Jackie Kennedy jet-setting in ’61.
The American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt would, rightly, come to be known as “the First Lady of the World,” for her tireless humanitarian work, especially the historic effort she made into the drafting and passage of the Declaration of Human Rights while serving as a U.S. representative at the United Nations.
Since then, the former First Lady Hillary Clinton eclipsed the record for an understanding of the complexities between economics, human rights, culture and education which shape and guide the political power of nations and the fates of its people, serving in the capacity of the American Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.
If her famous predecessor and famous successor globe-trotted to the corners of the world on behalf of humanitarian efforts and foreign policy, however, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis should also rightfully be remembered for the wanderlust which led her to explore new cultures and countries from the time she was a college student through the rest of her life.
Famously, in her capacity as First Lady, she became the most potent weapon of personal diplomacy during the Cold War, an important figure making those trips to non-aligned nations that the U.S. was seeking to draw as allies. But part of the reason why she became the world’s most famous woman was also simply because she went out and into the world.
In remembering her today, on what would have been her 85th birthday, through this gallery of images from just her more well-known world travels, one is struck by how she, as a proud representative of her own nation, paradoxically drew respect for it by so fully embracing the customs and cultures of the worlds she loved exploring.
While pictures posing her with Kings and Queens, Presidents and Popes always draw attention, a larger number of them show her being drawn to the everyday men, women and children, always seeking to discern the common bond she had with them.
These images are not in any particular order, the randomness of it all just flowing as they were retrieved from the website’s vast photo archive. Certainly, readers are welcome, as always to not only make corrections (many of the images were purchased years ago from newspaper morgues and often lacked proper dates and identity of place) but to also contribute photographs which are decidedly missing, like those showing her in Yugoslavia, Poland, Holland, Germany, Sweden, the former Soviet Union, Colombia and many other places.
An excited Jackie Bouvier, center, with fellow exchange students, about to sail for Europe where she would live and travel for a year, while studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, 1949.
In Turkey’s Blue Mosque, 1963.
Jacqueline Bouvier (far right) in Cordoba, Spain during her first trip to Europe in 1947. (Corbis)
Jackie Kennedy makes a spontaneous gift of a colorful scarf to a traditionally clad Muslim woman in Pakistan, 1962. (Life)
Jackie Onassis lunching in Capri, Italy, early 1970s.
The presidential widow arriving in Cambodia, 1967.
Jackie Kennedy in Iloni Palace, Honululu, Hawaii, 1967.
Jacqueline Kennedy touring the Acropolis in Greece for the first time, 1961.
As Jackie Onassis, back at the Acropolis in 1969.
Mrs. Kennedy in the Vatican, 1962.
Jackie Kennedy on the border of Afghanistan, 1962.
Jacqueline Bouvier with Father-Joseph Leonard in Iireland, 1950. (Sheppard’s Irish Auction House.)
Jackie Onassis, back in Capri with designer Valentino, 1970.
Jackie Onassis arrives in Jamaica for vacation, March 1976.
Jackie Kennedy, enjoying her gelato, Italy 1962
Jackie Onassis on a camel in Egypt, 1974.
The American First Lady greeted by villagers in Mykonos, Greece, 1961. (LIfe)
Jackie Kennedy Onassis listens to her personal tour guide through Beijing’s Forbidden City, October 17, 1982. (Washington Star Collection)
In Venice with her sister in the summer of 1951.
Jackie Kennedy goes shopping in Bangkok, Thailand, 1967.
Mrs. Kennedy riding in Ireland, 1967.
In Vienna, Austria with Nina Khrushchev, Jackie Kennedy acknowledges crowds, 1961.
In Dublin, Ireland, 1967, speaking with the wife of Irish President Eamon de Valera.
Donned in a traditional Andalusian riding outfit, the former First Lady rode through the Seville Fair on a horse.
Running her horse on a beach in Ireland, 1967.
Along with Princess Grace of Monaco, Jackie Kennedy joined host the Duchess of Alba in watching a flamenco fiesta in Seville, Spain, April 1966.
Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline Onassis cruising the Nile River in Egypt, 1974.
Jackie Kennedy dancing at a private party in Morocco, 1963.
Jackie Onassis in Madouri, Greece, 1968.
Jackie Kennedy leading a pack of schoolchildren in Argentina, 1966.
Jackie Kennedy, shopping again, this time in in Rome, 1962.
During an archeological dig she joined, Jacqueline Kennedy peers through her shades at Mayan ruins in Uxmal, Mexico, 1968.
With her husband Aristotle Onassis, the former First Lady toured through the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland and greeted admirers waiting to meet her, 1970. (London Daily Express/Getty Images)
Jackie Kennedy on her first day in Paris during her famous state visit there with the President, 1961.
Some more shopping, in Paris, 1972.
Poised before her sister’s London home, Jackie Kennedy was about to be drive to have lunch with the Queen of England, 1962. (London Evening Standard/Getty Images)
Jacqueline Kennedy with President Romulo Betancourt during a state visit she made to Venezuela with President Kennedy in December of 1961 (Corbis)
Jackie Kennedy in India with the traditional tilak on her forehead, March 1962.
Jackie Kennedy speaking as First Lady to farming families in Venezuela, December 1961.
