[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 86 (Thursday, June 30, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 30, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 TRIBUTE TO JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS

  Mr. BRADLEY. 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 her 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.''

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