In The Wake of Tragedy
ADIEU, JACQUELINE.
When, in the near future, a curtain is drawn on the public life of Mrs. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a lovely glow will be extinguished on the national scene.
There was never a First Lady like Mrs. Kennedy, and it is hard to imagine how there could ever be another.
She had so much more than beauty, as the months after the Inauguration revealed, and as the days after the assassination showed with heart-rending impact. She had - she has - character and depth and courage and spirit and love and loyalty and a beautiful instinct for correctness. Only the combination of those qualities could have given the nation and the world that poignant picture of a slender madonna in black; with black lace covering her head, walking down the steps of the White House with just her two small children to sustain her as she followed the flag-draped coffin of her husband.
Her valor in the aftermath of catastrophe is the more remarkable because of her youth and her former gaiety. Those who remember her water-skiing, laughing in the face of the ocean's spray, dancing at White House parties, smiling at the crowds that applauded her when she entered her box at the theatre, sitting on the sand of a beige New England beach sipping vin rose, conversing earnestly in French with a foreign dignitary, always looking a little bit like a little girl, never dreamed of a day when they would see her as a figure of sorrow --in black, pale, shadowed by her widow's weeds, kneeling to kiss the flag on her husband's bier. She knelt like a young queen, and her fair-haired little girl knelt with her, because Jacqueline Kennedy was brave enough to let her children share her sorrow and their father's panoplied exit from the history of our time. When she was First Lady, she gave the nation much to enjoy and to emulate. She was a cause of pride. She was a good example to the young people of the country because she showed that being beautiful and intelligent and graceful and modest was even better than just being beautiful. Her hairdo was easy to copy, but manners were not. Anyone could buy a dress like one that Jacqueline Kennedy had worn, but her taste and her brightness were not to be purchased in the most expensive store.
Many tributes have been paid by important men and women to the late President. They have praise his passion for peace, his desire to help people of all races, his eagerness to make this a better world, his magnetic personality and his charm. Perhaps the greatest tribute ever paid to him in life was Jacqueline Lee Bouvier's promise to love him until death.
