thoroughfare from the Capitol to the
White House that L'Enfant had intended it to be. And then there
was the White House itself. ``She did far more than redecorate
the White House, she restored and preserved it,'' says J.
Carter Brown, Chairman of the Fine Arts Commission. She was
instrumental in having Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an
Assistant to Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg, draft a
Presidential declaration ordaining that Federal buildings,
``particularly those located in the Nation's Capital'' must
``provide visual harmony to the dignity, enterprise, vigor and
stability of the American government'' and should ``embody the
finest contemporary American architectural thought.'' Perhaps
most important, however, was Mrs. Kennedy's very first design
project in this city: The preservation of the buildings
surrounding Lafayette Square, the Old Executive Office
Building, and the court building that is now the Renwick
Gallery.
In a very real sense, Jackie Kennedy had a greater effect
on the shape and spirit of the historic heart of the Nation's
Capital than any architect or developer. A number of her
handwritten notes show how fervently she led the cause.
Near the end of the Eisenhower administration, and over the
objections of the National Trust for Historic Preservation,
whose Decatur House had anchored the northwest corner of the
square since 1819, the Congress authorized plans to demolish
virtually all of the buildings on the east and west sides of
Lafayette Square, including the building that is now the
Renwick Gallery. Plans were already well underway to tear down
the Old Executive Office Building. In their place, the
Government planned several modern high-rise office towers.
Millions of dollars in architectural fees had already been
invested in the plans; scrapping them would not be easy.
In the summer of 1961, President Kennedy formally approved
some of the plans. His young wife, however, was deeply troubled
by the implications. In the following months she energetically
sought to revisit the designs.
Early in February 1962, Mrs. Kennedy asked David Finley,
then Chairman of both the National Trust for Historic
Preservation and the Commission of Fine Arts, to take a stroll
with her around Lafayette Square. She told Finley that both she
and the President were concerned about the proposed designs,
worrying that they would be incongruous with other buildings on
the square. In France, where she had studied at the Sorbonne,
there was a law providing that certain buildings of historical
or architectural importance could not be destroyed. It would be
nice, she ventured to Finley, for Congress to have such a law.
Finley, noting that the Commission's recommendations were
only advisory, said the final decision about the Lafayette
Square designs would be made by the General Services
Administrator. That official turned out to be an old friend,
Bernard Boutin.
The following month, she wrote him a spirited letter. ``All
architects are innovators, and would rather do something
totally new than in the spirit of old buildings,'' she observed
critically of the architectural trend of the time. ``I think
they are totally wrong in this case, as the important thing is
to preserve the 19th-century feeling of Lafayette Square.'' She
asked Boutin ``to write to the architects and tell them to
submit a design which is more in keeping with the 19th-century
bank on the corner. It should be the same color, same size,
etc.''
The GSA administrator adopted her position, and an April
18, 1962, letter to Finley shows Mrs. Kennedy barely able to
contain her excitement: Hold your breath because this is what
is going to happen--all our wildest dreams come true. . . . (1)
The new court building will be 19th century in feeling--similar
to bank. (2) The Dolley Madison and Taylor houses will be
saved!!! (3) The Court of Claims will be saved--it will be I
think turned into a Museum of Modern Art which people are
trying to get started here and which I said I would sponsor--as
I think it is wrong to identify oneself solely with art of the
past--and never encourage what is happening now. So it will be
used as it used to be. (4) The whole Decatur House side facades
will be saved except for the 2 tall modern buildings!!! . . .
Some will be used as extension of guest facilities at Blair
House--the rest as offices--so Theodore Roosevelt's old house--
and place where National Gallery was born will be preserved.
This is what delights me the most--everyone wants to raze
things and build efficient new buildings--Bernard Boutin is a
preservationist and also he says it will be cheaper! Who else
would ever have said that! None of those naughty show-off
architects! The gaps that are left will be filled with some
19th century D.C. houses that he will have moved there. So if
you know any special ones you want saved--tell him. (5) On 17th
Street a big building will go up to provide space for Bureau of
Budget or whoever it is who wants all this space.
Not everyone in Washington was as pleased as Mrs. Kennedy
with the preservation plan. Ralph Walker, a Fine Arts
Commission member who was a former president of the American
Institute of Architects and a pillar of the architectural
establishment at the time, was one who objected strenuously.
``To keep on using bad architecture and trying to preserve it
because there is practically nothing except Decatur House on
that side of the Square that is worth preserving--the rest is
junk, architecturally--it is junk. . . . I hope Jacqueline
wakes up to the fact that she lives in the 20th century.''
Of course, the First Lady did recognize her own century,
and also understood the special problems of historic
preservation in downtown Washington, problems that continue.
The need to accommodate new construction in a way that is
compatible with older structures isn't easy; this city has
failures and successes of design. But as Dorn McGrath, George
Washington University's influential professor of urban
planning, says, Mrs. Kennedy's Lafayette Square concepts became
an important model for future development in Washington. ``It
began the process of making a creative use of space in critical
Washington locations, increasing the density in parts while
maintaining the historical context. Her basic ideas,
implemented by architects, demonstrated that one need not throw
away 19th- and 18th-century architecture in order to live in
the 20th century.''
