The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  She didn’t win every point. From her research on the White House guidebook she had learned that long before bandleaders had adopted the custom of greeting prominent politicians with a sprightly chorus of “Hail to the Chief,” the air had been a Scottish ballad. The Scots played it largo. She remembered the President’s fondness for the melody and thought Scottish bagpipers might pipe it as a dirge. Ted Clifton persuaded her to withdraw the request. Though no one knew just when John Tyler had confiscated the tune as Presidential property, and though the circumstances had been hardly solemn—at Tyler’s direction, the Marine Band had used it to serenade his second wife-to-be—the inalterable fact was that “Hail to the Chief,” had acquired a semiofficial status. An unorthodox performance by foreigners would be regarded as improper.

  She lost another musical skirmish to the more formidable Church. She had asked to have a Navy chorus sing during the funeral Mass, and once again the Navy was eager to oblige. At first the possibility of an obstacle seemed remote here. In Annapolis three Academy choirs—Catholics, Protestants, and antiphonal—began rehearsing. None was destined to perform at the service, however, for in Ralph Dungan’s office a priest, overhearing Shepard’s phoned orders, took him aside and said, “You can’t do it. We have our own choir.” Taz protested that the first of the three consisted entirely of Catholic youth, but he was missing the nub; the Church was bent upon its own people. In the end Mrs. Kennedy yielded and directed that the midshipmen sing on the mansion’s North Lawn Monday.

  The hierarchy was victorious there. It was defeated in the greater debates over the Mass. Cardinal Cushing was acceptable to everyone, of course, and His Eminence stipulated no preferences of his own. The conflict arose over the designation of the second prelate at the altar. If seniority were observed, the Cardinal would be joined at the altar by Archbishop Patrick A. O’Boyle of Washington. Mrs. Kennedy had no objection to O’Boyle. But if any clergyman except Cushing were to speak, she wanted to see Auxiliary Bishop Philip N. Hannan at the lectern. He was young, gifted, and highly idealistic; she thought of him as “sort of a Jack in the Church.” Shriver braced himself for a bolt of clerical disapproval. Surprisingly there wasn’t even a spark, and Hannan was so assigned.

  The real clash came over the selection of the cathedral. To the hierarchy the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in northeastern Washington was the obvious choice. The bishops and monsignors couldn’t imagine a finer tabernacle. The Romanesque Shrine was the largest and most impressive Catholic edifice in the United States; it seated 2,500, was equipped with vast parking areas, and had become something of a tourist attraction—during the spring and summer glut of sight-seers there were scheduled tours, and an efficient basement cafeteria had been installed for them. Jacqueline Kennedy was unimpressed. She had never been inside the Shrine. She disliked the name. To her St. Matthew’s was far more appealing; she particularly treasured the memory of attending a Red Mass with her husband there. If any cathedral were to be identified with the President, this would be it. The hierarchy was dumfounded. Compared to its magnificent Shrine, St. Matthew’s was shabby, aging, unsplendid, unadorned by artistic treasures. The widow and the clerics deadlocked. In Robert Kennedy’s words, “The priests insisted on Immaculate Conception, but she was very insistent about St. Matthew’s.” He told her, “I think it’s too small. It only seats eleven hundred.” She replied, “I don’t care. They can all stand in the streets. I just know that’s the right place to have it.”

  Mrs. Kennedy had another, unanswerable reason for her choice, and eventually she disclosed it. She refused to ride to her husband’s funeral Mass “in a fat black Cadillac”; she had resolved to walk behind the caisson, and since the gleaming Shrine was too far away it was automatically eliminated. That settled that. At the same time it raised other, secular dilemmas, some of the first magnitude. Nobody, including Bob Kennedy, had anticipated a phalanx of famous pedestrians. Everyone responsible for security was appalled. Angie Duke envisioned a protocol nightmare, and wasn’t even sure that such homage wasn’t un-American. At his suggestion the Library of Congress ferrets were once more unleashed in the stacks, and they returned staggering under volumes of yellowed newsprint and cartons of microfilm which disclosed that similar processions had followed the coffins of Washington, Lincoln, Grant, and the first Roosevelt. Between 32,000 and 33,000 veterans of the American Revolution had followed George Washington’s body to its Mount Vernon grave. That was the best possible precedent, and Duke threw in his hand.

