Before the White House, Jackie Bouvier roamed Washington as a 25-dollar-a-week street photographer
Jacqueline Bouvier's first real job was asking strangers witty questions for a Washington newspaper column, camera in hand, for 25 dollars a week. Within a decade she was first lady, turning a largely ceremonial role into a showcase for arts and history, and later she spent years as a New York book editor.
She was born on July 28, 1929, in Southampton, New York, to the stockbroker John Bouvier, nicknamed Black Jack, and the socialite Janet Lee. Her father doted on her, but drinking, affairs and money troubles after the 1929 crash broke the marriage, and a public divorce followed in 1940. A cousin said she afterwards tended to retreat into a private world. Her stepfather, Hugh Auchincloss, gave her a settled life at his Merrywood estate in Virginia. A teacher at Manhattan's Chapin School remembered a clever, artistic girl who was full of mischief, and her boarding-school yearbook singled out her wit, her riding and her refusal to become a housewife.
She studied at Vassar before finishing a French literature degree at George Washington University in 1951. That year she won a Vogue junior editorship over several hundred other applicants, a trip with her sister Lee later became their co-written book One Special Summer, and she joined the Washington Times-Herald, first as a receptionist, then as its Inquiring Camera Girl.
In May 1952 she met Congressman John F. Kennedy at a dinner party; they shared Catholicism, a love of reading and time spent abroad. He proposed after winning his Senate race, but she took time to answer because she was off covering Elizabeth II's coronation in London. They married in Newport on September 12, 1953, and had four children, two of whom died in infancy.
As first lady from 1961 to 1963 she hosted major cultural evenings and led the restoration of the White House as a historic site, and her poise and style lifted America's image during the Cold War. After her husband's assassination in 1963 she largely withdrew from view. Her 1968 marriage to the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis stirred controversy. After his death in 1975 she edited books at Viking Press and then Doubleday. Andy Warhol made her a pop-art subject in 1966, and Gallup later named her among the century's most admired people. She died on May 19, 1994.
Source: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
