CAMELOT REVISITED

Copyright 1995 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.@bThe information
contained in this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise
distributed without the prior written authority of the Associated Press.

By GLEN JOHNSON
 Associated Press Writer
   BOSTON (AP) -- Even in her grief, Jacqueline Kennedy had the
strength to recount her husband's assassination in vivid detail and
the presence of mind to convey her hopes for his memorials.
   "His last expression was so neat," Mrs. Kennedy told
journalist Theodore H. White in comments released for the first
time Friday. "He had his hand out, I could see a piece of his
skull coming off ... and I can see this perfectly clean piece
detaching itself from his head.
   "Then he slumped in my lap," she said. "His blood and brains
were in my lap.
   "I kept saying: `Jack, Jack, Jack' and someone was yelling:
`He's dead, he's dead.' All the ride to the hospital I kept bending
over him saying: `Jack, Jack, can you hear me, I love you Jack.' I
kept holding the top of his head down, trying to keep the brains
in," she said on Nov. 29, 1963, a week after the president's
assassination.
   Excerpts from the interview have appeared in Life magazine and
White's 1978 memoir, "In Search of History," and the sight of the
dazed widow in her bloodstained pink suit has become a 20th century
icon. Now, the John F. Kennedy Library has released the full record
of that interview, 34 pages that include White's handwritten notes
and revisions in Mrs. Kennedy's handwriting.
   White donated the papers to the library in 1969, saying they
could not be released until one year after the former first lady's
death. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died of cancer May 19, 1994, at
age 64. White died in 1986.
   The transcript shows her hopes after the assassination included
privacy for herself and memorials for her husband.
   "I wanted that flame and I wanted Cape Kennedy. ... All I
wanted was his name on just that one booster, the one that would
put us ahead of the Russians," she said, apparently referring to
the rocket to the moon.
   The eternal flame still burns at Kennedy's grave at Arlington
National Cemetery. And while Cape Canaveral was renamed for Kennedy
on the day of White's interview, the rocket that went to the moon
was not.
   Cape Kennedy went back to being called Cape Canaveral in 1973,
although the NASA base there continues to be called the Kennedy
Space Center.
   "I'm not going to be the Widow Kennedy," Mrs. Kennedy told
White. "When this is over, I'm going to crawl into the deepest
retirement there is."
   Though she personified celebrity for more than 30 years, she
remained largely a stranger to the public that adored her. Even
after she married Aristotle Onassis, a Greek shipping tycoon 30
years her senior, she couldn't change her image as First Widow.
   Speaking of her 3-year-old son, Mrs. Kennedy said: "I want
John-John to be a fine young man. He's so interested in planes;
maybe he'll be an astronaut or just plain John Kennedy fixing
planes on the ground."
   She recalled that her daughter, Caroline, "held my hand like a
soldier. She's my helper; she's mine now."
   John F. Kennedy Jr. is a lawyer and publisher. Caroline also is
a lawyer and co-author of a book on the Bill of Rights; she's
married and has three children.
   White became close to the Kennedys when he chronicled the
presidential campaign in his best seller "The Making of the
President, 1960."
   The interview marked the first time "Camelot" was linked to
the Kennedy administration in print. In an excerpt published
decades ago, Mrs. Kennedy recalled that her husband loved the
recording of the musical "Camelot."
   "The lines he loved to hear were: `Don't let it be forgot, that
once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known
as Camelot,'" she said.