By the beginning of 1974, Aristotle Onassis seemed to be fading faster with each passing day. Much to everyone’s dismay, he was diagnosed with the very serious and also rare autoimmune neuromuscular disease myasthenia gravis, a debilitating condition affecting first the muscles that control eye and eyelid movement and facial expressions, and then finally the muscles that control breathing and neck and limb movements. The onset of the disorder can be quite sudden, as it was in Onassis’s case. To fight it, doctors prescribed extremely high dosages of cortisone, a drug with which Jackie was all too familiar since it was the same medication JFK had used to treat his Addison’s disease. However, in Onassis’s case, the medication only made matters worse in that it precipitated the onset of Cushing’s syndrome, which hit Ari hard with its symptoms that include weight gain, back pain, skin problems, and a litany of other issues that just a year earlier would never have been believed possible in Onassis.
The sicker he got, the meaner he was to Jackie. “Onassis treated her so badly,” said the celebrated photographer Peter Beard, who was a friend of Jackie’s. “I can’t tell you how many meals I sat through on Skorpios when he would scream at her, and she would just continue eating. She took a lot of shit from him. Constantly, he would make insulting comparisons between Jackie and Maria Callas, suggesting that Jackie was just interested in superficial gossip whereas Maria was a real artist and substantive person. It was all very hurtful.”
In the spring of 1974, Aristotle told Jackie that he wanted a divorce. He had actually been preparing for it for some time, because six months earlier he had instructed his lawyer, Stelios Papadimitriou, to draw up divorce papers. Moreover, he wrote out his last will and testament and handed it to the lawyer for safekeeping. In it, he stated that Jackie had “given up her hereditary rights on my inheritance” and thus he intended to “limit the share for her and her children.” (He was no doubt referring to the agreement Jackie had signed when she married him.) Now, upon his death, in accordance with his wishes, Jackie would receive just $200,000 a year for life, and $25,000 a year for John and Caroline, but only until they reached the age of twenty-one. Jackie would also receive a 25 percent share in Skorpios and the Christina. Moreover, if she decided to dispute the will, she would immediately forfeit any money she would have received. He also specifically stated his desire that his attorneys fight her in that regard “through all possible legal means.” Papadimitriou later recalled, “It was as if he wanted her to hate him—as if, even in death, he wanted her to be sorry she had married him. But when I told him that in order to file for divorce in Greece he would have to outline his criticism of her, what she had done wrong, why he was divorcing her, he blew up at me and said, ‘I will never do that. I will never say anything bad about Jackie. Forget it.’ ”
Jackie and Sinatra
It wasn’t that he didn’t love her, Aristotle Onassis had told Jackie, he just no longer wanted her in his life. It didn’t make any sense to her when he finally explained it in the spring of 1974, but so much of what had happened in recent years had defied explanation. This was just something else Jackie would have to accept. She was even free to date, Onassis had told her, though most people in her life thought that an unlikely scenario. However, in the early fall of 1974, Jackie did enjoy a night out on the town with someone who might have been considered an improbable suitor: Frank Sinatra. In fact, Jackie liked Frank a great deal, found him interesting and charming and—true to the way the Kennedys compartmentalized their feelings—didn’t hold against him any of the long-standing rumors that he had been one of JFK’s “wingmen” when it came to introducing the president to other women. “Her feeling was that whatever had happened fifteen years ago happened fifteen years ago,” said one of Jackie’s closest friends. “If she didn’t hold it against Jack, she surely wasn’t going to hold it against his friends. For instance, she didn’t hold it against Peter Lawford either, and he was a part of that contingent as well. Jackie didn’t live in the past, anyway. When she looked back on the Camelot years it was usually in a romantic, not critical, way. Therefore, she was always interested in socializing with people who had been connected to that time and place in her life. It made her feel good, it made her feel connected to a period that still meant the world to her.”
