She Captured Hearts--and Shaped Dreams

She was, in life, the most private of citizens, the most public of American icons. And so it was in death that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was doubly mourned on Thursday--both as the complex woman beloved by family and friends and as the womanly ideal revered by a generation of Americans.

“In times of hope, she captured our hearts,” said Lady Bird Johnson, the former First Lady, from her home in Stonewall, Tex. “In tragedy, her courage helped salve a nation’s grief. She was an image of beauty and romance and leaves an empty place in the world as I have known it.”

Dean Rusk, secretary of state during the Administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, recalled her as “an extraordinary woman, beautiful, gracious. She carried with her all the pomp that was necessary and she was a great hostess at the White House.”

But others chose to emphasize the less sweeping qualities of the slender brunette who--in what seemed a more innocent time--charmed America as a graceful First Lady and then eased its anguish as a stoic young widow.

“About 48 hours after the assassination (of President Kennedy), she went around to many of Jack’s closest staff and presented them with mementos of his--things she thought they would appreciate,” recalled Pierre Salinger, Kennedy’s press secretary.

“But all the time, you know she was thinking: ‘How am I going to get these two little kids through the rest of their lives?’ The fact that she came and put her arms around me at that moment was stunning. There were lots of times when Jackie was not very public but, in private, she was extremely strong.”

Her admirers, who rushed to extol her legacy and flocked to gather in silence around the luxurious Manhattan apartment where she died, were a cross section of America at its most mighty and mundane.

Millionaires and heads of state praised her courage and charm.

“Few women throughout history have touched the hearts and shaped the dreams of Americans more profoundly than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,” former President Ronald Reagan said in a statement that was echoed by former President George Bush and President Clinton.

“Nancy and I have always admired this remarkable woman, not only for her grace and dignity, but also for her tremendous courage.”

Meanwhile, in the chilly nighttime drizzle that cloaked her 5th Avenue apartment, well-dressed women and sanitation workers, grandmothers and schoolchildren, native New Yorkers and tourists from around the world gazed up in mournful respect.

“It isn’t just a famous person dying,” said Kitty Kelley, author of the biography, “Jackie Oh!” “It is our very last connection to the magic of the Kennedy era. . . . She didn’t leave behind a great body of work but she did leave something quite intangible and magic--a sense of style.”

Howard Adler, former Orange County Democratic Party chairman, said he vividly recalls meeting Jacqueline Kennedy and then-Sen. John F. Kennedy at the Disneyland Hotel in 1959. He was struck by her beauty and elegance, and by her unaffectedness.

“She was probably the most elegant and charming person I have ever met in my life. But I think those people of my generation who were brought to politics by the Kennedys had a sense that she was a real person, there never seemed to be a hidden agenda. She was very open.”

Adler also later mourned for the widow.

“I can still see her standing in the White House, with her son and daughter, watching the funeral cortege passing by,” he said. “It was one of the saddest moments in my life.”

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.

In her final hours 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, Clinton said that he and his wife, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, had received updates on her condition up until the time of her death.

Meanwhile, 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. Daughter Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, 36, 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, had 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 just before her death that Mrs. Onassis is “enormously grateful to all the people who have been kind enough to send her notes wishing her well.”

Meanwhile, her nephew, Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.), the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy, stressed another side of the sad vigil. “There’s a lot of love in her room and in her apartment,” he told reporters.

The media outside chronicled all the comings and goings, not surprising since she was 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.

Through the assassination of Kennedy in 1963; through her subsequent marriage to the older Greek millionaire Aristotle Onassis; through Onassis’s subsequent death in 1975; through the maturity of her two children and her entry into the book publishing business in New York--through all these phases of her adulthood, that aura of glamour survived.

“I think the Kennedy phenomena, as some of us refer to it who were not much younger than they were when they were in the White House, certainly had an influence on a generation--my whole generation--as well as myself,” said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, a longtime Democrat and former activist during her college years at UC Berkeley.

“We saw the Kennedys as a family that was going to (address) the issues of quality of life, of preventing a war, of dealing with civil rights, of encouraging community service and encouraging looking out for fellow human beings.”

Goldberg’s colleague, Zev Yaroslavsky, added that, as a parent himself, he “admired her in the way she has raised her two kids.”

“These are two--John Kennedy Jr. and Caroline Kennedy (Schlossberg--who) are very obviously, normal, productive citizens.

“They have not, as far as we know, had any of the problems that some of the kids of other prominent families have had. And what I admire most about her, and from what I know about her, (is that) she has invested more of her energy and time into raising those kids well than she has anything else. And it has shown.”

Times staff writers Josh Getlin in New York, Pamela Warrick, Bettina Boxall, Michelle Williams and Karen Wada in Los Angeles and Rene Lynch in Orange County contributed to this story. Hubler reported from Los Angeles and Meisler reported from New York.

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