Understandably, the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is focusing Americans' attention only on what they already well know - namely, the life of this fairy-tale first lady who did not always live happily ever after.
Ideally, her passing also should focus attention on the cancer that killed her and on the need to intensify research efforts in pursuit of improved treatment and eventual prevention. So far this does not seem to be happening. Maybe later, after the national mourning has subsided.Meanwhile, the spotlight is on the dignity with which she uplifted a saddened nation following the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, only three months after the death of a newborn son.
The same dignity and grace persisted later when disclosures trickled out about her husband's dangerous dalliances. Through it all she maintained an unruffled silence, never displaying the pain she must have felt. Not for her was the tell-all memoir. Or the million-dollar endorsement of some commercial product. Or the embrace of the latest popular cause.
No wonder she remained among the top 10 most admired women in almost every poll taken since 1960. Only among a few did her reputation slip following her marriage to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, a mutually unhappy union to a crass man of questionable character.
Any such slippage was soon repaired, however, when she returned not to a life of idleness she could easily have afforded but to a life of work and of devotion to her children. It was a life lived as much out of the public gaze as she could manage despite the constant importunings of the news media.
What great resilience she showed. What an interesting but tumultuous life she led. And what a sad ending, brought on by cancer at the age of 64.
The type of cancer that claimed her afflicts more than 40,000 Americans a year. Nearly half of those diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which occurs when a type of white blood cell becomes cancerous, die within five years.
Some forms of this cancer can be cured. Ironically, the most aggressive forms are also the more curable, while no certain cure exists for the slower-growing lymphomas.
Since the 1970s, the incidence of the disease has increased 65 percent. Speculation about the cause includes exposure to herbicides, pesticides and hair dye.
Consequently, there's more than one way to honor the memory of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. May Americans be generous to her personal legacy by concentrating on her more admirable traits of character. And may we all be generous to the American Cancer Society in its continuing fight against her killer.