Linked since birth with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee wanted to do something in memory of the late First Lady.
She did it the best way she knew how.Joyner-Kersee, given the one name Jacqueline in honor of the former President's wife who died Thursday night - "I have no middle name," she said - shattered her American record in the long jump Sunday at the Reebok New York Games.
"She was a role model," Joyner-Kersee said, after leaping 24-feet-7, breaking the mark of 24-51/2 she set at the 1987 Pan Am Games at Indianapolis.
"Her strength was exemplary. She was very strong. If there's anything I want, it's the strength to be able to endure like she did, to be a classy lady like she was and to be able to raise children like her."
The caring Joyner-Kersee said that she and her husband, Bob Kersee, prayed for Onassis when the wife of the 35th President was hospitalized with cancer last week and again after she died.
"When Bobby and I prayed after her death, we said what this meet would mean to us," Joyner-Kersee said. "We wanted to dedicate it to her."
It was fitting that the meet was held in New York, only a few miles from where Jacqueline Kennedy had lost her final battle.
"I had followed her career and tried to model myself after her," Joyner-Kersee said.
The link between the two began on March 3, 1962, when Joyner-Kersee was born in East St. Louis, Ill. - two years after Jack Kennedy had become elected President.
She was given the name Jacqueline by her great grandmother, Evelyn Joyner.
"She said that someday I would be the First Lady of something," Joyner-Kersee said.
As it turned out, she became the First Lady of track and field.