Where were you 29 years ago today ?

I was 1.

Hanging in 1st grade in my hometown Weston, CT!

I was working for her publisher Doubleday at the time. I honestly don’t remember how we found out or what the mood. I only remember her son announcing it to the world.

She lived on Fifth Avenue, not Park

I was celebrating! Until I read the will...

The whole world mourned her death

Oh, please..

and I was picking my nose when I heard

I was 15, so I was probably masturbating to some male underwear catalog.

Maurice Tempelsman is still alive at 93.

I was living on the Upper East Side. I walked past her building on the Central Park side of Fifth Avenue.

Putting the voodoo doll away.

I was here in hell, waiting the bitch's arrival so I could personally throw her into the lake of fire!

Oh, those deliciously piercing screams of agony! Music to my ears!

I was at the corner of 59th and Second, eating a Reuben sandwich and drinking an egg crème. I was wearing a t shirt with Gary Coleman on it. My companion? A dachshund named Merv.

Playing with a Bart Simpson doll in Kindergarten.

It's weird to think she was only 64. She seemed like she had been around and in the news forever. She was the queen of tabloids before being unseated by Princess Diana. I always forget she was so young when Kennedy was killed.

I was at the Piggly Wiggly when Gary, the store manager, interrupted Herb Alpert's version of "The Girl From Ipanema" to make the announcement over the intercom. A hush fell over the entire market. I hear someone from the next aisle over whisper about her climbing on the back of the limo to retrieve that piece of JFK's skull.

I hurried over to aisle 8 and dented a few cans of Libby's baby carrots and Del Monte sweet peas in her memory.

My day nurse had just helped me into my favorite wicker chair on the front porch of the main house at the compound so I could enjoy the crisp ocean air when word came from my granddaughter Caroline that Jackie had passed on.

R11 I, too, was a fresh arrival in hell.

The sky was so blue that day.

It was, r18, it was!

My roommate was either watching the news and Peter Jennings reported it or there was a special announcement. I don't remember, which but I do remember feeling like a moment in history had just taken place. I also felt a twinge of sadness. I was 3 when JFK was assassinated. Jackie definitely was like American royalty or something. No matter what, she was a part of the national life for decades.

She was the end of when adults acted and dressed like adults.

It's all been said, the good and, more so, the bad, about Edward Kennedy, but still, I give him his due credit.

The man could write, and deliver, a compelling eulogy. Those he gave for Jackie O and JFK, Jr. were very moving.

Of course, by then, he'd had a bit of practice at them.

I tried to find audios of both of them but, apparently, I didn't look hard enough.

Where will we be when they announce Melania's death?

I remember when she died. I don’t recall it being a huge media event—even by the standards of the era.

My memory might be faulty, but I don’t even recall people at work talking about her or her passing. (And my colleagues tended to be news junkies, just like me.)

I was in Malta on 19th May 1994, It was a week after my 26th birthday. I think we were there for the whole of May that year.

The leader of the UK Labour Party John Smith had dropped dead on my birthday, Tony Blair became the leader after.

I was at work the day the widow Kennedy-Onassis died. Honestly I was a little sad about it, since I grew up admiring the president and his family, as many people were of that era. What I remember most is John Jr. describing how she was surrounded by her family and her books and the things she loved when she died.

I was in 7th grade when President Kennedy was assasinated. So, grew up aware of Jackie, her marriage to Onassis, she was always in the news to some degree. Don't remember what I was doing that day. I do remember getting the news that John had died in the plane crash. I remember thinking, I was glad she had died before him and was spared that. Then laughed at myself, that was something right out of my long dead mother's head.

R24 is either extremely senile or incredibly stupid, since her death was a huge news story at the time for several days.

I was 7 when Cleopatra died. It was all over the news.

I was in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963 and witnessed JFK’s assassination.

R20 I remember watching one of the morning shows (I think it was TODAY, as that was my show of choice) when they broke in early in the morning saying they had heard Jackie was on her deathbed, and she had a steady stream of visitors to her apartment throughout the night (Carly Simon was one of them). They broke in when the Cardinal from St. Patrick's Cathedral had visited to give her the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. By then, a crowd had gathered - media reporters and 'fans'. I was then changing through the channels to the other morning shows, and they had the same coverage. There weren't any commercials, from what I recall - and those gathered on the street were crying and bringing flowers.

