RECOGNITION

WHAT JACKIE TAUGHT US PRESS

ASSOCIATED PRESS
New Book Reveals Lessons From Jackie O
By VERENA DOBNIK

NEW YORK (AP) -- The lighthouse look. That was the technique Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis used to captivate almost anyone, according to the author of a new book published a decade after her death.
“Jackie perfected the lighthouse look: She had the ability to not only lock eyes with you, she had the ability to lock into your mind,” Tina Santi Flaherty, author of “What Jackie Taught Us: Lessons From the Remarkable Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,” said.
“She would get on the same track with you, and listen, making you feel that what you had to say was the most important thing in the world.”
The book, published by Perigee Books, will be released April 6, in time for the anniversary of Onassis’ death from cancer on May 19, 1994.
Flaherty was her neighbor at 1040 Fifth Ave., where the former first lady made sure - even as she was dying - that building staff members each received an invitation to her funeral, Flaherty said in a recent interview. The author, a former vice president at both Colgate-Palmolive Co. and GTE Corp., is president, chief executive officer and founder of Image Marketing International, which specializes in communications training for executives, political candidates and university administrators.
“What Jackie Taught Us” doesn’t quite fit the list of “Jackie” biographies and tell-alls. Rather, it is “a Jackie handbook, a how-to book,” Flaherty said.
“I never thought Jackie got enough credit for her leadership qualities. I wanted to find out what her challenges were, what her mistakes were and how she overcame them,” the author said.
“When a woman is glamorous, it often stops there. With Jackie, it stopped with her big sunglasses and jet-setting image. But there were a lot of brains under that pillbox hat.”
A voracious reader who took on as many as 10 books a week, Onassis worked as a book editor during the years she spent in New York City following President Kennedy’s assassination.
“What attracted Jack to her was both her beauty and her brains. He knew he’d never be bored with her,” Flaherty said.
As Jacqueline Kennedy, the author said, Onassis changed America’s unsophisticated world image with culture, food, fashion and music, and restored tattered parts of the White House to make it “a living history lesson.”
In private, Onassis reversed her “very negative self-image” from a childhood filled with a torrent of criticisms from her mother, Janet Auchincloss.
“Her mother told her that she was not feminine, that her hair was too frizzy, that her size 10 feet were too big, her shoulders too broad and her eyes set too wide apart,” Flaherty said.
Jackie’s response was to grow into an icon of style and social allure, coached by her father, Jack Bouvier, whose seductive energy broke women’s hearts - and inspired his daughter. It was from him that she learned to become the social light beam.
“To be noticed in a crowd, he advised, walk to the center of a room, put a dazzling smile on your face, and keep your chin up. Don’t let your eyes dart around the room,” Flaherty writes in the book.
“Never act as if you’re looking for someone; they should be looking for you.”
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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NEW YORK POST
‘LESSONS’ FROM JACKIE 10 YRS. AFTER HER DEATH
Cindy Adams - January 30, 2004
IF YOU’RE not already Kennedy’d-out, a book’s coming down titled “What Jackie Taught Us: Lessons from the Remarkable Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.” Author Tina Santi Flaherty, a Jackie fan, was her Fifth Avenue apartment building neighbor.
It’ll say stuff like: She “captivated the most interesting men of the 20th century.” She “transferred the techniques that attracted them to other areas of her life . . . she used her smile and charm on an ambassador, a judge or a waiter . . . She used her father’s favorite technique - ‘the lighthouse look.’ “
On her image: “Knowing a carefully crafted image was a powerful tool to project herself onto the world stage, Jackie directed everything towards that.”
On her focus: She was “not the least bit guilty for refusing something she didn’t want to do. She declined an activity if it was boring.”
May marks the 10th anniversary of Jackie’s death. This $19.95 Perigee book drops on us in April.
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
Why We Show Up Late to Cocktail Parties
By Campbell Robertosn - April 30, 2004

