Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (July 28, 1929 –
May 19, 1994) was the wife of John F. Kennedy from 1953 to 1963 and was known as Jacqueline Kennedy or Jackie Kennedy.
She served as First Lady of the United States from 1961 until her
husband's assassination in 1963. She was married to Aristotle Onassis from 1968 until
his death in 1975, and was known as Jacqueline Onassis, Jackie Onassis, or more informally as Jackie O. In
later years she had a successful career as a book editor. She preferred her first name to be pronounced in the French manner
(IPA: /ʒaklin/).[1].
Family and early life
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was born at Southampton Hospital in Southampton, New
York, into New York society. She was the elder daughter of John Vernou Bouvier III (1891–1957) and Janet Norton Lee
Bouvier (Auchincloss Morris) (1906–1989).[2]
Her name commemorated both sides of her family ("Jacqueline" celebrating three generations of "Jacks" on her father's side and
"Lee" celebrating the surname of her maternal grandparents).
In attempts to get on the social register both sides of her family were to make
exaggerations about her heritage with Bouviers making claims she descended from the royal Fontaines in France and the Lees
declaring she was part of the "Virginia Lees."[3] She was of mostly Irish, Scottish, and English descent; her French paternal ancestry is
distant, with her last French ancestor being Michel Bouvier, a Philadelphia-based cabinetmaker who was her great grandfather.
Jacqueline was joined by a sister, Caroline Lee, known as Lee, in 1933. Her father,
nicknamed "Black Jack", was a playboy stockbroker whose womanizing led to his eventual divorce from Janet when Jackie was a young
girl. While Black Jack never remarried, Janet married her second husband, Standard Oil heir
Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr. and had two children with him, Jacqueline's half-siblings
Janet Jennings and James Auchincloss. In her later years, Jacqueline's mother married
Bingham Morris.
Jacqueline spent summers of her first 12 years at the estate of her paternal grandparents called Lasata in East Hampton where she became an accomplished
equestrienne competing with her favorite horse Danseuse, meaning "female dancer" in French.
After her parents' formal divorce in 1942 and her mother's remarriage, she was to continue her riding at the Auchincloss's
Hammersmith Farm.
She loved reading, painting, writing poems, and shared a warm relationship with her father. Her relationship with her mother,
though, was often distant.
Education, introduction to society and first job
- 1935–42 The Chapin School — New York City — Kindergarten and grammar school
- 1942–44 Holton Arms School — Bethesda, Maryland — grammar school and first year of high school.
- 1944–47 Miss Porter's School — Farmington, Connecticut — High School
- 1947–49 Vassar College — Poughkeepsie, New York — Freshman and Sophomore years of College
- 1949–50 University of Grenoble and the Sorbonne — Paris, France -Junior year abroad program through Smith College
- 1950–51 The George Washington University — Washington, D.C. — 4th year of college. Graduated with a B.A in French
Literature
- 1954 Georgetown University — Georgetown, Washington D.C. American History Continuing Education Classes[4]
While Jacqueline was at Vassar, she was named "Debutante of the Year" for the 1947–48 season.
In 1951, Jacqueline took her first job as the "Inquiring Camera Girl" for The
Washington Times-Herald. Her job was to ask witty questions of the people she met in Washington, D.C. The questions
and amusing responses would then appear alongside the interviewee's photograph in the newspaper. One of Jacqueline's subjects for
this assignment was a young Massachusetts Congressman named John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy marriage
Jacqueline Kennedy at Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island on the day of her wedding in 1953.
