For actress Lucci, the star of TV's All My Children, the Jackie sale was her first auction ever and it was a "baptism by fire." She went, she says, thinking to take home golf clubs for her son, but the bids quickly put an end to that notion. Then a small pencil study of a leopard was put up. "it jogged my memory that Jacqueline Kennedy had a taste for things exotic, that she traveled to India. And when we got it, I was exhilarated."
The leopard (around $12,000) is intended for her daughter, and Lucci also wanted something for her son. "My husband's European," she says, "and we love to travel, so when a framed collection of lapel pins from 29 countries came up, it seemed appropriate. I remembered Kennedy's `Ich bin ein Berliner' speech and that Jacqueline Kennedy had been the toast of Paris, and I assumed that there would be a pin from Germany and one from France." She got the pins (for about $8,500). "But in fact," says Lucci, laughing, "those two countries are not represented."
As for the leopard sketch, artist unknown, "the truth is, it's not that well done. It's matted in such a way that the leopard's tail goes under the mat and I think there was some erasing that went on," Lucci notes. "But we still love it. The fact that there are these mistakes, it's kind of charming."
And what made Lucci want a memory of Jackie? "I admired her very much, particularly in raising two children in the public eye and the way she maintained their privacy."
ELIZABETH VAN ELLA
Like Richard Gaspari, Van Ella made a startling discovery when she received the six books on Greece that she had won for $6000. One volume is a collection of Constantin Cavafy's poetry that includes Ithaka, which was read at Jackie's funeral.
Van Ella bid on the books, which are kept in a bedroom desk drawer, because "I'm a classics major and I was curious about this Greek period in Jackie's life, when she decided to leave America." The volumes have proved revealing.
"This period was very introspective," says Van Ella, who heads the Chicago-based security firm James E. Van Ella & Associates. "She was reinventing her life. A lot of these books talk about loss and grief, about people rising from the pyre and moving on in their life. And my husband died and I've sort of reinvented my life."
The books reflect Jackie in another way. "People thought of her as a woman of style, a blue blood," observes Van Ella. "But in the end, what was she? A book editor."
PHOTO (COLOR): Susan Lucci (r) with daughter Liza Huber.
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