On Tuesday night, the crowd mingled into the Four Seasons restaurant in neck scarves and pearls, A-line dresses and tailored dress suits. It was a book party for “What JACKIE Taught Us,” by TINA SANTI FLAHERTY, and we’ll leave it up to you to guess which Jackie the book’s talking about. (Hint: not the fat one from “The Honeymooners.’’)
In a busy corner not far from the main staircase stood SUSAN LUCCI, in a black dress, and OLEG CASSINI, tall and collected in a red sweater, red shirt and red tie under his suit jacket, like a chic MEPHISTOPHELES. As Ms. Lucci batted her eyelashes under a barrage of camera flashes, Mr. Cassini, 91, sat down on a stool, harassed by no one.
Except us, of course.
“There is nothing out there from other designers that I even look at; I make it a point not to,” Mr. Cassini said, when we asked about modern fashion. “By accident, I will open a magazine, but I will not look for an idea. I pride myself on not having to do that.”
At a cue from a publicist, Mr. Cassini rose from the stool, knocking over a poster of Mrs. Onassis. The publicist lunged in frantically and set the poster back on the easel, while Mr. Cassini straightened his jacket, chuckled to himself, and gave us a little conspiratorial smirk.
Style, baby.
A few minutes later, JOAN RIVERS presented Mr. Cassini and Ms. Lucci with “Lesson in Living” awards - Mr. Cassini’s for his achievements in “Image and Style,” Ms. Lucci’s for her achievements in “Men, Marriage and Motherhood.” The difference in these awards can perhaps be best appreciated in the respective acceptance speeches:
Mr. Cassini: “I don’t know if you know, but I dressed some of the most important women in movies, in Hollywood, and I had the reputation of having the best lot of anybody. I had the great girls. That doesn’t mean I had anything personal with them.” Pause. “Sometimes it happened.”
Ms. Lucci: “I just want to say I’m extremely happy to be receiving this award here in the presence of my very handsome, fabulous husband, HELMUT HUBER.” A man booed from the balcony.
After the little awards ceremony, we introduced ourselves to Ms. Rivers, who was wearing a black VERSACE jacket and MANOLO BLAHNIKs.
She began waxing sentimental to us about the hats at the Central Park Conservancy luncheon, when suddenly a photographer interrupted her. “Did MELISSA turn you over to PETA?” the photographer asked. “I noticed you were at the fund-raiser.”
“I know,” Ms. Rivers said. “I’ve always been humanely killing animals, but I do think I have taken my sables places they would never have gone in their life.”
The photographer didn’t laugh.
Nearby, ARNOLD SCAASI was approvingly stroking the purse straps of a reporter from Women’s Wear Daily. We had just finished talking to Ms. Flaherty, who had praised Mrs. Onassis’ style and contrasted it with that of today’s “pop-tart singers” and “bad-boy rappers.” It seemed to be a theme here, so we just skipped the formalities: what was it that Mr. Scaasi hated about the younger generation of fashion?
“I don’t hate anything,” he said. “But I worry that young people, I mean, I’m being very serious now, I’m going to try and be very serious, I’ve had three drinks - vodka and orange juice, mainly vodka because they’ve got me at the Four Seasons, I’m going to drink lots of vodka - what was the question again? I forgot.”
What was it that Ms. Scaasi hated about the younger generation of fashion?
“Oh, yes. I think that very young girls whose idol is BRITNEY SPEARS are rather frightening. I mean, frightening.’’
“Now it’s like they’re just thrown out there with their belly buttons showing,” he added. “I mean, God, after you’re 16, what happens to you?”
Then he asked us our sign.
It came to our attention after we left the party that the veteran paparazzo RON GALELLA had been there. Considering the injunction that Mrs. Onassis obtained against him in the early 70’s, we found his presence at the party intriguing.
Mr. Galella was traveling and unavailable yesterday, but we were able to talk to JOHN DUFF, who runs Perigee, the imprint at Penguin that published the book. He explained that the book included a lovely picture of Mrs. Onassis that Mr. Galella had taken, and that inviting him was a sign of “closure.”
“The point of the book,” Mr. Duff said, “is that Tina is expressing the characteristics that made Jackie the way she was. She did have a court order. But she didn’t throw water in his face. There was a certain graciousness in that.”
With Jess Wisloski.
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PALM BEACH DAILY NEWS
‘I ALWAYS ADMIRED HER’
ISLANDER WRITES HOW JACKIE CHANGED THE U.S., WORLD
ROBERT JANJIGIAN, Daily News Fashion Editor, April 6, 2004

