My first encounter with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis took place in 1974 in probably the most privileged, secluded, protected place on earth, the Greek island Skorpios belonging to her second husband, Aristotle Onassis, with a backdrop of arguably the most beautiful private vessel in the world, the treasure-laden Christina.
That summer, we were visiting our best friends from Paris, Clem Wood, an American writer, and his wife, Jessie de Vilmorin, and their eight children, on the island of Speccia, only a helicopter ride from Skorpios. And every summer thereafter, Jacqueline would call us up and invite us to her island, which she laughingly called the Island of Dr. No, and with eight children plus my two, plus cousins and assorted child friends, brought the total in three summer houses to fifteen.
