Nation: The Funeral

To each and every one, whether there or participating through the unblinking vigil of television, there was the particular sight or sound that touched the emotions.

To many, it was Jackie Kennedy, still athletic in her springy stride, walking behind her husband’s casket. To others, it was Hail to the Chief, or the Navy hymn, or Onward, Christian Soldiers. To some, it was the ageless rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. But to others, it was the fact that those rituals are not changeless—as evidenced when Richard Cardinal Gushing, Archbishop of Boston, who had married John and Jacqueline Kennedy and baptized their children, neared the end of the Requiem Mass and cried in his strangely discordant voice: “May the angels, dear Jack, lead you into Paradise.” And to a few, it was the time when Air Force One, the blue-and-white presidential jet, thundered over the graveside ceremony in Arlington Cemetery. Said the pilot later: “The President liked the plane so much. We just thought it would be nice to fly over.”

On Sunday, the body lay in state beneath the Capitol rotunda. The casket, draped in a flag and surrounded by a five-service military honor guard, was never to be opened because the President had been deeply disfigured. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield fought through sobs to read a eulogy that, although well-meaning, was cruel in its emotion: “There was the sound of laughter; in a moment, it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands . . .”

He repeated those phrases five times, and as he did so, Jackie Kennedy held her face rigid as stone. Beside her were the children, Caroline and John Jr., dressed in matching powder-blue coats and red shoes. Caroline was solemn and open-eyed. But John-John capered about, tugging at his mother’s hand, and had to be sent from the rotunda with his nurse. When he left the Capitol later he was clutching a small flag on a foot-long stick. He had spotted it in the office of House Speaker John McCormack and firmly announced, “I want that flag to take home to my daddy.”

“Let’s Walk a Bit.” Outside the Capitol a multitude—possibly a quarter of a million people—waited to begin a hushed parade past the casket. Eight abreast, they lined up for 32 blocks outside the Capitol in such numbers that even at the rate of 6,000 an hour, there was no chance that those at the end of the line could get in before the funeral procession Monday morning. They never stopped. At 2 a.m., a wornan walked by the bier wheeling an infant asleep in a stroller. A blind man was led by the casket, his companion softly whispering a description of the scene. At 2:30 a.m., Jersey Joe Walcott, onetime heavyweight champion of the world, went by. He had waited eight hours in line.

During the night, Jackie had come back again, slipped through the mourners. She knelt at the casket, brushed her lips against the flag. As she did so, Bobby Kennedy lingered brooding near the rotunda wall. When a reporter remarked to him of the crowds, Bobby managed a slight smile and murmured, “Fantastic. Fantastic.” Then the couple left. Outside, Jackie said, “Let’s walk a bit.” Arm in arm, they moved almost like ghosts across the lawn below the steps and through the waiting line. As they turned to descend the hill at the Senate side of the Capitol, a silent, respectful throng began to follow far behind until they crossed a street to a waiting limousine. Jackie looked back once at the floodlit dome and the intent crowd in the cold below it. Then she turned to Bobby and a weak, grateful smile crossed her face as she entered the car.

Front & Center. On Monday, sunlight splashed the rotunda, and a million people lined the streets of Washington. Shortly before 11 a.m., nine servicemen slid the casket from its catafalque, bore it haltingly, laboriously down the 36 Capitol steps past the black-clothed ranks of John Kennedy’s family. The drums began a muffled thunder. There was a gnashing of metal as the military men loaded it aboard the glistening black caisson, the same that carried the coffin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt 18 years ago.

Slowly, the procession began the 1.8-mile route to the White House. Immediately behind the caisson came a caparisoned, riderless horse. A sword in its scabbard hung from the black saddle, a pair of gleaming boots were reversed in the stirrups—a sign that a commander had fallen and would never ride again. Black Jack, a 16-year-old dark chestnut gelding, is the pride of Fort Myer’s stable of 27 ceremonial horses, and has performed in dozens of military funerals over the past ten years. Now the animal was skittish, prancing sideways and endlessly tugging at the arm of the Army private who led him.

When the procession arrived at the black-draped White House, Jackie and other members of the President’s family left their black limousines, fell in behind the restless capers of Black Jack and the slow-turning wheels of the caisson. Behind them strode President Johnson, and his wife. Next, a limousine carrying Caroline and John cruised out the gate. Then the White House driveway filled, gatepost to gatepost, with a moving mass. Like a slow, powerful river, it poured out onto Pennsylvania Avenue, and not until then did the makeup of that seemingly formless crowd come clear.

At the front and center marched the regal, khaki-clad figure of Charles de Gaulle. At his side was Queen Frederika of Greece. And on either side of them were: King Baudouin of Belgium in army khaki; Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, splendid in his decorations and chartreuse sash; West Germany’s President Heinrich Lübke; Philippines President Diosdado Macapagal; Korea’s President-elect General Park Chung Hee. They, along with 213 other world leaders, headed to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, eight blocks away.

