Journalists From New York State

"There'd been the biggest motorcade from the airport. Hot. Wild. Like Mexico and Vienna. The sun was so strong in our faces. I couldn't put on sunglasses... Then we saw this tunnel ahead, I thought it would be cool in the tunnel, I thought if you were on the left the sun wouldn't get into your eyes..."

"They were gunning the motorcycles. There were these little backfires. There was one noise like that. I thought it was a backfire. Then next I saw Connally grabbing his arms and saying "no, no, no, no, no," with his fist beating. Then Jack turned and I turned. All I remember was a blue-gray building up ahead. Then Jack turned back so neatly, his last expression was so neat... you know that wonderful expression he had when they'd ask him a question about one of the ten million pieces they have in a rocket, just before he'd answer. He looked puzzled, then he slumped forward. He was holding out his hand … I could see a piece of his skull coming off. It was flesh-colored, not white — he was holding out his hand … I can see this perfectly clean piece detaching itself from his head. Then he slumped in my lap, his blood and his brains were in my lap … Then Clint Hill [the Secret Service man], he loved us, he made my life so easy, he was the first man in the car … We all lay down in the car … And I kept saying, Jack, Jack, Jack, and someone was yelling "he's dead, he's dead." All the ride to the hospital I kept bending over him, saying "Jack, Jack, can you hear me, I love you, Jack.""

"His head was so beautiful. I tried to hold the top of his head down, maybe I could keep it in... but I knew he was dead."

"When they carried Jack in, Hill threw his coat over Jack's head, and I held his head to throw the coat over it. It wasn't repulsive to me for one moment — nothing was repulsive to me —"

"These big Texas interns kept saying, "Mrs. Kennedy, you come with us", they wanted to take me away from him... But I said "I'm not leaving"… Dave Powers came running to me at the hospital, crying when he saw me, my legs, my hands were covered with his brains... When Dave saw this he burst out weeping... I said "I'm not going to leave him, I'm not going to leave him"… I was standing outside in this narrow corridor... ten minutes later this big policeman brought me a chair."

"I said, "I want to be in there when he dies"… so Burkeley forced his way into the operating room and said, "It's her prerogative, it's her prerogative..." and I got in, there were about forty people there. Dr. Perry wanted to get me out. But I said "It's my husband, his blood, his brains are all over me.""

"I held his hand all the time the priest was saying extreme unction."

"The ring was all blood-stained... so I put the ring on Jack's finger... and then I kissed his hand..."

"Everytime we got off the plane that day, three times they gave me the yellow roses of Texas. But in Dallas they gave me red roses. I thought how funny, red roses — so all the seat was full of blood and red roses."

"But there's this one thing I wanted to say... I'm so ashamed of myself... When Jack quoted something, it was usually classical... no, don't protect me now... I kept saying to Bobby, I've got to talk to somebody, I've got to see somebody, I want to say this one thing, it's been almost an obsession with me, all I keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy, it's been an obsession with me... At night before we'd go to sleep... we had an old Victrola. Jack liked to play some records. His back hurt, the floor was so cold. I'd get out of bed at night and play it for him, when it was so cold getting out of bed... on a Victrola ten years old — and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record, the last side of Camelot, sad Camelot... "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot."...There'll never be another Camelot again..."

"Do you know what I think of history? … For a while I thought history was something that bitter old men wrote. But Jack loved history so... No one'll ever know everything about Jack. But … history made Jack what he was … this lonely, little sick boy … scarlet fever … this little boy sick so much of the time, reading in bed, reading history … reading the Knights of the Round Table … and he just liked that last song. Then I thought, for Jack history was full of heroes. And if it made him this way, if it made him see the heroes, maybe other little boys will see. Men are such a combination of good and bad … He was such a simple man. But he was so complex, too. Jack had this hero idea of history, the idealistic view, but then he had that other side, the pragmatic side... his friends were all his old friends; he loved his Irish Mafia."

"History!... Everybody kept saying to me to put a cold towel around my head and wipe the blood off... later, I saw myself in the mirror; my whole face spattered with blood and hair... I wiped it off with Kleenex... History! … I thought, no one really wants me there. Then one second later I thought, why did I wash the blood off? I should have left it there, let them see what they've done... If I'd just had the blood and caked hair when they took the picture … Then later I said to Bobby — what's the line between history and drama? I should have kept the blood on."

"Jack so obviously demanded from a woman-a relationship between a man and a woman where a man would be the leader and a woman would be his wife. With Adlai Stevenson you could have another relationship-where you know, he'd be sort of be sweet and you could talk, but you wouldn't ever,.. I've always thought women who were scared of sex loved Adlai."

"An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding."

