Jackie Kennedy’s courage throughout the heartache of the assassination and the funeral enshrined her forever in the hearts of Americans everywhere. She maintained her composure and dignity throughout the difficult days in the aftermath of the assassination. Despite her pain her thoughts were only for her slain husbands memory and the welfare of their children.

Finally shedding her bloodstained clothes in the early hours of November the 23rd she lay awake planning a funeral that would honour her husband. She worked feverishly with her staff to ensure every detail was perfect, organising the Black Watch Regiment amongst others to play at the funeral. With Bobby she picked out the perfect spot in Arlington cemetery for Jack to be laid to rest in and organised the eternal flame that would mark the gravesite. .

She brought her children to the capitol to say goodbye to their father before the actual funeral. With family and friends arriving at the White House for the impending funeral she immersed herself in the detail that the protocol of the forthcoming funeral demanded. Jackie was determined to walk behind her husbands coffin down Pennsylvania Avenue; this was greeted with concern as security was already in a state of high alert following the events of November 22nd.

The funeral was difficult to bear for the family and friends of the late President, particularly as they watched his young children wondering aloud where their father was. John turned three years of age on the day of the funeral, too young really to understand what had happened to his family.

Despite the trauma of the day and the tears that were being shed all around her Jackie managed to remain composed, her thoughts for Jacks parents and family and for her children. Returning to the White House, she stood in a receiving line to meet the people who had meant so much to her husband in life. And once she had completed her duties she moved upstairs with her guests for Caroline and Johns joint birthday party, which she hadn’t had the heart to cancel feeling they had been through enough confusion in the past three days.

As always in death it would be the weeks and months ahead that would prove the most difficult. Packing her belongings and organising for the move from the White House was extremely hard on Jackie, who though she would never have believed it at the time, had grown to love the house and had spent the happiest years of her marriage there. Sadly she watched as the Oval Office was stripped of Jacks belongings, watching everything going on around her only served to increase her deep sense of pain.

For Jackie life as she knew it had died. She had been removed from the position of First Lady by the terrible events at Dallas. At was only thirty-four years old and with two small children she didn’t know what she would do with the rest of her life. She knew she would stay in Washington as she felt close to Jack there but felt she had lost her purpose.

Bereft at leaving the White House she moved into their friend Averell Harriman’s home in Georgetown as she tried to put her life back together. Throughout this time she spent countless hours responding to the thousands of condolence letters she had received. Her moods were erratic and she was consumed with grief, losing her composure and her temper at times. The truth was that she had suffered a severe emotional trauma, witnessing as she had the murder of her husband and she was struggling to cope with her new life alone.

To add to all this her home had become a tourist point, as she tried to take her children to school or welcome a visitor into her home, scores of tourists would attempt to take her photograph or worse reach out and try to grab one or other of the children. Life was becoming a nightmare for her.

During this time her goal had become the glorification of her husbands memory and she was single-minded in her pursuit of this. She gave press interviews to writers and journalists in which she described her husband eloquently and described a life together that had been idyllic. Determined to protect her young family, she would allow nothing to tarnish the memories they had of their father.

In Hyannis Port after the assassination she began her re-creation of her husbands image. While speaking to journalist Theodore White she described a recording of the Broadway show Camelot that Jack had loved and it was during this interview she first used the word Camelot, a name that has become synonymous with the glorious days of the Kennedy Presidency.

Returning to the claustrophobic atmosphere of Washington was more difficult after the freedom at the Cape. Everywhere she went she felt as though she were being watched. Added to this was the knowledge that this was Jacks world and without him it held no appeal for her. She pulled back from many of their mutual friends, finding the constant memories of their life together too painful to bear.

She held herself together throughout that first Christmas just and while the re-decoration of the new home she had purchased for herself and the children in Georgetown had kept her occupied for a while, in truth she could never settle down to life on her own in Washington and soon began to feel that it was time to move on.

In June of 1964 Jackie moved to New York to begin a new life. She was still emotionally shattered, racked with guilt over the past and scared of what the future would bring. She knew she had to try and make a normal life for the children and this would never be achieved in Washington where they were virtually under house arrest. In New York they would have the freedom to go where they wanted and live as they wished as more anonymity existed in that city.