Scattered thickly among them were dozens of men no one could recognize —Secret Service agents and bodyguards, scanning the crowd, rooftops, doorways and windows. The State Department alone had 250 agents; at least a dozen Secret Service men were always within a few yards of President Johnson. De Gaulle had ten guards of his own, and 4,324 servicemen and cops lined the route. With the events of the past few days, no one who watched that march could help fearing that another shot might break the hush. Indeed, there had been dozens of threatening phone calls, but there were no real scares.

Inside the cathedral, 1,200 other invited guests waited for the cortege to arrive. They made a diverse assembly: Astronaut John Glenn and New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Pennsylvania’s William Scranton, Alabama’s George Wallace. G. Mennen (“Soapy”) Williams, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, wore a black bow tie with green polka dots. Fifty Senators and 100 Representatives—only the most senior—were there, along with former Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman, Richard and Pat Nixon, Evangelist Billy Graham, Henry Ford, IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Jr. and dozens from the diplomatic corps, and many, such as Nellie Heffernan, Pat Twohig and Joe Timilty, from the White House domestic staff. Martin Luther King Jr. came late and alone.

“This Is a Church.” At last, through the open doors, the horses’ hoofs were heard. Cardinal Gushing moved down the aisle, and as he approached the doorway, a woman in black stepped toward him. He took the dead President’s mother in his arms, murmured, “Rose, my dear, my dear.”

Outside, Jackie Kennedy kissed the cardinal’s ring, then entered the cathedral with Caroline and John. The little boy gazed in awe at the ceiling, said softly, as if to reassure himself, “This is a church.” But once the service began, John-John was too fidgety to stay, and again he was taken out.

Cardinal Cushing began his dissonant, yet moving, intonation of the Mass: “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord: and let perpetual light shine upon him.” Suddenly Charles de Gaulle stood upright, facing the altar. He was joined by Emperor Selassie and King Baudouin, and the three chiefs of state stood alone, erect and rigid. Later, because it was a Kennedy favorite, the third chapter of Ecclesiastes was read—almost in monotone—by the Most Rev. Philip M. Hannan, Auxiliary Bishop of Washington: “There is an appointed time for everything … a time to be born, and a time to die … a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” It was as fitting as anything done during the service. Finally, Hannan repeated part of President Kennedy’s inaugural address—and they may have been the most felicitous words heard all week.

When it was over, the honor guard took the coffin into the sunshine. A band struck up Hail to the Chief—usually a tune of cheerful dignity, but on this day a doleful dirge. On the steps, Caroline brushed a tear from her eye. John-John, who was to have had his third birthday party that day, suddenly looked up and saw the flag on his father’s casket. Jackie leaned over to whisper to him, and he saluted. The funeral procession began the last three miles to the cemetery.

Overhead. There, a crowd of 10,000 spilled along the hillside, stood within 100 yards of the gravesite. Television cameras and newsmen were stationed within 50 feet of the bright, artificial green sod spread around the opening. Drummers from the Marine Band marched to the top of the hill, hammered out the somber beat as the caisson drew near. The Air Force bagpipe band, moving in slow step, wailed The Mist Covered Mountain.

As the Kennedy family walked toward their seats, Jackie for the first time seemed unsure of herself. She started blindly toward the grave, but Bobby caught her arm and gently guided her to a chair. Beneath her veil, tears glistened, and suddenly she jerked her head up in surprise as jet fighters roared over. There were 50 of them, representing the states of the Union.

Cardinal Cushing, presiding once more, seemed almost to hurry through the rote and ritual. Near the end, he blurted the words “this wonderful man, Jack Kennedy,” into the midst of the stream of ancient Catholic prayers. A 21-gun salute boomed in the distance. Up the hill, three musket volleys cracked. A bugler began to play a perfect taps, then faltered twice.

The pallbearers, their white-gloved hands moving in careful precision folded to a tight triangle the flag that had covered Kennedy’s coffin for two days. Jackie took it and, hugging it to her breast, took a taper and lighted a blue flame at the foot of the grave—an “eternal light.” Bobby and Teddy Kennedy touched taper to flame too, then they turned to go, and the funeral of John Kennedy was over.

The long line of limousines cruised down the hill to Washington and, as evening came, the crowd drifted away, the television crews dismantled their equipment, the drums stopped pounding. That night, while the flame flickered in the dark over heaps of wreaths and flowers and a litter of film wrappings, crumpled bags and rolls of TV cable, Jackie Kennedy returned to the grave with Bobby. She put a small bouquet of lilies on the grave, prayed, wept, and went away.