Onassis Given Last Rites; Family, Friends Gather : Illness: Admired former First Lady is surrounded by ‘a lot of love’ as she struggles with lymph cancer.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who charmed America as a graceful First Lady and then eased its anguish as a stoic young widow, received the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday as relatives and close friends rushed to comfort her as she struggled with lymph cancer.

A close friend described the 64-year-old widow of President John F. Kennedy as “gravely ill.” But her nephew, Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.), the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy, stressed another side to the sad news. “There’s a lot of love in her room and in her apartment,” he told reporters.

Onassis had entered New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center on Monday for further treatment of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But she asked to return to her 5th Avenue apartment that faces Central Park on Wednesday after doctors decided that the disease could not be cured.

“There was nothing more to do for her,” her close friend Nancy Tuckerman told reporters. “The disease has progressed. She will not have any further treatment.”

Throughout her public life, Onassis has been known as a shy woman who tried to shun reporters and cameras but never could escape the glare of the media as it tried to satisfy the curiosity of millions of Americans.

As she fought her illness in the seclusion of her apartment, scores of journalists crowded outside the exclusive building. Television trucks and special antennas stretched to the edge of the Metropolitan Museum of Art a couple of blocks away.

In Washington, President Clinton said that he and his wife, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, had talked with the former First Lady during the last few days and were receiving reports on her condition.

“She’s been quite wonderful to my wife, to my daughter and to all of us,” Clinton said. “We’re thinking about her and praying for her.”

Throughout the day, relatives and close friends entered the apartment to stand at her bedside and then take solace in each other. Her son, 33-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr., ran across 5th Avenue from Central Park in the morning so he could rush into the building without replying to questions from reporters. Her daughter, 36-year-old Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, and her husband, Edwin, came to the bedside as well.

President Kennedy’s last surviving brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and his wife, Victoria, arrived in the early evening after a flight from Washington.

Others who joined the vigil included Onassis’ sister, Lee Radziwill Ross, and two of President Kennedy’s sisters--Eunice Shriver and Patricia Kennedy Lawford. Her brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, arrived with Eunice. Their daughter, television reporter Maria Shriver, also stopped by.

Sen. Kennedy, after visiting his sister-in-law for 90 minutes, told reporters that Onassis is “enormously grateful to all the people who have been kind enough to send her notes wishing her well. She’s resting comfortably and I look forward to seeing her tomorrow.”

The media outside chronicled all the comings and goings, not surprising since she is widely viewed as the most glamorous of American first ladies, a shy yet sophisticated woman who spoke French and immersed herself in the history of the White House.

When President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, the dignity of the young widow in black with two small children at her side at his funeral was stamped via television into the memory of the nation.

Some of that aura was lost when she married the older Greek millionaire Aristotle Onassis, five years after the death of the President. But that marriage, though it lasted until Aristotle Onassis’ death in 1975, was not regarded as a happy one, and she did not go to Paris to be near him in his last days.

A widow for the second time, she then entered the book publishing business in New York. She is now a senior editor at Bantam-Doubleday.

In recent years, she was often accompanied in public by millionaire Maurice Tempelsman. He was reportedly at her bedside Thursday.

Msgr. George Bardes of St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church, her parish church, administered “the sacrament of the sick.” That is more commonly known by its former name of “the last rites” and is given to anyone who is regarded as seriously ill.

Doctors at the hospital had been treating Onassis with radiation and chemotherapy since January, when she was first diagnosed as suffering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, which produces the white blood cells that fight infection and bolster immunity.

Some variations of this disease are often regarded as curable, but there can be sudden relapses. The extent of the seriousness of Onassis’ illness was not widely known and she was seen strolling in Central Park only Sunday, the day before she entered the hospital.

The gravity of the illness became clear, however, when she decided to leave the hospital and return to her bed in the apartment. “She’s near death,” said a friend of the family. “They’re very careful about her privacy and they’re trying to make it as private and dignified as possible.”

Times staff writers Marlene Cimons and Alan Miller contributed to this story from Washington.