Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis remains a defining figure in American cultural and political history. She is remembered for her style and for the powerful men she married, but she was far more than her clothes and her husbands.
Many historians believe Jackie will be remembered as one of the great American first ladies. Her transformation did not happen suddenly. It was almost as if two people merged into one: Jackie Kennedy and Jackie O. How she reconciled these different phases of her life has always fascinated observers.
Some compare her historical standing to Cleopatra. Cleopatra was beautiful, but she was also a clever woman, and so was Jackie. Her role as first lady turned her into a first-class celebrity. She appeared regularly on the covers of leading magazines, and her photographs were in demand around the world.
With all the success, however, came suffering. The assassination in Dallas was an extremely difficult time, but Jackie had a laser-like focus. She realized she had a mission to care for Jack Kennedy's legacy. In private she could not sleep and she wept, but during the day she did a remarkable job preserving the dignity of the presidency.
Her personal life was shattered. More tragically, just a few years later she had to endure the same experience again with Bobby Kennedy. Yet Jackie was rarely alone. Her younger sister Lee was always there.
Lee supported Jackie as first lady and was always present for her. People in the White House said they were always happy when Lee came, because Jackie was always happy. The sisters could relax and spend time together, smoking, drinking, whispering and gossiping.
From the beginning their lives were intertwined. It is impossible to understand one without the other. It is a story of rivalry and resentment, love and loss.
Jacqueline Bouvier was born on July 28, 1929. Her sister Lee arrived four years later. Lee and Jackie were born into an upper-class American family. They grew up in New York City on the Upper East Side and spent summers in the Hamptons.
Their childhood was filled with horses, ballet and reading many books. It was almost like an eighteenth-century English upbringing. They were raised in a Park Avenue apartment built by their grandfather, a real estate developer. It was one of the most beautiful buildings in the city.
They had plenty of money, and they had parents who did not love each other very much. This was a great source of anxiety for both girls. Competition between the sisters was fierce. Each sister measured herself against the other, and more often than not, Lee found herself in the shadow.
Whether it was school grades, piano recitals, horseback riding or even their father's affection, the rivalry persisted. Black Jack Bouvier, Jack Bouvier, was one of the few people who managed to lose money on Wall Street at the height of the boom in the 1920s. He was not like Joseph P. Kennedy.
He was truly a man about town. He dressed beautifully and reportedly had different drivers on call at all times. He was always impeccably tailored and belonged to a whole set of New York clubs. He was a club man.
His relationship with his daughters was very close. In fact, he spoiled them badly. He always sang their praises to other family members, to the point that they felt a little annoyed by it. He took them shopping, and from Jack Bouvier they got their sense of style.
He gave them a sense of what fashion could be. He told them clothes may make the man, but they also make the woman. Both daughters learned those lessons well. He was a very permissive father, and at least for Jackie, he served as the ideal model of the husband she would want.
Their parents' marriage was troubled. Jack's business deals turned from profitable to disastrous. After years of constant argument, their mother Janet filed for divorce in the summer of 1940. She would later marry Hugh Auchincloss, a wealthy American stockbroker.
Jackie and Lee now became members of one of the richest families in the United States. But life at the Auchincloss farm in Virginia was far from simple. Their second stepfather was a father to three children from previous marriages. The Bouvier sisters were newcomers and outsiders.
They were very much defined by the fact that their mother had separated, which was completely unacceptable in those days. It was in all the newspapers. They were almost like two little orphan girls who had to stay together.
During that period, not many people got divorced. They were mocked at school, and then reports about it appeared in the paper. It was a very difficult time for both of them.
As Jackie and Lee approached their twenties, the subject of marriage came to dominate their lives. The environment they grew up in certainly required an education, but the real goal was to make a good marriage, to marry a man of a certain social standing who was well off.
They were not, in the American terms of those days, socially great, because America was incredibly snobbish and clannish at that time. If you had Irish or Jewish blood, you were looked down upon. Of course, there was Irish blood on both sides.