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who died 10 years ago next month, was much more than a pretty face and much-mimicked style setter.
That’s the premise behind What Jackie Taught Us (Perigree, $19.95), a new book by part-time Palm Beacher Tina Santi Flaherty.
“There is something else underneath that pillbox hat, behind the big sunglasses, beyond her image as a stylish, elegant woman,” said Flaherty, who will launch the book in Palm Beach from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday during a signing at the Classic Bookshop, 310 S. County Road.
What Jackie Taught Us is Flaherty’s third book. The former corporate executive has published two previous self-help books, The Savvy Woman’s Success Bible in 1997 and Talk Your Way to the Top in 1999.
Flaherty thinks that women can learn and improve themselves by examining Onassis’ life.
“Jackie changed the image of America around the world,” said the author, who coincidentally has an apartment in the same Manhattan building that Onassis did.
“Though I saw her often, we never met,” she said. “I always admired her from afar.”
Onassis, in Flaherty’s view, is the ultimate role model, able to make the most of the way she looked, acted and dressed, and able to pursue her interests in the arts and history for the betterment of the country.
“The United States was not a sophisticated place before Jackie came on the scene,” said Flaherty, citing Onassis’ interest in fine food, music, art, interior design and clothing during her White House years.
“Previously, there were more grandmotherly types as first ladies,” she said.
Onassis brought a youthful vigor to the country, Flaherty said.
“The world, especially the Europeans, started looking at the United States not as the home of the ugly Americans, but as a cultural center. Jackie was the change agent.”
Although there have been 25 or so biographies of Onassis, Flaherty said, “no one has analyzed and categorized the elements in her life that have made her the international icon she remains today.”
Though Onassis had self-perceived flaws, such as feet she thought were too large, eyes that were too far apart and hard-bitten nails, Flaherty said, she managed to overcome them.
“We can definitely learn something from how she got beyond the small things to become a person with such a lasting impact,” she said. “And it wasn’t about money. When she was at the Sorbonne, Jackie was poor, but still managed to look chic.”
In writing the book, Flaherty realized that Onassis has been a major influence on her life.
Onassis’ choices in attire and decorating also figure in to Flaherty’s adopted philosophy of living a more gracious life. “She believed in the less is more concept. Keep it simple and you can’t go wrong, but always strive for the best.
“If there was something she wanted, she was the most determined person,” said Flaherty. “Her perseverance was remarkable. She was daring and fearless.”

PALM BEACH POST
CAMELOT OR CASH -A-LOT?
SCOTT EYMAN, Palm Beach Post Books Editor, April 2, 2004

