Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

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Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (July 28, 1929–May 19, 1994) was the wife of President John F. Kennedy, and the First Lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963.

Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was born into New York society, the eldest daughter of John Vernou Bouvier III (1891-1957), a playboy stockbroker of French descent, and his wife, Janet Norton Lee (1906-1989), a bank president's daughter. Her maternal great-grandfather, a potato-famine Irish immigrant, was a superintendent of New York City public schools, though Janet Lee Bouvier preferred to tell people that he was a Maryland-born veteran of the United States Civil War.

She had a younger sister, Caroline Lee Bouvier, who was married three times: to Michael Canfield, to Polish prince Stanislas Radzwill, and financier Herbert Ross. Through their father, the Bouvier sisters were descended from the Van Salees, a merchant family of Dutch/African ancestry that settled in New Amsterdam in the 17th century.

After being named "Debutante of the Year" for the 1947-48 season, she was educated at Miss Porter's School, Vassar College and George Washington University, and spent time studying in France. She spoke French and Spanish fluently.

After an engagement to stockbroker John Husted, Jr. (they were to have married in June 1952), she married Senator John F. Kennedy, one of the Democratic Party's rising stars, on September 12, 1953, at Newport, Rhode Island. They had four children: Arabella (stillborn, 1956) Caroline Bouvier Kennedy (b. 1957), John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. (1960–1999) and Patrick Bouvier Kennedy (b./d. August, 1963).

Kennedy narrowly beat Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, becoming the 35th President of the United States in 1961. Jacqueline became one of the youngest First Ladies in history. On February 14, 1962, she took American television viewers on a tour of the White House.
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Jackie was riding next to her husband during his assassination on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. Mrs. Kennedy testified to the Warren Commission that she saw a piece of the President's skull be detached, yet, as documented in the Zapruder film, her head was not in a position to allow her eyes to see the president's head top until almost a second after the president's head first exploded. Within seconds she then climbed onto the left-center rear of the limousine trunk, behind and left of the president, and quickly picked up a piece of her husband's head, which she soon gave to a Parkland Hospital doctor.

During the next three days, she planned her husband's funeral and her gallant courage during the funeral won her admiration for the world. Because of this, she would not get the privacy she wanted. The black-veiled widow led the mourning for the assassinated president in unforgettable scenes: holding her two children, one in each hand, kneeling at the bier along with her daughter in the Capitol, walking behind the caisson on foot from the White House to St. Matthew's Cathedral, where the funeral mass was held, and finally, lighting the eternal flame at her husband's grave at Arlington National Cemetery. The London Evening Standard put it this way: "Jacqueline Kennedy has given the American people...one thing they have always lacked: majesty."

A week after the assassination, she was interviewed by Theodore H. White of Life magazine. In that interview, she bestowed the Kennedy years as the years of "Camelot."For one year following the assassination, she did not make any public appearances. This was because she was observing a year of mourning. During her year of mourning, the only public appearance she made was on May 29, 1964. She attended a mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington on what would have been her husband's 47th birthday.

On October 20, 1968, she married Aristotle Onassis, a Greek-shipping tycoon, in Skorpios, Greece, thus losing her Secret Service protection. When her former brother-in-law Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated three months earlier, Jacqueline decided that Kennedys were being "targeted" and she and her children had to leave the States. So, marriage to Onassis made sense: he had the power to give the protection she wanted; she had the social cache he craved (he ended his affair with opera diva Maria Callas to marry her).

Whatever the marriage was, it wasn't a love match. They rarely spent time together. Though "Ari" got on with Caroline and John, Jr. (his son introduced John to flying; both would die in plane crashes), Jacqueline did not get on with step-daughter Christina Onassis. She spent most of her time traveling and shopping (a hobby that exasperated John Kennedy, who once asked a friend "Is there a 'Shoppers Anonymous'?"). Ari died on March 15, 1975, leaving Jacqueline a very rich widow.

When a paparazzo had photographed Jackie 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.

She spent her latter years as an editor at Doubleday, living in New York City and Martha's Vineyard with Maurice Tempelsman, a Belgian-born married industrialist and diamond merchant. In 1994, she was diagnosed with lymphoma, a form of cancer. She died from this at her Fifth Avenue apartment in her sleep on May 19.

Her funeral on May 23 was televised around the nation, even though it was private, the way she wanted it to be. She was buried beside her assassinated husband at Arlington, which too, was private, but it included remarks from President Bill Clinton. During the service, the two Kennedy children laid flowers on her flower-draped mahogany casket, bidding goodbye to a remarkable era in American history.

Preceded by:

Mamie Eisenhower

First Ladies of the United States

Succeeded by:

Lady Bird Johnson