Then they kept breaking in with news that they had heard she had indeed passed away, and were waiting for an official word - JFK Jr came out to address the crowd which was getting bigger and bigger on Fifth Ave. All day long and into the evening news, it was covered by the media. President Clinton and his wife quickly made a statement, as did the former President Bush and his wife, and Nancy Reagan.

It was a very big deal in America and around the world, being the global socialite that she was.

To think within five years two other world cultural icons would pass away - Princess Diana, and JFK, Jr.

Spring of 1994 was great for news junkies.

Nixon died in April, Jackie died in May and O. J. committed double murder in June.

I was working, as an administrative assistant. I was miserable. I was 29 and looking back, I was in great shape.

I lost the war with gravity.

I was in Venice kissing the love of my life in San Marco.

[quote] Probably one of the toughest things he ever had to do in his adult life.

Not tougher than watching his mother waste away and suffer with cancer. As painful as it was for me, I experienced a sense of relief that my mother was no longer in pain.

R35, Jackie did not waste away or suffer thanks to the morphine drip she demanded from her doctors.

She died 48 hours after being released from the hospital and one last walk in Central Park with Maurice.

At the bank, why, OP?

64 doesn’t seem that old anymore.

I was in grade 7

OP, are you joking? Jackie on Assistance was a money-worshiping trophy wife. Class my foot.

R30 is a fraud and impostor who should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

I was the attending on duty desperately trying to revive her. I was 5. It was a Doogie Howser type situation.

^...and 29 years ago I was temping as a secretary after college because the economy was shit.

Can't stand all the Jackie worship on DL. She gets no credit with me for her so-called style and grace and fuck-all elegance. She grew up with and around money. Of course she knew how to dress and do her hair. So what? Show me someone who grew up in Appalachia and learned manners and taste through careful observation and intelligence, then I'll be impressed.

I always thought she was ugly who decided she was so elegant?

She lived at 1040 Fifth Ave. (between E. 85th and E. 86th St., less than 2 blocks from the Met musuem), not on Park Ave.

I had barely recovered from Princess Diana’s death when zu heard the new. It was almost too much.

R31, The cardinal, who was John J. O'Connor at the time (he of the ugly visage), did not give Jacqueline Onassis the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. It was a priest from her parish church, St. Thomas More, on E. 89th St. I believe his name was Msgr. Georges Barthe (or something very similar)

Kindergarten.

R44, Candice Bergen lives in that building now.

R24, your memory wasn't faulty. I was very surprised that it wasn't bigger news at the time. No one talked about it and it soon left the news.

- R20

^ It was HUGE news.

I think it was pretty big news, guys.

OP being married to Carolyn Bessette hound was the toughest thing he ever did and his second biggest mistake

R49 is an absolute moron.

I was in fifth grade and my class had a field trip to the Met and South Street Seaport. We were late to the museum because a huge portion of Fifth Avenue was blocked off and the bus driver had to go west and down southern Manhattan(I remember going past the Twin Towers) and back up. All I remember was long down the street and seeing a bunch of commotion by the building with the awning. All the news vans were there and NYPD had those blue wood barricades up. I didn’t find out until I got home and the local stations were showing wall to wall coverage and there was a shot of the awning.

You seem like a very lovely person, R53.

I remember “surrounded by family, friends, and her books.” No recollection of where I was. John John’s death I recall because it was during summer and I was at the Cape with a boyfriend.

I remember my elementary school English teacher interrupting class to announce her death.

Weird to think Jackie and Diana died only 3 years apart.

R36, this is her on the day she died?!?!

In college. 20 years old. Hanging with my boyfriend, who was a decade older. He read into some of JFK Jr'.s words about Jackie "dying on her own terms" (I'm paraphrasing) and theorized that Jackie had committed suicide, perhaps with some assistance.

Home with my kids who were 5 and 2yrs old. My girlfriend called and said turn it to CNN. I honestly felt bad, but not as bad as when John Jr died in that plane crash. I really did feel bad about that.

I didn't give one fuck about Jackie O and I changed the station.

