Research by Steven L. Brawley

Jackie's May 1972 Interview with Maryam Kharazmi, Kayhan Newspaper

Jackie in Tehran

Our correspondent in Tehran is a beautiful 22- year-old Iranian girl named Maryam Kharazmi. Maryam works as a junior reporter for a local newspaper, the "Kayhan International."

Attractive, perceptive, industrious and personable, Maryam several weeks ago achieved a scoop. She interviewed Jacqueline Kennedy .Onassis who nowadays avoids reporters as she avoids the plague. 

"Jackie was here with her husband," Maryam explains, "at the invitation of the National Iranian Oil Company, which is interested in working out with Onassis the purchase of some oil tankers. 

"Naturally, Jackie had nothing to do with those discussions," Maryam reports, "so I decided I would try to interview her on her free time. I heard that she and Onassis were dining at the Hilton Hotel here one evening, so I raced home, climbed into my best clothes, and got to the hotel. They were having cocktails with Reza Fallah - he's senior executive of National Iranian Oil - and his daughter and some other friends.

"I waited an hour until cocktail time was over, then I edged my way over to Jackie. 'Hello, Mrs. Onassis,' I said, 'I know you hate to talk to reporters. But I've waited such a long time for just a few short minutes with you.' "

Jackie smiled at me, then politely explained that she was there with friends but that she might consider giving me a short interview some time later.

"I started to leave with her and her guests when suddenly a very charming gentleman, short but appealing, took my hand and kissed it. 'Why haven't we been introduced?' he asked.

"I was too astonished to say anything. Luckily Reza Fallah came to my help. He introduced me to Aristotle Onassis.

"'I never know why,' Onassis said, 'but instead of pretty girls being introduced to me they are always introduced to my wife.' "

The following night I met Jacqueline Onassis again, this time at a party given for her and her husband by Fallah. She looked stunning in an orange chiffon evening gown. True to her word, she granted me an interview.

I asked her what differences there were in her being Mrs. John F. Kennedy and then Mrs. Aristotle Onassis. 

"People often forget," she answered, "that I was Jacqueline Lee Bouvier before being Mrs. Kennedy or Mrs. Onassis. Throughout my life, however, I've always tried to remain true to myself. And I'll continue to do this so long as I live. I am today what I was yesterday and with luck what I will be tomorrow."

She reminisced about her days in Washington, explaining that she was working as a journalist- photographer conducting interviews when she met Senator Kennedy. "I don't dislike reporters," she declared. "It's just that I get afraid of them when they come at me in a crowd. I don't like crowds because I don't like impersonal masses. They remind me of swarms of locusts. But having been a reporter myself, I'm aware of what problems a journalist encounters. I used to make appointments in advance to interview some very important person. Then he'd cancel at the last minute or wouldn't show up and I'd have to take shots of somebody else and talk to chance acquaintances."

Maryam reports that Jackie was exceedingly "clever, shrewd, and professionally experienced in the ways she artfully, dodged particular questions." When I asked her if she felt better as private Mrs. Onassis than public Mrs. Kennedy, she smiled and replied, "That's a leading question. I'm a woman above everything else. I love children and I think that seeing one's children grow up is the most delightful thing any woman can think about."

"I have been through a lot and suffered a great deal. But I've had lots of happy moments as well. I've come to the conclusion that we must not expect too much from life. We must give to life at least as much as we get from it. At its best life is not too secure and one must seize every moment as it comes."

"Every moment one lives is different from the other," she went on, "the good, the bad, the hardships, the joys, the tragedies, loves and happiness are all interwoven into one indescribable whole that is called life. You cannot separate the good from the bad. And perhaps, there is no need to do so."

Maryam asked Mrs. Onassis if stories about her quick temper were accurate.

Said Jackie: "The truth of the matter is that I am a very shy person. People take my diffidence for arrogance 'and my withdrawal from publicity as a sign of my supposedly looking down on the rest of mankind." 

Our correspondent in Tehran summed up Mrs. Jacqueline Onassis as "charming, plebian, forthright, polite, with practically no makeup, but with large, bright, glowing eyes the basic ingredient of her facial beauty."