They were expected to marry well. Janet pushed them toward it, to marry a man with real money, because her husbands, who were supposed to have had money at some point, had lost everything. Janet had enormous social ambitions for these girls, and she was determined to bring them into the highest level of society.
First Jackie and then Lee made their debuts at society parties, glittering occasions where the children of the wealthy and influential could meet. At this time it was the younger sister Lee who shone more. She achieved something similar to Jackie's achievement when she was crowned debutante queen of the season, but she was widely considered the more beautiful, more elegant and easier to deal with of the sisters.
In April 1953, at the age of 20, Lee married Michael Canfield. Rumored to be the illegitimate son of the Duke of Kent, Canfield was tall and handsome, distinguished and popular. He seemed like the ideal husband.
There was speculation, however, that Lee was less interested in her new husband than in the idea of beating her older sister. Indeed, Lee's wedding increased the family's worries about Jackie. The older Bouvier sister was taking her time finding a husband.
An engagement to a young stockbroker had been arranged in 1952, but Jackie broke it off after only a few months. She realized she did not love her fiancé or the life he promised her. What was expected of them was not only what Jackie expected of herself, though.
Jackie did not want to become another society lady in New York City. She had different views about herself than her mother had about her. There were not great expectations for either of them to be professionals in any way.
But the interesting thing about what Jackie did was that she entered a profession. She was a newspaper photographer in Washington. She was an extremely curious person, so journalism was going to be a wonderful career for her.
Jackie had a newspaper column and interviewed politicians, celebrities and people in the street. She always had interesting questions. She took it seriously, to her family's dismay.
But Jackie was at a dangerous age. Each new debutante season brought younger girls onto the marriage market. Even Jackie's warring father and mother found rare agreement in their worries. Jackie was being left behind.
But then came John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Senator Kennedy was like George Clooney in 1953. He was the bomb. He had a magnetic way of attracting women, and Jackie was interested in politics.
She saw a man she would never be bored with, and he saw a woman he would never be bored with. She was not only a beautiful woman but also a smart woman. It was mutual.
Jack was really attracted to her. She was very beautiful. She had gone to the right schools, which mattered in the Kennedy world. What also motivated him was the fact that his father really liked her.
Kennedy had just announced his candidacy for the Senate. But his growing reputation as a womanizer was becoming a problem. Politics required him to be married. His father Joe, the former ambassador to Britain and the manager of his son's career, saw Jackie as the ideal society wife he needed.
Kennedy proposed in June 1953. Only two months after Lee's triumphant marriage to Michael Canfield, Jackie was now engaged to one of the most eligible men in the country. Once again, she had left her younger sister in the shadow.
The wedding of Senator John F. Kennedy recalled the social grandeur Newport had once enjoyed. The former ambassador and Mrs. Joseph Kennedy, the groom's parents, were among the figures present who made this the society wedding of the year.
For onlookers outside the church, it was a real wedding out of a storybook. A radiant bride, the former Jacqueline Bouvier, and a handsome groom. With a beautiful wife and a rising political star, the future looked bright for the young senator from Massachusetts.
On September 12, 1953, Jackie Bouvier married John F. Kennedy at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Newport, Rhode Island. Among the hundreds of celebrants that day was Jackie's younger sister, Lee. She had been married only five months earlier, to the publisher Michael Canfield in April of that year.
But Lee was growing increasingly disappointed with her choice. Lee and her husband moved to London, where they enjoyed a busy social schedule. But the marriage was unhappy.
Lee began an affair with the Polish aristocrat Stas Radziwill. He had come to London in 1946. She was 19 years younger than him. But Radziwill's old-world manners, his wealth and his aristocratic connections seduced the beautiful young American.
He was a Polish prince. He was not as rich as she would have liked, because ultimately he was Polish and had to leave his country. But he knew everyone at a high level and he really loved her. He was an older man, elegant and charming, European.
