Eligible bachelor Senator John F. Kennedy proposed by telegram to Long Island socialite Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (1929-1994) while she was in England photographing the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II for the Washington Times-Herald.

"I have never met anyone like her," he said. They wed in September 1953. Kennedy became President in 1961.

As First Lady, French-speaking, Sorbonne-instructed Jacqueline was elegant and beautiful. She captivated the world. The White House became a theater of the arts and intellect.

The zenith was in April 1962 when cellist Pablo Casals performed as the Kennedys honored 49 Western Hemisphere Nobel Prize winners of which President Kennedy described as: "the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together in the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Mrs. Kennedy's touch, as subtle as her whispery voice, transformed history. In an interview with Life magazine a week after her husband's assassination, she said, "At night, before we’d go to sleep, Jack liked to play some records, and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record..."

"...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. There’ll be great Presidents again…but there’ll never be another Camelot again..."

Celebrate life.