Jackie Kennedy Onassis is news again because of a love (32 years after her death)

BarcelonaThere are figures of such a monumental social dimension that, no matter how many years have passed since their death, they are a source of news comparable to any other celebrity who is still alive. As is the case with Diana of Wales, Jackie Kennedy –or Jackie Onassis, choose for yourselves– periodically appears among the most read news on information portals for all kinds of reasons, it doesn't matter if it is fashion, gossip, or politics. What matters is that any excuse is good to put her name in a headline and verify that her legend remains as alive as the first day and that people who had not even been born when she had already died are not willing to miss a single detail of her life.

This has happened once again this week, 32 years after her death. She who was baptized as the widow of America has occupied the media again with a story that practically no one knew. And the fact is that the woman for whom all the men of the world sighed –gays for her looks and heterosexuals for her undeniable attractiveness– had a love story that was neither JFK's nor Onassis'. A love that did not make her change her original surname, Bouvier, but that we now see was perhaps even more important than the one she had with, for example, her second husband.

A sad project

The lucky one was John Carl Jack Warnecke, a man who died in 2010 and who left instructions for his daughter that, once he was dead, she should wait a few years to publish some memoirs he had written. The text has finally seen the light this week under the title Camelot's architect: The untold story of Jackie Kennedy, Lafayette Square, and a secret romance. Warnecke, who was the architect of President JFK’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery, reviews in the memoirs how his relationship with Jackie evolved over the years, whom he met the year before the president’s assassination. Their first meeting was in 1962 at a party at the British embassy in Washington. He says that when he saw her he was dazzled and had feelings for her almost automatically. Far from being guided by caution, however, he admits that he decided to go on the offensive and asked her to dance right there.

Their next meeting, he explains, was already after the assassination. She and RFK, brother of her late husband, went to him to ask him to take charge of the president's grave, which meant they maintained very continuous contact. “Even though I was very attracted to her, I restrained myself. [...] We would meet in my office to work on the design of the grave, but nothing more. However, all of that generated a kind of tension, a personal and affectionate tension between us,” confesses Warnecke in his posthumous text.

That regular contact was abruptly reduced once the commission ended. In the autumn of 1964, however, they decided to see each other again, according to the architect. The chosen place was Newport, in the state of Rhode Island, where Jackie had spent most of the summers of her life. There, Warnecke explains, they verbalized for the first time what they felt for each other, which they had previously avoided telling one another. “We both knew in secret that we were in love,” he recalls.

Wedding plans

The love they had repressed served as a driving force for them, and by the end of that year they were already considering marriage, he states. However, they could not agree on how to go about it. While they were trying to find a way, time passed, and they reached 1966 without having made their romance public. In fact, their relationship was so serious at the time that Jackie moved to live in Hawaii during the period he was stationed there for work. Shortly after, however, he says that reality crushed his desires to live the relationship publicly. While he was in debt because he had experienced a bad professional streak, he realized that “Jackie needed special protection and privacy.” “I realized that I would never be able to guarantee it to her adequately,” he asserts in the text.

Parallel to that cooling of the relationship –during which they continued to see each other but less frequently–, Onassis was courting Jackie, who supposedly let herself be wooed discreetly by the shipping magnate without Warnecke having any news of it. She never wanted to make anything official with the Greek until –why could that be?– the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy took place, which accelerated the until then stalled plans to make public her relationship with what was then one of the richest men in the world. In October 1968 they married on the now mythical island of Skorpios and the widow of JFK became once again an iconic global wife.

Hidden tragedy

But that appearance of happiness of Jackie's was not so... The second most shocking revelation of the book is that the woman many have described as the most photographed woman of the 20th century discovered only after marrying Onassis that it had been a mistake. According to Warnecke's account, shortly after the wedding, he went to see her in Paris and Jackie confessed to him that that marriage had been “the biggest mistake she had ever made”. Perhaps for this sad reason they continued to see each other over the years. The love they had for each other “was never broken,” explains the architect, who points out that from then on they only met as friends. So much so that she even gave him advice regarding the women he met.

The couple met up more regularly than before starting in 1978, when she had already been Onassis's widow for three years and he had just divorced his second wife. “I felt as if, in a way, we continued to live an exciting secret affair,” he explains, who despite this great connection he describes, ends up confessing that he found out about her illness on television, the same day in February 1994 as the rest of the US.

Three months later, Warnecke also experienced Jackie’s funeral from emotional ostracism, as she lost the battle against Hodgkin's lymphoma. He had to watch as she was buried in the same grave that they had created together for President Kennedy. She had given him a blanket in 1965 accompanied by a witty note in which she said that she was giving it to him so that he wouldn't be cold when he was alone. Practically 30 years after receiving that gift, we now know that he threw it into the Russian River, in California. The blanket and the note that he had kept with such affection to be able to remember their love story floated away down the water, perhaps with the same force with which her public life swept away their love story.