R36 Since she died, there have been stories that her death was that of assisted suicide. That is what she wanted, and the Church and her family granted her wishes.

I have no idea. I was probably drunk or doing coke -making a lackluster post-college effort in life. I didn't think about Jackie much back then so I probably didn't know for days after she died. I remember thinking John John was hot so I would have paid attention for that reason if I saw him on the news or in a magazine. There was a great thread last night where an insider or someone very well read into all things Jackie, likened her to a street fighter who went to Miss Porter's.

As previously noted, Jackie requested and was granted a morphine drip to hasten her death once her doctors told her there was nothing more they could do for her.

I was almost born. I was born May 25, 1994.

I was but a young child. Still can't believe someone so stuffy, with an uninteresting personality, and such an ugly voice is so fawned over.

I was 2.

I was living my best quarter in junior college, about 6 months before graduating. I had Honors Sociology, Intro Philosophy, Victorian Literature, Poetry. It was the first quarter I got all A’s. My earlier classes were with all my Lit friends, then Sociology was a GE class where I knew no one, most of the class were Nursing students. Philosophy was my last class & the room was always hot & I’d be a sweaty mess by the time I got out at 1:20. I had Fridays off, so 3-day weekends every week! My sister was at our sister JC, studying to be a respiratory therapist, & a few times during this period I wrote her GenEd/English papers for her, since I was an English major & had a lighter schedule. I vividly remember our Mom wanting me to help her & overlooked the cheating aspect.

The Stephen King miniseries The Stand was broadcast around this time & it made a huge impression on me. I’d read the novel almost a year prior, right as Hantavirus was discovered, & I’d thought it was the book coming to life & had been really dejected for a bit. Seeing the miniseries, on the other hand, was quite rapturous. I watched it again during the lockdown, 25+ yrs later, & it didn’t move me so deeply.

^overlooking

I have no idea. Probably rushing through my homework so I could watch the Power Rangers or something on Kids WB. Who knows?

R32, if you were a 14 year old teenager in spring 1994, the only death that mattered was Cobain's!

R63, what was she suffering from?

Was Jackie Catholic? Shocked she died via suicide

I remember the day vividly. Ahh spring of 1994. Wish I had a time travel machine

Her smile reminds me of these small hairy dogs

Rose Kennedy was never told of Jackie's death r16, it was thought better to keep it from her.

Was Jackie Catholic? Shocked she died via suicide

God's word changes for those of means and influence.

If Jackie O wasn't such a heavy smoker she might still be with us.

Passed out

I was in the next room writing everything down, preparing to betray my very private friend some decades down the track.

John John's press release seemed unnatural, I bet Jackie wrote it herself in anticipation. It was too poetical and romantic and intelligent for jnr, and it seemed staged. He was also smirking in and arrogant way that said he liked the attention and wasn't that upset by his mother's passing.

[quote] If Jackie O wasn't such a heavy smoker she might still be with us.

R78 Do your homework, Marylou. She died from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which has nothing to do with smoking.

r82 but it could have had something to do with dying her hair so much for so long

I was in her library, rocking back and forth

Smoking increases the risk of ALL cancers. I thought everyone - at least here - knew that.

R85 also glans cancer?

Check out smoking as a risk factor for leukemia.

Who's Jackie Kennedy Onassis?

R83, Jackie began going gray very early and had been coloring her hair since the early 1950s when dyes were more primitive than today.

r89 yes, and they think something in the old hair colors could have contributed to her cancer and that of other womens'. NHL can be caused from chemicals. A lot of elderly famers get it from pesticides.

R24, Jackie’s illness and terminal status were well known. It was a big news story because she was very famous, but no one was shocked by it unless they were living under a rock. That’s why it did not have (and does not have in memory) the impact of a death seemingly out of nowhere, like JFK, Jr, Diana or Michael Jackson.

R77, it’s not suicide if medication administered to stop pain and keep the patient comfortable also happens to hasten death when death is imminent anyway.

[quote] It's all been said, the good and, more so, the bad, about Edward Kennedy, but still, I give him his due credit. The man could write, and deliver, a compelling eulogy. Those he gave for Jackie O and JFK, Jr. were very moving.