Jackie Bouvier in 1949 while a student in Paris, attending a party.
Jackie Kennedy in the ruins at Angkor, Cambodia, 1967. (Corbis)
Jackie Onassis checking out the old marketplace in Athens, Greece, 1969.
The new bride of Senator John F. Kennedy with him on their honeymoon in Acapulco, Mexico, 1953.
Jackie Kennedy browsing the open-air market bazaars of India, 1962.
With husband Ari, Jackie Onassis takes in some bellydancing on the table, Cairo, Egypt, 1973.
Greeting a horse in Pakistan, which would soon be presented to her as a gift, 1962.
Jackie Kennedy placing flower leis at the foot of King Kamehameha’s statue in Honolulu.
Jackie Kennedy dancing the Twist in the London home of her sister in 1962, snapped by her friend Benno Graziani.
The widowed Mrs. Kennedy spent Easter 1967 in Argentina, where she is seen riding here.
Jackie Kennedy and Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk unveiling a plaque of an avenue named for President Kennedy, 1967.
Jackie Onassis gets some help climbing as she explores a cave in Lefkas, Greece, 1969.
Jackie Kennedy in India 1962.
Jackie Onassis strolling the beach at Cesaree, Israel in 1978.
Interacting with villagers in Venezuela, 1961.
Jackie Kennedy and her two children in the cottage of Kennedy relatives in Ireland, 1967.
Prince Norodom Sihanouk shows Jackie Kennedy the lavish gifts he government was presenting her during her 1967 Cambodian visit.
With her friend Karl Katz, showing her an archeological dig site in Israel, 1978.
Jackie Onassis in Nairobi, Kenya, 1973.
Ari and Jackie Onassis in Tehran, Iran, 1972.
The Washington Times-Herald’s Inquiring Cameragirl Jackie Bouvier working in London to cover the city during the time of Queen Eizabeth’s May 1953 coronation.
Jackie Kennedy arrives in Montreal, Canada for the World’s Fair Expo ’67.
Although the photographs here are primarily from the 1960’s and 1970’s when she was first the American President’s wife and then his widow, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis continued to travel the world until the year before her death in 1994, making what she didn’t realize at the time would be her last trip back to France.
In 1964, newspapers imagined what Jackie Kennedy, then celebrating her 35th birthday, might look like today – her 85th birthday.
Once she returned to the workplace for the first time in twenty-two years in September of 1975, following the death of her second husband six months earlier, she not only continued to travel to new countries for her own personal interest but for professional reasons as well.
The late 1970s, the 1980s and the early 1990s had her making her one and only visit to the Soviet Union, as well as to Belgium, the Czech Republic and the nations of Scandinavia.
When she died in May of 1994, she was two months short of celebrating her 65th birthday, often viewed in earlier times as the absolute age of retirement. Although she might technically have been considered a senior citizen at that point, there was something about her, like millions of other people who aren’t famous or who have seen the world as she was privileged to do, which seemed to still mark her as young.
1Jackie Onassis about two years before her death.
Certainly, she had begun to visibly, even markedly age – a result almost certainly due, in part, to the cancer that would kill her. Yet somehow she managed to seem somehow youthful.
Some later presumed this was a result of the world only remembering her when she was First Lady, some three decades before her death. In fact, of course, her presence continued to dominate the film footage of the evening news and color magazine and black-and-white newspaper photographs.
It had nothing to do with greying hair or wrinkles but rather her perpetual incandescence, a spirit lit by an unquenchable compulsion to learn, to continually discover knowledge about people different from herself and cultures different from her own.
It was evident even to her new boss, when she reported to him in December of 1951 as an initially unassigned reporter.
“Just what is it that interests you the most?” the Washington Times-Herald editor Frank Waldrop asked her briskly.
After a long, almost uncomfortable pause of hard thought, she piped up in response to him, “Everything.”
Categories: The Kennedys
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Thank you Carl for sharing such a wonderful tribute in pictures.
THANK YOU MR. ANTHONY. THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER 1ST LADY LIKE JACK-LEEN , SHE WAS MADE TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED . A CLASSY, ELEGANT, BEAUTIFUL WOMEN WITH GREAT EYES I JUST LOVE LOOKING AT HER , BUT ONLY WITH JACK . WHEN ARI APPEARS I GET DEPRESSED . SHE WAS TRULY AN AMERICAN QUEEN AND I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO BE IN HIGH SCHOOL DURING JFK’S ADMINISTRATION . RIP SWEET JACQUELINE !
A picture is worth a thousand words…The photo of Mrs. Onassis looking at the sign in Cambodia with the Prince as a street is named after the President…all the pain, sorrow, regret, joy, etc. is etched on her face….I always thought words created the story – but you proved pictures can tell just as powerful a story.
As always, thank you.
David//Chicago
Hi Carl –
Congratulation’s on your Bronze Medal! Well deserved — Ida would be proud.
David//Chicago
Carl, you came up with a bunch of new photos – but then, you always do! I enjoy your articles so much – they are always so insightful.
Thank you again Barbara for you’ve been very kind in your words over the long haul. I notice, and I appreciate it. Have a good Thanksgiving.