  At first the widow wanted to walk every step—from the executive mansion to the Hill, from there to St. Matthew’s, and from the Mass to the burial site. Independently of her, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were taking the same line. To soldiers and sailors it seemed a fitting tribute to a fallen Commander in Chief. Ted Clifton gently pointed out that the consequences could be catastrophic. Gentlemen would refuse to be seated while a widowed First Lady was on foot, and few of these gentlemen were fit for such a hike. Clifton reminded Mrs. Kennedy that doddering behind her would be the oldest members of the Congress, Supreme Court Justices who were septuagenarians and octogenarians, and the President of Turkey, who had been a major when Dwight Eisenhower—himself seventy-three—had been a cadet at West Point. Conceivably half the nations in the UN could be left leaderless. She meditated and then modified her order. They would walk from the White House to St. Matthew’s, eight blocks away; infirm Chiefs of State could be driven there in advance. Even then the funeral planners murmured dissent, but she declined to budge further. “Nobody has to walk but me,” she said, and when she was told they would insist upon joining her she shrugged. That was their affair, she said; “That doesn’t matter.” A diehard inquired, “What will we do if it rains?” “I don’t care,” she said firmly. “I’ll walk anyway.” Her tone discouraged further argument. It dawned on them that not even a howling hurricane would prevent her from striding up Seventeenth Street and Connecticut to the cathedral at 1725 Rhode Island. Like staying with the body in Dallas, like her refusal to shed her stained clothing until she had been returned home, this was something she had to do.

  By now Clifton, Duke, Shepard, Miller, and Shriver had almost become part of Dungan’s office furniture. Each man had left word with a score of colleagues that he could be reached at these extensions. Thus the marathon meeting was really larger than it seemed; the two White House switchboards kept plugging in invisible participants. Dungan felt a strange longing for last night’s simplicity. Today there were innumerable points of control, and they were not nearly so reliable. Bob Kennedy couldn’t always be reached, Jackie frequently changed her mind, and the Church and the military were being mulish. Twenty-four hours hadn’t decreased the sense of shock; if anything the men were more aware of their loss, and broke down more often. At the outset they had at least been rested. The accumulation of fatigue had begun to tell, both in emotional displays and sudden eruptions of temper. The one iron man there, Dungan thought, was Shriver. Except for occasional brief absences he sat hour after hour in front of the desk with a yellow pad in his lap, making meticulous notes and firing off orders.

  But Shriver wasn’t the only efficient conferee. Dungan himself was performing ably, and Saturday’s accomplishments suggest that the general standard was very high. Dr. Joseph English, no expert in transportation, arranged a transatlantic dash for Mary Ann Ryan, a distant cousin of the President’s. A terse debate on mourning clothes ended, as Dick Goodwin put it, with the judgment that “If there was any occasion which demanded the highest formality it was the death of a President; therefore we would wear tails.” The preparation of guest lists continued, and had become more orderly—two men worked on the diplomatic corps, two handled the Congress, one chose family friends, one clergymen, one the press—and here, too, the follow-ups were painstaking. Once the selection of St. Matthew’s had become definite, groups of planners traveled there and made preliminary charts of pews and standing room while Sandy Fox dispatched telegrams and spread the word that
invited Washingtonians were to pick up the invitations—which Sandy was inscribing with his exquisite calligraphy—in the East Lobby, where Dave Hackett and Dean Markham awaited them. Deciding upon musical titles was another initial step, and it was surprisingly complex. A state funeral is an intricate medley; not counting the national anthem, ruffles, and flourishes, there were to be thirty hymns. The bands had to be marshaled (Army seniority was disregarded; Mrs. Kennedy had requested priority for the Marine Band), and the proper scores had to be distributed to the musicians. There may be a dozen versions of a familiar refrain. For the Kennedy funeral the Kennedy team was exacting, and Irving Lowens of the Library of Congress’ music division was yanking volumes and folders from his own stacks, establishing the history of each composition.

  In the case of “Hail to the Chief” he even appointed an ad hoc committee, whose report was filed in the Marine Band library. This may seem like caviling. But the President’s campaigns had taught his campaigners that every line of fine print would be read by someone, and as it happened Lowens’ findings were to be cited more than once. The sheer mass of the television audience meant that the tiniest movement would be witnessed by experts. America has experts in everything. There are people who devote lifetimes to a study of Longstreet’s movements on the morning of July 3, 1863; there are people who can recite the complete works of Robert W. Service; and there are people who make a hobby of “Hail to the Chief.” The strains which Tyler had thought romantic were to be played four times that weekend, twice on the Hill and twice at the church. Renditions were rotated among the service bands, and later letters arrived from vigilant critics who had recorded each beat with stopwatches and wondered why the tempo had varied.