Jacqueline was engaged to a young stockbroker, John Husted, in December 1951. In
courting, Jackie had commuted to New York City from Washington to meet Husted. In New York City she stayed at the apartment of
her father, Black Jack Bouvier, who liked Husted. However, the engagement was called off in March 1952, on the advice of Jackie's
mother, Janet. She felt Husted, who made $17,000 per year, was not affluent enough, even though his family was on the social
register.[5][6] Jackie is reported to have told cohorts that Husted was "immature" and his work was too tame.[7] Years later, Jacqueline's explanation of the engagement's end
was that she and Husted were not very serious.[8]
Jacqueline and Kennedy were at the same functions several times between 1948 and 1952. The first was the wedding of a mutual
friend on Long Island in 1948. In May 1951 she met him at a dinner party at the home of Charles and Martha Bartlett in
Washington, DC. Kennedy accompanied her out to the car but discovered Husted was in the car. In the winter of 1951–52 they
attended a large event in Palm Beach, Florida. After the engagement with Husted was
called off, the Bartletts hosted another dinner party on May 8, 1952
and the romance began. [9]
The announcement of the couple's engagement did not result in universal delight within the Bouvier family. According to an
article in Time magazine, "[Jacqueline] telephoned me to tell me the news", Black Jack
Bouvier's sister Maude Bouvier Davis explained, "but she said, 'You can't say anything about it because the Saturday Evening Post is about to come out with an article on Jack called "The Senate's Gay
Young Bachelor"[10] and this would spoil
it.'" Another aunt, Michelle Bouvier Putnam, was dismissive of the media hubbub surrounding the forthcoming nuptials, saying,
"The whole Kennedy clan is unperturbed by publicity. We feel differently about it. Their clan is totally united; ours is
not."[8]
Jacqueline Bouvier and John F. Kennedy married on September 12, 1953, at Newport, Rhode Island. The bride's gown and the
bridesmaids' dresses were made by Ann Lowe, a well-known fashion designer; the reception was
held at Hammersmith Farm, with guests numbering nearly 2,000 people. After the wedding,
they returned to Washington, D.C. following a brief honeymoon. Early in their marriage, Senator Kennedy suffered crippling pain
in his back from a wartime injury and he had two operations. As he was recovering from surgery, Mrs. Kennedy encouraged him to
write a book, Profiles in Courage, which is about several U.S. senators who
had risked their careers to fight for the things in which they believed. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography in
1957.
The marriage had problems arising from John F. Kennedy's alleged affairs and his debilitating health issues, both of which
were hidden from the public. Jacqueline spent much of her time and money early in their marriage redecorating their home and
shopping for clothes. Many of these garments in the early days were designer clothing by Scaasi.[11]
For their first years of marriage, John and Jacqueline Kennedy lived in a townhouse on N Street in Georgetown, Washington, D.C..
Jacqueline was fond of her father-in-law, Joseph P. Kennedy, and the affection
was returned. He saw the great PR potential of her as a politician's wife. Jackie's relationship with Rose Kennedy was more
distant. She was also close to her brother-in-law, Robert ("Bobby"). Yet she was not
fond of the competitive, sporty, and somewhat abrasive nature of the Kennedy clan. She was quieter and more reserved. She
preferred to have time alone with John rather than with him and the entire family. The Kennedy sisters nicknamed her "the deb",
and Jacqueline was always reluctant to join in the traditional family touch-football games. Once, she broke her ankle in a game
of touch-football with them.
Children
Candidate's wife
Jacqueline Kennedy campaigning alongside her husband in Appleton, Wisconsin, in March 1960
In January 1960, Senator John Kennedy announced his candidacy for Presidency of the United States, and began working very long
hours and traveling all around the country. Jackie had taken an active role in the campaign, even speaking to grocery store
shoppers over the PA system in one town. In Appleton, Wisconsin, she signed autographs for junior high school students,
commenting that her signature would be more legible than Jack's. Campaigning in West
Virginia hit Jacqueline the hardest, as she had not witnessed that degree of poverty before. Later, in the
White House, when the need for new glassware came up, Jackie suggested that Morgantown Glassware from the impoverished state supply it.
A few weeks before her husband’s campaign for President began, Jacqueline learned that she was pregnant and due to the
previous stillbirth of an unnamed daughter, her doctors instructed her to remain at home. From Georgetown, Jacqueline helped her
husband by answering thousands of campaign letters, taping TV commercials, giving interviews both televised and printed
and by writing a weekly newspaper column, Campaign Wife, which was distributed across the country. She was assisted by her
personal secretary, Mary Barelli Gallagher, who continued her post during the White House
Years; she stopped working for Jackie several months after Mrs. Kennedy moved to New York
City. In 1969, Gallagher published her best-selling tell-all memoir, My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy.