The funny thing is, when Lee's mother met him, she said, my God, you are marrying the older version of your father. Back home, Jackie's marriage to her handsome senator husband was also fraught with trouble.
In 1955 she suffered a miscarriage, and the following August she endured the pain of a stillbirth. Her husband, however, did not allow these setbacks or his chronic health problems to stop him from pursuing his favorite hobby.
John Kennedy was perhaps a man of his time and social circumstances. He clearly loved women. They were a diversion, they took his mind off things. In fact, John Kennedy had no other vices. He drank very moderately. He nursed a scotch all day. He did not really smoke.
Like his father and his brother, this was part of the Kennedy men's world. Jack Kennedy's sexuality was not normal to that degree. It was obvious. But even then, there was a lot of it.
Jackie thought a little as most women think: I will change him after marriage. But she was well aware of it. She took a European view that if he strayed, yes, but as long as he came back to her and her children every night, that was what mattered.
She knew everything that was happening everywhere. Part of it was that she was raised in a certain way, where a woman was supposed to behave in a certain way, and a wife was supposed to behave in a certain way. She knew what that was. She also did not intend to embarrass his administration by revealing any of it.
She was devastated by it. She was constantly trying to find a way to hold things together and to appreciate the special circumstances she was living in.
In London, Lee left her husband, Michael Canfield, to start a new life with the Polish aristocrat Stas Radziwill. She was already pregnant when the couple married on March 19, 1959. They moved into a house near Buckingham Palace, and Lee immediately began renovating it.
But even as she embarked on this happy new phase of her life, Jackie and her husband were at the beginning of something much greater. In July 1960, Kennedy won the Democratic nomination for president with Lyndon Johnson as his running mate.
Kennedy began his campaign against his Republican opponent, the incumbent vice president Richard Nixon. This would be the closest presidential contest since 1916. At this stage, Jackie was pregnant again.
But that was not the only reason for her limited role in her husband's campaign. The Irish gang around John Kennedy was not convinced by her. They worried that Jackie was too foreign, too European, too French, too upper class, and that the average American woman would not be able to connect with her.
So they kept her off the stage for a long time. But they soon learned she was his greatest asset. When he was speaking in Boston, for example, she spoke Italian with Italians. When she went down to Louisiana, she got up and began adding more details and finished the entire speech in French.
She also talked about her personal background, saying she was French and her family had French heritage. But she knew how to connect with people. Her role was really to be the princess in waiting and to add a touch of elegance to what was sometimes a dirty, boring business.
On November 8, 1960, Kennedy won by the narrowest of victories. Jackie would be the new first lady of the United States. She was only 31 years old.
Jackie was actually afraid of the White House, the whole idea. She did not like the title at first, first lady. Everyone knows she thought it sounded like a horse. She did not like it.
So on the morning he won, at eight or nine in the morning, they were saying, my God, he won. He got California. She put on an old raincoat and went for a walk alone on the beach, because she knew. She knew her history, she knew politics, and she knew her life was going to change.
Seventeen days after the election, the new first lady went into early labor and gave birth to John Kennedy Jr., the younger brother of Caroline, who had been born nearly three years earlier. The new baby had underdeveloped lungs, and an incubator was his home during the first weeks of his life.
Lee, too, was facing difficulties caused by premature birth. Her second child was born three months early. This meant Lee could not travel to Washington for Kennedy's inauguration.
While Lee struggled with depression, Jackie adapted to her new life as a global celebrity. The press adored her youth and her beautiful style. When she accompanied her husband on his first overseas trip, there was as much interest in Jackie as there was in the president. Newspapers called her the first lady of fashion.
Jackie gained admiration and affection around the world for the same reasons America truly valued her as first lady. She was clear, she was young and active. She had a forward-looking vision of how America and the world would evolve.
She was a woman who had spent a long time in Europe and traveled around the world. She loved exploring new cultures. Jackie made connecting with people her work when she represented the United States abroad.