“Though they spoke often over the years, Frank and Jackie hadn’t seen much of each other after that incident when the president refused to stay at Frank’s home in 1962,” recalled Frank’s close friend Tony Oppedisamo. “But there was always a strong connection there because of Jack. Frank loved Jack, no matter what had happened. When he was with Jackie, it brought back a lot of those old feelings for that time and place, as I think it did for her too. But the relationship with Jackie was one of his relationships that, when it came to explaining the depth of it, Frank was very tight-lipped about, even with me. He just made it clear that there were feelings there.”
At the end of their evening together, Frank—who was single at the time—and Jackie ended up at Jilly’s, a popular nightspot on 52nd Street owned by Frank Sinatra’s longtime friend Jilly Rizzo. Tony Oppedisamo was at the time a jazz guitarist and vocalist who happened to be working at Jilly’s the night Sinatra and Onassis showed up there. “I was on a break and Jilly had me come to his table and we were sitting and talking when there was a loud buzz in the room. We turned around and in walked Frank with Jackie. They sat down and seemed very happy, holding hands—not to say that it was a romantic gesture because they also could have been holding hands as old friends, but they were holding hands. Maybe an hour or so later just as the food was being served, in walked Aristotle Onassis. There was no big deal made about it; it wasn’t as if Frank looked up and said, ‘Oh shit! What’s he doing here?’ Jackie seemed very happy to see Onassis. So he joined them and there was then a lot of conversation and a lot of laughs. It was all very friendly.”
At about three in the morning, according to Oppedisamo, Jackie and Ari left the popular nightspot, followed by Tony and Jilly. Before taking his leave, Onassis shook hands with Sinatra, with Rizzo, and then with Oppedisamo. He looked at Jackie and said, “Okay, I’ll be in the car. Take your time.” He then walked across the street by himself and halfway down the block where his limousine awaited him. “It surprised me,” recalled Oppedisamo, “that he left Jackie there with Frank, but in my opinion, Onassis respected that Frank and Jackie had a relationship that predated him. I think he sensed that there was a strong connection. I remember thinking at the time, well, he’s not well, he’s been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, maybe he thinks, ‘I’m not going to be around much longer and Jackie could do a lot worse than end up with Sinatra.’ ”
About a year later, on September 17, 1975, Jackie Kennedy Onassis would spend another evening with Frank Sinatra, this time when she accompanied him to his concert at the Uris Theater in New York and then, afterward, for drinks at the “21” Club. When pictures of the couple appeared in the press the next day, Ethel Kennedy was concerned enough to telephone Jackie to remind her that Sinatra had been involved in the more infamous White House shenanigans. Some in Jackie’s circle claimed she was upset that Ethel had brought the matter to her attention, while others have said she wasn’t really moved one way or the other about it. What is known, though, is that it never got serious between Frank and Jackie.
An interesting postscript to the story of Jackie Onassis and Frank Sinatra: It would be almost twenty years later, in May 1994, when Frank got word of Jackie’s death. It hit him hard. In fact, he was so distraught he couldn’t perform opening night at the Foxwoods Casino in Ledyard, Connecticut. “He just wasn’t able to work,” recalled Tony Oppedisamo. “Frank Jr. [who was conducting the orchestra for his father at this time] did the show that night. In fact, the audience was told that they could get refunds for their tickets and see Frank Jr. I was up with Frank [Sr.] the whole night, until the sun came up the following morning. In the past, I’d spent hundreds of hours with Frank until three or four in the morning, sometimes with all
laughs, sometimes much more serious. But that weekend there was just silence. He didn’t want to talk about it. He just wanted me around as a friend.
“The next day, he slept the entire day,” continued Oppedisamo. “That second night, again, he was too distraught to go on. He just couldn’t pull it together. There was nothing physically wrong with him; he had made himself ill because he was so upset. Frank Jr. performed again that night. Finally, on the third day, we realized Frank [Sr.] wasn’t going to be able to continue at all. We canceled the rest of the engagement and rescheduled it for November. In my mind,” Oppedisamo concluded, “Frank’s reaction to Jackie’s death spoke volumes for the way he felt about her.”