Ted didn't write either of the eulogies. Nor did he write the one he delivered for Bobby.

R91, Yes, it was known that Jackie was very ill, so her death was not a shock, nor was Farrah Fawcett’s.

But, was Michael Jackson’s death a shock to anyone?

His days were numbered, much like Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse.

"The whole world mourned her death, as she was the epitome of class and grace."

I honestly did not give a shit when she died.

I'm sure I had a moment of thinking, "Cancer. Sad." But that was about it.

[quote] Ted didn't write either of the eulogies. Nor did he write the one he delivered for Bobby.

You seem to be sure of that.

Yes, I know that a US Senator, especially a wealthy one, would have very good writers on their staff, or, at their immediate service.

Still, I'll stick with my observation at r22. Both eulogies had the ring of someone who knew both Jackie O and JFK, Jr very well and commons sense tells me that he had to have contributed a great deal of the content.

R60, now I finally know what "Jackie on Assistance" means!

-D

[quote]it’s not suicide if medication administered to stop pain and keep the patient comfortable also happens to hasten death when death is imminent anyway.

No, that is called palliative care. That is usually done via hospice care - which Jackie was not on.

In Jackie's case, it came out later (after her death) that her life could have been prolonged if she stayed under doctor's care and had treatment. She was diagnosed early on, in January, 1994 - so her survival rate was better than most.

Four months in, she chose to stop all treatment, she chose not to stay under doctor's care, and opted for 'assisted suicide' instead - not to linger with the illness, but to return home and die with dignity (not in a hospital or hospice). She did one last photo shoot walking via Central Park with her beau just days before her death, so the world would remember her that way and not 'gravely ill'. Everything was well-planned and orchestrated by her.

Having an incredibly raunchy night of sex with my then-best friend, who was a total preppy nerd.

R98, This was the last walk with Maurice, not the photo at R36.

R100 Yes, that is what she wanted. Strolling through the park on a spring day with Maurice just a couple of days before she died. She didn't want pictures of her frail and hunched in a wheel chair, she didn't want to be photographed on a stretcher hooked up to machines being taken away by rescue - she had this all planned, and rather well. She looks pretty good in those photos for someone who was going to die in a few days - she didn't exactly look like she was suffering or at 'death's door'. However, from what was said over the years - that is when she decided to end her life. She didn't want to wait until she was in terminal pain and frail, grasping for her last breath. She died with dignity.

My guess is if she didn't have the assisted suicide on May 19, she probably could've lasted until mid-summer without treatment / medication. Just days before, she was still mobile and able to walk through the park.

R101, Barbara Bush was another FLOTUS who decided to stop all treatment, be discharged from the hospital and die peacefully at home in a matter of days.

It was 1994 and I was working in banking, standing on my feet all day. I barely noticed that Jackie passed.

Around the time of Jackie’s death, I was going through a serious rift with a good friend who was also a coworker. This took my mind off of my problems for a while. My boss was an attorney for a government agency and she told me all about the Kennedys and how shady they were, especially Jackie. Forever changed my perspective on them.

R104…. Well, spill that tea!

R104, Jackie had very little to do with the inner workings of the Kennedy family from 1953 to 1963, and almost none at all after Bobby was murdered in 1968.

R96, I don’t question that Ted Kennedy would have contributed his thoughts for each of the eulogies, but the writing was left to the professionals.

But she was no saint herself, was she? A greedy, snobbish gold digger who bullied her son into law school because she didn’t want him to be an actor.

I was 11.

R108, Jackie knew full well that JFK, Jr. needed direction in life and without it he was prone to making poor choices.

Without her guidance, he made serious mistakes, like George Magazine, marrying Carolyn and worst of all, resuming the flying lessons.

R108, I have to say, most parents would steer their kids away from an acting career. It’s the rare parent that would wholeheartedly endorse it.

R98, She had brain and liver mets. Her days were numbered even with treatment. Some cancer patients choose to stop all treatment when the prognosis for survival with quality of life is minimal or nonexistent. Yes, it’s true they often enter hospice care, but someone as rich and prominent as Jackie could buy the equivalent of hospice care without having to make that formal designation, with its grim tone.

