The Death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (May 19, 1994)

 

 

 

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died the night of May 19, 1994 at her Manhattan apartment.  Cause of death was non-Hodgkins lymphoma, which had been made public a few months earlier.  Her death came one month after the death of former president Richard Nixon (who JFK defeated for president in 1960).  She was a great lady who was especially revered in New York because of her love of architectural preservation.  Jackie's death is particularly memorable for me because it coincided with the death of my father.

 

Dad suffered from a rare degenerative disease of the brain known as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) for about 10 years - the same condition actor Dudley Moore suffered from.  On Mother's Day on 1994 he was hospitalized for a mild heart attack and two weeks later I visited him and my mother for the weekend.  (Up until this hospital stay my mother had taken care of my father at home.)

 

I heard the news about Jackie's death (at the age of 64) during the 11:00 news while packing for my trip and I read more about it the next morning in the New York Times while waiting to board my flight to Pittsburgh at Newark Airport.  On the last day of my visit Mom, Dad and I watched some of her funeral from Dad's hospital room.  (It was a sunny and  hot day in New York.)  The next day, May 24, Dad died unexpectedly, two months shy of his 70th birthday.  I returned to Pittsburgh the following day to help my brother, sister and mother with funeral preparations.