Caroline Bouvier Kennedy was born on November the 27th 1957. Wikipedia says the following, she “is an American author, diplomat, and attorney. She served as United States ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017 and ambassador to Australia from 2022 to 2024. Most of Kennedy’s professional life has been in literature, law, politics, education reform, and charity. She is a member of the Kennedy family and the only surviving child of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.”
Caroline Kennedy is exceptionally well educated and has had a successful career. Caroline married Edwin Schlossberg in 1986 at Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville Massachusetts. She has three children, Rose Kennedy Schlossberg (born 1988), Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg (born 1990), and John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, known as Jack (born 1993). Tatiana has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She is 35 years old and has two very young children.
Caroline Kennedy was 5 years old when her father JFK was assassinated in Texas in November 1963. Only 4 months earlier Jacqueline was expecting a baby, a little baby brother or sister for Caroline, in addition to the little brother she already had. But her mother went into labour 5 weeks early, a lot at the time but not considered so much now. The President was with his son Patrick who was baptised and died after a day. This was in August 1963. We can only speculate as to what Caroline felt at the time.
Four months later Caroline was standing on the steps of St Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington DC after the funeral mass for her father. President Kennedy’s funeral was held on Monday 25th November 1963 in Washington DC.
Footage of that is here.
This is how RTE described it: “After the funeral mass, President Kennedy’s coffin is placed on a horse-drawn caisson outside.
President Kennedy’s coffin is carried down the steps and placed back on the horse-drawn caisson which bore him to the cathedral. This gun carriage will now bear him to Arlington National Cemetery. The proceedings are watched by the president’s family: his widow Jacqueline, children Caroline and John, mother Rose and brothers, Ted and Robert. 3-year-old John can be seen saluting his father’s coffin.
The commentator Michael O’Hehir describes the scene. He thinks that 6-year-old Caroline may have a grasp of what is really happening today, but not little John. He says that “Caroline stares, rather vacantly at times, at the coffin in front of her. The little boy dances around and jigs around as little boys do.”
Caroline’s mother Jacqueline Kennedy not only lost her husband, but witnessed his brutal assassination at very close range, having turned her head to look straight at the President when he was hit with the fatal head shot. He slumped onto her lap as the secret service scrambled. Jackie was deeply traumatised. On that day Caroline lost her father and her home. They moved out of the White House two weeks later.
Jacqueline Kennedy raised Caroline and John Jr in New York. She relied on their uncle Robert Kennedy to be a surrogate father to both Caroline and John Jr, a role despite having many children himself he took very seriously. RFK was assassinated in 1968 which devastated Caroline’s mother.
Jacqueline said at the time: “I hate this country. I despise America and I don’t want my children to live here anymore. If they’re killing Kennedys, my kids are the number one targets. I have the two main targets. I want to get out of this country.” Caroline was only 11. It’s fair to say Jackie was a survivor and she pulled it together for her children. She died in 1994 when Caroline was 37.
Caroline and her brother John Jr were very close. John Jr died in a plane crash in 1999. Caroline at 42, had buried her father when she was 5, the uncle that her mother relied on at 11, her mother and then her only brother. But Caroline went on to have a very successful career, get married and have three children.
Last week it was announced that her middle daughter Tatiana Schlossberg has been diagnosed with terminal blood cancer. In a piece for the New Yorker, Tatiana Schlossberg said “when I was diagnosed with leukaemia, my first thought was that this couldn’t be happening to me, to my family.” Tatiana Schlossberg has a two year old son and infant daughter.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/a-battle-with-my-blood
Tatiana, “My parents and my brother and sister, too, have been raising my children and sitting in my various hospital rooms almost every day for the last year and a half. They have held my hand unflinchingly while I have suffered, trying not to show their pain and sadness in order to protect me from it. This has been a great gift, even though I feel their pain every day. For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry. Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
Caroline Kennedy knows what it is to suffer. Now she will nurse her daughter through what, short of a miracle, will be her last Christmas.
Finally, she will explain to her grandchildren why mummy is no longer there.