Research by Steven L. Brawley

Myths About Jackie:

• She was French: No, she was Irish, English, French, and Scottish (1/2 Irish and only 1/8 French).
• She graduated from Vassar: No she received a BA in French Literature from George Washington University in 1951.
• Her pink suit was a knock off: No. Jackie used a complicated buying scheme that allowed her to have a New York salon - Chez Ninon "assemble" a fall 1961 Chanel suit (fabric, materials, buttons, and all) so it would appear that she was buying American.
• Oleg Cassini designed all of her White House era clothing. Mostly. He designed the bulk of what Jackie called her "state" clothes. But, she had clothing scouts around the world searching collections for new finds from multiple designers.
• She spent most of her time as First Lady in the White House working on its restoration and entertaining heads of state: Not really. She spent a great deal of time away from the White House at a leased Virginia estate called Glen Ora, and travelling overseas (Italy, India, Greece, etc.). President Kennedy's family members, even her mother, often filled in for her at official White House functions. The comedian Jimmy Durante even adapted his old joke to say "Goodnight Mrs. Kennedy, wherever you are."
• She made all of the decisions regarding the White House restoration. Well, she led the effort and created the White House Historical Association and the Fine Arts Committee. JFK also weighed in from time to time (including directing the Blue Room floor to be darkened, selecting the blue toile fabric in his bedroom, and the redo of his Oval Office in Nov. 1963).
• She wasn't very political: We continue to learn more and more about Jackie's influence and political savvy based upon her 1964 oral history and other documents.

Research by Steven L. Brawley

Portions of Jackie's 1964 oral history conducted by historian and Kennedy staffer Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.:

• "But I said: Please, don’t send me away to Camp David, you know, me and the children. Please don’t send me anywhere. If anything happens, we’re all going to say right here with you.”And, you know — and I said, “Even if there’s not room in the bomb shelter in the White House,” which I had seen, I said, “Please, then I just want to be on the lawn when it happens, you know, but I just want to be with you and I want to die with you. And the children do, too, than live without you.”
• "I was always a liability to him until we got to the White House. And he never asked me to change or said anything about it. Everyone thought I was a snob from Newport who had bouffant hair and had French clothes and hated politics. And then because I was off and having these babies, I wasn't able to campaign, be around him as much as I could have. And he’d get so upset for me when something like that came out. And, sometimes, I would say, Oh, Jack, I wish — I’m so sorry for you that I’m just such a dud.”
• "And he cared so much. He didn’t care about his 100 days, but all those poor men who you would send off with all their hopes high and promises that we would back them. And there they were, shot down like dogs or going to die in jail. And Bobby came over to see me and said, Please stay very close to Jack. I mean, just be around all afternoon. If I was going to take children out - in other words, don’t leave anywhere, just to sort of comfort him."
• "I always thought there was one thing merciful about the White House, which made up for the goldfish bowl and the Secret Service and all that, was that it was kind of - you were hermetically sealed or there was something protective against the outside world, I mean, as far as your private life went. And I decided that was the best thing to do. Everyone should be trying to help Jack in whatever way they could. And that was the way I could do it the best, by making it always a climate of affection and comfort and detente when he came home."
• "Bobby told me this later and I know Jack said it to me sometimes. He said, Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president? He didn't like that idea that Lyndon would go on and be president because he was worried for the country. Bobby told me that he’d had some discussions with him. I forget exactly how they were planning or who they had in mind. It wasn't Bobby, but somebody. Do something to name someone else in ’68."
• "“I think a woman always adapts, and especially if you’re very young when you get married. You know, you really become the kind of wife you can see that your husband wants….when you live with a man who’s so busy…you don’t just want to question him, question him at the end of the day. So you pick it up by what he’s telling someone else…what he wants to tell you . .though I might have been dying to know.”

Source: Jacqueline Kennedy:Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy (2011).

Jackie's Letter to Khrushchev

Washington, December 1, 1963

Dear Mr. Chairman President,

I would like to thank you for sending Mr. Mikoyan as your representative to my husband’s funeral.

He looked so upset when he came through the line, and I was very moved.

I tried to give him a message for you that day—but as it was such a terrible day for me, I do not know if my words came out as I meant them to.

So now, in one of the last nights I will spend in the White House, in one of the last letters I will write on this paper at the White House, I would like to write you my message.

I send it only because I know how much my husband cared about peace, and how the relation between you and him was central to this care in his mind. He used to quote your words in some of his speeches - ”In the next war the survivors will envy the dead.”

You and he were adversaries, but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up. You respected each other and could deal with each other. I know that President Johnson will make every effort to establish the same relationship with you.

The danger which troubled my husband was that war might be started not so much by the big men as by the little ones.

While big men know the needs for self-control and restraint—little men are sometimes moved more by fear and pride. If only in the future the big men can continue to make the little ones sit down and talk, before they start to fight.

“You and he were adversaries, but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up.”

I know that President Johnson will continue the policy in which my husband so deeply believed - a policy of control and restraint - and he will need your help.

I send this letter because I know so deeply of the importance of the relationship which existed between you and my husband, and also because of your kindness, and that of Mrs. Khrushcheva in Vienna.

I read that she had tears in her eyes when she left the American Embassy in Moscow, after signing the book of mourning. Please thank her for that.

Sincerely,

Jacqueline Kennedy

Source: JFK Library