Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 20, 1994 TAG: 9405200078
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Family members were with her when she died after battling untreatable lymph cancer "with great fortitude."
Onassis, 64, had returned to her Fifth Avenue apartment Wednesday after doctors said "there was nothing more to do for her," said her longtime friend Nancy Tuckerman, who announced the death.
There were women who had more money, more fame or more class, but there was nobody like her.
In the end Jackie O was more than a thin, beautiful socialite with a soft little voice. She was more than the wife and widow of a president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and a Greek tycoon, Aristotle Onassis. She married fame and wealth, but earned respect and admiration.
Onassis had made few public appearances over the last three decades. But everything called attention to her: her wealth, estimated in 1989 to be more than $200 million; her dark, wide-eyed beauty; and her social position, beginning with her Southampton birth and Newport, R.I., childhood.
She was at Kennedy's side when he was shot to death in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
The nation's horror at the assassination turned to grief, then to admiration for the widow's brave, lonely resolve. Many admirers were stunned when in 1968 she married the 62-year-old Onassis. ``Jackie: How Could You?'' one headline demanded.
For several years she played the jet-set wife. But amid reports of marital discord, she was an ocean away, in New York, when he died in a Paris hospital in March 1975.
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier - who pronounced her first name to rhyme with queen - was born July 28, 1929, in the Long Island resort community of Southampton.
She attended Vassar and the Sorbonne before graduating from George Washington University in 1951 with a major in French literature. That year, she became an inquiring photographer for the Washington Times-Herald. While there she interviewed Kennedy, then a Massachusetts senator.
She had no interest in politics, but when they announced their engagement in 1953 Jackie pronounced herself ``the luckiest girl in the world.''
She was 31 when her husband, 12 years older, was elected president. They moved into the White House with their children, Caroline, born in 1957, and John Jr., born less than a month after the election.
The new first lady dedicated herself to redecorating the White House. She hired the first permanent White House curator and organized its first guidebook to raise funds for renovation.
She also traveled and shopped - extravagantly, some said. Thanks to her, pillbox hats, bouffant hairdos, white gloves and Oleg Cassini gowns were the rage.
Although she ranked being a fashion leader ``at the very bottom of the list of things I desire,'' it was part of an appeal that reached around the world.
Onassis began her publishing career in 1975 at Viking Press but left two years later in anger over Viking's publication of a Jeffrey Archer novel in which Ted Kennedy was the target of an assassination attempt.
She moved to Doubleday, where she persuaded singer Michael Jackson to write his memoirs, ``Moonwalk,'' and got controversial ballerina Gelsey Kirkland to write her autobiography, the best-selling ``Dancing on My Grave.''
In the office, she was known for perfect manners and down-to-earth style. She even fetched her own coffee.
``She had developed a suit of armor as if it wasn't happening - as if the waiters weren't staring, people weren't doing double takes,'' recalled Alan Williams, former editorial director at Viking Press.
She was a working woman by choice, not necessity. When Onassis left her only $120,000, she contested his will and won a $26 million settlement from her stepdaughter, Christina.
She owned an apartment overlooking the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a 400-acre oceanfront compound on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts and an estate in the horse country of central New Jersey, where she still rode in hunts.
She was often seen on the arm of her companion, Maurice Tempelsman, a wealthy diamond dealer who helped manage her finances. John Jr., 33, and Caroline, 36, both lawyers, also live in Manhattan.
by CNB