By Elaine Quayle
She was 46 years old. She had worked before her first marriage, held a high-profile, “nonprofit” job, and endured some traumatic and turbulent years. Maybe a job was just what she needed. But Jackie Kennedy Onassis certainly was no ordinary applicant!
She was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, a former First Lady, but also a former “inquiring photographer” for the Washington Times-Herald.
Tina Cassidy revealed some surprising facts about Jackie Kennedy Onassis from her new book, Jackie After O (HarperCollins, 2012), in an interview with the Washington Post.
Letitia Baldridge, Jackie’s classmate at Miss Porter’s prep school and her social secretary as First Lady, had an unorthodox idea for her friend—battle her midlife crisis and empty nest syndrome by using her intelligence and education in a job!
It was the 1970s, and women were returning to the workforce when their children got older. Baldridge, who knew of Jackie’s love of poetry and books, even persuaded Jackie to look at jobs in publishing.
Cassidy says that after lunch at a French restaurant in New York where Jackie asked Random House publisher Jason Epstein for a job—he turned her down!
So Jackie sent out feelers to other publishers. Viking Press hired her in September 1975.
Although, as the widow of two millionaires, she did not need money, Viking Press gave her a starting salary of $10,000 per year.
However, when Viking signed the author of a novel featuring Edward Kennedy, Jackie was unhappy and left to become an editor at Doubleday, where she concentrated on books preserving the broad range of American culture. But, as Cassidy notes, she even took on some projects that were not “a sure thing.”
And what an employee she was—and no prima donna! In 2006, HRSBT featured “What Would Jackie Do in the Workplace? Jacqueline Kennedy as Employer, Employee.” The article revealed anecdotes from the book, What Would Jackie Do? An Inspired Guide to Distinctive Living, written by Shelly Branch and Sue Callaway, former colleagues at Fortune magazine.
Coworkers told these authors that Jackie “didn’t want just an empty title; as an employee, she was disciplined and restrained, accepting ‘line responsibilities’ and even doing her own photocopying! Ultimately, she became a ‘pencil-wielding publishing pro.’
“She was not into daily workplace habits, varying her schedule and activities, saying ‘the only routine with me is no routine at all.’ Yet she remained open with colleagues, borrowing cigarettes and keeping bowls of M&Ms and Tootsie Rolls on her desk for passersby.”
O! What an employee!