The First Lady was not content to reshape the urban
landscape around the White House. She played an active role in
beginning the revitalization of Pennsylvania Avenue. Although
she had concerns about the location of the National Cultural
Center, which ultimately was named the John F. Kennedy Center
for the Performing Arts, it was too late for her to move the
new building to locations she preferred downtown.
She was keenly interested in the renovation of older
buildings for theater and arts uses along and near Pennsylvania
Avenue. William Walton (who later did become Chairman of the
Fine Arts Commission) said Mrs. Kennedy wanted to use one
Pennsylvania Avenue building as ``an opera house like she had
seen in a trip to Panama City.'' She worked to make certain
that theater and arts uses were a part of the first plans for
Pennsylvania Avenue--goals that eventually were realized with
the restoration of the National Theater and the Warner, and the
creative blend of preservation and new construction of the
Lansburgh.
Her letters and notes recognize that older buildings embody
precious features of our heritage and that they serve as
examples of quality for architecture today. Mem-
bers of Congress, in urging the passage of the National
Historic Preservation Act in 1966, called Mrs. Kennedy's
preservation efforts a model, not only for preservation in this
city, but for large and small communities throughout America.
Of course, many, many others played a role in saving old
buildings and providing for the beautiful Lafayette Square that
L'Enfant referred to in his plan as the ``President's Park.''
But the record is clear that Jackie Kennedy played the crucial
role when many others said it was too late. As historian Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr. recalls her telling her husband, ``The
wreckers haven't started yet, and until they do, it can be
saved.''
It was a credo she took with her after her husband's death,
when she moved to New York. There she protested against the
demolition of New York's Penn Station and worked tirelessly in
the successful effort to preserve Grand Central Terminal. But
Lafayette Square, her first effort, may be her greatest
triumph. John Kennedy once remarked that the sensitive
combination of old and new buildings on the square ``may be the
only monument we'll leave.''
Assuming anyone remembers. One evening last year, historian
David McCullough, seated next to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at
dinner, thanked the former First Lady for her important role in
saving Lafayette Square, adding that he was sure she had been
thanked many times before. ``Mr. McCullough,'' she responded,
``I have never been thanked.'' Self-effacing as always and
satisfied with the result of her efforts, she simply did not
seek public recognition. But all of us who care about the
preservation of the Capital's--and the Nation's--heritage
should be sorry that she did not receive that recognition
during her life. For more than any resident of the White House
since Thomas Jefferson, she had a vision of what architecture
and the arts can mean. In the end, she may be one of the more
important preservationists in Washington's history.
Richard Moe is president of the National Trust for
Historic Preservation. Leonard Zax is a trustee of the D.C.
Preservation League and a partner in the law firm of Fried,
Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson.
[From Time Magazine, May 30, 1994]
Portrait of a Friendship
(By John Russell)
When it came to human quality, Jacqueline Onassis had
perfect pitch. After her son John had read aloud at the 1979
dedication of the Kennedy Library in Boston the poem by Stephen
Spender that begins with the words ``I think continually of
those who were truly great,'' she brought out one of her most
delicate exhalations and said, ``I'd really like to meet Mr.
Spender, and I'd like Caroline to meet him too.''
During the dinner my wife and I set up for that purpose,
she made one of the quiet but definitive remarks at which she
excelled. Spender had asked her what she regarded as her
biggest achievement. ``Well,'' she said without hesitation, ``I
think that my biggest achievement is that after going through a
rather difficult time, I consider myself comparatively sane.
I'm proud of that.''
At her home, with its views over Central Park, she was the
very antithesis of the manipulative New York hostess. When she
invited a lot of people, which did not happen often, a vast and
equable good humor made its way throughout the company. She
could make everyone among them feel that the evening was
crowned by their arrival, and she also had a great flair for
the unexpected guest.
Jacqueline Onassis never in any way compared herself with
any of her successors in the White House, though she did once
refer to one of them--in sympathy, not in mischief--as ``a
frightened little bunny who calls me almost every day.'' She
was a willing but never gullible supporter of many a good
cause. There was nothing she wouldn't do to move them along.
(She drew the line at charity balls, though.)
Above all, she brought a minute attention to the
affectionate reassurances that keep friendship alive. Though
capable of a holy rage when it was called for--for instance,
when a famous figure of the day weaseled out of a book he had
promised her for Doubleday--it gave her enormous pleasure to
keep friendships in repair.
She never pretended to be a great scholar, but on almost
every topic of mutual interest that came up, she just happened
to know the right thing to read. When my wife and I were
leaving for India for the first time, she made no promises. But
within a couple of hours a shopping bag was brought round to
our door. In it were more than 200 photocopied passages from
rare 19th century books on India, each marked in her own hand.
It was a fantasy of hers that everybody else's life was
much more interesting than her own. ``Think of the plots that
are being hatched down there!'' she would say, looking down
from the balcony of the Four Seasons Restaurant, with her
Schlumberger bracelets dangling over the edge. At lunchtime at
Les Pleiades, the much missed art-world restaurant, she would
say, ``What do you suppose they're buying and selling over
there, cold sea-bass?''
When it came to a book project, she was one of the all-time
great bubble-blowers. Never did those bubbles burst, either.
Scheme after scheme was launched and christened. My ideas, no
matter how fatuous, were buoyed up by her goodwill. It was, and
is, one of my ambitions to write something that would last--
forever, no less--as a thank-you letter to the U.S., where I
have been so well treated. Months passed in this way, until the
idea began to collapse under its own weight. She did not scold.