In the general election on November 8, 1960, John F. Kennedy
narrowly beat Republican Richard Milhous Nixon in the 1960 presidential election.
First Lady of the United States
Jackie gave birth by caesarian section to John F. Kennedy, Jr. two weeks after his
father's election. Jackie toured the White House shortly after. Mamie Eisenhower walked
her around the vast house, never telling her there was a wheelchair for her use.[citation needed] Jackie left the White House and went home to collapse. She was still in
frail health when her husband became the 35th President of the United
States and she First Lady in January, 1961.[citation needed] She was one of the youngest First Ladies in history, just behind Frances Folsom Cleveland and Julia
Tyler.
She asked to be addressed as "Mrs. Kennedy". Like any First Lady, she was forced into the public spotlight with everything in
her life under scrutiny. When asked what she felt was the major role of the First Lady, before she entered the White House, she
said, "I think the major role of the First Lady is to take care of the President so that he can better serve the
people."[citation needed]
While she did not mind giving interviews or being photographed, she was worried about the effect it would have on her
children. Jacqueline was determined to protect them from the press and give them a normal childhood. She allowed very few
photographs to be taken of them but when she was gone, the President would allow the White House photographer Cecil Stoughton to take pictures of the children.[citation needed]
Mrs. Kennedy planned numerous social events that brought the First Couple into the Nation's cultural spotlight. She had also
invited artists, writers, scientists, poets, and musicians to mingle with politicians, diplomats, and
statesmen. She spoke fluent English and French. This appreciation for art, music, and culture marked a new chapter in American
history. Jackie's skill at entertaining gave White House events the reputation of being magical. For instance, when she
orchestrated a dinner at Mount Vernon in honor of Pakistan's President Ayub Khan, whom
President Kennedy wanted to honor for his role in supporting the U.S. in a recent crisis, she banished large U-shaped dining
tables, replacing them with round tables that seated eight. Her social graces were legendary, as can be noted from the way she
communicated with Charles De Gaulle in Paris and Nikita Khruschev in Vienna. The President's summit in Vienna turned
out to be a disaster, but the Premier's enjoyment of Mrs. Kennedy's company was subsequently deemed one of the few positive
outcomes. When Soviet Premier Khrushchev was asked to shake President Kennedy's
hand for a photo, the Communist leader said, "I'd like to shake her hand first."[13]
French influence in the Kennedy White House
Due in part to her French ancestry, Jacqueline had always felt a bond with France, which was reinforced by her education
there. This was a love that would later be reflected in many aspects of her life, such as the menus she chose for White House
State Dinners and her taste in clothing and her love of ballet. She chose French interior
designer Stéphane Boudin of Maison Jansen to
consult on the White House Restoration and decoration of the private family quarters on the second and third floors of the
Executive Mansion. Mrs. Kennedy recruited a Vietnamese-born French chef to become White House chef.