She would not just study a country's culture. She studied how they dressed and the colors they liked. So when she went to India, she wore pink because a senior fashion editor told her, Jackie, pink is the navy blue of India, so wear a lot of pink.
She wore wonderful clothes. She spoke languages. She had tremendous grace and intelligence in presenting herself. She was truly what Sinatra called her: the queen of America.
The stunning success of the foreign tour must have been difficult for Lee, whose refined taste in elegance had always distinguished her from Jackie. Jackie had now become a symbol of international elegance.
Lee's marriage to Stas Radziwill was also strained. They argued constantly. In the midst of this unhappiness and insecurity, Lee began an affair with Aristotle Socrates Onassis, a notorious Greek shipping magnate. Unknown to everyone, Onassis would become hugely important in Jackie's life.
Meanwhile, Jackie was asked to accompany her husband on a visit to Texas. Jackie's performance was closely watched despite her success abroad. There were still doubts about her connection with the domestic public. This trip to Texas, however, would have a devastating effect on Jackie's life.
Lee Bouvier Radziwill was at her home in London on November 22, 1963. She knew her sister, first lady Jackie Kennedy, was in Texas with her husband on an important political visit to the southern state. It was early evening when the news came from Dallas.
Jackie's husband, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated. From a high window came the shot that changed American history. The confusion was indescribable. Both the president and Governor Connally were hit.
As they were taken to the hospital, swarms of police and FBI agents searched for the killer. Jackie was beside her husband in an open car when his head exploded. The assassination itself was a horrifying tragedy for everyone. It is incredible how anyone could live through that.
She never really got over it. The world shared the grief. The assassination was truly a global event. Most people of that generation can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when it happened. It was terrifying.
It is terrifying even to talk about post-traumatic stress or whatever it was. It does not even begin to discuss it. You also have to think that she and her husband had made many plans for the future, to improve the country and move forward. And then it ended. It just ended like that.
It was not just the loss of her husband. The White House ended, and all the dreams that came with it. Lee traveled to Washington immediately and was beside her sister throughout the following days.
The funeral took place on November 25, 1963. The day before, Kennedy's flag-draped coffin lay in state in the United States Capitol. Thousands of people lined up to pay their respects. A memorial Mass was held at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. President Kennedy was then buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Jackie's calm and dignified behavior earned her widespread respect. The way she conducted herself throughout the funeral held the country together. Everyone was falling apart. It was a terrible time for our country.
A British correspondent said that Jack Kennedy gave the American people something they had not had before: majesty. She brought great dignity and sorrow to the occasion. Standing at the grave, like a marble statue in a black veil, with the two children holding her hands, the images spread around the world. She did a remarkable job preserving the dignity of the presidency.
Jackie became a saint. She could do no wrong. America was enjoying great innocence at the time. Who would have thought that some madman, a little man weighing about 120 pounds, could kill the strongest, most attractive, charismatic, brilliant leader?
To 190 million Americans, he was president. To those three, he was a loving husband and a devoted father. Jackie was traumatized by what she witnessed. She recounted her version of the assassination again and again in grim, vivid detail.
Barely sleeping, she became depressed and thought about suicide. Even those closest to Jackie found her behavior increasingly difficult. Her sister Lee was a great support to her.
But there was one person who understood better than the rest. Bobby, John Kennedy's younger brother, became a surrogate father to Jackie's children. He had already taken on the mantle of leader of the Kennedy brothers.
He was very close to Jackie and the children, and they truly looked on him as a father figure. They could talk to each other about their loss and did not have to explain. He died and we will not see him again. They loved him very much, and that bound them to each other.
As Jackie struggled through the months, the American people longed to leave the shock of Kennedy's death behind. Lee also wanted to move forward with her life. She often felt constrained by her informal role in the presidential family. Now she could carve out a life of her own.