But, she said, in her best down-feathered voice, ``Don't let's
talk anymore about that book you're never going to write.''
[From Time Magazine, May 30, 1994]
Once, in Camelot
(By Hugh Sidey)
She was a butterfly caught in the political torrents of
Washington, detesting many of its coarse rituals but fascinated
by its drama.
Jackie Kennedy went to Milwaukee when Senator John Kennedy
announced for the crucial Wisconsin primary in the winter of
1960, and the temperature was near zero. She sat in a jammed
and tacky hotel hall, stiff-backed in a short-sleeved designer
sheath with delicate leather gloves up to her elbows, eyes wide
and smile frozen. A New York and Washington thoroughbred in the
land of parkas and beer. She never yielded.
The night before Jack flew to Los Angeles for the
Democratic Convention, where he would be nominated for
President, the two retreated into a stark hotel suite. After
months of delegate hunting, the real game was afoot, and she
knew that ahead lay surging crowds and screaming groupies. The
moment was almost desolate, the beginning of something strange
and maybe not nice. It was in Jackie's circled eyes. She could
not raise room service. She found Cokes, remade the bed while
her husband talked Vice Presidents with a friend.
She was tortured in those first days in the White House.
Just when the idea of making the White House a living stage of
American history and beauty seized her is hard to say, but
within days she had called friends to try out her idea, to
hustle funds to restore the old mansion as it had been in the
days of Jefferson and Madison. There was Jackie prowling
government warehouses for old furniture and diving into the
White House basement, smudging herself with dust but scrounging
up desks, tables, and chairs.
The White House began to take on its historic designs; the
place shone with new paint and gardens. She was ecstatic to
find the original woodcuts for wallpaper ordered in the early
days. New panels were printed. She relished the great view down
toward the Mall from the Truman balcony. ``This is what it is
all about,'' she told a visitor, sweeping her arm from the
Washington Monument to the Jefferson Memorial. ``This is what
these men fight so hard for.''
Let the skeptics snort about Camelot, but there was
something during the Kennedy years that was magic. Jackie was
more of that than anyone admitted for a long while. She
smoothed the rough Kennedy edges. As much as anyone in those
heady days, she grasped the epic dimensions of the adventure.
No small portion of the glamour of the Kennedy stewardship that
lives on today came from her standards of public propriety and
majesty.
She could be naughty, perhaps acting out of knowledge of
her husband's indiscretions. Before the brutal end of the New
Frontier came, there was the feeling that the two had grown
closer together because of the inexorable public pressure that
surrounded the White House. But in the summer of 1963, she went
off with her sister Lee Radziwill for a European cruise, stayed
twice as long as scheduled as stories of nocturnal sightings
filtered back. Jack was sore. That was one of the reasons she
went to Dallas in November on that doomed political junket, a
gesture of contrition for the summer sins.
She came out of Parkland Memorial Hospital after the most
terrifying public tragedy in history, pink suit splattered with
her husband's blood, her hand resting on the garish coffin
where his shattered body lay. She walked that way down an ugly
loading ramp with her back straight and her chin up, carrying
immeasurable grief. She never yielded.
[From Time Magazine, May 30, 1994]
America's First Lady
few people get to symbolize a world, but jacqueline bouvier kennedy
onassis did, and that world is receding, and we know it and mourn that
too
(By Peggy Noonan)
She was a last link to a certain kind of past, and that is
part, but only part, of why we mourn so. Jackie Kennedy
symbolized--she was a connection to a time, to an old America
that was more dignified, more private, an America in which
standards were higher and clearer and elegance meant something,
a time when elegance was a kind of statement, a way of dressing
up the world, and so a generous act. She had manners, the kind
that remind us that manners spring from a certain moral view--
that you do tribute to the world and the people in it by being
kind and showing respect, by sending the note and the flowers,
by being loyal, and cheering a friend. She was a living
reminder in the age of Oprah that personal dignity is always,
still, an option, a choice that is open to you. She was,
really, the last aristocrat. Few people get to symbolize a
world, but she did, and that world is receding, and we know it
and mourn that too.
Those who knew her or watched her from afar groped for the
words that could explain their feeling of loss. A friend of
hers said, with a soft, sad voice, that what we're losing is
what we long for: The old idea of being cultivated. ``She had
this complex, colorful mind, she loved a turn of phrase. She
didn't grow up in front of the TV set, but reading the classics
and thinking about them and having thoughts about history.
Oh,'' he said, ``we're losing her kind.''
I echoed the sentiment to another of her friends, who cut
me off. ``She wasn't a kind, she was sui generis.'' And so she
was.
America continues in its generational shift; the great ones
of the 1950s and 1960s, big people of a big era, are going, and
too often these days we're saying goodbye. But Jackie Kennedy's
death is different. No ambivalence clouds her departure, and
that leaves us feeling lonely. America this week is a lonelier
place.
She was too young, deserved more time, and the fact that
she didn't get it seems like a new level of unfairness. She
never saw her husband grow old, and now she won't see her
grandchildren grow up.
But just writing those words makes me want to break out of
sadness and reach back in time and speak 1960s--speak, or at
least how the 1960s spoke before they turned dark. So I guess I
mean I want to speak Kennedyese. I want to say, ``Aw listen,
kid, don't be glum.'' What a life she had.
