JFK+50: Volume 6, No. 1954
JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS DIED 22 YEARS AGO TODAYNew York City (JFK+50) Former First Lady and wife of the 35th President of the United States, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died twenty-two years ago today, May 19, 1994, at her apartment on Fifth Avenue here in New York City.
Mrs. Onassis, who was 64 years old, had been undergoing treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a form of cancer of the lymphatic system, since January.
In recent years, she had worked as an editor for Doubleday Books in Manhattan.
Described by the New York Times as "a quintessentially private person, poised and glamorous, but shy and aloof," Jackie O "almost never granted interviews on her past," and had not publicly spoken about John F. Kennedy since 1964.
In 1968, news of Jackie's marriage to Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis came as a shock to many people throughout the world, but in the end the former First Lady chose to buried next to her first husband, President John F. Kennedy, at Arlington National Cemetery. Also, the Metropolitan Museum of Art named an exhibit "on her indelible style 'Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years.'"
The office of Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy issued the following statement upon Mrs. Onassis's death...
"Jackie was part of our family and part of our hearts for forty wonderful and unforgettable years, and she will never really leave us."
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994) was born in Southampton, NY to Wall Street stockbroker John Vernou Bouvier III & Janet Norton Lee. JLB attended Vassar College and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. She earned a BA in French Literature at Georgetown University in 1951.
JLB married Senator John F. Kennedy in 1953. They had two children, Caroline and John F. Kennedy Jr. As one of the youngest 1st Ladies in history, she redecorated the White House and traveled the world. After JFK's death, she forever placed his presidency in the world's memory by comparing it to Camelot.
SOURCES
"Death of a First Lady; Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Dies of Cancer at 64," by Robert D. McFadden, The New York Times, May 20, 1994, www.nytimes.com/
"Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House," by Sally Bedell Smith, Random House, New York, 2004.
Jacqueline Kennedy
at a State Dinner
May 22, 1962
Photo by Robert Knudsen
JFK Library Image