Before she died, everyone (who followed celebrity news) knew that she had been given a terminal diagnosis, had chosen to forego further treatment, and had gone home to die.

I guess you can argue the fine point of when palliative care becomes assisted suicide, but I think it blurs an important distinction to say that those who are dying of cancer – i.e. death is likely to come relatively soon – are “committing suicide” when they knowingly ask for and receive calming and pain-relieving drugs that also shorten life.

But she said she didn’t want John to become “a fruit”. And she was friends with more than one gay man…

R113, Jackie was born in 1929. Very few parents of that generation would enjoy the idea of their child being homosexual, no matter how tolerant their attitude was toward adults not in their own families.

R98 is full of shit.

I cried and cried and cried.

We should have an elder gays only DL section. Where we can discuss things of importance to men of our age. I don't have any reason to be socializing online or in person with anyone who wasn't alive at the same time as Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Maybe break things out by decades. The young guns can talk about Harry Styles or whatever they are into. I am older now and don't care to follow the new guard.

An excerpt from "White House by the Sea."

Yes she was afraid of John Jr being gay. And she had famous homosexual friends. But her own son! Fuck!

And Bassette having that affair with that Calvin Klein model while still newly married and no children with John when he was pushing 40. Their marriage bed was not getting a of use. At least by a married couple.

Lordy OP's ignorance and purple prose about Jackie O. For crissakes. Well, soon these maudlin Kennedy Stans will all be dead as well.

Bessette sounds like a cunt.

Jackie O was a carefully constructed public image that had very little to do with reality.

p.s. She made up Camelot, chain smoked and stole her sisters' boyfriend. Klassy lady.

Jackie’s smoking played a role in the death of her son Patrick…

I think if JFK Jr had been fug, we wouldn't have heard as much about Jackie O. Sure, she was already world famous, but JFK Jr did so much to keep and reward attention. You couldn't look away.

R122 to me, she came across as a bit domineering. John Jr. was something of a free spirit. Not a good match.

R118 I wonder how much of that book the author made up ? For example, she claims Carolyn Bessette called the Palm Beach house "creepy". This would be in the late 90s, which is when she was part of the family for such a brief time. "Creepy" wasn't a word used by women in their 30s to describe something back then - it's a word used by women in their teens and twenties today to describe everything they don't like. I doubt very much CB used the word 'creepy' to describe the house.

That's a pretty thin reed on which to cast doubt on an entire book's credibility, R127.

R128 Not really. If this is what they're using to promote the book - first impressions are the lasting impressions.

[quote] first impressions are the lasting impressions.

How unfortunate.

I was sitting on my ass eating Snack Wells.

Didn’t JFK jr get some day press in the days after or the days leading up for roller blading around Central Park shirtless. I do think that was unusual, but the consensus was that he could have paused it for a week or two. The other side of the argument was that he needed to word out some of his grief. Probably could have done that in a shirt, though.

Didn’t JFK jr get some bad press in the days after or the days leading up for roller blading around Central Park shirtless? I don’t think that was unusual, but the consensus was that he could have paused it for a week or two. The other side of the argument was that he needed to work out some of his grief. Probably could have done that in a shirt, though.

I was at a speech by Bill Clinton, who mentioned it. Not everyone had heard yet, so there were gasps in the audience.

In my basement dwelling, lounging in my caftan, eating bonbons and posting on alt.showbiz.gossip.

R127, Carolyn had an odd vocabulary. According to both Carole Radziwill and JFK, Jr.’s assistant RoseMarie Terenzio, she called all her close female friends “lambs”.

And for the record, the Kennedy family Palm Beach house was creepy. It was never updated while they owned it. It was dark inside with an insufficient number of windows, no air conditioning and the rooms were uncomfortably small.

Probably the walls were saturated with Gloria Swanson's and Joseph P.'s effluvium

I remember hearing that during the wake, her friend, the singer Carly Simon, had to be physically blocked from putting a letter into her coffin by Ed Schlossberg, as such an honor was for family only.

R138, Jackie’s wake took place in her apartment, for fear of photos being taken of her corpse at a funeral home and being published.