She herself said something like this to a friend, in a
conversation just months ago, when she first knew she was sick.
She told him she was optimistic and hoped to live 20 more
years. ``But even if I have only 5 years, so what, I've had a
great run.''
They said it was a life of glamour, but it was really a
life of splendor. I want to say, ``Listen, kid, buck up, don't
be blue''--the thing about this woman and her life is that she
was a patriot, who all by herself one terrible weekend lifted
and braced the heart of a nation.
That weekend in November 1963, the weekend of the muffled
drums, was the worst time for America in the last half of this
century. We forget now the shame we felt as a nation at what
had happened in Dallas. A President had been murdered, quite
savagely, quite brutally, and the whole appalled world was
looking and judging. And she redeemed it. She took away the
shame by how she acted. She was young, only 34, and only a few
days before she'd been covered in her husband's blood--but she
came home to Washington and walked down those broad avenues
dressed in black, her pale face cleansed and washed clean by
trauma. She walked head up, back straight and proud, in a
flowing black veil. There was the moment in the Capitol
Rotunda, when she knelt with her daughter Caroline. It was the
last moment of public farewell, and to say it she bent and
kissed the flag that draped the coffin that contained her
husband--and a whole nation, a whole world, was made silent at
the sight of patriotism made tender. Her Irish husband had
admired class. That weekend she showed it in abundance. What a
parting gift.
A nation watched, and would never forget. The world
watched, and found its final judgment summed up by a young
woman, a British journalist who had come to witness the
funeral, and filed home: ``Jacqueline Kennedy has today given
her country the one thing it has always lacked, and that is
majesty.''
To have done that for her country--to have lived through
that weekend and done what she did from that Friday to that
Monday--to have shown the world that the killing of the
President was not America, the loving dignity of our saying
goodbye was America--to have done that was an act of supreme
patriotism.
And a lot of us thought that anything good or bad she did
for the rest of her life, from that day on, didn't matter, for
she'd earned her way, she deserved a free pass, she'd earned
our thanks forever.
In a remarkable interview she gave Theodore White the
following December, she revealed what a tough little romantic
she was. ``Once, the more I read of history the more bitter I
got. For a while I thought history was something that bitter
old men wrote. But then I realized history made Jack what he
was. You must think of him as this little boy, sick so much of
the time, reading in bed, reading history, reading the
``Knights of the Round Table,'' reading ``Marlborough.'' For
Jack, history was full of heroes. And if it made him this way--
if it made him see the heroes--maybe other little boys will
see. Men are such a combination of good and bad. Jack had this
hero idea of history, this idealistic view.'' And she spoke of
Camelot and gave the world an image of her husband that is
still, for all the revelations of the past three decades,
alive. She provided an image of herself too, perhaps more than
she knew. The day before she died, a young schoolteacher in New
York City who hadn't even been born when she spoke to Teddy
White, told me of his shock that she was leaving us. ``I
thought she would be like Guinevere,'' he said. ``I thought she
would ride off on a horse, in her beautiful silence, and never
die.''
Her friends saw a great poignance in her, and a great
yearning. Behind her shyness there was an enormous receptivity
to the sweetness of life and its grace. A few years ago,
friends, a couple, gave a small dinner party for two friends
who had just married, and Mrs. Onassis was among the guests. It
was an elegant New York gathering, a handful of the renowned of
show business and media and society, all gathered to dine on
the top floor of a skyscraper. The evening was full of laughter
and warm toasts, and the next day her hosts received from Mrs.
Onassis a handwritten, hand-delivered letter. ``How could there
be an evening more magical than last night? Everyone is
enhanced and touched by being with two people just discovering
how much they love each other. I have known and adored [him]
for so long, always wishing he would find happiness . . .
Seeing him with [her] and getting to know her, I see he has at
last--and she so exceptional, whom you describe so movingly,
has too. I am so full of joy for both--I just kept thinking
about it all day today. What wonderful soothing hosts you are--
what a dazzling gathering of their friends--in that beautiful
tower, with New York glittering below . . .''
With New York glittering below, The world, I am told, is
full of those notes, always handwritten and lucid and
spontaneous--and always correct. ``The notes were the way she
was intimate'' with outsiders, said a friend. The only
insiders, really, were her family.
There was always in her a sense of history and the sense
that children are watching--children are watching and history
will judge us, and the things that define our times are the
great actions we take, all against the odds and with a private
valor of which the world will little note nor long remember.
But that's the big thing--the personal struggle, and the sense
that our history day by day is forged from it. That was her
intuition, and that intuition was a gift to us, for it helped
produce the walk down the broad avenues of Washington that day
when her heart was broken.
She was one sweet and austere tune. Her family arranged a
private funeral, and that of course is what she'd want and that
is what is fitting. But I know how I wish she would be buried.
I wish we could take her, in the city she loved, or the
capital she graced, and put a flag on her coffin and the coffin
on a catafalque, and march it down a great avenue, with an
honor guard and a horse that kicks, as ``Black Jack'' did, and
muffled drums. I wish we could go and honor her, those of us
who were children when she was in the White House, and our
parents who wept that weekend long ago, and our children who
have only a child's sense of who and what she was. I wish we
could stand on the sidewalk as the caisson passes, and take off
our hat, and explain to our sons and daughters and say, ``That
is a patriot passing by.'' I wish I could see someone's little
boy, in a knee-length coat, lift his arm and salute.