"She changed the White House from a plastic to a crystal bowl."

"She was as close to an American princess as the nation can remember. But she never lived happily ever after with a man who truly loved her."

"Perhaps she never expected love when she married two remarkable, charismatic and powerful men. Perhaps she settled for too little love. Perhaps she got from her husbands what she may really have wanted-power, money, celebrity, what appeared to be security."

"Jackie endured it all, even when the women involved include Mafia moll Judith Exner to whom JFK gave expensive gifts, even when some of the relationships turned out to be more than half-hour stands, even when her husband's infidelity was widely known in Washington, even when some of the encounters took place in the White house itself."

"When JFK was assassinated, Jackie secured his place in history by her brave and resolute conduct. When her death was announced, the first images in the minds of all of us and on all the TV stations were of her shocked face as she stood by Lyndon Johnson at his swearing in Dallas, her blood-stained pink suit she refused to change, her haunted face as she walked beside her husband's casket."

"It was Jacqueline Kennedy's face, as much as his death, that broke the nation's heart. She became an American folk hero, an enduring fascination."

"For Aristotle Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy was the ultimate trophy wife, the world's most famous woman. For her, he may have represented money, security and relief from the permanent First Widow status imposed on her by the public and by her Kennedy in-laws."

"The public knows few personal details about Jackie's last years, as she wished. But we have never lost our fascination with her, our appreciation of her role as First Lady, our caring about her and our hopes that she had found happiness and love."

"Admittedly, Melania Trump looked stunning this morning as she walked into St. John’s Church, wearing a head-to-toe baby blue outfit designed by the reigning king of American sportswear, Ralph Lauren. The knee-length dress, high-necked bolero jacket, matching gloves and stiletto pumps all convey a message of class and elegance, drawing immediate – and likely intentional – comparisons to Jackie O., who wore the same color Oleg Cassini suit fifty-six years ago today: January 20, 1961, the day her husband John F. Kennedy was inaugurated."

"In her first major statement as the de facto First Lady, Trump has made the decision to echo the styling of a former First Lady: one who arguably had the largest fashion influence of any American President’s wife until, perhaps, Michelle Obama. That choice is simultaneously safe and questionable – safe, because no one doubts that the Oleg Cassini suit worn by Jacqueline Kennedy represents a key historical fashion moment and questionable, because Trump has already had issues with, um…distinguishing herself from those women who came before her."

"Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, the glamorous wife who was beside John F. Kennedy during his presidency and when he was shot, was for 33 years the most famous woman on Earth."

"She was first lady in a time — which has not quite ended — when many Americans were put off if a president’s wife seemed too involved in his political career. In almost every presidential marriage you will find a first lady who, while she serves, insists that all politics is left to the president — but when viewed in history, she turns out to have been a significant influence on that presidency. Jackie is no exception."

"She lived through and reflected a crucial period in U.S. history in which women moved into the mainstream of American professional life and redefined their roles."

"As idealised Jackie Kennedy morphed into debased Jackie Onassis, and Camelot gave way to Watergate, we ceased to believe in the Eden of the Kennedy era, its heroine descending into postlapsarian guise. Her very costume spoke of this fall: America’s patrician princess, all hats, gloves, and ball gowns, was reborn as a permanently sunglassed plutocrat, skulking about in flip-flops, queen of Skorpios only."

"This was a former First Lady who gave no interviews for 30 years; a book editor who stalwartly refused to pen an autobiography; a woman who excommunicated friends if they spoke about her and fought to suppress unauthorised revelations. It was an irony that while, as Jackie Kennedy, she embraced the most public of public lives, by nature she was the epitome of the private individual, poised and glamorous, yet reticent and aloof."

"Jackie has been perceived as a sphynx who very definitely possessed a secret. Around this faux blue-blooded beauty spiralled a web of myth and rumour; fantasies she did not deign to respond to that thus took root as fact."

"People who tried to say no to Jackie found that she would go to great lengths to outwit them."

"Before her marriage, she worked as a photojournalist for the Washington Times-Herald, interviewing the likes of Richard Nixon and reporting on the coronation of Elizabeth II. In later life, she took jobs at Viking Press and Doubleday, where she helped edit Michael Jackson’s 1988 autobiography, Moonwalk. But her greatest achievement came in those days after Dallas, when the queen of the White House abruptly made herself over as its architect and myth-maker, the equivalent of Guinevere sitting down to write Le Morte d’Arthur."

"Kennedy of course is best known for her chic fashion sense, something I'm sure Melania Trump admires, but she was more plugged into her husband's administration than she's given credit for: She knew about his plan to get rid of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and she was a sounding board for him during the Cuban missile crisis."

