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Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis biography

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Quick Facts

  • PLACE OF BIRTH: Southampton, New York
  • PLACE OF DEATH: New York, New York
more about Jacqueline

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Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, noted for her style and elegance, was the wife of President John F. Kennedy and later married Aristotle Onassis.

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Synopsis

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was born Jacqueline Lee Bouvier on July 28, 1929, in Southampton, New York. She married John F. Kennedy in 1953. When she became First Lady in 1961, she worked to restore the White House to its original elegance and to protect its holdings. After JFK's assassination in 1963, she moved to New York City. She married Aristotle Onassis in 1968. She died of cancer in 1994.

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Quotes

When you get written about a lot, you just think of it as a little cartoon that runs along at the bottom of our life - but one that doesn't have much to do with your life.
– Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Profile

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis was born on July 28, 1929 in Southampton, New York. Her father, John Bouvier, was a wealthy New York stockbroker of French Catholic descent, and her mother, Janet, was an accomplished equestrienne of Irish Catholic heritage. Onassis was a bright, curious and occasionally mischievous child. One of her elementary school teachers described her as "a darling child, the prettiest little girl, very clever, very artistic, and full of the devil." Another teacher, less charmed by young Jacqueline, wrote admonishingly that "her disturbing conduct in geography class made it necessary to exclude her from the room." Onassis enjoyed a privileged childhood of ballet lessons at the Metropolitan Opera House and French lessons from the age of 12. Like her mother, Onassis loved riding and was highly skilled on horseback. In 1940, at the age of 11, she won a national junior horsemanship competition. The New York Times reported, "Jacqueline Bouvier, an eleven-year-old equestrienne from East Hampton, Long Island, scored a double victory in the horsemanship competition. Miss Bouvier achieved a rare distinction. The occasions are few when the same rider wins both competitions in the same show." Onassis attended Miss Porter's School, a prestigious boarding school in Farmington, Connecticut; in addition to its rigorous academics, the school also emphasized proper manners and the art of conversation. There she excelled as a student, writing frequent essays and poems for the school newspaper and winning the award as the school's top literature student in her senior year. Also during her senior year, in 1947, Onassis was named "Debutante of the Year" by a local newspaper. However, Onassis had greater ambitions than being recognized for her beauty and popularity. She wrote in the yearbook that her life ambition was "not to be a housewife." Upon graduating from Miss Porter's School Onassis enrolled at Vassar University in New York to study history, literature, art and French. She spent her junior year studying abroad in Paris. "I loved it more than any year of my life," Onassis later wrote about her time there. "Being away from home gave me a chance to look at myself with a jaundiced eye. I learned not to be ashamed of a real hunger for knowledge, something that I had always tried to hide, and I came home glad to start in here again but with a love for Europe that I am afraid will never leave me." Upon returning from Paris, Onassis transferred to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and

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