Jacqueline Onassis (July 28, 1929 - May 19, 1994) was the wife of United States President John F. Kennedy from 1953 to his death in 1963.
She served as First Lady of the United States from 1961 until her husband's assassination. She was married to Aristotle Onassis from 1968 until his death in 1975. In later years she had a successful career as a book editor.
She preferred her first name to be pronounced in the French manner.
After her marriage to Kennedy she was known as Jacqueline Kennedy or Jackie Kennedy; upon her marriage to Onassis and thereafter she was known as Jacqueline Onassis, Jackie Onassis, or more informally as Jackie O.
Jacqueline was born in Southampton, New York, in a world of wealth and privilege.
She was the daughter of Wall Street Stockbroker, John Vernou Bouvier III and his wife Janet Norton Lee. She had a younger sister, Caroline Lee, born in 1933, and later known as Lee Radziwill.
The name "Jacqueline Lee" 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 their heritage, with Bouviers making claims they descended from the royal Fontaines in France and the Lees declaring they were part of the "Virginia Lees".
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 spent her early years between New York City and Easthampton, New York at the Bouvier Family estate "Lasata", where she became at a very early age an accomplished equestrienne. As a child, she also enjoyed drawing, reading, and writing poems.
Her parents divorce in 1940. While he never remarried, her mother married her second husband, Standard Oil heir Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr. in 1942, and had two children with him, Janet Auchincloss Jennings and James Auchincloss.
Jacqueline lived with her mother's new family, dividing her time between her stepfather's two vast estates, Merrywood in Mclean, Virginia, and Hammersmith Farm, in Newport, Rhode Island. In later years, Jacqueline's mother married Bingham Morris.
Jacqueline entered Chapin in New York City in 1935 for kindergarten and the early years of grammar school. From 1942 to 1944 she attended the Holton-Arms School in Washington, DC through her first year of high school; she transferred to Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut for the remainder of high school, graduating in 1947.
She spent her first two years of college at Vassar in Poughkeepsie, New York, and spent her junior year (1949-1950) in France at the University of Grenoble and The Sorbonne in a program through Smith College. She returned to The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., graduating in 1951 with a B.A in French Literature.
Jacqueline was named "Debutante of the Year" for the 1947-48 season.
In 1951, she took her first job as the "Inquiring Camera Girl" for The Washington Times-Herald.
Her job was to ask witty questions of people she met in Washington, D.C. The questions and amusing responses would then appear alongside the interviewee's photograph in the newspaper.
During that period she was briefly engaged to a young stockbroker, John Husted, but the engagement was called off after three months.
Jacqueline Bouvier and then Congressman John Kennedy were in the same social circle and attended the same functions several times between 1948 and 1952 including a wedding of a mutual friend on Long Island in 1948, a dinner party in May 1951 at the home of Charles and Martha Bartlett in Washington, DC, and a large event in Palm Beach, Florida in the winter of 1951.
After her engagement with Husted was called off, the Bartletts hosted another dinner party on May 8, 1952 and her romance with Kennedy began.
They were married on September 12, 1953, at Newport, Rhode Island. The wedding was considered the social event of the season with an estimated 700 guests at the ceremony and 900 at the lavish reception that followed at Hammersmith Farm.
After a brief honeymoon, they returned to Washington, DC.
Her husband had serious health issues, suffering from Addison's Disease, and from crippling back pain from a wartime injury. He underwent two spinal surgeries which proved almost fatal due to complications. While he was recovering from the surgeries, Jacqueline 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.
In January 1960, Senator John Kennedy announced his candidacy for Presidency of the United States, and began campaigning around the country. Jackie took 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.
Shortly after, Jacqueline learned that she was pregnant and due to previous problem pregnancies, her doctor instructed her to stay 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 a stark contrast from her recent predecessors who were all much older.
She was not only young and attractive, but intelligent and cultivated, and possessed an innate sense of style and elegance. Though she was sometimes criticized for her aloofness, expensive tastes, and European ways, the American public quickly took to her, and made her its idol.
Like any First Lady, she was forced into the public spotlight with everything in her life under scrutiny. 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.
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 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.
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."
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 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.
She chose the period of the Madison administration, returning much of the original French Empire style furniture.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 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.
On February 14, 1962, Mrs. Kennedy took American television viewers on a tour of the White House with Charles Collingwood of CBS.
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 ability to speak French.
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 Galbraith's journals and memoirs.
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 Fort 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. She told Lady Bird Johnson, "I want them to see what they have done to Jack".
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.
A week after the assassination, the President's widow was interviewed in Hyannisport on November 29 by Theodore H. White of Life magazine.
The steadiness and courage of Jacqueline Kennedy during the assassination and funeral won her admiration around the world.
Following his 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 after the assassination.
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 for her children. 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
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 (decommissioned in 2007), in Newport News, Virginia, and a memorial in Hyannisport, Massachusetts.
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 Jimmy 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.
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.
Jacqueline was with her children in New York when Onassis died in 1975.
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, living in New York City, Martha's Vineyard and the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis, Massachusetts.
Jacqueline Onassis 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.
In January 1994, Onassis was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer.
Her diagnosis was announced to the public in February.
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.
She died in her sleep at 10:15 pm on Thursday, May 19, at the age of 64.
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.
Through the years during and after she was First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy was a fashion icon.
Many women tried to copy her clean suits, dresses and hairstyles.
She had a tendency to wear French designers like Chanel, Givenchy, and Christian Dior but later made American designers like Lilly Pulitzer and Oleg Cassini well-known after wearing their clothes while being First Lady.
Still today Jackie is known for an impeccable style and is thought of as the most stylish of the First Ladies.
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:
A high school named Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School for International Careers, was dedicated by New York City in 1995, the first high school named in her honor.
Central Park's main reservoir was renamed in her honor as the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir.
On the campus of her alma mater George Washington University, the residence hall located on the southeast corner of I and 23rd streets NW in Washington, D.C. was renamed Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis Hall.
Near the White House, a garden was renamed the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden in her honor, shortly after the assassination of her husband.
There is an award and a school at American Ballet Theatre named after her, in honor of her childhood study of ballet.
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