Happy birthday to my all-time idol

Today, JBKO would turn 90. No public woman ever made steel look more feminine. No other First Lady faced as much and handled it with as much grace.

I look at this photo from her sweet sixteen summer, on vacation with her father in Hot Springs, VA. She has yet to meet (then) Lt. John F. Kennedy. The decade of fame and glory, as well as the adversity (his near-death back surgery, her 5 difficult pregnancies, his assassination and state funeral) are all ahead of her.*

I look in her eyes and wonder, did this very private young girl really want us all to know her?

*Really, she married JFK in 1953 and buried him in 1963. What an amazing, exhausting decade that was for this lady.