Caroline Kennedy
Caroline Bouvier Kennedy[1][2] (born November 27, 1957)[3] is an American author, attorney, and diplomat serving as the United States ambassador to Australia since 2022. Kennedy previously served in the Obama administration as the United States ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017.[4] She is a member of the Kennedy family, the only surviving child of US president John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
This article is about President John F. Kennedy's daughter. For John F. Kennedy Jr.'s wife, see Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.
Caroline Kennedy
Less than a month before Caroline's third birthday, her father won the 1960 presidential election. She spent her early childhood years in the White House during his presidency, and was almost six when he was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The following year, she and her brother John F. Kennedy Jr. moved with their mother Jacqueline to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where Caroline attended grade school.
Kennedy graduated from Harvard University and worked at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she met her future husband, exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg. She later earned a J.D. degree from Columbia Law School. Most of Kennedy's professional life has been in law, politics, education reform, and charitable work. She has also acted as a spokesperson for her family's legacy, especially that of her father, and co-authored two books with Ellen Alderman on civil liberties.
Early in the primary race for the 2008 presidential election, Kennedy and her uncle, Ted Kennedy, endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama. She later stumped for him in Florida, Indiana, and Ohio, served as co-chair of his Vice Presidential Search Committee, and addressed the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.[5]
After Obama selected United States senator Hillary Clinton to serve as secretary of state, Kennedy expressed interest in being appointed to Clinton's vacant Senate seat from New York, but later withdrew from consideration for personal reasons. In 2013, President Obama appointed Kennedy as the United States ambassador to Japan.[6] Eight years later, Joe Biden appointed Kennedy as United States ambassador to Australia and she took office following her confirmation on June 10, 2022.[7]
Education and personal life[edit]
Kennedy began her education with kindergarten classes in the White House organized by her mother.[25] Before the family's move to New York, she was registered at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart.[26] She attended The Brearley School and Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York City and graduated from Concord Academy in Massachusetts in 1975.[27] She was a photographer's assistant at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.[28] In 1977, she worked as a summer intern at the New York Daily News, earning $156 a week ($784 in 2023 dollars), "fetching coffee for harried editors and reporters, changing typewriter ribbons and delivering messages."[29] Kennedy reportedly "sat on a bench alone for two hours the first day before other employees even said hello to her"; and, according to Richard Licata, a former News reporter, "Everyone was too scared."[28] Kennedy also wrote for Rolling Stone about visiting Graceland shortly after the death of Elvis Presley.[28]
In 1980, she earned a Bachelor of Arts from Radcliffe College at Harvard University.[30] During college, Kennedy had "considered becoming a photojournalist, but soon realized she could never make her living observing other people because they were too busy watching her."[28] After graduating, Kennedy was hired as a research assistant in the Film and Television Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She later became a "liaison officer between the museum staff and outside producers and directors shooting footage at the museum", helping coordinate the Sesame Street special Don't Eat the Pictures.[31] On December 4, 1984, Caroline was threatened when a man telephoned the museum and stated his name and address while reporting that a bomb had been planted there. Three days later, he was arrested for the threat.[32] In 1988, she earned a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, graduating in the top ten percent of her class.[33]
Caroline was romantically linked to many famous men, including Mark Shand, Sebastian Taylor, and Jonathan Guinness (of the Guinness family).[34] While working at the Met, Kennedy met her future husband, exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg. They married in 1986 at Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville, Massachusetts.[35] Kennedy's first cousin Maria Shriver served as the matron of honor, and Ted walked her down the aisle. Kennedy is sometimes incorrectly referred to as "Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg", but she did not change her name at the time she married.[1][2] Kennedy has three children: Rose Kennedy Schlossberg (born 1988), Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg (born 1990), and John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, known as Jack (born 1993).
Raised in Manhattan and somewhat separated from their Hyannisport cousins,[36] Caroline and John Jr. were very close, especially following their mother's death in 1994.[37] After John Jr. died in a plane crash in 1999, Caroline was the only remaining survivor of President Kennedy's immediate family, and she preferred not to have a public memorial service for her brother.[38] She decided that his remains would be cremated and his ashes scattered into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, where he met his fate.[39] John Jr. bequeathed Caroline his half ownership of George magazine, but Caroline believed that her brother would not have wanted the magazine to continue following his death,[40] and the magazine ceased publication two years later.[41]
Kennedy owns Red Gate Farm, her mother's 375-acre (152 ha) estate in Aquinnah (formerly Gay Head) on Martha's Vineyard.[42] The New York Daily News estimated Kennedy's net worth in 2008 at over $100 million.[43] During her 2013 nomination to serve as ambassador to Japan, financial disclosure reports showed her net worth to be between $67 million and $278 million, including family trusts, government and public authority bonds, commercial property in New York, Chicago, and Washington, and holdings in the Cayman Islands.[44]
Kennedy and Ellen Alderman have written two books together on civil liberties:
On her own, Kennedy has edited these New York Times best-selling volumes:
She is also the author of A Family Christmas, a collection of poems, prose, and personal notes from her family history (2007, ISBN 978-1-4013-2227-4). In April 2011, a new collection of poetry, She Walks in Beauty – A Woman's Journey Through Poems, edited and introduced by Caroline Kennedy, was published. She launched the book at the John F Kennedy Library & Museum at Columbia Point, Dorchester, MA.
Citations
Book sources