[From Town & Country Magazine, July 1994]
The Essence of Style
(By Letitia Baldrige)
I knew Jackie from the time we were both teenagers living
in the Washington area. I was just ahead of her at Miss
Porter's School in Farmington, CT, and then at Vassar. When I
started my first job at the American embassy in Paris, she
arrived on the scene as a student at the Sorbonne. There was no
way then to predict that within a decade she would be following
the yellow brick road to the White House.
To meet here, even during her adolescent years, was never
to forget her. She was a natural beauty--wearing none of the
trappings of the teenage cosmetic fashions of the day. There
were no globs of neon purple lipstick, no thick eyebrows
blackened with strokes of a dark pencil. Nor did her skin
suffocate under a thick layer of Pan-Cake makeup. Even more
important to me in my earliest impression of this young girl
was her voice--unforgettable in its soft, breathy tones. It was
a sound that forced one to draw close and listen well.
I could tell she was also a natural athlete by the firmness
of her body, the hint of muscularity in her bare upper arms and
that graceful gait. In the White House, where I was the social
secretary and Jackie's chief of staff, we were going over the
mail one day when I told her that many Americans had written to
ask how she had developed such superb posture. ``Write them to
learn how to sit straight on a horse,'' was her quick reply,
``because once you can do that, you'll walk straight ever
after.'' She paused, then corrected herself. ``Of course you
can't write that. Not everyone has a horse. Just say--oh, just
say whatever you like, but leave the horse out of it.''
She was born with a built-in fashion flair. So was her
sister Lee Radziwill (it must have been in the Bouvier genes).
That sense of style governed not only what she bought but the
way she wore it. She frequently received letters from women who
complained that they had purchased ``exact copies'' of the
First Lady's outfits (usually mass-produced and in the
marketplace 6 weeks after Jackie appeared in them), but ``When
I put on the dress, the effect isn't as dazzling.'' They simply
could not understand why, if they were the same size, roughly
the same age, and clad in the same outfit, they did not look
just like Jackie.
She received thousands of letters every week brimming with
other questions. Nothing, it seemed, was too personal to ask:
What is your diet? What do the children (and their animals!)
eat? What brand of toothbrush do you use (``those wonderful
teeth,'' they would exclaim in their letters)? And even, ``What
laxative do you and the President take,'' because, as one
correspondent concluded, ``You look like regular people.''
The letter I most liked to read were those that simply
showed the writer's admiration for the First Lady and asked for
nothing in return: ``The happy, beautiful look on your
children's faces shows what a good mother you are'' and ``I
tried putting some lilies of the valley in an antique porcelain
mug in an unexpected corner of our living room, like I say you
had done in a photograph, and my husband and I look at it all
the time. It's so beautiful--how wonderful you are to have
things around you like that!''
Of course, they're gone now--the John F. Kennedys and their
White House magic. The American public did not wish it to end,
that allure and romance. But now there's a closure, and
complaints are being heard throughout the land that people
didn't know Jackie well enough during those White House years
and after; even members of the younger generation who weren't
around in the 1960s can't get enough of her today.
During the Kennedy administration, Pam Turner stood
guarding her boss' privacy as Jackie's efficient press
secretary; toward the end Nancy Tuckerman took over as White
House social secretary, becoming the First Lady's lifelong and
most trusted aide-de-camp. Whatever the world was able to learn
about Jackie through her official duties and obvious devotion
to her children, I don't think the public ever realized just
how much she helped her husband behind the scenes.
Jackie would leave cartoons and limericks for Jack in
unexpected places to cheer him up when the Nation's affairs
were going badly. She would arrange for special treats (like
Joe's Stone Crabs from Miami and his favorite ice cream) to be
served when he was under unusually great pressure in the Oval
Office. With deft timing, old friends would pay morale-boosting
calls at Jackie's prompting. But her most effective weapon in
raising Jack's spirits was a surprise visit to his office with
the children. And she labored more over his birthday
celebrations than over any state dinner.
Many days she would be waiting by the elevator to the
family apartment to help him when he emerged from it, dragging
himself on crutches and in excruciating back pain. It was a
sight the President would not have wanted outsiders to witness.
It's hard work being ``First Lady,'' a title Jackie hated.
Initially, she instructed her staff to refer to her as ``Mrs.
Kennedy,'' but that didn't last long. Tradition is a tough
wrestling partner. Whether she was hosting an evening for 2,000
people in 90 degree heat in the backyard, as she once
sarcastically described the South Lawn, or watching a cobra
fight a mongoose to death (as Indian protocol dictated she do
in Prime Minister's Nehru's garden), she was ever the trooper.
People have never stopped talking about her manners. Jackie
learned those as every young women does--from her mother, as a
little girl (and as every young woman and man should be
learning them from a parent today). Her handwritten notes were
beautiful--not only in their warm, affectionate style but in
their frequency and timing. The morning after a dinner, the day
after a bouquet was received, out a note would go, with its
simply engraved ``The White House'' heading the stationery.
Sometimes in those notes--and virtually everywhere else--
there would be glimpse of her humor. She sought the fun in any
situation and seemed to have a continually amused sparkle in
her eye--even if always holding others at a distance.