White House restoration
The restoration of the White House was Jacqueline Kennedy's first major project. She was dismayed during her pre-inauguration
tour of the White House, which was conducted by Mamie Eisenhower, to find little of historic significance in the house. The rooms
were furnished with undistinguished pieces that she felt lacked a sense of history. Her first efforts, begun her first day in
residence (with the help of society decorator Sister Parish), were to make the family
quarters attractive and suitable for family life and included the addition of a kitchen on the family floor and rooms for her
children. Upon almost immediately exhausting the funds appropriated for this effort, she established a fine arts committee to
oversee and fund the restoration process; she also asked early American furniture expert Henry du Pont to consult. Her skillful management of this project was hardly noted at the time,
except in terms of gossipy shock at repeated repainting of a room, or the high cost of the antique Zuber wallpaper panels
installed in the family dining room ($12,000 in donated funds), but later accounts have noted that she managed the conflicting
agendas of Parish, du Pont, and Stéphane Boudin of Maison Jansen with seamless success; she initiated publication of the first White House guidebook, whose
sales further funded the restoration; she initiated a Congressional bill establishing that White House furnishings would be the
property of the Smithsonian Institution, rather than available to departing ex-presidents to claim as their own; and she wrote
personal requests to those who owned pieces of historical interest that might be donated to the White House. On February 14, 1962, Mrs. Kennedy took American television viewers on a tour of
the White House with Charles
Collingwood of CBS. In the tour she said, "I just feel that everything in the White House
should be the best — the entertainment that's given here. If it's an American company you can help, I like to do that. If not —
Just as long as it's the best." Working with Rachel Lambert Mellon Mrs. Kennedy oversaw redesign and replanting of the
White House Rose Garden and the East Garden, which was renamed the
Jacqueline Kennedy Garden after her husband's assassination. Jacqueline
Kennedy's efforts on behalf of restoration and preservation a the White House left a lasting legacy in the form of the
White House Historical Association, the Committee for the Preservation of the White House which was based upon
her White House Furnishings Committee, a permanent Curator of the White
House, the White House Endowment Trust, and the White House Acquisition Trust.
Foreign Policy
Tour of France
Before the Kennedys visited France, a television special was shot in French with Jackie on the White House lawn. When the
First Couple visited France, she'd already won the hearts of the French people, impressing
Charles de Gaulle and the French public with her French. At the conclusion of the
visit, Time magazine seemed delighted with the First Lady and noted, "There was
also that fellow who came with her." Even President Kennedy joked, "I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to
Paris — and I have enjoyed it!"
Tour of India and Pakistan
At the urging of John Kenneth Galbraith, President Kennedy's ambassador to
India, Mrs. Kennedy undertook a tour of India and Pakistan, taking her sister Lee
Radziwill along with her, which was amply documented in photojournalism of the time as well as in the journals and memoirs
of Professor Galbraith. At the time, Ambassador Galbraith noted a considerable disjunction between Mrs Kennedy's widely-noted
concern with clothes and other frivolity and, on personal acquaintance, her considerable intellect.
In Lahore, Pakistani President Ayub Khan presented Mrs Kennedy with a much-photographed
horse, Sardar (the Urdu term meaning ‘leader’); subsequently this
gift was widely misattributed to the king of Saudi Arabia, including in the various
recollections of the Kennedy White House years by President Kennedy's friend, journalist and editor Benjamin Bradlee. It has never become clear whether this general misattribution of the gift was
carelessness or a deliberate effort to deflect attention from the USA's preference for Pakistan over India. [14] At the same time, she had a friendly chat with Iranian Empress Farah Pahlavi.
Death of an infant son
Jacqueline gave birth to a premature son, whom she and John named Patrick Bouvier
Kennedy, via emergency caesarian section at Otis Air Force Base on
August 7, 1963. Because his lungs were not fully developed,
Patrick could not breathe and he was air lifted to Boston's Children's Hospital where he was placed in an oxygen-rich,
pressurized room. He died of Hyaline Membrane Disease (now known as Respiratory Distress Syndrome) on August 9, 1963. Jacqueline told President Kennedy there was one thing she would
not be able to bear, and that would be to lose him.
After Patrick's death, Jacqueline kept a low profile at the White House. The President suggested she visit her sister in
Europe as a way to recuperate from Patrick's death. She spent considerable time relaxing in the Mediterranean region during the early autumn. She and her sister were guests, along with Mr. &
Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., aboard Aristotle Onassis's yacht, Christina,
during this period. Jacqueline made her first public appearance at the White House in the middle of November 1963.
Assassination and funeral of John F. Kennedy
-
When President Kennedy asked her to accompany him on a campaign trip to Texas, she told him she
would go anywhere he needed her. On November 21, 1963 they
left Andrews Air Force Base, first stopped in San Antonio, and then went to Houston where they toured
NASA facilities. Their last stop that day was in Ft.