Ari Dies
On February 2, 1975, while terribly ill with the flu in Glyfada, Aristotle Onassis called his wife Jackie in New York to tell her that he missed her and wanted to see her. By this time, he wasn’t even able to keep his eyes open because of the myasthenia gravis. He had lost forty pounds in two months, was slurring his speech, and seemed as if he were wasting away. Christina summoned cardiologist Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld in New York and asked him to fly to Greece to see her father. “Jackie accompanied me on that trip,” recalled Rosenfeld. “After I examined Onassis, I determined that he was suffering from gallbladder disease and I felt strongly that he should go to New York for intensive treatment. However, Onassis’s gastroenterologist, Professor Jean Caroli, felt he should be sent to Paris for treatment. Jackie let the decision rest with Christina, who agreed with Caroli. Thus Onassis was moved to the American Hospital in Paris.
“Jackie was very upset,” continued Dr. Rosenfeld. “She did her best to get along with the daughter. They tried to put aside their differences so that decisions could be made. They both loved Onassis, even if they didn’t get along with each other.
“A few days later, Onassis was operated on in Paris. I was concerned. I did not believe he would survive an operation at that time; he was that weak. The operation did not go well; Onassis seemed ready to give up. This was not the kind of life for a man who had lived so fully.”
Jackie was told that her husband could hang on for days, maybe weeks. Therefore she decided to return to New York to be with her children. Some questioned her decision to leave her dying husband’s side and wondered how she could do it. Surely, said the skeptics, if she really cared about him she would never have left him in Paris at such a crucial time.
Once she was back in Manhattan, Jackie Kennedy Onassis telephoned a number of old friends, including the architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. A few years earlier, Barnes had solidified his reputation as a world-class architect with his highly acclaimed Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Though he and Jackie had continued occasional correspondence, they had not actually seen each other since June 1969 when they went to the theater to see 40 Carats with Rose Kennedy. When he arrived at her home at about noon on March 12, 1975, Jackie greeted him at her elevator in the foyer. She did not look well. “She had on a cream-colored silk robe, her hair pulled into a little ponytail, no makeup on,” he recalled many years later. “I had never seen her like that. Jackie ordinarily didn’t accept visitors that way. She looked older than she had when I last saw her. As soon as she saw me, she gave me a warm embrace. I noticed that she had rosary beads in her hand.”
“I’m so sorry we haven’t seen each other,” Jackie said, according to his memory. “But it was impossible, Ed. I had to cut out of my life every male friend I ever knew before Ari. He was that jealous. It wasn’t worth the fights with him. I hope you understand.” Jackie said that she had also called a couple of other men she’d known before Ari to apologize, and mentioned one by name—the noted writer George Plimpton, whom she had also dated prior to marrying Ari.
“Of course, I understand, Jackie,” he said. “These things happen.”
The two then went into the living room. With shaky hands, Jackie lit a cigarette and curled up on a couch across from the architect. A maid brought in a tray of teas with a pot of hot water. The two then spent about thirty minutes catching up on each other’s news. Jackie was particularly interested in Barnes’s latest projects. “There’s no one like you out there,” she said to him. “Do you realize that? You are so unique in your field!” (It’s possible that Jackie was stroking his ego, because it is clear that she had the same high regard for I. M. Pei, to whom she had awarded the job of designing the Kennedy Library and Museum.)
Finally, Edward asked, “So, how’s Ari?”
“He’s not doing well, Ed,” Jackie said softly. “I should have stayed there, I know that now. But I am so disliked over there by everyone—his daughter, Christina, his family, his friends. And for what? What did I ever do?” She shook her head. “He loved me. I loved him back. Was that so wrong?” Jackie continued, saying that she intended to go back to Paris in a week. “To tell you the truth, I need time to steel myself for what I know is coming,” she said. She also said that she was in touch with Onassis’s oldest sister, Artemis, who had promised to let her know if Ari’s condition changed. “But I pray to God nothing happens before I get back,” she said.
