It’s not entirely incorrect to say that Steven Louis Brawley is obsessed with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. “Obsession,” though, undersells the rigor and dedication he brings to the task of cataloging and contextualizing her history. His business card bears an iconic pink pillbox hat, but Brawley’s no mere fanboy.
The 60-year-old Kirkwood resident is the custodian of one of the largest private collections of Kennedy pop culture ephemera, and his ever-growing scholarly archives are nothing to sneeze at either. He’s a frequently consulted media expert on all things Jackie and has maintained an online image collection and information hub for almost 25 years at pinkpillbox.com and its social media offshoots.
His fascination with history began with an august, but perhaps slightly less glamorous, subject.
“My first passion was Abe Lincoln,” Brawley says. “I was probably an Abe Lincoln kid from about five, even through high school. My family was very encouraging. They bought me books and took me to Springfield, Illinois.”
Indeed, Lincoln imagery abounds in the living room of his cozy and inviting midcentury ranch house. But it’s clear who the star is.
There are pop culture representations of the First Lady from vintage prints and magazine spreads to a Funko Pop toy, as well as exquisitely preserved files comprising original photographs, documents and notes handwritten by Jackie herself. I have only a passing interest in the Queen of Camelot, but handling those artifacts (properly protected in plastic, of course!) was electrifying.
His fascination with Jackie began with a vintage item which is, of course, preserved and displayed proudly in the dining room.
Steven Brawley. Photo credit: Geoff Story
Brawley’s brother Ricky died when Steven was five and during the lengthy hospitalizations, young Steven stayed with relatives. “I was shuffled around a lot, so I stayed with Grandma Brawley in Lafayette Square,” he says. “She had this picture that she bought at Globe Drug Store on Cherokee Street.”
He asked about the glamorous young couple in the picture. Grandma Brawley’s age-appropriate explanation was that it was President John F. Kennedy, who’d been shot by a bad man, and his wife Jackie Kennedy, who was a brave mother.
“Not a lot of detail, but just enough to give me an understanding,” he says.
Jackie joined Abe in coming alive in his mind. That led to a broader interest in history. He took notes at family reunions and taught himself more sophisticated research methods, like asking older folks to see their family Bibles and looking up census records.
As an undergrad at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Brawley served as editor of his college newspaper. In that role he developed a relationship with Blanche Touhill, who became a mentor to him.
“She always said historians take a longer view of history,” Brawley says. “She said, ‘You’re a reporter and an editor of the newspaper. Your job is to record for future generations.’”
As Brawley grew up, he realized teaching — which initially seemed like the most feasible way to professionalize his calling — wasn’t for him. He turned to journalism and communications instead. He later moved into a demanding and successful career in nonprofits, but the history bug never let him alone.
During Brawley’s prime party years in the late ’80s through the early 2000s, he was out partying, but even then he was mostly sitting with the oldsters holding down the bar, collecting stories and wisdom from them. This was when the AIDS crisis was swinging its vicious scythe through the community, cutting down elders and young people alike — including Jimmy Walker, also known as Bette Davis, one of the city’s premiere drag queens and one of Brawley’s favorite storytellers. After she passed, Brawley regretted not having found a way to share her storytelling. That regret pushed him into blogging and collecting, and shaped him into the community historian he is today.
His collection of local queer memorabilia, the St. Louis LGBT History Project, is legendary and vital. The project partners with the Missouri History Museum and the State Historical Society of Missouri to preserve, collect, and share stories and mementos. My own copy of his 2016 book Gay and Lesbian St. Louis is well dog-eared and thumbed through.
In the beginning of the obsession that would give way to scholarship, he started collecting history in general. The internet changed the game.
“I became kind of an addict on eBay,” he says. He realized he needed to focus or the wide-ranging collection of history would overwhelm him. “I just ended up with this nucleus of Jackie stuff, so I ended up saying, ‘Jackie will be my muse.’”
At first it was pop culture items and magazines. Though it pained him, he didn’t initially have the cash or clout to access her actual possessions. The huge Sotheby’s auction, a year after her passing in 1994, was well beyond his reach.
“The more I got into her life and research,” he says, “I decided I don’t want to be a fan, and I don’t want to be what I would call just a pedestrian collector.” He wanted to figure out, he says, “What is it that I can contribute to the knowledge base about her?”
Brawley realized what was missing and found his niche: locations.
“When I would go to D.C., I would go to the places,” he says. “That led me to a very niche orientation of what I call my Jackie Journey, which is telling and learning about her in a way that I can contribute this information to other folks down the road.”
He’s stood where she stood, including inside four or five of her actual homes.
“I walk the floors, walk the stairs, sit on the porches,” he says.
Toward the end of her life, Jackie had leased a small cabin in Virginia in search of ever-elusive privacy. It was a spare and simple place, far from the glamour of the capital, without her signature maximalist décor.
“I felt her there more than the other homes,” Brawley says.
Hi most recent decade has been one of especially intense and refined focus. His steadfast and careful work has gained him access to stunning and insightful artifacts, like handwritten notes from her detailing her very exacting expectations for events, locations and meetings.
In the next few years, Brawley plans to transition into full-time writing, with several Jackie books already outlined and researched. In August he completed a Public History Certificate from Nazareth University to augment the work he did for his master’s degree at St. Louis University.
Taking on Kennedy in print is intimidating, he allows. “It’s sacred ground to some people. I feel confident that I’m getting over my impostor syndrome.”
After the publication of Gay and Lesbian St. Louis, a few people got in touch to tell him what he missed, and he realized that there were indeed some inadvertent omissions. Far from a rebuke, though, he takes these comments as kind of the point of the book: It’s all in service of getting a complete picture.
“That means we’re learning and growing,” he says. “When you’re doing research on topics that people don’t know about, there’s going to be that void. It’s going to shake stuff loose. And that’s amazing.”
It’s taken time and trust to gain the access and information that he has, and you won’t find it splashed piecemeal online. His research is rigorous, and it will come out in the books as a complete piece of scholarship.
If you want to visit the archives of the Kennedy Library, there’s a fair amount of training you have to complete. He’s been three times, and has seen and held things that took his breath away — and no, he’s not saying what they were.
Nor will he reveal the family sources that he’s developed or the well-known authors who’ve been mentoring him. You’ll have to wait for the books.
“I try not to be a fanboy about it,” he says. “I can be critical of her as a human or flawed: she smoked and drank; she spent money like it was nothing. She was privileged, but she also was a person who went through so much.”