Worth. After a breakfast the next day, November 22, with the Ft. Worth Chamber of
Commerce at The Hotel Texas, President and Mrs. Kennedy flew to Dallas's Love Field. A
short motorcade was to take them to the Trademart where he was scheduled to speak. Jackie was
seated next to her husband in the limousine when he was shot and mortally wounded
in Dealey Plaza. Vice President Johnson and his wife followed in another car in the motorcade. After the President was
hit, Jacqueline climbed out of the back seat and crawled toward the Secret Service agent who was at the back. After his death she
refused to remove her blood-stained clothing, and regretted having washed the blood off of her face and hands. She continued to
wear the famous stained pink suit as she stood next to Johnson on board the plane when he took the oath of office as
President.
Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, John Jr., Caroline, and Peter Lawford depart the U.S. Capitol after a lying-in-state ceremony
for John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 24 November 1963
Jacqueline led the nation in mourning as the President lay in repose at the White House and then lay in state in the Capitol
rotunda. The funeral service was held for the President at
St. Matthew's Cathedral. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery and Jackie was the first to light the eternal flame at the grave
site. Lady Jean Campbell reported back to The London Evening Standard:
"Jacqueline Kennedy has given the American people… one thing they have always lacked: majesty."[15]
Following the assassination, she stepped back from official public view. She was spared the ordeal of appearing at the trial
of Lee Harvey Oswald, due to his murder while in police custody on November 24, 1963. She did, however, make a brief appearance in Washington to
honor the Secret Service agent, Clint Hill, who had
climbed aboard the limousine in Dallas to try to shield her and the President.
Life following the assassination
A week after the assassination, the President's widow was interviewed in Hyannisport on November 29 by Theodore H. White of Life magazine. In that session, she
compared the Kennedy years in the White House to King Arthur's mythical Camelot, commenting that John often played the title song of Lerner and
Loewe's musical recording before retiring to bed. She also quoted Queen Guinevere from the musical, trying to express how
the loss felt. "Now he is a legend when he would have preferred to be a man."
The steadiness and courage of Jacqueline Kennedy during the assassination and funeral won her admiration around the world.
Following John's death, Jackie and her children remained in their quarters in the White House for two weeks, preparing to vacate.
Johnson made several phone calls that were recorded via Dictabelt from the Oval Office to Jackie in the residence; the two also
shared several letters and notes back and forth through messengers since the assassination. In the first call on December 2, 1963, she told him that she knew how rare it was to have something
in a President's handwriting and that she now had more in his handwriting than she did in Jack's. The President encouraged her to
come and visit with him to spend time talking.
After spending the winter of 1964 in Averill Harriman's home in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., Jackie decided to
purchase a luxury apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue in New York in the hope of having more privacy. She sold the home she had built
in Atoka, Virginia, where she had intended to retire with her husband. She spent a year in mourning, making no public
appearances, then zealously guarded her privacy. During this time, her daughter Caroline told her school teacher that her mother
cried frequently.
She perpetuated her husband's memory by visiting his grave site on important anniversaries and attending selected memorial
dedications. These included the 1967 christening of the Navy aircraft carrier named USS John F. Kennedy,
which was decommissioned in 2007, in Newport News, Virginia, and a memorial in Hyannisport, Massachusetts. She requested and lit an eternal
flame over her husband's grave. In May 1965, Jacqueline Kennedy and Queen Elizabeth II jointly dedicated the United
Kingdom's official memorial to President Kennedy at Runnymede, England. This memorial included several acres of soil given in perpetuity from the United Kingdom to the United
States of America on the meadow where the Magna Carta had been signed by King John in 1215.
She oversaw plans for the establishment of the John F. Kennedy Library, which
is the repository for official papers of the Kennedy Administration. Original plans to have the library situated in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard
University, proved problematic for various reasons, so it is situated in Boston. The finished library, designed by
I.M. Pei, includes a museum and was dedicated in Boston in 1979 by President Carter, nearly 16 years after the assassination. The governments of many nations donated
money to erect the library, in addition to corporate and private donations.
