If you're a woman about my age, you know what I'm referring to. The most chic woman in America would wear that dress for a cheerful greeting in Fort Worth, a breakfast in Dallas, a parade in weather really too warm for the wool jacket. Her pink hat would be noticed by all the women who studied her attire. Thousands of women would envy her as she waved at the enormous crowds. Then in a few terrible moments, a poised and polished woman would be photographed scrambling over the back of a convertible. (to escape? to reach for a fragment of a head she'd caressed ? She refused to change clothes and wore it, shell-shocked, at the side of a sad-looking man with his right hand raised.
The most dramatic footage of the bloody dress was taken when she arrived back in Washington and followed Pres.Kennedy's coffin, holding Robert Kennedy's hand. The dark blotches are on the right lower side of the dress, and even extend to her legs. She had defiantly refused to remove the suit, saying, "let them see what they've done to Jack." She was only sorry that she'd washed the blood from her face before Lyndon's Johnson's inauguration on Air Force 1.
I was a child then and knew very little about the Kennedys except that my parents had not voted for him. And they harrumphed at Jackie's reputation for style which they thought was too expensive-appearing more like a princess than the dowdy Mamie Eisenhower she replaced.
The pink suit looked like a rose in a sea of dark blue and black. It became a sign of innocence and beauty on a day which would destroy both.
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