Washington saw much mimicking and limerick spouting at parties
during the Kennedy years. The popular French Ambassador, Herve
Alphand, for example, was famous for performing his imitations
of world leaders as after-dinner entertainment at the French
Embassy. Jackie is the only person I have known who could
imitate Ambassador Alphand imitating President Charles de
Gualle. (Even Robin Williams would have a hard time doing
that.)
Witty, bright, generous of spirit: Those enduring qualities
form a mental scrapbook of endless pages. But as the future
begins to slip by even more quickly than the past, what will my
overriding memory of Jackie be? As the regal charelaine of the
No. 1 House of the land (make that the world)? When somebody
dies, one tends to remember a definite image of that person.
Mine will certainly not be the one television gave us of her
coffin about to be lowered into the earth at Arlington
Cemetery--a casket shining so cleanly and peacefully in the
sun, decorated so tastefully with greenery on the top, centered
with a simple white cross of flowers.
No, my image through the years ahead will be of her in the
white silk Givenchy ball gown she wore during a 1961 state
visit to France for the farewell dinner President and Madame de
Gualle hosted in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The top of
her white dress was a veritable painting of pastel flowers, all
hand-embroidered in paillettes. The President was unbelievably
handsome that night in his white tie and tails. Jackie and Jack
looked at one another with open admiration as they left Paris
arm-in-arm for Versailles. They were, after all, a team, and
this balmy June evening was a far cry from the campaign trail
back home. The air around them was literally charged with
electricity from the synergy of their presence, physical
appearance, talent and youth. The de Gaulles and every other
guest at that large formal dinner were transfixed by the two of
them all evening long.
After dinner, liveried footmen bearing massive silver-gilt
candelabra with burning candles lit the way for the procession
of guests, the two heads of state and their wives. (Except for
the illuminated frescoed ceiling in the Hall of Mirrors, there
were no electric lights in the public rooms of the palace at
that time.) Through the many darkened rooms the candlelight
parade progressed, the women's dresses and jewels sparkling as
they moved. On we went to our destination at the very end of
the palace, the newly restored Royal Opera built by Louis XV
expressly for occasions such as these. We walked to the
cadences of music provided by strolling court musicians--clad
in period costumes and playing 18th-century instruments.
The President and Mrs. Kennedy were the first to be
seated--lowering themselves gingerly onto the blue chairs of
the tiny royal box (the 18th-century Louis must have been one-
half the size of the Kennedys). The theater, with its crystal
chandeliers of burning candles, was a jewel box of ivory, gold
and powder blue. The stage was illuminated by torchlight,
leaving the Secret Service understandably nervous. But they did
not know President de Gaulle: He simply would not have
permitted a fire on his night to honor the Kennedys.
We watched a ballet commissioned by Louis XV himself. It
was more than magical. It was a dream sequence for every member
of the White House party fortunate enough to be present. No one
enjoyed or appreciated it more than John and Jacqueline
Kennedy.
When the evening was over and the single file of limousines
wound its way back to Paris through the beautifully lit gardens
and allees of trees in the Parc de Versailles, we suddenly
heard the American and then the French national anthems over
loudspeakers. The Kennedys stopped the procession and got out
of their car. No one would have dared follow them. They walked
alone to a giant, illuminated fountain as the music continued
playing through the trees. They stood hand-in-hand in silence,
savoring this moment in history for at least 5 minutes, their
figures silhouetted against the fountain's dancing, flickering
waters. I was not the only one to hold my breath.
That is the image I will always take with me: Of the two of
them, the Presidential team, hand-in-hand, giving a premier
performance on a state visit to a foreign land, doing us proud.
Utter perfection. Taste and grace.
in search of privacy
Gloria Emerson, ``The most ordinary day required Jackie to
be braver than most Americans will ever understand. Sixteen
years ago, meeting for lunch at The Plaza, I made sure she sat
with her back to the room so people could not gawk. But by then
she knew how to transcend such intrusive scrutiny and somehow
had lifted herself into a zone where strangers could not harm
her. After lunch we walked together to the silvershop S.J.
Shrubsole, only a few blocks away, but it seemed a dreadful
distance. As we went down Fifth Avenue people broke their
stride to stare at her. How peculiar that I, the war
correspondent, was so fearful that someone might approach her
or even hurt her, while she walked as if on a country lane.
When I left her at the shop a small knot of people stood on the
sidewalk, waiting for her to emerge, and I said how nice it
would be if they moved on, out of respect, so they did.''
Andre Previn, ``Jackie edited a book of mine `No Minor
Chords,' and I had occasion to see her often. I remember how
unprepared I was for her wicked sense of humor and her
appreciation of the absurd. Once, over lunch, I asked her
whether it ever bothered her that every pair of eyes was
trained upon her. `That's why I always wear my dark glasses,'
she said. `It may be that they're looking at me, but none of
them can ever tell which ones I'm looking back at. That way I
can have fun with it!' A smile of almost pure glee illuminated
her face.''
Thomas Moving, ``She was an electric presence; she had huge
magnetism. I used to walk 10 feet behind her when we were in
Moscow to watch people do a double take when they saw her.
They'd drop the things they were carrying.''
