Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Her father drank and ran through money and other women, and the divorce, when it came in 1940, was reported in detail in the papers. Her mother remarried the stockbroker Hugh Auchincloss, and the Bouvier girls moved into his Virginia estate, where Jacqueline sometimes felt like a Catholic guest in a Protestant house. She rode, read, and learned French, Spanish and Italian. Poughkeepsie bored her, so she spent a year in Grenoble and Paris and finished at George Washington in French literature. She won a Vogue junior editorship over hundreds of applicants and quit after one day, on the managing editor's advice. Then she took $25 a week from the Washington Times-Herald to stop strangers on the street, photograph them, and print what they said.

She was 31 when she moved into a White House she found furnished with undistinguished pieces. She set up a fine arts committee, brought in Henry du Pont and the decorator Sister Parish, wrote personally to families holding pieces that had walked out the door with departing presidents, and got Congress to make White House furnishings the property of the Smithsonian so it could not happen again. She founded the White House Historical Association and the office of White House curator, and paid for the work with a guidebook. On February 14, 1962, she walked 56 million American viewers through the result on CBS with Charles Collingwood. It went to 106 countries and won a Trustees Award at the Emmys — she remains the only first lady with one. She also stopped the demolition of Lafayette Square.

She had a miscarriage in 1955 and a stillborn daughter, Arabella, in 1956. In August 1963 she delivered Patrick five weeks early by emergency Caesarean and he died of hyaline membrane disease two days later, while she was still recovering at Otis Air Force Base. Three months after that she sat in the third row of the car in Dealey Plaza. She refused to change out of the suit, telling Lady Bird Johnson she wanted them to see what they had done to Jack, and stood beside Lyndon Johnson in it while he took the oath. She planned the funeral on Lincoln's model, overruled Robert Kennedy to keep the casket closed, walked in the procession, and lit the flame. One week later she gave Theodore White the Camelot line.

Marrying Aristotle Onassis in 1968 cost her the Secret Service, the public's opinion, and a nickname she never chose. She spent the next 25 years earning it back — nearly 20 as a book editor at Viking and then Doubleday, where she talked Michael Jackson into Moonwalk and pushed the Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West to finish The Wedding. She led the fight that saved Grand Central Terminal. She died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma on May 19, 1994 and was buried at Arlington beside Kennedy, Patrick and Arabella. Her estate came to $43.7 million. Historians polled by Siena College have ranked her third or fourth among first ladies since 2003. The suit stays in the National Archives, unseen until 2103.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's life against the full span of the corpus.

• White House Historical Association company
  Founded to fund and protect the collection she was assembling 1961
• The White House restoration other
  A fine arts committee, a permanent curator, and a guidebook to pay for it 1962
• A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy television
  56 million American viewers, then 106 countries and an Emmy 1962
• The Grand Central Terminal campaign building
  A plaque inside the terminal records her part in stopping the demolition 1978
• Moonwalk, by Michael Jackson book
  She persuaded him to write it, edited it, and supplied the foreword 1988
• The Wedding, by Dorothy West book
  She pressed West to finish it and edited it at Doubleday 1995

• 1940 aged ~11 Her parents divorce and the details run in the papers
• 1951 aged ~22 Graduates from George Washington University in French literature She had spent her junior year at Grenoble and the Sorbonne.
• 1952 aged ~23 Hired as Inquiring Camera Girl at the Washington Times-Herald One of her subjects was six-year-old Tricia Nixon.
• September 12, 1953 aged 24 Marries Senator John F. Kennedy at Newport, Rhode Island Roughly 700 guests at the ceremony and 1,200 at the reception.
• February 14, 1962 aged 32 Leads a televised tour of the restored White House It went out to 56 million Americans and then to 106 countries.
• August 9, 1963 aged 34 Her infant son Patrick dies two days after his birth He had been delivered five weeks early by emergency Caesarean.
• November 22, 1963 aged 34 Stands beside Lyndon Johnson in the blood-stained suit as he is sworn in She had refused to change out of it.
• October 20, 1968 aged 39 Marries Aristotle Onassis and loses Secret Service protection Her standing with the American public fell sharply.
• May 19, 1994 aged 64 Dies at her Fifth Avenue apartment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma

• John F. Kennedy 1917–1963
  35th President whose brief tenure included the Cuban Missile Crisis and the launch of the Apollo program. married to
• Michael Jackson 1958–2009
  Performer whose recordings, choreography, and music videos redefined global pop stardom. edited
• Hillary Clinton b. 1947
  First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, and first woman to win a major party's presidential nomination. advised
• John Kenneth Galbraith 1908–2006
  Economist and public intellectual whose The Affluent Society critiqued American consumerism. urged her tour of India
• Earl Warren 1891–1974
  Chief justice whose Court transformed civil rights, voting, representation, and criminal procedure. took her deposition
• Jane Jacobs 1916–2006
  Writer and activist whose defense of mixed, walkable neighborhoods transformed urban planning. fought the same demolitions