Jackie & Me

Somewhere in the world there’s a photograph I’ve been trying to find for over forty years. I’ve never seen it but I know it exists. It was taken while I was passing by the outdoor commencement ceremony of a friend who was graduating from Boston University. I managed to find her parents in the crowd to congratulate them. They were surprised and excited to see me but all they could say was, “Did you see… Did you see? Did you see Jackie?”
      “Jackie? Jackie who?”
      “Jackie O!”
      Jackie Onassis. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The most famous woman in the world.

      It turns out her nephew was also graduating and his family came out in full force. Jackie, her sister Lee Radziwill, Caroline Kennedy and John Jr. All sitting together in the front row.  

      Flanked by security, they waited like everyone else for the ceremony to begin. The sisters chatting, John hunched over the Boston Globe, Caroline sitting quietly between mother and brother. A constant gaggle of parents and other attendees gathered ten feet away taking pictures of the famous family for their graduation weekend scrapbooks. No one in attendance was without a camera. Everyone was leaving with a photo.

      It so happens John and I were students together at the same college and we had a brief encounter a year earlier when I found his wallet in the library one night. He came by my room the next day to pick it up. We chatted briefly. I managed to steer our polite conversation to the subject of our mothers. In that moment, I secretly celebrated the fact that the former First Lady and the woman known to my family as the Chopped Liver Queen were discussed in equal measure by their respective sons in a campus dorm room.

      A year later, here I am and there he is. His sister stepped away leaving an empty chair between mother and son. I walk straight ahead and sit in the vacant seat. John looks up from the paper on his lap with a quizzical expression.  

      “You may not remember me,” I acknowledge. “I’m the guy who found your wallet,” I explain. He nods with recognition and picks up the conversation from there. By now, Mrs. Onassis must have taken some measure of interest in this stranger sitting to her left and chatting with her son. She turns her shoulder slightly in my direction and leans in just enough to inquire who I am without saying a word. I explain. She nods. She turns back to her sister. They resume their conversation as I wrap up mine.

      That might be the end of my story. Only the entire time I sat amidst this Kennedy tableau, there was the constant click of camera shutters capturing the moment. Hundreds of photos must have been taken of the most famous woman in the world and her heartthrob son with this unidentified figure sitting in between.

      Somewhere in the world, there are prints of those snapshots taken while I sat on that folding chair along Commonwealth Avenue. Somewhere in some photo album or envelope there’s visual proof of this story. I tell it in the hope it will someday reach someone who will recognize it to be the missing piece of a puzzle they may have wondered about just as I have wondered about them. Until such time, I can only rely on my memory to provide the image of that picture perfect afternoon when Jackie sat among us and gently nodded in my direction.