May 19, 1994—Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who made the White House a center of style with her
fashion sense and interior in decoration, then carefully tended to the memory
of John F. Kennedy after his
assassination, died in her New York apartment of non-Hodgkins lymphoma at age
64.
Five years after JFK’s murder, his widow remarried,
to Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis, and in her last decade she lived quietly but
contentedly with diamond importer Maurice Tempelsman. But the public associated
her with her first husband, and she would be buried next to him (and their stillborn child and baby son) at Arlington National Cemetery, with the Eternal Flame burning nearby.
The flame is most appropriate as the symbol of her
post-White House life, not only because she chose this as her final resting
place (as she planned all aspects of JFK’s funeral, patterning it after Abraham Lincoln's), but because she was the
keeper of the flame when it came to his reputation, as the most famous and
fascinating widow in Presidential history.
The Kennedy administration was celebrated as a font
of culture, with events like inviting Nobel Prize winners to the White House.
But the First Lady deserved that reputation far more than her husband.
JFK had earned considerable cachet as a Harvard
undergrad with While England Slept
and as a U.S. Senator with Profiles in
Courage. But as Herbert S. Parmet showed in his account of the President’s
pre-White House years, Jack, Kennedy
received so much editorial assistance (from New
York Times columnist Arthur Krock for the first title, and speechwriter Ted
Sorensen for the second) that his listing as sole author is questionable.
As for his reading matter, though Jackie recalled him reading while walking around and he loved to recite verses that reminded him of his military service, much of his taste ran toward the more pedestrian James Bond.
In contrast, Jackie read both more deeply and
widely: cutting-edge new fiction (Jack Kerouac), as well as such poets as Edna
St. Vincent Millay, Byron, Frost, Langston Hughes, and Constantine Cavafy. Nor
was English her only language for reading: she was fluent in French and Spanish
while also knowing some Italian, German and Polish. That was a boon to her
husband both as he governed and campaigned, since she was as adept in
translating for him research papers on French involvement in Indochina as in
speaking to ethnic blocs in their native languages.
After her husband was inaugurated, Jackie wielded
her cultural influence widely, as she:
*invited writers, painters, poets, and musicians to
perform at the White House;
*used the Executive Mansion to promote such performing
arts organizations as American Ballet Theater, the Metropolitan Opera Studio,
Opera Society of Washington, Interlochen Arts Academy, and American Shakespeare
Festival.
*created the “Concerts for Young People”;
*began discussions with Senator Claiborne Pell that
led to the formation of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Arts;
* advocated for a national center for the performing
arts (which, after his assassination, ended up being named for her husband).
Yet her advocacy for the arts may have been most
visible in her February 1962 TV special, “A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy.” The effect was
threefold, in that it:
*mobilized support for preserving the White House as
a piece of architecture (“Never before had White House interiors been so
affectionately hailed by the public,” wrote historian William Seale in The President’s House);
*helped create a formal mechanism for fostering this
appreciation through the White House Historical Association; and
*transformed, through her breathy voice, immaculate
coiffure and red suit, a deeply shy woman into a superstar every bit a match
for her husband, as she was watched that night by 56 million Americans. (A still
from that special accompanies this blog post.)
The effect was equally striking abroad. No matter
where she traveled—Europe or Latin America—Mrs. Kennedy was received
rapturously. In a perceptive blog post on the Web site of USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy, Madison Jones observes
that Mrs. Kennedy will be remembered “for creating a dominant soft power
dynamic in American politics, and proving to foreign audiences everywhere that
knowledge, appreciation and understanding of other cultures can forge a lasting
bond between nations that improve foreign relations immensely.”
Mrs. Kennedy used her standing as an icon—now
infused with Pieta overtones as the
woman who cradled the body of the martyred President in Dallas—to mold
Americans’ memory of the administration as “Camelot.” Her four-hour interview with reporter-historian Theodore
H. White for Life Magazine, conducted
just a week after the assassination, evoked how Jack loved to listen to the
soundtrack to the Broadway musical about the wise, just and gallant English
ruler.
It also spawned among Kennedy devotees a desire for a “future king” who
would pick up where Jack left off—first brother Bobby, then youngest brother
Ted—with all kinds of twists nobody could have anticipated. Moreover, as noted in James Piereson’s 2013 blog post for the Daily Beast, she created an image of Jack as a liberal idealist
and peacemaker not only somewhat counter to Kennedy’s daily practice as a
politician, but also virtually impossible for his successors to equal.
Other than that, in the years after the
assassination, Mrs. Kennedy largely maintained her silence—not entering into
partisan political warfare or even writing her memoirs. Some of her reluctance
to comment publicly involved trying to protect the two young children she now
had to raise alone; some of it resulted from an attempt to cope with what would
now be regarded as post-traumatic stress syndrome, as she sought help answers
to her grief from a priest and a psychotherapist.
But at least some of her reticence derived from
aristocratic instincts. Jack and Jackie Kennedy lived among the very rich,
which involved the wife refusing to dignify rumors of a husband’s infidelity or
other trespasses. Time correspondent
Hugh Sidey noted that JFK liked Lord David Cecil’s biography of a Regency rake,
Young Melbourne, because it described
“a society of young, wealthy aristocrats who devoted themselves honorably and
tirelessly to service to their queen and empire—and on their weekends to
themselves and their pleasures.”
The upshot of it was that if the rumors weren’t
publicly acknowledged, they would fade out of consciousness—for all intents and
purposes, disappearing. In a nation without royalty—fought, explicitly, against
royalty—Mrs. Kennedy’s decades-long taciturnity about her husband’s dalliances
enabled her to maintain her own queenly mystique.
Whether reserve, class, desire for privacy, or some
combination of these, that attitude led many to remain stoutly loyal to her,
perhaps none more so than the Secret Service personnel who guarded her and her husband.
It wasn’t until after her death, three
decades after Dallas, that several on this detail opened up about Jack’s
constant, reckless White House trysts for Seymour Hersh in The Dark Side of Camelot—or how some, like Clint Hill, thought the
President had made it far more difficult to protect him against snipers in
Dallas by riding in an open motorcade.
No comments:
Post a Comment