Alice Thuermer, Middleburg, Virginia, ``I was in the shop
alone one day and I had the classical-music station on, and
Jackie walked around for about 10 minutes. I left her alone,
and then she said in a very peaceful kind of way, `It's so,
wonderful in here: The flowers, the fragrance, the music, the
books--just like being in church.' ''
ties that bind
C.Z. Guest, ``I knew she was very ill, and I knew she
wasn't going to live long. I left her one of my garden books,
and I ended my note by saying, `Let's go hunting together next
year.' She sent me a handwritten note back that said, `Wouldn't
it be fun. Let's do it.' ''
Pierre Salinger, ``Just 4 days after JFK's killing, she
gave me a leather cigar case--one that could hold two cigars--
with `JFK' printed on it. Her handwritten note said, `For dear
Pierre. I know you carry more cigars than this, but I thought
you might like to have this cigar case that belonged to Jack.
It comes with all my love and appreciation for all you did to
make his days here so unforgettable. Jackie.' ''
Cordelia Frances Biddle, ``When Janet Auchincloss
Rutherford [Jackie's half sister] died after her own
extraordinarily courageous battle with cancer, Jackie spoke at
the service. It was a drizzly day, and the mourners were a
pallid, unhappy bunch. `Mrs. Onassis is here,' someone
whispered. And there she was: Her presence radiated through the
church. It was something tangible, like heat. I have never
forgotten what she said. In the midst of a long and moving
memorial, she paused and then said simply: `Knowing Janet was
like having a cardinal in your garden. She was bright and
lovely and incredibly alive.' Whenever I see a cardinal, I
remember those words.''
Bunny (Mrs. Paul) Mellon, ``Friends for 30 years, we shared
life with selfless trust, whatever came along--hard knocks or
success--but with truth and laughter never far away.''
Marc Riboud, photographer, ``Once I was visiting Jackie in
her New York apartment, after Ari Onassis died, when all the
papers were full of stories about a fight between Jackie and
Christina Onassis. Christina unexpectedly dropped in, and I
tried to excuse myself. But Jackie said, `Oh, no, stay and
we'll all have a good time.' She and Christina sat there,
telling stories about Ari and laughing together. They certainly
were not fighting.''
Ruth Carpenter, The Brearley School, ``Mrs. Onassis was
that wonderful kind of parent who takes an interest without
giving an answer. She read every story in Caroline's short-
story book, and went on to Malory's ``Le Morte
d'Arthur.'' . . . I remember Caroline's class put on a program
of musical skits in assembly that were such a hit that they'd
perform them over and over for any group they could find. And
Mrs. Onassis would show up every time.''
Helen Bartlett, ``I was born in 1959, when Kennedy was
still a Senator. Jack Kennedy was my godfather--my mother is
John Jr.'s godmother--so I was not Jackie's godchild, but she
took over when the President died. She was my connection to
Jack, and she kept up this guardianship. There was a letter for
every birthday, every Christmas, every event of importance in
my life. She was one of the most empathetic people ever. She
could take in what you were saying and get it.''
Hugh Newell Jacobsen, architect, ``The Martha's Vineyard
house was a place that was not part of the Kennedy compound--it
was home. The whole concept was how she could have a real base
for her children and herself. I got a call from her when she
was up at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, saying that she
had laid the house out from my floor plans in sand on the
beach, so that she could walk from room to room. To visualize
the spaces, she put stones down where the windows were. More
than any other client I've ever had, she wanted to participate
in that way, rather than just trust in blind faith.''
Eleanor Lambert, ``I was with her and Ari down at Loel and
Gloria Guinness' in Acapulco the winter after Alexander Onassis
was killed in the air crash. When it was midnight and the
fireworks began, Ari started to sob. Jackie put her arms around
him, just like the Pieta, and held him. She let him cling to
her for what seemed like 10 minutes. It was so touching because
he was not kind to her. But she stuck by him in this awful time
when he was mourning so terribly.''
that spirit of adventure
Charles Sheldon Whitehouse, former Ambassador to Laos and
Thailand, ``I remember fox hunting with her in a downpour.
`Don't you think we should go in?' I said hopefully. `Oh, not
yet,' she replied. `We're already wet and, who knows, something
wonderful might happen.' ''
Charles A. Dana III, ``In September of 1989, she joined
myself and a group of friends aboard the J/Boat Evdeavor, off
Edgartown. She was so proud of herself taking the helm that she
asked if I had a camera. It was obvious she wanted to look the
part, so she affected as related a pose as anyone could the
first time steering a very large sailboat. Later she joked, `If
the photograph looks salty enough, send it to Ethel.' You read
a lot about certain people and then when you meet them, they
don't measure up. But she shattered the hourglass.''
Peggy McDonnell, Far Hills, New Jersey, neighbor, ``One
year at Halloween, when John was about seven, Jackie wanted to
drive. She hadn't driven much in years. I said OK, and we
hadn't gone more than 10 minutes when flashing lights and
sirens appeared behind us. Right away she started telling John,
`Quick, act like you're sick.' So the poor policeman comes up,
shines a flashlight right in her face and just didn't know what
to do. All he could say was, `Oh everything's fine.
Everything's just fine.' ''
Nina Auchincloss Straight, ``I learned how to ride
following Jackie. Right up until her fall last Thanksgiving, we
were still chasing around just like little girls in the
Piedmont hunt country.''