Edward studied her for a moment. “I’m worried about you, Jackie,” he told her.
“I’m not well, Ed,” Jackie said, her voice a soft whisper. It was not a characteristic remark. No matter how difficult things had ever been in her life, she had always attempted to put forth an image of strength and resolve, even if secretly she was crumbling. However, it was as if she now had no energy left for image-making, especially for the benefit of a close friend.
“Have you talked to any of the Kennedys?” Edward asked.
“Oh yes,” she said, brightening a bit. “They have all been so wonderful to me.” But she said that Rose had told her that she should return to Paris as soon as possible to be at Ari’s side. Rose felt that if something happened to Ari while Jackie was in New York, she would never be able to forgive herself. “And she’s right,” Jackie said. “I never would.”
After about an hour, Jackie rose from the couch and, now seeming completely spent, asked Edward to leave. She felt she had to take a nap. “Will you please call me tomorrow,” he asked, “and let me know how you are?” She said that she would do so. However, she did not. In fact, this occasion would mark the last time Edward Larrabee Barnes would ever lay eyes on Jackie Kennedy Onassis. For years, he would wonder why she would seek him out after so many years, only to then decide not to stay in touch. He would never have an answer.
A couple days later, on March 14, 1975, Onassis’s sister, Artemis, called. Ari had taken a turn for the worse. “I’ll be there tomorrow,” Jackie said.
The next morning, Artemis called again just as Jackie was packing to return to Paris. Ari had died.
Who Should Represent the Kennedys at the Funeral?
Oh my God,” Ethel Kennedy exclaimed. “Onassis is dead? What a terrible shame.”
At the time, Ethel was standing in the cockpit of a United Airlines jet en route to Los Angeles. One of the more unusual perks of being a Kennedy was that if something newsworthy involving one of them occurred while they were on a flight somewhere, the airline generally allowed them to be contacted via the pilot’s communications system with ground control. The purpose of this admittedly unusual practice was to alert the family member of whatever had occurred so that waiting press at the gate upon landing would not come as a total surprise. A statement could be at the ready, if necessary. It didn’t happen often, but it did happen. On this particular day in March 1975, Ethel was sitting in first class winging her way to the coast when a stewardess came up to her to inform her that the pilot needed to see her. She must have known there was a problem as she walked up the aisle and into the cockpit. She was handed a telephone, and her assistant Noelle Bombardier was on the other end, informing her of Ari’s death.
“How shall I prepare for this?” Noelle asked her, according to her memory. “Will you want to go to Greece for the funeral?”
“Oh my God,” Ethel repeated. “I d
on’t know. I don’t think I can do it, Noelle. Another funeral? And Jackie? It’s all just too much. Call Teddy and ask if he will go and represent the family.”
When Ethel landed in Los Angeles, she immediately called Noelle from a pay phone at the airport to see if she had talked to Ted. Noelle told her that the senator said he had a prior engagement and couldn’t possibly go to Greece on such short notice. Many other Kennedys could have gone, true. But Ted felt that it should be Ethel. She and Jackie had the most public recognition, and to Ted’s mind, it seemed only right. However, this was the last thing Ethel wanted to do. At the risk of seeming selfish, she said that she simply couldn’t handle another funeral that involved Jackie. “Even all of these years later, just seeing her like that again will bring it all back to me,” she said, “and I can’t do it. But, okay, if I must, I must. Will you go with me?” she asked Noelle. “Because I can’t go alone.”
Noelle Bombardier agreed that she would accompany Ethel to Greece. However, later that day Ted Kennedy changed his plans and said he would attend the funeral to represent the family. “Oh, thank God for Teddy,” Ethel told Noelle, “because, truly, I did not want to go.”
After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family--1968 to the Present Page 25
