European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 29, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Death of a first lady via by Martin Walker London observer a a Acqueline Buuvier Kennedy Onassis who. Died May 19 at age.64, was a woman of. Whom the burdens of modern Fame fell to the uttermost degree. The coming of television and the Jet age that allowed an unprecedented Range of presidential travels made hers one of the most famous faces of her Century i and her husbands assassination h Dallas made her the very Symbol of grief and loss. She refused lady Bird Johnson a suggestion that she change the Pink Chanc suit smeared with his blood. A i want them to see what they be done to Jack a she said. They had been married just 10 years in a. Union that brought together the Energy ambition and new Money of the Kennedy family with the old social elite of the bout ices. A she Learned Early to control her private sad Nesses. Her dashing and handsome father Quot Black Jack Bouvier although divorced when she was 13, had promised to give her away at her wedding. An alcoholic As Well As a Rake he became too drunk on whiskey thoughtfully sent to his hotel room by Jackie s Mother a even to attend. Jackie smother refused to delay the ceremony. Jackie had the usual childhood of the privileged elite learning to ride and Hunt and educated at miss porters school and Vassar but it was by her own Talent that she won the prix do Paris offered by Vogue Magazine with essays on Baudelaire Oscar Wilde and Sergei Diaghilev. She turned Down the offer of a Job at the Magazine s Paris office to work instead As a journalist in Washington . She did Well being sent to cover the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth ii in London where Younnen. John Kennedy cabled her a articles excellent but you Are  it was on her return from that trip that he proposed. In her youth she deliberately sought Fame delighting in being named americans Debutante of the year in 1947, and wooing the Young sen. Kennedy with single minded determination she haunted his office bringing picnic lunches to his desk and offered to help edit and retype his speeches. She even flirted with him in her newspaper column in the Washington times Herald posing the Public question a a can you give any reason Why a contented Bachelor should Ever get married Quot she hated politics and campaigning once telling her Sis Ter Lee that she had found the perfect escape by remaining almost constantly pregnant. But she became the first would be first lady to in. Vite the to cameras into her Home for a prolonged interview and the first to invade a supermarket seize the microphone and announce a please carry on with your shopping but i want to Tell you Why you should vote for my husband Quot once installed in the White House she redecorated it thoroughly and then escorted the to Cam eras throughout a a an unprecedented invitation to a. Public intimacy that is still the most requested single to show at the museum of broadcasting. _ having embraced Fame she then flouted it fighting a series of Battles for privacy with her husbands White House press Secretary Pierre Salinger. Asked once what she would most like to feed her new alsatian Puppy she bluntly replied  the insistence on privacy helped to conceal her heavy smoking habit and her nervous Way of biting her nails Down to the Quick. In the formal portrait of her that hangs in the White House the hands Are faked to suggest Long and sculpted fingers. She was never quite a Kennedy telling her sister Jacqueline Bouvier and John Kennedy at their wedding on sept. 12, 1953, with Ted Kennedy watching. That a they Romp around like a Bunch of Baboons on the  she disliked their boisterous games particularly after her brother in Law Teddy broke her ankle during a touch football game. Quot i done to understand it Quot the president once noted. A she breathes All the political gases that flow around us but she never seems to inhale  until the assassination of her husband she per formed in Public precisely As he and american pub lie opinion would Haye wished in a pre feminist Era. She appeared Content to be the ultimate presidential accessory providing Glamour and children and that stylish Patina of old Money that approximates to an aristocracy in America. A i am the Man who brought Jackie Kennedy to Paris Quot was the president s opening line to a state banquet hosted by Charles de Gaulle whom she delighted by speaking in excellent French. Nikita Khrushchev said a a in a like to shake her hand first Quot As he waited to meet the Kennedy Cou pie before their Vienna Summit in 1961. At the formal banquet seated beside the soviet Leader she interrupted him with the line a please done to bore me with  he laughed pulled his chair closer and promised to Send her a Puppy from the dog the soviets had just launched into space. She was More than just a diplomatic asset to her husband. Without her to play the role of guinevere there would have been no Camelot myth and very Little style it was Jackie Kennedy who organized the cultural evenings at the Whitehouse the Light ban Ter in French with Andre Malraux before a recital by. Pablo Cassa is. Once a widow she rebelled. She shunned publicity and the National ceremonies of the Kennedy myth. On the 20lh anniversary of her husbands death she refused to attend the memorial service at Arlington National cemetery and instead went for a lonely stroll on the Beach at Martha a Vineyard. Above All she married the greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis to the bafflement of an America who saw her As the High priestess at a National shrine. One motive seems to have been the need for Suffi Dent wealth to guarantee privacy for her children As Well As herself. He was an old acquaintance of her husband the Man who had introduced Young sen. Kennedy to Winston Churchill in the South of France and who had Lent her his yacht after the deep depression that followed the death of her premature baby in 1962. Warned by a Friend that she would a fall off your Pedestal if she married Onassis she replied a a that a better than freezing there Quot but she liked Onassis. In a letter she later wrote to Arthur Schlesinger protesting at his describing president Kennedy As a roman Quot she suggested that she saw in Onassis something of her first husband. A it almost expresses what i feel about being greek Quot she wrote a there is a desperate Defiance of Fate which romans never had. Lyndon Johnson is really the roman a a classic emperor a Mcnamara maybe even George Washington Are roman a but not  in the Shell that the Onassis Money ensured she avoided interviews and interviewers and rebuilt her life on her own litigious terms. She took a persistent photographer to court to Stop his ambushes and fought one bitter Legal Battle against William Manchester a Book death of a presi another against the Onassis family to retain the $26 million bequeathed to her. Although she did not need the salary she insisted on having a career As a Book editor at Doubleday and although some of her colleagues saw her As a part timer she edited two Best Sellers and secured for her company the rights to the Michael Jackson autobiography Moonwalk. The most Dutiful and complaisant of political wives she tolerated her husbands constant infidelities that recalled her own fathers philandering. Having married the first president Young and dashing enough to be a Prince charming rather than symbolic father of the nation she put up with Ner own role As Consort accessory. Y she brought to the task a style that made it accept Anh j 3 in America to drink wine and enjoy Art and to impose her francophile tastes on that ultimate american Symbol the White House. Insisting on private time to enjoy her horses and her Hunting she was Loyal when it most mattered. During the a i3 pm a As a a go a a the protected Bunker ring the cuban missile crisis and insisted on re Maming m the White House with her husband. Page 26 sunday May 29. 1994