It’s spring, and the publishing industry has once again turned to its perennials: Baseball and the Kennedys.
Five new books about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and John F. Kennedy Jr. - plus an updated edition of Lawrence Quirk’s The Kennedys in Hollywood - have arrived or are set to arrive in bookstores, and their authors have begun plugging them on the entertainment shows. This week, for example, underwear-model-turned-author Michael Bergin has hit the talk shows to promote his book The Other Man: A Love Story, about his affair with John F. Kennedy Jr.’s wife, Carolyn.
He’s not in it for the money, he swears. Bergin told Entertainment Tonight Wednesday that he just wanted “closure.”
Author Laurence Leamer’s new book, Sons of Camelot, got a bump in sales after Leamer appeared on TV to defend the Kennedy honor against Bergin’s declarations that Carolyn “wanted me to save her” from her sad life with John.
Why the endless fascination with the Kennedys?
“There’s no greater pleasure in life than watching somebody else’s unhappiness,” Leamer said Tuesday from his winter home in Palm Beach. “In living with them for years, I’ve discovered one thing: They are alive; in living through them, you feel alive.”
Some of the current crop of books are solidly sourced and researched (Leamer’s), some are manifestly secondhand (Quirk’s), and others are voyeuristic celebrity porn (Bergin’s book and Edward Klein’s Farewell, Jackie). Yet, still we read, the good and the bad alike.
“It’s a truism to say that they’re the closest thing to royalty we have,” says Chuck Adams, executive editor at Algonquin Books. “Each of them was incredibly charismatic. They had great P.R., and they kept themselves in the public eye, even if there was no reason to do so. In some odd way, Jackie’s efforts to establish a career as a book editor and create a zone of privacy made her even more alluring.
“There is a market, although at some point you’d think it would stop working. Even Joe McGinniss’ The Last Brother, which was vilified, was a bestseller. I think that part of their appeal is that there’s so much tragedy - one thing after another, it just never ends.”
The truly odd thing is that the Kennedys have retained their hold on the imagination of America even as their political and social standing has inevitably declined. Sen. Ted Kennedy is outgunned, if not outmanned, and there are no other heirs apparent to be found among the family’s younger generation - unless you count California’s first lady, Maria Shriver.
The new Jackie books - Klein’s book, Tina Flaherty’s What Jackie Taught Us, as well as Sally Bedell Smith’s Grace and Power, due next month - come on the 10th anniversary of her death from lymphoma at age 64.
Flaherty also has a home in Palm Beach, and the book jacket describes her as “a lifelong admirer (of Jackie) . . . and for many years a neighbor in the same New York City apartment building.” Flaherty writes about Jackie’s “vision, focus, courage and style.” “Like a cool, cleansing breeze, Jackie Kennedy swept in and overnight changed the staid, conservative image of 1950s America into one of international style and elegance,” she writes. “She is an icon and an example for all of us not only because she dressed beautifully but because she also behaved beautifully.”
Smith’s Grace and Power is more about JFK’s behavior - basically a day-by-day, hour-by-hour accounting of whom the president was negotiating with and sleeping with in the White House.
Leamer’s Sons of Camelot is the final volume in his Kennedy trilogy, which included The Kennedy Men and The Kennedy Women.
“Publishing about the Kennedys picked up about the time of The Godfather, and for much the same reason. As the American family itself declined, we became fascinated by these two great families, fascinated by why a family does or does not hold together,” Leamer says.
“And the other thing that has happened is the democratization of truth,” he adds. “Fifty years ago, a few people knew what was going on in New York and Hollywood and Washington. My parents didn’t know Roosevelt was in a wheelchair. Now we know the most intimate details of everybody’s life, which has led us to this continuing struggle - can you have heroes when you know so much about people?”
Added to that, says Leamer, is the American obsession with sex. Most of these books are far more concerned with what JFK was doing with the White House bedrooms than what he was doing with tax policy or the Bay of Pigs.
“If you ask a European about their morals,” says Leamer, “they’ll talk about political morals or religious morals. But if you ask an American to discuss morals, it’s all about sex. D.H. Lawrence said that Americans have sex in the head. He was right; I think we should read about it less and do it more.”
Mostly, the continuing flood of books about the Kennedys illustrates the commercial conspiracy to exploit the famous.
“Nobody is willing to do the work to determine if something in a book is true or not,” Leamer says. “We’ve got to have better readers, better book buyers, people who understand that they’re being marketed to, and the books are in the front of the store because the publisher has paid money to put them there. Reading is an adventure; seek things out.”
As the author of three vast books about the family, Leamer, for one, is played out.
“I’m definitely done with the Kennedys. The only subject that hasn’t been done is the Kennedy dogs, and somebody else is going to have to do that.”
On the other hand, his next book is a biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger, so Leamer remains in the family, if only on an in-law basis.
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TOWN & COUNTRY
Lessons From Jackie

Ten years after the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a new book reminds us that her greatest gift to the world was her gracious example. The following is an excerpt. By Tina Santi Flaherty

Some people believe that there is such a thing as the Kennedy Curse. Violent deaths, self-destruction and broken dreams have haunted the fabled family over the years and certainly have contributed to this belief. Whether such a curse actually exists is open to interpretation. There is no doubt, however, that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis could rightfully be called the Kennedy Blessing. For more than four decades, Jackie—as we still fondly call her—captured our imagination as no other woman has or probably ever will again. Her passing in 1994 seemed premature, and it still doesn’t seem fair that she’s gone.
The ten-year anniversary of her death serves as a reminder of the lessons all of us can draw from her example. The passage of time has also diminished the weight we give to the harsh criticism of her perceived missteps, like her marriage to Aristotle Onassis. In light of Jackie’s constant quest for perfection and her need to be the best, money and all that it brought was integral to her sense of well-being. Taken in context, that motive is but a blip on a life beautifully led.
Most observers would agree that Jackie’s legacy lies in the choices she made as a wife, a mother and a widow. She handled happiness and heartache; incredible fame and wealth; and public demands and private needs with remarkable discipline, drawn from a profound well of self-knowledge and self-acceptance. Her incomparable style influenced everything she did: the people she chose to spend time with, the way she entertained and the books she read. The old truism Perfection is made up of many trifles, but perfection is no trifle was the song of Jackie’s life.