"Recently, while channel-surfing late one night, I stumbled upon the 1964 comedy "Kisses for My President" in which a hapless Fred MacMurray struggles to cope with being married to the first female president, played by Polly Bergen. Things run amok until Bergen's character gets pregnant and decides to resign the presidency so that she can take care of their family. This ending, absurd to 21st-century audiences, would have made sense to Jackie Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt because to them, the concept of a female president was absurd in and of itself. The idea of a first gentleman would have been preposterous."

"She even apologized to JFK before he became president and told him, “I’m sorry for you that I’m such a dud.” But when her husband asked her to stop wearing head scarfs because she looked too much like a celebrity, she stood her ground. She refused to change her style and soon millions of American women were copying her. It remains to be seen with our current first lady whether her willful approach will help her or hurt her."

"She had a very acute sense of her image as first lady and how she wanted to use her image to promote her husband's administration and his ideals."

"On duty as First Lady, Mrs. Kennedy’s impact was profound—a visual metaphor for the President’s youthful, internationally minded administration, and a symbol of a new era of cultural sophistication at the White House. For her formal daytime ensembles, she took a leaf from Britain’s royal dressmakers and their clients, avoiding prints and instead using brilliant solid colors and bold lines that helped her to be easily distinguished in a crowd. Her majestic, strong-silhouetted evening gowns, meanwhile, showcased her statuesque figure and married French grandeur to a thoroughly American breeziness."

"Throughout, her disciplined elegance revealed an equestrian’s fastidious approach to dressing. Off duty, meanwhile, Jacqueline Kennedy was every inch the liberated sixties woman, barefoot in capri pants and sportif tops that were always chosen with an eye to simplicity of line."

"During the Onassis years, a jet-set glamour crept in as she shielded herself from the paparazzi gaze behind her trademark bug-eyed sunglasses. That glamor was well-served by her friend Valentino’s sleek day clothes and romantic evening looks. As an esteemed literary editor in the seventies, she dressed the part in a working-woman wardrobe that was practical yet faultlessly stylish."

"For what would prove to be one of her last public appearances, for the American Ballet Theatre gala at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1993, Jacqueline Kennedy wore a dress by Herrera of white crepe with rhinestone buttons. During the fitting, Mrs. Kennedy Onassis subtly altered the placement of those buttons from the original runway model, streamlining the effect and proving her enduring taste for perfectionism in all things."

"Jackie Kennedy grabbed the public’s attention with her chic, yet simple fashion sense. From boxy Chanel suits to Halston pillbox hats, she reshaped fashion’s view of conservative clothes and left a noteworthy fashion legacy behind."

"The Jackie Look, or what I call the A-line look, created a worldwide impression of such dimension that she became the First Lady of the world. There wasn’t one lady on the planet who didn’t want to dress like her, comb their hair like her, walk and talk like her. And it was the first time an American designer could influence world trends."

"Our Jackie is embodied forever in that bloodstained pink suit. She bore the grief of a nation with such dignity, and then guarded her privacy until she died in 1994 at age 64. This Jackie is harshly judgmental, dispensing petty opinions that say as much about her as they do the objects of her disdain."

"I want you to know something else, too, that I’m grateful for. In January of 1992 Jackie came to a fundraiser for me when I was running fifth in New Hampshire, and reached out to my wife and to my daughter in ways that I will never forget. One month after, her son had also come to an event for me, when I think I was running sixth in New Hampshire."

"God gave her very great gifts and imposed upon her great burdens. She bore them all with dignity and grace and uncommon common sense. May the flame she lit so long ago burn ever brighter here and always brighter in our hearts. God bless you friend, and farewell."

"I can't put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started — not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men — the ones moved by fear and pride."

"Like many fellow fashionistas, Donahue is rushing to cram Obama's 5-foot-11-inch frame into the mold left by her timeless predecessor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The trouble, historians say, is that it's a lousy fit."

"Kennedy was the epitome of 1960s haute couture. Her style was aspirational, unattainable. Obama is more of a fashion populist. It's hard to imagine Kennedy, in her pillbox hat and leopard-skin coat, dishing about shopping at J.Crew."

"It was in those brief, heady years or perhaps it was really just one year, during the campaign and election of 1960—when John F. Kennedy and his young, beautiful wife were fast becoming national and then international celebrities that the legend of Jackie was born."

"Looking back now, even in the light of all we know about her fraught, strained, "storybook" marriage to an obsessively philandering husband, there does seem to be something special about Jackie Kennedy. Maybe it's just that the camera loved her. Maybe she was so intriguing to so many people simply because, set beside the other prominent women in Washington, DC, in the early 1960s, she was young (barely in her 30s), chic and, with her Irish and French ancestry, indefinably and refreshingly "exotic.""