parade.com
Courage, Strength, and Dignity: A Conversation with Caroline Kennedy
EXCLUSIVE DOTSON RADER SEPTEMBER 04, 2011
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In the spring of 1964, less than six months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. began conducting more than eight hours of interviews with Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline. At her request, the transcripts and tapes were sealed from the public. Now her daughter, Caroline, is releasing the interviews in a new book, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, to be published on Sept. 14.
On a hot summer morning in Boston, Caroline Kennedy sat down to talk to PARADE about the conversations, which reveal a different side to the glamorous woman the world calls Jackie O but whom Caroline still calls “Mummy.” Inside the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Caroline, 53, wearing a beige summer coat, an off-white blouse, and a light beige skirt, displayed the elegance of her mother and the charm of her father, whose bust stood nearby.
This daughter of Camelot has managed to live a quietly public life on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, and their three children (Rose, 23; Tatiana, 21; and John, 18), whom she credits with inspiring her to endorse Barack Obama in 2008. Save for a brief but awkward foray into politics—she expressed interest in Hillary Clinton’s vacated New York Senate seat in 2009 but then withdrew her name from consideration—she has carried her family’s legacy into the 21st century with grace and fortitude. In fact, as Caroline talks about her father, her brother, and her hopes for her own children, she exhibits the qualities she most admires in her mother: a sense of strength, a passion for reading, and the will to move forward despite the pain that has come her way.
PARADE: How did the Schlesinger interviews with your mother happen in the first place?
CAROLINE KENNEDY: In 1964, my mother, Uncle Bobby and Uncle Teddy, and others were looking for ways to create a living memorial to my father and inspire a new generation to go into public service and politics to make the world better, as he did. They also wanted to preserve the record of his administration. The technique of oral history was fairly new then, but the idea was to capture people’s recollections while they were still fresh. Over 1,000 people were interviewed, and Mummy decided she should be a part of it. She chose Arthur Schlesinger because she wanted to do it with somebody who shared her sense of history.
Did you know about the interviews?
My brother, John [who died in 1999], and I knew that she had done them and that she wanted them put aside for 50 years. After my mother left Washington, she gave no interviews about my father or their time in the White House, so this is a unique historical document. It’s a wonderful portrait of both my parents. The interviews were done between March and June ’64, when we were in Georgetown. Soon after, Mummy decided to move to New York.
Why did she leave D.C.? Did she feel unsafe there?
We moved because she loved New York, and she felt she could start a new life there. Washington is all about the president, and I think she believed it would make her sad to stay. She thought John and I could grow up in a freer environment in New York. People in New York had taken her, John, and me into their hearts—respecting her privacy as well as embracing her. She really thrived on the city’s intellectual environment, and New York was the place she felt the freest and was home—she was born in Southampton, Long Island, and spent summers there and winters in the city.
Since 2002, you’ve been the vice chair of the Fund for Public Schools, which has raised more than $285 million for education in New York City. Did this interest come from your mother?
Education was the most important value in our home when I was growing up. People don’t always realize that my parents shared a sense of intellectual curiosity and a love of reading and of history. One of my favorite parts in the new book is where my mother talks about my father and how he used to read all the time, even when you wouldn’t think a person could read. He’d read when he was getting dressed; he’d read when he was walking. [laughs] If there was something she was reading and found interesting, he would take it right out of her hand and read the whole book.
And your mother?
She was always reading! That’s the image I have when I think of her. In New York, she’d be reading when I came home from school or in the evenings. In the summer, we’d swim in the mornings, and in the afternoons she’d read on the porch. She always said that reading the memoirs of Versailles [the French royal palace, which was the center of political power from 1682 to 1789] was the best preparation she had for the White House, because the way people behaved at court was like how they did around the president. She had a deep engagement with literature, history, plays, and poetry. They gave her strength, even in the difficult times. Because she knew about ancient Greece and read the plays written back then, she knew about suffering and about perseverance.
Did she encourage you and John to read?
Yes. She made it fun, and she was always quoting things. When we’d play charades, everybody wanted Mummy on their team because she knew these quotes no one else knew. She would throw in Walter Raleigh, Yeats, and Bible verses, and she’d win every time! She mostly didn’t play, but when she did she was really a star.
