Ladies, Brothers, and friends this evening I will review a brief part of the life of our own most admired first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Some may believe that there is such a thing as "The Kennedy Curse".  Violent deaths, personal destruction, and broken dreams have haunted this fabled family over many years and have contributed to this belief.  We all recall the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on that fateful trip to Texas.  And the assassination of his brother, Senator Robert Kennedy on June 5, 1968 in Los Angeles, Ca.  as well as the unfortunate death of "John-John" at 38 years of age as he lost control of his plane off the coast of  Martha's Vineyard, MA.  Then there was the unfortunate incident when Ted Kennedy's car went off a bridge into a pond at Chappaquiddick, Ma.

The inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961 brought to the White House and to the heart of the nation a beautiful young wife and the first young children of a President in half a century.

Jacqueline Kennedy entered the role of First Lady by declaring that her priorities were her young children and maintaining her family's privacy. Nevertheless, during the weeks before the inauguration, she began her plans to not only redecorate the family quarters of the White House but to historically restore the public rooms. She created a committee of advisors led by Americana expert Henry DuPont, with sub-committees led by experts on painting, furniture and books. By March 1961, Jacqueline Kennedy was scouring government warehouses in search of displaced White House furnishings, and soliciting the nation to donate important historical and artistic items. As part of this effort, she successfully pressed Senator Clint Anderson and the 87th Congress to pass what became Public Law 87286 that would make such donated items the inalienable property of the White House. Since the restoration project was privately funded, she helped to create a White House Historical Association, an entity which was able to raise funds through the sale to the public of a book she conceived, The White House: An Historic Guide. She also successfully pressed for the creation of the federal position of White House Curator to permanently continue the effort of protecting the historical integrity of the mansion. Her legacy of fostering a national interest in historic preservation extended to her own "neighborhood," when she reversed a previous federal plan to destroy the historic Lafayette Square across from the White House and helped to negotiate not only a restoration of old buildings there, but a reasonable construction of new buildings with modern use.
 
Jacqueline Kennedy also sought to use the White House to "showcase" the arts. She became the most prominent proponent for the establishment of the National Cultural Center in the nation's capital, eventually to be named for her husband. At the White House she hosted performances of opera, ballet, Shakespeare and modern jazz, all performed by American companies. After her meeting with French Minister of Culture Andre Malraux in May of 1961, he made a loan to the U.S. from France of the Louvre Museum's famous Mona Lisa painting, and Jacqueline Kennedy presided over the unveiling. From Malraux, she developed ideas on the eventual creation of a U.S. Department of the Arts and Humanities, an undertaking she discussed with Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell and one that she anticipated would emerge with the creation of a presidential arts advisor and advisory board in 1961. The eventual creation of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Arts achieved her goal, she later reflected.

Her death im 1994 seemed premature, and it still doesn't seem fair that she is gone.

Jackie had everything people admired and wanted for themselves - beauty, intelligence, adorable children, a life full of excitement and glamour, and yes, a handsome husband, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  We cannot think of Jackie without remembering Jack.  Together they symbolized a poignant time in our nation's history, when its innocence and optimism promised that anything was possible.  They gave us hope and made us feel that we were living in the best time in the history of our nation.

The extraordinary life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was full of magic, both black and white.  The most terrible tragedy that could ever be imagined happened to her.  Her husband, the most powerful man in the free world, was murdered before her very eyes.  I am sure that each of us remember that fateful day. where we were, what we were doing when we heard the unbelievable news that our president had died - assassinated,  Many of us cried when we heard it - I know I did.  But Jackie handled his death with a majesty that we will never forget.  Our hearts ached as we tearfully reached out to her, young Caroline, and the little boy we called John-John.  We loved Jackie when Jack was alive and continued to love her after he was gone.  Admittedly, many of her admirers were temporarily thrown off base by her subsequent marriage to Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.  After Onassis died, we resumed our unflagging adoration when she emerged as America's most famous working woman.  Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was by no means a perfect person, but in our minds and memories, she was as close to perfection as few people ever will be.

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