Pamela Turnure Timmins was the press secretary for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) during her years as first lady.
- Died: April 25, 2023 (Who else died on April 25?)
- Details of death: Died at her home in Edwards, Colorado, of lung cancer at the age of 85.
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Pamela Turnure Timmins’s legacy
Timmins initially worked for the Kennedy family prior to the presidency of John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) as a receptionist and secretary in his Senate office. When the Kennedys entered the White House, Timmins took on her new position as the first press secretary to a first lady. It was the beginning of a new era, when an active first lady would be scrutinized by the media and the public, and Kennedy came to rely on Timmins to help manage her correspondence and media inquiries.
Timmins was riding in the Dallas motorcade on the day the president was assassinated, and she provided personal and professional support for the first lady. She continued working with Kennedy for several years after her husband’s death. In later years, Timmins worked as an interior designer.
There were rumors that Timmins and President Kennedy had an affair while he was still a senator, which were cited as part of an attempt to derail his presidential campaign. These rumors resurfaced with the publication of the 1997 book “The Dark Side of Camelot.” Timmins and her family continued to deny these allegations throughout her life.
Timmins on the 1963 death of Patrick Kennedy
“[E]ven though there had been quite a few candid pictures of the Kennedy family together and some idea of what they were like as a family, that basically they had a marvelous reserve and they never wanted to sort of flaunt themselves as a family and show their innermost feelings for one another. When this happened, for the first time the inner life of the family became terribly open to the world, and what the President particularly and Mrs. Kennedy particularly felt for one another became apparent to the world, and this was something that people who admired them as a head of state and his wife, had really never known what they were like as a family until this moment. Suddenly it was all in the open, and the President’s real devotion to Mrs. Kennedy and to the children – all if it – was a new side that had never been seen so microscopically before.” —from a 1964 oral history interview for the John F. Kennedy Library
Tributes to Pamela Turnure Timmins
Full obituary: The Washington Post
