Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 21, 1994 TAG: 9405230161
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press Note: lede
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
She will be buried following a funeral Monday morning at St. Ignatius of Loyola Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan, according to Nancy Tuckerman, her friend and spokeswoman.
Onassis' body remained at her apartment, and Tuckerman said there were no plans for a wake.
Meanwhile, the nation that once mourned with the former first lady mourned for her, with flowers, fond remembrances and tears. She died the way she wanted to, her son said - at home, surrounded by the things she loved.
``She did it in her own way and in her own terms, and we all feel lucky for that,'' a somber John F. Kennedy Jr. told reporters as he left her Fifth Avenue building Friday.
Onassis, 64, the widow of President Kennedy and Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, died Thursday night of complications from lymph cancer that had spread to her brain and liver. She went home from the hospital a day earlier when doctors told her there was nothing more they could do.
``She was surrounded by her friends and family and her books, and the people and the things that she loved,'' her son said. ``We are extremely grateful'' for the outpouring of support, he added.
Shortly after he spoke, an empty coffin was carried into Onassis' the building by black-suited men from the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home. Kennedy, 33, and his sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, 36, followed the coffin inside.
As the arrangements were made, the world remembered the woman known for her sophistication and style in the White House, her fortitude and courage after her husband was slain.
``She captivated our nation and the world with her intelligence, her elegance and her grace,'' President Clinton said.
``I love her. I always love her,'' Paraguayan housekeeper Miguela Yaluk said outside Onassis' green-canopied building. ``She affected me personally ... very deeply in my heart.''
Bouquets of spring flowers - pink tulips, a single white lily, red roses and fragrant lilacs - piled up at the building door, perhaps plucked from Central Park where Onassis once regularly jogged.
``Go with God,'' read an unsigned note.
Dan Scurro, a guard at the nearby Metropolitan Museum of Art, left one pale pink rose tied with white ribbon. ``I wanted something that had a tint of color - the subtle, understated thing she always liked,'' he said.Though three decades had passed and her face had matured with age, many still recalled the young woman in a blood-splattered pink suit and pillbox hat, moments after her husband was slain. They remembered the young widow in black, kissing her husband's flag-draped coffin.
``We grew up in the Kennedy generation. We remember where we were when he died,'' said Rick Gibbons, a tourist from St. Paul, Minn. ``Now, with Jackie dead, it's like the end of an era, the last closing statement.''
by CNB