The writer Truman Capote was a friend of Lee. She was one of the group of beautiful and charming women he referred to as his swans. He pushed her toward an acting career for which she had no formal training. It would ultimately end in embarrassment.
Capote was a great admirer of Lee. He admired Lee more than Jackie. There was a time when she presented herself as a photographer and took pictures, and then she was on the road with the Rolling Stones, spending time with those men.
She was trying to carve a path for herself, because the old days when a woman could be very beautiful, marry well and have a good time were ending. She wanted to be a woman who did something.
Truman Capote was building her up, telling her that if she wanted to become an actress, he would get a play by Tennessee Williams, they would open it in Chicago, Kenneth would do her hair, Yves Saint Laurent would design the costumes. It became a full production.
Lee could not simply say she would take acting lessons, study with so-and-so and then maybe try a small role. Her first role was on television. On the first night of her career as a lead actress in "The Philadelphia Story" in 1967, Lee was paralyzed with fear.
She seemed like part of the role, certainly, but she could not act. The reviews were terrible. After another attempt to appear in a television film that was heavily criticized on ABC in early 1968, she left acting forever.
Jackie, meanwhile, tried to rebuild her life. She moved away from Washington and bought an apartment in Manhattan at 1045 Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. With her two children, she tried to settle into a life away from politics.
But still very much in the public consciousness, she became a target for the photographer Ron Galella. He was one of the few photographers based in New York. He lived in the north Bronx, about 12 miles from midtown Manhattan, and spent a full day working.
His routine was to develop film the night before and sell it. In the morning it was marketing. He would go to the fan magazines. They picked pictures of all celebrities, not just Jackie or Liz Taylor, Doris Day, Liza Minnelli, Calvin Klein. All these stars were hot. They would get a thousand dollars for a cover.
It was big marketing in the morning. Then he would go near Jackie's place on Fifth Avenue and wait for Jackie to go shopping. She would buy shoes. She did not even know he was there. Great shots.
He was obsessed with her. Obsessed because he did not have a girlfriend. He was not married. New York was a wonderful place. He spent the whole day from morning to night.
Ron's pictures would keep Jackie in the spotlight, but they soon became an unwanted nuisance in her life. At this time, though, he was just another photographer.
Jackie was still trying to adjust to John Kennedy's death, but her suffering deepened in the summer of 1968, when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated at a Los Angeles hotel. This would be a year of widespread social unrest in the United States.
It is hard for us now to imagine that America was burning. It was on fire. Inner cities were exploding, there were riots in the streets. Detroit, New York, Washington, D.C. were burning. All these crazy things were happening. Bobby was assassinated. Martin Luther King was assassinated.
It is entirely understandable that Jackie was terrified. She said that if they are killing Kennedys, then my children are next. If Jackie was looking for an escape from the traumas of 1968, she could not have chosen a more shocking way out.
Only four months after Bobby Kennedy's assassination, Jackie married again. Her new husband was very familiar to her sister Lee. He was the 62-year-old Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, Lee's former lover.
The impending marriage of the former president's widow to the Greek shipowner must have been one of the best-kept secrets for years. It certainly surprised many people. As the bride and groom headed to their luxury yacht, the Christina, reports indicated a state of panic among the Kennedy family.
The Vatican also frowned. Mrs. Kennedy said a Vatican official was old and smart enough to know well that she was violating Roman Catholic Church law. Onassis had visited the White House. He was also one of the first visitors to the White House after the assassination.
People also believed that Onassis was always looking for an angle with Jackie. It was only after Robert Kennedy's assassination that he felt he had a window and could move on her. She certainly loved him, but he also opened her life to much broader horizons.
She was no longer subject to the Kennedy family. He also had his own security force. Onassis could take care of her. The idea of owning an island and a yacht where he could literally sail her away from all her problems and take her to this private island, a place where she could be secluded, was incredibly appealing.