Summer of '94. I was unemployed. I had quit a retail job without a new job because if I had not, I never would have gotten out of there. I was desperate to be in another industry and was interviewing all over and it fucking sucked. I felt like I was washed up at 25 competing with recent graduates. Those were the days of NY Times Help Wanted Classified ads and faxing and endless calls and fancy paper for your resume and suits and ties at job interviews (always a pleasure on the hot NYC subway).

I had just come out of a really bad health scare (bad for a guy in his mid 20s) and weeks of testing but it was all a false alarm. So I was ready to have a good summer.

I had also just passed my one year anniversary with my boyfriend. My boyfriend had a really nice ice cold apartment on the Upper East Side and we spent all summer having sex and renting movies from Blockbuster and the local video stores. Take out and getting high and going to the deli for a Ben & Jerry's Craving at midnight. All good times!

[quote] The whole world mourned her death, as she was the most famous and expensive courtesan in world history up until that time.

FIFY

There's an amazing account of the deathwatch of her fans outside her NYC apartment in Wayne Koestenbaum's otherwise tedious and much mocked "Jackie Under My Skin." While waiting for news, they start bitching loudly about anyone famous ushered up to her apartment, and then finally a black woman chastises, "Jackie wouldn't like to hear you speaking like that!" After the death, her sister Lee Radziwill is escorted from the building, and Koestenbaum (who is such a fan he even wrote an entire opera libretto about Jackie) muses, "Lee is all we have left."

I don’t know her.

I had a relative who knew the Kennedys. She worked on the Senate and Presidential campaigns; imagine the tragedy of Jack being assassinated and then, less than five years later it happens again with Bobby.

How do you go on?

Ironically, Rose outlived Jackie.

Her death wasn't a surprise. It was known she was ill with cancer.

I remember where I was when her son had died. His death was a shock, although I remember reading about him taking flying lessons, then buying a plane, and thinking it wouldn't end well.

Only Ethel(95) and Joan(86) remain from the Camelot era.

Only way I might know is to go back to an old A/E calendar book.

Still married to my ex husband. I canceled our wedding (commitment ceremony) and he could not imagine life without me and tried to commit suicide by slitting his wrists. I was young and stupid and ended up marrying the frau.

R148 what?

[quote] Jackie’s wake took place in her apartment, for fear of photos being taken of her corpse at a funeral home and being published.

The casket was closed even at the apartment and covered by an antique cloth of some sort.

R150, Lids can be opened.

I suspect R148 was an EST gone wrong, R149.

The family didn’t want this.

OP I doubt that Lilly Tempelsman mourned “the epitome of style and grace”.

How the fuck would I know?

R154, I would be flattered if my husband left me for one of the most famous women in the world.

You know I’m pretty sure this was breaking news but I don’t remember the adults constantly talking about it, it being a water cooler event so I truly had to google. OJ had murdered Nicole the week before and then the high speed chase happened.

I was in my 8th grade English class and we heard it from Channel 1.

R157, OJ committed the murders in June. Jackie died in May.

Everyone knew she was dying of cancer. It's not like she just keeled over unexpectedly.

[quote]Probably one of the toughest things he ever had to do in his adult life.

Passing the bar was tougher. And landing a plane was the toughest.

I was waiting tables at brunch at my part-time job.

I turned on my TV late that morning, IIRC, and John-John was giving his schpiel. I wondered what he meant when he said "she did it in her own way, on her own terms." Did she suicide?

R159 lol. Oh. What a cunt I am. OP made this post May 19th.

R163 what else could it mean. Unless he meant her widow post First Lady legacy and you miss the opening bit.

Running around with my cousins a.k.a. my babysitter's kids.

I was at work. I can't remember if the public knew if she had been ill.

The public knew she had been diagnosed months earlier, but the suddenness of her impending death did come as a surprise.

R168, A morphine drip caused the suddenness.

[quote] I had a relative who knew the Kennedys. She worked on the Senate and Presidential campaigns; imagine the tragedy of Jack being assassinated and then, less than five years later it happens again with Bobby. How do you go on?

With lots and lots of money, and a papal decoration!

Plus the retard was locked away up in Wisconsin, and the whore who married a Protestant was taken away by God in that plane crash. That was always enough to keep me warm at nights.

I don’t know where I was 29 minutes ago.