No drug addicts. No arrests. No scandals.
The story of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' years as the world's best-known single mother is a tale without tabloid appeal, without the sordid twists and tragedies of the rest of the Kennedy clan.Her daughter, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, is married with three children; she is an author and lawyer just a month short of her eighth wedding anniversary. Her son, John F. Kennedy Jr., is a charismatic lawyer with a possible future in politics.
Unlike their oft-troubled cousins, Caroline and John emerged virtually unscathed despite growing up under a microscope - first in the White House, and later as the children of a national martyr.
Mrs. Onassis deserved much of the credit. When Hillary Clinton became first lady, she quickly placed a phone call to Mrs. Onassis asking for advice on raising 13-year-old Chelsea in Washington.
The assassination of her husband left a nation grieving for Jackie Kennedy and her two children, and they instantly became America's adopted family. The image of Camelot was seized by a mourning country, and the survivors' every move was chronicled.
Jackie wanted no part of the intense scrutiny and left Washington for New York within a year of the assassination. She raised her children in New York City, where they grew up in relative anonymity.
After her marriage to Aristotle Onassis ended with his death in 1975, she shunned the media and led a normal life - attributes she passed on to her children.
Wendy Leigh, who wrote a 1993 biography of JFK Jr., spoke glowingly of Mrs. Onassis' work raising her son.
"I did expect kind of the Kennedy Brat Pack, with Palm Beach and all of that," she said last year. "I was very surprised he wasn't spoiled. That's a great credit to her, you know?"
Others agreed. A 1989 Knight-Ridder article praised Jackie for rearing "two bright, surprisingly normal children." A third child, Patrick, died three days after his birth in August 1963.
The travails of the Kennedy cousins are legion, from the drug overdose death of Robert's son David to a stint in a rehabilitation facility by Ted's youngest son, Patrick, to the rape trial of Jean's son, William Kennedy Smith.
No such stigma ever attached to Jackie's children. John, 33, and Caroline, 36, both thrived, in part thanks to hands-on mothering.
"It isn't fair to children in the limelight to leave them to the care of others and expect they will turn out all right," Mrs. Onassis once said.
Her relationship with her children remained strong. As recently as Sunday she went for a stroll through Central Park with Caroline and her grandchildren.
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Additional Information
Awards postponed
The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston said Monday's Profile in Courage Award ceremony has been postponed because of the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The library, in a statement Friday, also expressed its grief at the death of the former first lady, but praised her for helping to establish the memorial to her late husband. Mrs. Onassis "was a bountiful source of ideas and inspiration in the development of this institution," and the staff and millions of visitors "share a profound feeling of loss" with her passing, the statement said. No new date for the awards was announced.