Still she could not escape the past as she had to endure the pain of the Warren Commission Findings and re-live the events of the assassination over again. Life was difficult for her and she worried as she watched Bobby being sworn in as Senator from New York fearing the same fate would befall him and agonised with the rest of the family as Teddy narrowly escaped death in a plane crash.

She was constantly requested to give interviews and realising that the story must be told she decided to control the telling of it. She chose William Manchester to write it and sat with him for hundreds of hours describing in painful detail the events of the fateful visit to Dallas.She found these recollections incredibly difficult and could not get through the sessions without breaking down. Despite the constant pain, for her children’s sake continued to maintain a façade of normality at home.

For the adults it was a different story, in the aftermath of the assassination she had clung to Bobby in her grief and was still depending on him solely. Both of them had been deeply traumatised by the assassination and they had united in their shared grief. As Bobby struggled to move on with his personal and professional life Jackie had been there to provide support and he continued to do the same for her. He became a surrogate father to Caroline and John who in turn adored their Uncle Bobby.

She made it through the first year but only just. Things would get better and life would return to what was more like normality from 1965 onwards. She began to get out more, she went on dates and started to live again. She began to take an interest in life outside her family and close circle of friends and became interested in the Bedford Stuyvesant Project that Bobby was overseeing and later she lent her support to the campaign to save the Metropolitan Opera House. Throughout this time she was increasingly involved with the plans for the Presidential Library honouring JFK in Boston. These projects helped her find focus while at the same time kept her in the media spotlight. Still a figure of enormous importance and profile in America she was newsworthy for whatever she did.

Her life continued in pattern, summers at Hyannis, winters at Palm Beach as slowly she began to emerge from her shell. She had been untouchable for so long, revered across the country and the world but this would soon change when she read William Manchester’s manuscript detailing the assassination. Shocked by the revelations, she refused to believe he would print anything so personal. In a state of shock herself at the time of the interviews she hadn’t realised just how personal she had been with the writer. Determined to protect her privacy and that of her children, she began a battle to remove sections of the manuscript. This proved to be difficult and things turned quite ugly when she decided to sue Manchester. Her reputation was tarnished, as was Bobby Kennedy’s who had pledged his full support to her despite his concerns of the political fallout.

However disappointed she was with public opinion, she was adamant that she preserve the privacy of her family and did not want her most intimate moments discussed at will by people on the street. Determined to ignore the criticism she continued living life at a fast pace, travelling all over Europe and living a jet set existence.

It was during this time that she would begin seeing Aristotle Onassis and he would provide her with companionship and security that she had thought she would not find again. Conscious though that the Greek divorcee would not help Bobby’s chances of becoming President as he prepared to make his bid to run, she was counselled to be discreet about her romance. She travelled to Greece on many occasions to be with him and was glad of the respite away from the press intrusion and public interest.

Throughout all this, she remained loyal to the Kennedy family, continuing to feel her bond to them very strongly. Unhappy at first about Bobby’s decision to run for the Presidency, as time had gone on and she witnessed the impact he was making, she began to relax more and enjoy the familiarity of the campaign and the time spent with many of Jacks advisers and friends. She looked forward to a time when they as a family would be back in the White House again.

Her newfound sense of peace and normality was shattered as she was awoken to the news of Bobby’s fate. She had watched the returns come in from Los Angeles before she went to bed and was happy that he had done so well. Startled from her sleep to discover that he too had fallen prey to an assassin’s bullet, she fell into a state of deep shock. Immediately flying to California to be with him, she was at his bedside as he died on June 6 1968. Her darkest fears had come true. It was Dallas revisited.

This time however she was unable to contain her grief. Her deep and lasting bond with Bobby had been shattered and once again she had lost a man she had truly loved. Ravaged by grief and despair and frantic with worry she feared for her children’s lives, worried that their name would make them prime targets for abduction or worse. In her despair she made a decision, she would marry Onassis and begin a new life with him dividing her time between Greece and the United States. Onassis as one of the richest men in the world had the money to be able to offer the sort of security and protection that none of the other men in her circle ever would. And so it was that Jackie announced her decision to marry Aristotle Onassis much to the derision of a very disappointed and disillusioned public. They felt she had reviled the late Presidents memory and the press vilified her. Unabashed by the bad publicity she made her way to Greece to marry her unlikely groom in a small private ceremony in Skorpios. This was at the beginning of another chapter in her remarkable life.