Nation: The Family in Mourning

No sooner had Jackie arrived back at Washington with her husband’s body than she served notice that she wanted to be consulted on all details of his services and burial. Well aware that her family and friends might otherwise spare her painful decisions, she insisted that she meant to see to it “that people will remember all the best things about him.”

In the bewildering days when she had first moved into the White House, Jackie had often sought refuge from her worries while sitting alone in the Lincoln Room. “It was the one room in the White House with a link to the past,” she once recalled. “It gave me great comfort . . . When you see the great bed, it looks like a cathedral . . . I felt a kind of peace in that room . . . I could really feel his strength.” Now, she firmly told the family, her husband’s funeral must be “as Lincolnesque as possible.”

“This Is Perfect.” From Bethesda Naval Hospital, where she waited while the President’s body was embalmed, Jackie sent word to Artist William Walton, an old family friend, about a book containing sketches and photographs of Lincoln’s White House lying-in-state. She even remembered just where the book was in the White House library. Walton found it, made sure that the White House East Room was prepared with the same simple drapings.

White House Aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Peace Corps Official Richard Goodwin rushed to the Library of Congress during the night, found other books on the Lincoln rites. When Jackie entered the East Room with the body at 4:25 that morning, she said: “No matter what happens from now on, Jack’s funeral will always be for me as it was when he came back to the White House. This is perfect.”

“He Belongs to the Country.” It was, in the last analysis, Jackie’s decision that her husband be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. There was some family feeling that the President should be with his infant son Patrick in the family plot at Brookline, Mass. Cardinal Cushing advised against this: the plot, he said, was much too small to accommodate all the thousands who would surely want to visit it as a shrine. Jackie herself thought that Brookline would be too out of the way. Said she: “He really belongs to the country as a whole.”

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara selected an Arlington site, showed it to Bobby Kennedy and Jean Kennedy Smith. Jackie herself inspected it on Sunday morning, approved, but asked that the grave be on a direct line between the flagpole at the Lee Mansion and the Lincoln Memorial. Army engineers hastened to the scene, conducted surveys, and laid out that direct line.

Jackie made other requests, all meant to symbolize things that her husband had stood for. She asked that a member of the Army’s Special Forces, wearing the green beret distinctive of those guerrilla warfare specialists, be included among the honor guard. Because of Jack’s love of the Navy, she requested that the Navy hymn be played as the casket was carried up the Capitol steps. She invited the Navy Choir and Tenor Luigi Vena, who had sung at her wedding, to sing at the cathedral. Recalling that Jack had recently marveled at an exhibition by Britain’s Royal Highland “Black Watch” Regiment at the White House, had enjoyed Ireland’s “Irish Guards” on his trip abroad last June, she asked for both. She suggested that the U.S. Air Force’s own ceremonial bagpipers appear at Arlington, wailing off over a hill in an exit similar to one that had thrilled Kennedy on the White House lawn. She suggested that an “eternal light” be placed at the head of the grave. It is fed by propane gas so that at night it appears blue—Jack’s favorite color.

At Jackie’s side throughout the week was Bobby Kennedy. Even before Jackie returned from Dallas, Bobby tried to encourage others, went to his Justice Department office where he kept repeating: “Cheer up. Cheer up.” It was Bobby who assigned to his brother-in-law, Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver, the job of seeing to it that all of Jackie’s many requests were fulfilled.

To Senator Teddy Kennedy fell the job of flying to Hyannis Port, comforting his mother and breaking the news to his invalid father. Rose Kennedy gamely controlled her grief, but did not immediately tell her husband of the assassination. On Friday night he was coaxed into watching a long movie at home, rather than television. Although he cannot talk or write, his restlessness indicated that he sensed the others’ sadness. But he retired as usual at 9:30 p.m.

No Times at Breakfast. Next morning during breakfast with Rose he became more suspicious when his New York Times was not beside his plate. During his usual wading in the swimming pool, he failed to respond to the forced family pleasantries. After Joe had changed clothes, Teddy and Eunice Shriver joined their father in his bedroom. When he asked to turn on the television set, Teddy stalled, said it did not work. Old Joe pointed to the unplugged power cord. Teddy reluctantly inserted it—but as the screen began to flicker on, he yanked the cord out again. Then he told his father about Jack’s death. Joe is a tough old bird, in the best sense of the phrase; he understood the news, took it without visibly flinching, and insisted on watching much of the final ceremonies for his son on television.

Most of the family gathered in Hyannis Port, as usual, for Thanksgiving. Jackie’s arrival with the children by Air Force jet was heavily covered by the Secret Service, state and local police. Her limousine left Otis Air Force Base at high speed, driven by Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, whom she had pulled to her side in Dallas when the fatal shots rang out. The day was overcast, windy, chilly. Next week Jackie expects to return to Washington, supervise her move out of the White House and into a Georgetown house lent to her temporarily by Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman. Later she probably will buy a house of her own in Georgetown.