Jaci Dawn

I succumbed to a weak and unwise purchase when I was out yard-saling this weekend. It had everything to do with November of 1963. I had just turned 7 years old and was in the 2nd Grade. Mrs. Butts was my teacher. She came into the class after a brief absence, ashen-faced and red-eyed. We were being sent home.

I don’t know if I grasped the gravity of the situation at school or not. We left quietly, that I remember. There was none of the usual happy celebration of an unexpected holiday, only a somber feeling in the air as our young minds tried to take in what had just happened.

The strangest part of the day was that Dad was already home when we got there. Dad was never home in the middle of the day, and on a Friday. The television was on and the somber tone of the newscasters as they replayed the day’s events over and over and over again was unmistakeable. Something horrid had happened.

We were young, but we zeroed in on the heroine of the times, the woman who refused to ride in a bullet-proof car but who chose, instead, to walk along behind the hearse with her young children. She would not bow to terrorism. She would not give a terrorist the satisfaction of making her afraid. She was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, wife of the late President, mother of his children.

I am not a Jacqueline. My name is Jackie, after my father, John (aka Jack). I am almost a year older than Caroline Kennedy. I have a life-long fascination with the lady who walked out of the White House in November and into the hearts of the American people. I know she was flawed, blind in some respects, and extremely private. She was betrayed, disparaged, and the subject of many a tabloid – yet she remained a lady, always. She had grace.

So it was when I found this porcelain doll for $5, that I thought I couldn’t live without her. Well, I could, but I would regret it.

“Any particular reason she is $5?” I asked the people at the yard sale. They looked suspicious. Should she be more? I admitted that I had no clue: I was only interested because of my age when her first husband was assassinated.

I brought her home, confessed to my husband, and then we debated her actual monetary worth. We decided it was around $30. She’s not an antique – there are bar codes on the box she came in.

I did look her up. She was sold by Publisher’s Clearing House and can be found on eBay and other auction sites for $37. One Goodwill site lists her at $10 (but with some damage). I’m confident that $30 is close to her actual worth – now.

I will keep her in the original box (or – if I find such a thing – inside a plastic tube to keep the dust off). I’m not interested in displaying her. She doesn’t actually look like Jackie O., anyway. I’ll put her in a carton with all the newspapers about the assassination – true, vintage newspapers. I kept everything from that day.

Royalton Collection 1960’s Bride Jacqueline

I have followed her, cut out articles about her, mourned her when she died, and read her biographies. She was an enigma, a lady in the face of the most trying moments, and a lady in the face of the paparazzi.

I don’t really mind having spent $5 on her.