Onassis offered her the security and privacy she craved. But her relationship with Ari would cause a rift in the close relationship between Jackie and her sister. Lee had hoped to marry him. Her marriage to Prince Radziwill was about to end.
She could not react well. She was beside herself with resentment and anger. The American people loved Jackie. She was on a pedestal. But when she wanted to marry Onassis, she was warned: do not marry Onassis. You will be brought down from that pedestal by the American people. She said it is cold and lonely up there. I do not care.
Her new marriage to Onassis was enough to change the public's view of Jackie at first. But as their relationship continued, she would move smoothly from being Jackie Kennedy, the grieving widow of the former president, to Jackie O, a global fashion icon.
Wherever she traveled, however, grief seemed to find her. Jackie made New York home for herself and her children, although her husband never gained permanent residence there. Although life on Manhattan's Upper East Side offered some privacy, she was still a major target for photographers.
Knowing full well that pictures with her face covered were less attractive, Jackie often wore large sunglasses to frustrate the pesky photographers. Ron Galella's growing obsession with Jackie began to become very annoying. But his stubborn persistence would give the world one of the most famous images of Jackie.
How he got that picture was that there was a model, Joey Smith, who needed portfolio pictures. He said, let's go to the park. Maybe I will run into Jackie and get some money. He photographed her across Fifth Avenue, and there came Jackie. She did not see them.
Then he made a brilliant decision: he got into a taxi, because if he ran after her she would see him wearing glasses, and he would never get a great picture. He rolled down the back window. He got two shots of Jackie, but she did not hear the click of the camera or anything else because it was nearly five o'clock and there was a lot of traffic.
Then the driver became interested in Jackie and honked the horn. He did not even ask him to. It was luck. She turned around, and the camera was in front of his face, and she gave him the Mona Lisa smile, which he loved. The Mona Lisa smile is the beginning of a smile, it does not show teeth. That is the best kind of smile there is.
He got out of the taxi. Immediately, she recognized him, put on her sunglasses and started walking. He had another block of walking. Jackie was angry. She headed toward him. Are you satisfied with yourself? Yes, thank you. Goodbye.
For Jackie, Ron's constant presence would cause increasing distress. She realized that her pictures were all part of her fame, but she wanted her children to remain anonymous. Always eager to get a great picture, Ron photographed Jackie in all areas of her life, which meant Caroline and John Jr. They were often targeted.
On a number of occasions, Jackie asked her bodyguards to chase Ron away. Ron felt his livelihood was at risk, or perhaps he was just following his instinct for big publicity. He decided he would back off. The result would be a continuing dispute that would last nearly a decade.
He got pictures of John Jr. on a bike, and her on a bike, on a pedestrian path. The reason she said she smashed this camera, Mr. Connolly, the agent, was because she was with John Jr. and she did not want it published. She sent two agents to get the film, and they took him to the police station.
He was placed under harassment by Jackie. The judge dismissed the cases. He did not know who was harassed, but the case was dismissed. There was nothing. He paid his lawyer $450 and sent her the bill. His lawyer said, bill her, and she never paid or answered. And so began all the court proceedings.
It was a big experience. He was the plaintiff. He sued her for interfering with his livelihood as a photographer. It was a big legal battle in 1972, lasting 26 days, and it was like a circus. It was crazy.
He could not win the case anyway because the judge, Irving Ben Cooper, had been appointed by President Kennedy. So he lost. A restraining order was issued against Ron, preventing him from photographing Jackie within 25 feet.
It is not known what pressure the trial put on Jackie. But her marriage to Onassis was becoming difficult at this time. Among other things, he had returned to his womanizing habits.
Tragedy also seemed to follow in Jackie's footsteps. In 1973, Aristotle's son Alexander was killed in a plane crash. It was a truly pivotal moment. After that, things never got back on track. He never recovered.