AN IMPECCABLE IMAGE
Letitia “Tish” Baldrige, a friend of Jackie’s from their teenage years at Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut who later became her White House chief of staff and social secretary, once recalled: “Even at school, she always had a deft way of wearing her clothes. She could put on a beret the right way, while the rest of us would put one on and look like someone’s cleaning lady trying to cover her hair. She knew how to tie a scarf in a chic way, and it would stay there. We’d try to copy her, and the knot would end up down our backs.”
When she became First Lady, Jackie quickly realized that regardless of what she accomplished, she would be judged pri–marily by the way she looked. Her couturier of choice, Oleg Cassini, designed more than three hundred pieces for her during that time. With Cassini in her corner, Jackie’s sensational taste and unerring fashion sense made an impact on style that has yet to be surpassed.

GIVING THANKS
Jackie followed her own rigid rule that all thank-you notes should be written within twenty-four hours. These beautifully written missives were warm, charming and personal, never stiff or dutiful, and were one of the few avenues in which Jackie felt free to reveal her feelings.
Even at the bleakest point of her life, Jackie’s discipline didn’t waver. The day after her husband was buried, she took the time to write a lengthy letter of appreciation to Lyndon Johnson, thanking him for walking behind Jack’s coffin despite the security risks and for his friendship over the years.

MOTHERHOOD
Putting aside the sadness and insecurity she had felt as a child, Jackie was de–termined to be the best mother possible to Caroline and John. She frequently turned to the practical wisdom of –the renowned child-rearing expert of the 1960s, Dr. Benjamin Spock. His advice to new parents—to “trust your instincts. . . you know more than you think you do”—must have been comforting to Jackie as a first-time mother. “People have too many theories about rearing children,” she said. “I believe simply in love, security and discipline.”
She believed it was essential that her children learn correct manners and that they always be considerate of others. Leaving nothing to chance, Jackie made sure they knew how to greet people properly. All adults, from White House maids to Cabinet members, were addressed as Mr., Mrs. or Miss. “The children were well-behaved because their mother would not have it any other way,” said Baldrige.
Although the phrase “quality time” wasn’t used in the 1960s, Jackie knew the importance of spending unin–terrupted periods with her children every day. Throughout her life, she showed Caroline and John how to be independent, responsible and thoughtful by her own words and deeds. As proof that she succeeded, Senator Edward Kennedy affectionately remarked at her funeral: “Her two children turned out to be extraordinary, honest, unspoiled and with a character equal to hers. And she did it in the most trying of circumstances. They are her two miracles.”

COMPOSURE
Jackie was never a victim. She didn’t wallow in despair but forced herself to look ahead with hope. On the morning of her wedding to Jack, she learned that her beloved father would not be escorting her down the aisle. Apparently, he was thought to be too tipsy, so Hugh Auchincloss, her stepfather, gave her away instead. When the processional march began, Jackie steadied herself and summoned the strength to rise above the hurt she felt and to portray instead the serene, beautiful bride everyone expected to see.
A decade later, her handsome groom would be gunned down in Dallas before her very eyes. She handled his death with unforgettable majesty. And when she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in early 1994, her bravery was so great that she told friends her cancer was simply an annoyance and soon everything would be all right. She died just months later.
Ten years down the road, Jackie ’s life story continues to demonstrate that it takes strength and courage to remain centered during times of great pain. She met each crisis not only bravely but also with a total lack of self-pity, whether it was the loss of a loved one, a marital betrayal or her own impending death. She accepted her life and her death in the same spirit—with fortitude and the knowledge that life must go on until the final curtain is drawn.