By Meghan Streit
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Barbara Rinella brought an American legend back to life at Sedgebrook on January 19. Dressed in a coral shirtwaist dress, matching pillbox hat, white gloves, and oversized black sunglasses, Rinella recounted the extraordinary life of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

Assuming the former first lady’s persona, Rinella gave a witty and remarkably detailed history lesson highlighting the highs and lows of Jackie O’s 64 years, based on Edward Klein’s biography Farewell Jackie—A Portrait of Her Final Days.

June Lauter, a Sedgebrook resident who attended the performance with friends, says she has seen several of Rinella’s shows. “You definitely feel like she’s in the body of the person she’s impersonating,” Lauter says.

The self-described “academic entertainer” dazzled the crowd of about 150 Sedgebrook residents and guests from the community with tales of Jackie’s childhood, her schooling in New England and Paris, her love of horseback riding and fashion, her romance with and storybook wedding to John F. Kennedy, and the birth of her children.

She revealed the frailty behind Jackie’s courageous elegance with stories about her parents’ divorce, her complicated relationship with her father, “Black Jack” Bouvier, and the assassination of her husband. Rinella peppered her performance with irreverent humor and good-natured jabs at the scandal that has plagued the Kennedy clan.

An unlikely performer
Rinella began her quirky one-woman shows in 1979 when a friend scheduled her to do a book talk at the Women’s Athletic Club in Chicago. “I said, ‘I don’t do that!’ And she said, ‘Well, you do now!” Rinella remembers of her first performance.