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Jackie was born July 28th, 1929(6 weeks later than expected) to parents John Vernou Bouiver III and Janet Lee Bouiver. Jackie was named for her father. Jackie was joined by a sister, Caroline Lee, in 1933. Her father, nicknamed "Black Jack", was a playboy stockbroker whose womanizing led to his eventual divorce from Janet when Jackie was a young girl. While Black Jack never remarried, Janet wed the wealthy Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr. As a child, Jacqueline became a well-trained equestrienne and began a lifelong love affair with horseback riding. She won several trophies and medals for her riding, and the ample land at the Auchincloss's Hammersmith Farm gave her something to appreciate. She loved reading, painting, writing poems, and shared a warm relationship with her father. Her relationship with her mother, though, was often distant. queline was engaged to a young stockbroker, John Husted, in December 1951. However, this engagement was called off in March 1952, at the advice of Jackie's mother, Janet, who felt Husted was not affluent enough.[citation needed] Jacqueline first met Senator John F. Kennedy at a dinner party in Washington on May 10, 1952. The dinner party was organized by mutual friends, Martha and Charles Bartlett. Hoping to talk to Jackie privately after dinner, JFK followed her outside. When he arrived at her 1947 black Mercury convertible, he turned around upon seeing a man leaning on the car. As it turned out, the man was an acquaintance of Jackie’s who just happened by and, recognizing her car, decided to wait for her to come out so he could say hello. He had no idea he had stymied a lot of hard work by the Bartletts, who had hoped to set up JFK and Jackie. Nine months later, the Bartletts hosted another party, reintroducing JFK and Jackie. This time, JFK asked Jackie to join him on a double date the following weekend. They went to a carnival in Georgetown. Upon Jacqueline's meeting Senator John Kennedy again, they began dating. Their romance progressed into engagement, and finally marriage.Jacqueline Bouvier and John F. Kennedy married on September 12, 1953, at Newport, Rhode Island. Their reception was held at Hammersmith Farm, with guests numbering nearly 2,000 people.Together they had four children: a daughter called Arabella Kennedy (stillborn, 1956), Caroline Bouvier Kennedy (b. 1957), John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. (1960–1999), and Patrick Bouvier Kennedy (born and died in August, 1963).The marriage had its difficulties arising from John F. Kennedy's affairs and debilitating health problems, both of which were hidden from the public.As First Lady (a title she wasn't fond of, saying it sounded like the name of a horse), she was forced into the public spotlight with everything in her life under scrutiny. Jacqueline knew her children would be in the public eye, yet she was determined to protect them from the press and give them a normal childhood. She allowed very few photographs to be taken of them and when she was gone, the President would let the White House photographer Cecil Stoughton snap away.After Patrick's death in August 1963, Jackie kept a low profile at the White House. She made her first official appearance in November when President Kennedy asked her to travel to Texas with him for campaign purposes. She was sitting next to him when he was shot and killed in the Dallas motorcade on November 22, 1963. She led the Nation in mourning during his lying-in-state at the U.S. Capitol, during the funeral service at St. Matthew's Cathedral, and finally, while lighting the eternal flame at her husband's grave at Arlington National Cemetery. The London Evening Standard reported: "Jacqueline Kennedy has given the American people ... one thing they have always lacked: majesty.A week after the assassination, she was interviewed by Theodore White of Life magazine. In that interview, she compared the Kennedy years in the White House to King Arthur's mythical Camelot, after the Lerner and Loewe musical then playing on Broadway, telling White that Jack had loved the show. She also told White, "Now he is a legend when he would have preferred to be a man."On October 20, 1968, Jackie married Aristotle Onassis, a Greek shipping tycoon, on Skorpios, Greece. Four and a half months earlier her brother-in-law, Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, had been assassinated in Los Angeles. At that point, Jacqueline decided 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 wanted, while she had the social cachet he craved. He ended his affair with opera diva Maria Callas to marry her. Jackie lost her entitlement to Secret Service protection and franking privilege, to which a widow of a president of the United States is entitled, upon her marriage to Onassis.She spent her later years as an editor at Doubleday, living in New York City and Martha's Vineyard with Maurice Tempelsman, a Belgian-born, married industrialist and diamond merchant.In January 1994, she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer but it was not announced to the public until February of that year. The family was initially optimistic and her daughter Caroline made Mrs. Onassis promise her that she would ditch smoking, which she did. She continued her work with Doubleday though she curtailed her schedule greatly. By April 1994, Mrs. Onassis knew the end was near as she had a bout with pneumonia, an ulcer and the spreading of her cancer. She made her last trip home from the hospital on May 18, 1994 and died the following night at her Fifth Avenue apartment in her sleep at 10:15 pm on May 19 of that year. Onassis was only 64. Her funeral on May 23 was televised around the nation and world, even though it was essentially a private funeral, as was her own wish. She was buried beside her assassinated husband at Arlington.
Music from the musical:Camelot & Bongo Bongo Bongo.
Several actresses have portrayed Jacqueline Onassis:Francesca Annis in Onassis: The Richest Man in the World Jacqueline Bisset in America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Junior Story Blair Brown in Kennedy Margaret Colin in the play Jackie: An American Life Robin Curtis in LBJ: The Early Years Sarah Michelle Gellar in A Woman Named Jackie (Gellar played a young Jackie) Jill Hennessy in Jackie, Joan and Ethel Roma Downey in A Woman Named Jackie Jaclyn Smith in Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Joanne Whalley in Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis
Farewell, Jackie: A Portrait of Her Final Days, Edward Klein, Viking Books, 2004.All Too Human: The Love Story of Jack and Jackie Kennedy, St. Martin's Press, 2003.Just Jackie: Her Private Years, Ballatine Books, 1999.The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America's First Family for 150 Years, Pocket Books, 1996.The Death of a President, by William Manchester, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1967."What Would Jackie Do? An Inspired Guide to Distinctive Living," by Shelly Branch and Sue Callaway, Gotham Books, 2006.
My Father, Jack "Black Jack" BouiverI edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4