Onassis marriage
On October 20, 1968, Jacqueline Kennedy married
Aristotle Onassis, a Greek shipping tycoon, on Skorpios, Greece. Following this, her legal name was changed to Jacqueline
Onassis. Four and a half months earlier her brother-in-law, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, had been assassinated in Los
Angeles. At that point, Jacqueline feared that the Kennedys were being "targeted", and that she and her children had to
leave the United States. Marriage to Onassis appeared to make sense: he had the money and
power to give her the protection she needed, while she had the social cachet he craved. He allegedly ended his affair with
opera diva Maria Callas to marry her. Jacqueline gave up
Secret Service protection and franking privilege, to which a widow of a president of the
United States is entitled, after her marriage to Onassis.
For a time, the marriage brought her adverse publicity and seemed to tarnish the image of the grieving presidential widow.
However, others viewed the marriage as a positive symbol of the "modern American woman" who would not be afraid to look after her
own financial interests and to protect her family. The marriage initially seemed successful, but stresses soon became apparent.
The couple rarely spent time together. Though Onassis got along with Caroline and John, Jr. (his son Alexander introduced John to flying; coincidentally, both would die in plane crashes), Jacqueline did
not get along with step-daughter Christina Onassis. She spent most of her time
traveling and shopping.
In the 1970s, the First Lady's sister Lee Radziwill discussed creating a documentary
with Albert and David Maysles about Jacqueline's girlhood in East Hampton. At
about the same time, Jackie's aunt on her father's side Edith Ewing Bouvier
Beale "Big Edie" and her daughter "Little Edie" received unwanted national
attention when the National Enquirer ran an expose on the deplorable
conditions of their East Hampton mansion, Grey Gardens. The Suffolk County, New York Board of Health made a raid ordering them to clean up the property
which was falling into disrepair and was being overrun with feral cats. Jacqueline and Aristotle Onassis donated $32,000 to clean the house and install a new furnace and plumbing system and
cart away 1,000 bags of garbage.
The Maysles interviewed the Edies and showed the footage of Radziwill and she confiscated the film.[16] However, the Maysles were to return and the focus of their documentary was to be
the Edies instead of the First Lady, and it has become the cult documentary Grey
Gardens.
Jacqueline was with her children in New York when Onassis died. Her legacy was severely limited by a rumored prenuptial agreement and by legislation that Onassis had allegedly persuaded the Greek government
to approve, which limited how much a non-Greek surviving spouse could inherit. Jacqueline eventually accepted Christina's offer
of $26,000,000, waiving all other claims to the Onassis estate.
Invasion of privacy
When a paparazzo photographed Jackie Onassis nude on a Greek island, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt bought the photos and published them in
the August 1975 issue, much to her and the Kennedy family's embarrassment.
Final years
Jackie Kennedy's Official White House Portrait
Onassis's death in 1975 made Jacqueline, then 46, a widow for the second time. Now that her children were older, she decided
to find work that would be fulfilling to her. Since she had always enjoyed writing and literature, Jacqueline accepted a job
offer as an editor at Viking Press and then, in 1978, moved to Doubleday as an associate editor under an old friend, John
Sargent,[17] living in New York City, Martha's Vineyard and the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis, Massachusetts. From the
mid 1970s until her death, her companion was Maurice Tempelsman, a Belgian-born industrialist and diamond merchant who was long separated from his
wife. Among the many books she edited was Larry Gonick's The Cartoon History of the Universe. He expressed his gratitude in the
acknowledgments in Volume 2. Jacqueline Onassis's continuing charisma is indicated by the delight the Canadian author
Robertson Davies took in discovering that at a commencement exercise at an American
university at which he was being honored, Jacqueline Kennedy was on hand, circulating among the honorees. On the other hand, her
efforts on behalf of Doubleday to enlist Frank Sinatra, the Duchess of Windsor and not surprisingly Queen Elizabeth II as Doubleday authors were firmly rebuffed.
Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1986 during a visit from the current President and First Lady,
Ronald and
Nancy Reagan
Jacqueline Onassis also appreciated the contributions of African-American writers to the American literary canon and
encouraged Dorothy West, her neighbor on Martha's
Vineyard and the last surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance, to complete
The Wedding: a multi-generational story about race, class, wealth, and power in the United States. The novel received
great literary acclaim when it was published by Doubleday in 1995 and Oprah Winfrey
introduced the story in 1998 to millions of Americans via a television film of the same name starring Halle Berry. Dorothy West acknowledged Jacqueline Onassis's kind encouragement in the foreword.
She also worked to preserve and protect America’s cultural heritage. The notable results of her hard work include
Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C, and Grand
Central Terminal, New York's beloved historic railroad station. While she was First
Lady, she helped to stop the destruction of historic homes in Lafayette Square, because she knew that these buildings were an
important part of the nation’s capital and played an essential role in its history. Later, in New York City, she led a historic
preservation campaign to save and renovate Grand Central Terminal from demolition. A plaque inside the terminal acknowledges her
prominent role in its preservation. In the 1980s, she was a major figure in protests against a planned skyscraper at
Columbus Circle which would have cast large shadows on Central Park.
From her apartment windows in New York she had a splendid view of a glass enclosed wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art which displays the Temple of
Dendur. This was a gift from Egypt to the United States in gratitude for the generosity of the Kennedy administration, who
had been instrumental in saving several temples and objects of Egyptian antiquity that would otherwise have been flooded after
the construction of the Aswan Dam.
In January 1994, Onassis was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma, a form of cancer. Her diagnosis was announced to the public in February. The
family was initially optimistic, and she stopped smoking at the insistence of her daughter. Onassis continued her work with
Doubleday, but curtailed her schedule. By April 1994, the cancer had spread, and she made her last trip home from
New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center on May
18, 1994. A large crowd of wellwishers, tourists, and reporters gathered on the street
outside her penthouse apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue, and she died in her sleep at 10:15 pm on Thursday, May 19, at the age of 64. Her son said, in announcing her death to the world, "My mother died surrounded by her
friends and her family and her books, and the people and the things that she loved. She did it in her own way, and in her own
terms, and we all feel lucky for that."[18]
Jacqueline Onassis's funeral was held on May 23 at Saint Ignatius Loyola Roman
Catholic Church at Park Avenue and East 84th Street in Manhattan, which was the same church where she was baptized in 1929. As a
concession to a grieving world, audio of her private funeral, along with a special television broadcast, was broadcast around the
world. At her funeral, her son, John, described three of her attributes as the love of words, the bonds of home and family, and
her spirit of adventure. She was then buried next to President John F. Kennedy, and near their son Patrick and daughter Arabella
at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.[19][20] The New York Daily
News ran an issue the next day saying, "Missing Her".
Legacy, memorials, and honors
Since her death, many Americans remember how she captivated the attention of her nation and the rest of the world with her
intelligence and grace. With a deep sense of devotion to her family and country she dedicated herself to raising her children and
to making the world a better place through art, literature, and a respect for history.
The companion book for a series of interviews between mythologist Joseph Campbell and
Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, was
created under the direction of Onassis, prior to her death. The book's editor, Betty Sue
Flowers, writes in the Editor's Note to The Power of Myth: "I am grateful… to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy
Onassis, the Doubleday editor, whose interest in the books of Joseph Campbell was
the prime mover in the publication of this book." A year after her death in 1994, Moyers dedicated the companion book for his PBS
series, The Language of Life to Onassis. The dedication read: To Jacqueline
Onassis. As you sail on to Ithaka. Ithaka was a reference to the C.P. Cavafy poem that Maurice Tempelsman read at her
funeral.
In December 1999 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was among 18
included in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th
Century, from a poll conducted of the American people.
Like her assassinated husband, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis's legacy has been memorialized in various aspects of
American and to a later extent, non-American culture. They include:
"#wp-_note-Jacqueline_Kennedy_Onassis_High_School">[21] It is located at 120 West 46th Street between Sixth and Seventh
Avenues, and was formerly the High School for the Performing Arts.
- Central Park's main reservoir was renamed in her honor, so it is called the Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis Reservoir.[22]
- The residence hall on the southeast corner at the intersection of I and 23rd Streets of the
