Courage, Strength, and Dignity: A Conversation with Caroline Kennedy

In the spring of 1964, less than six months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. began conducting more than eight hours of interviews with Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline. At her request, the transcripts and tapes were sealed from the public. Now her daughter, Caroline, is releasing the interviews in a new book, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, to be published on Sept. 14.

On a hot summer morning in Boston, Caroline Kennedy sat down to talk to PARADE about the conversations, which reveal a different side to the glamorous woman the world calls Jackie O but whom Caroline still calls “Mummy.” Inside the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Caroline, 53, wearing a beige summer coat, an off-white blouse, and a light beige skirt, displayed the elegance of her mother and the charm of her father, whose bust stood nearby.

This daughter of Camelot has managed to live a quietly public life on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, and their three children (Rose, 23; Tatiana, 21; and John, 18), whom she credits with inspiring her to endorse Barack Obama in 2008. Save for a brief but awkward foray into politics—she expressed interest in Hillary Clinton’s vacated New York Senate seat in 2009 but then withdrew her name from consideration—she has carried her family’s legacy into the 21st century with grace and fortitude. In fact, as Caroline talks about her father, her brother, and her hopes for her own children, she exhibits the qualities she most admires in her mother: a sense of strength, a passion for reading, and the will to move forward despite the pain that has come her way.

PARADE: How did the Schlesinger interviews with your mother happen in the first place?
CAROLINE KENNEDY: In 1964, my mother, Uncle Bobby and Uncle Teddy, and others were looking for ways to create a living memorial to my father and inspire a new generation to go into public service and politics to make the world better, as he did. They also wanted to preserve the record of his administration. The technique of oral history was fairly new then, but the idea was to capture people’s recollections while they were still fresh. Over 1,000 people were interviewed, and Mummy decided she should be a part of it. She chose Arthur Schlesinger because she wanted to do it with somebody who shared her sense of history....