John Pierspont, New York and Far Hills, ``I used to hunt
alongside her for many years, and she was an extraordinary
equestrienne, very game--the bigger the fence, the more she
liked it. The last time I saw her ride was in a hunter trial in
Virginia, and she was outstanding--her team won first place.''
style, style, style
Stephen Rubin, president and publisher, Doubleday Books,
``I often think that some of the best moments Jackie and I
shared as editorial colleagues took place in her very modest
office, and she'd be munching on celery and carrots that she
brought from home in tin foil. We'd go through eight projects
in 20 minutes. She was always reasonable, a real pro, and would
never waste anybody's time.''
Rene Verdon, White House chef, ``Mrs. Kennedy was very
concerned about the menus. Sometimes she would say, `I had
dinner at the French embassy and had something wonderful. Could
you try that?' I think the dinner we did at Mount Vernon--
poulet chasseur, couronne de riz Clamart, framboises a la creme
Chantilly--will remain in the history of America.
John Loring, design director, Tiffany & Co., ``One young
woman in the company was having trouble getting into an
apartment building where she desperately wanted to live,
because she was of a minority group. She asked if there was a
chance that, since Mrs. Onassis had worked with her on the book
projects, she could write a nice word to the building. I called
Jackie and she said, `I understand the situation completely,
and the letter will be in your office in the next 30 minutes.'
Thirty minutes later the letter was in the office and the young
woman got into the building. . . . Three weeks before Jackie
died, I got a note from her saying, `Don't worry, everything's
fine, and soon we'll be out having festive lunches.' Well, why
did she write that? Because instead of writing something sad or
dramatic, she wanted you to feel good and didn't want anybody
to worry.''
Hubert de Givenchy, ``She incarnated to perfection an ideal
of beauty, American-style, composed of youth, charm, and
modernity. It was a privilege to be able to dress her. . . .
For the grand reception that Charles de Gaulle gave in honor of
the Presidential couple in the gallery of mirrors at
Versailles, I made for her a long gown in embroidered silk with
a matching coat. The next day, she sent me a small drawing of
herself in the dress, with a line that said, `General de Gaulle
complimented me by saying that I looked like a painting by
Watteau.' ''
Kent L. Barwick, president, Municipal Art Society, ``In
probably most every town in America there is something still
there that wouldn't be, had Jackie not led the [Grand Central]
fight. The victory in the Supreme Court in 1978, made it
possible for cities and towns all over to have landmarks laws.
Jackie understood how places and buildings and parks had an
impact on people. One time in a meeting at her apartment to
discuss the proposed Columbus Circle building (which was
designed to be the tallest in the world), she said, `They're
stealing the sky.' And she crystallized the issue, just like
that.''
Viviana (ViVi) Crespi, ``My son Marcantonio adored her,
too. Jackie wrote him beautiful letters when he'd send her his
poems. She said, `You must continue. Poets are the ones who
change the world.' ''
Aaron Shikler, First Lady's portrait artist, ``I did many,
many studies of her for what many people would say was a gloomy
portrait--it was very intense. And when I started to do it
full-size I said to myself, `It's not right--it's got to be a
little lighter, more open.' That's when I started the one
that's in the White House, but she preferred the first version.
Then, when she made her decision to marry Onassis, it was like
something disappeared. She relaxed, became girlish, giggly. It
was like another person working with me.''
James Roe Ketchum, White House curator, 1963-70, ``On
Monday morning the day of President Kennedy's funeral, the
phone rang at our apartment at 6 o'clock. It was Jackie; I
don't think she slept more than an hour or so at a time that
whole weekend. She explained that she would like to have the
Cezannes moved from the family quarters. She'd decided to
receive certain heads of state there--she singled out de
Gaulle, Haile Selassie, and Prince Phillip. She knew we had
just acquired a collection of aquatint views of American cities
of about 1800, and she wanted those to replace the Cezannes.
She thought the setting should be American.''
Hugh D. (Yusha) Aiuchincloss III, ``After the funeral,
Nancy (Tuckerman) gave me all the letters I'd sent Jackie from
Groton, when she was in Farmington, from 1944 to 1947. I wasn't
doing very well in school and wanted to join the Marines. She
told me not to feel sorry for myself and to study harder, that
the Marines didn't want anybody who wasn't intelligent. Even
though she was 2 years younger than me, she was firm with me.
And it made me study harder. And I did join the Marines.''
Lady Bird Johnson, ``I remember distinctly this beautiful
woman coming to my very simple house when she was one of the
new Senate wives. I thought how young she was, and how
different from all the rest of us.''
an original
Lisa Drew, former editor, Doubleday, ``Her life in the last
15 years seemed to me to be the most satisfying. It seems her
happiness in that period of time quadrupled. Jackie was warm
and generous and excruciatingly funny because she consistently
came out with the completely unexpected. But it was right to
the point. I think that was the key to her humor. Very apt.''
Ambassador Pamela Harriman, ``I will miss her and America
will miss her.''
Sargent Shriver, ``In all these years, I never heard Jackie
being nasty or bitter or mean or spiteful. And that imagination
she had. Beauty, brains, courage, passion, artistic
sensibility. One of the most unusual personages of these times.
And so many people responded to her in so many ways--and she to
them. For most women, or for any man, coming from such a
privileged background to be catapulted at 31 years of age into
worldwide attention . . . was a colossal challenge. You'd think
it impossible for her to avoid becoming self-centered and
egotistical. But that never happened to her. She was just as
beautiful when she died. Even illness hadn't ruined her beauty.
I was lucky to see her. She was peaceful. Is there any better
way to leave this life?''