Of course, he was deeply disappointed by it and sat on the yacht Christina drinking, which in fact did not go particularly well with Jackie, as you can imagine. Then somehow it got into his head, perhaps from his sisters or from his daughter Christina, that Jackie was bad luck, that she was the black widow, that she was responsible for his son's death.
Onassis went into a terrible decline. By the time of his death, only two years later, the relationship with Jackie had effectively ended. The sisters were approaching middle age.
By now, Lee's marriage to the Polish aristocrat Stas Radziwill had also ended in divorce. Still, she struggled to escape her sister's shadow. Lee was not fickle, but she moved from one thing to another.
First she would follow the Rolling Stones and be a newspaper photographer. Then she would make a documentary. Then she would become a decorator. Then she would become an actress. It was hard for Lee.
Lee was seen as a prominent New York social figure, somewhat aimless. She always had projects she was interested in doing, like a book project or some kind of cause, but nothing ever really caught fire. Jackie was in a more stable place.
After the death of her second husband, Aristotle Onassis, Jackie once again faced the task of rebuilding her life. This time, however, it would be different. Now 45, she decided she would no longer rely on others to save or protect her. She was helping herself. She would return to work.
March 1975 is considered a stunning turning point in Jacqueline Onassis's life because it was the first time in a long time that she no longer needed to be defined as a wife. She worked at two different publishing houses, Viking and Doubleday, and both said she was a wonderful editor.
She was done being in the public eye. She had gone through the same experience with John Kennedy's assassination and then with Robert Kennedy's death as well. And then the whole drama of marrying Aristotle Onassis. She really wanted a quiet life, and book publishing offered that.
She had always been known as Jack Bouvier's daughter, John Kennedy's wife. This was something of her own. This was a woman who did not need money. This was a woman looking for meaning in her life, and she appreciated how having a career makes you feel. It made you feel valued, made you feel needed, made you feel productive. She also loved the work very much.
Gradually, Jackie found some long-awaited peace. In the 1980s, she began a new relationship with her financial adviser, Maurice Tempelsman. He was steady and reliable, but more importantly, he put Jackie first. The exact opposite of Kennedy and Onassis.
Tempelsman was also the one who played an active role in securing Jackie's privacy. Although a restraining order had been issued against Ron Galella in 1972, by 1980 he was clearly violating it. Maurice reported him, and a second trial began. This would effectively end Ron's obsession.
He pleaded guilty. He faced a fine of $125,000 or seven years in prison. He said he would give them all up: Jackie, John Jr. and Caroline Kennedy, for the rest of their lives.
Jackie lived and worked in New York during the last 25 years of her life. She died of lymphoma on May 19, 1994, at her home in Manhattan with her family around her. She played an active role in the city she considered home, saving Grand Central Terminal from demolition and bringing the Temple of Dendur to the Metropolitan Museum.
It seems every street and every building has a Jackie story to tell. Even long after her death, she lives in the city and can never be forgotten. At her funeral, Senator Ted Kennedy, her brother-in-law, said that no one they knew had a better sense of self than Jackie.
People truly admired and respected her. As a historical figure and a seemingly hardworking person, not just a rich parasite, she was very popular. She was a woman of real depth and real intelligence, but many people could not get past her beauty, her travels and her dark sunglasses. She never got enough credit for her true character.
Lee Radziwill's story, however, is still being written. A fixture on the New York social scene, she has carved out a special place for herself as a true fashion icon and can still be seen in the front rows of fashion shows around the world.
If Jackie was the queen of America, then Lee is the closest thing the United States has to royalty. No matter what she does or where she travels, Jackie will always be with her. There is always that thing with sisters, comparing people's lives.
But both admired the other. It is interesting to think of them as a legacy of sisterhood. They were like mirrors to each other. They were very different individuals. They lived very different lives.
Jackie will always be the sister who was in the front. Lee will always be the one standing in the shadow. And they were ultimately comfortable in those positions. After Jackie's death, unfortunately, Lee became and remains the thing she feared most. She is Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's sister. She is Jackie O's sister.