  Now and then the planners boggled. At 1930 hours Fort McNair held a full-dress briefing for regular officers, the National Guard, the reserves, the Secret Service, the metropolitan police, and the park police. General Wehle presided, colored chalk in hand. He drew elaborate diagrams and even indulged in whimsey, dryly remarking to Captain William Smith, “This is going to be a golden moment for you; you are going to be the first junior officer in history to issue the order, ‘Joint Chiefs of Staff! Forward March!’ ” Wehle thought nothing had been left to chance. He had told Shriver, “I want everything in writing.” Nevertheless the meeting broke up with no mention of the Presidential flag. Late that evening Seaman Ed Nemuth was watching television at Anacostia when a petty officer informed him that he would carry the huge standard behind the coffin tomorrow and on Monday. It was to be one of the most conspicuous military assignments in the ceremonies; television watchers who never saw Wehle or the Joint Chiefs were to be left with a vivid impression of Nemuth. Yet he had never seen a President’s ensign, had never carried a banner that large, and never dreamed that the pole would be too tall for the Capitol’s bronze doors. He would have to deal with that vicissitude when it arose; the order had come to him too late for rehearsal. Similarly, the President’s family should have reached a definite decision about the Mass card. Mass cards aren’t like newspapers. Printers must devote meticulous care to them. Running one off on a crash schedule is extremely difficult. But after preliminary examination of those which had been used at the requiem Masses for Joe Kennedy, Jr. and Ethel’s parents, the matter was set aside until Sunday.

  Of course, there is such a thing as too much efficiency. The White House operators are so good, and their connections so swift, that often neither the caller nor the called knows where the other is. In Chicago Tish Baldridge, who had preceded Nancy Tuckerman as social secretary, had lain awake until 2 A.M. Giving up sleep, she had packed a bag and taken the first plane to Washington. Saturday noon she entered the East Gate, passed by the catafalque, and phoned Shriver on a mansion extension. Sarge didn’t know it was an extension. He assumed she was in Illinois, and when she asked whether there was anything she could do, he suggested she think about the cemetery. This was consistent with the organizational approach Larry O’Brien had perfected for John Kennedy—give every volunteer a job; even if he blunders, he will be left with a feeling of participation. Had Tish been at her Merchandise Mart office her thoughts would have been ineffective. Since she was in Washington (and since she was a strong-minded woman) her presence was quickly felt. She approved the purchase of Joe Gawler’s $700 copper-lined asphalt-concrete vault, and with Angie Duke’s wife Robin she sketched an arbor of flowers for the grave. Tish and Robin were old friends of Mrs. Kennedy, but neither understood her concept of taste. To her a floral arbor was like engraving R.I.P. on a gravestone, and when they set out to buy up every rose in the capital they were embarking on a collision course. Jacqueline Kennedy had her own ideas about flowers.

  Seaman Nemuth, the Mass card, and Tish were exceptional. With few exceptions the widow had but to express a desire and the achievement materialized like Aladdin’s jinni. Because she had been expecting Patrick’s birth in two months, she had been unable to accompany her husband to Ireland. Nevertheless he had told her of his affection for the people, had held her spellbound with dramatic tales of the April 1916 uprising in Dublin, and had described President Eamon de Valera’s youthful struggles in Brooklyn. She mentioned how moved he had been by Ireland’s drill of mourning for departed heroes, and that was enough; Clifton, who had been with him there, had previously assigned a picked detail from Fort Myer to study a film showing the solemn salute, but now he knew that would not do. He phoned the Irish Ambassador, who, grateful for the opportunity to do something, declared that he would fly in a team of cadets from Shannon. Dungan’s office made reservations for them at the Mayflower Hotel.

  She remembered another, more recent incident; on November 13, during her convalescence, the bagpipers of the Black Watch Regiment had skirled on the south grounds to the delight of John and Caroline. After wittily glossing over Black Watch encounters with American colonists during the Revolutionary War, the President had spoken of his own affection for Scotland. He loved it, he had said, because it was a lost cause which, in the end, had triumphed. Mrs. Kennedy felt that her husband had always had an affinity for lost causes. Now his own life was one. She thought it appropriate for the Black Watch to march behind the gun carriage in groups of three, between the Joint Chiefs and the U.S. Marines. Clifton called Ormsby-Gore’s military aide. The Black Watch was still touring America, and the pipe major and eight pipers were flown up from Knoxville and billeted at Fort Myer. The American funeral pace was a hundred paces a minute, slightly faster than the heartbeat of a man. There was no equivalent in the British Army. The Scotsmen would have to maintain it for a mile, and they began round-the-clock drill.

  Fort Myer’s two drill fields were becoming rather crowded. Lieutenant Sam Bird was rehearsing his body bearers. Sergeant Keith Clark was practicing taps. While Clifton had flinched at the idea of a mournful rendition of “Hail to the Chief,” Jacqueline Kennedy’s preference for the melancholy sound of bagpipe music was endorsed. The Black Watch men weren’t the only skirlers; four Air Force pipers had been assigned to the graveside ceremony, and the old red-brick fort was made even more tristful by their plaintive wailing. The stables clattered with the sounds of hoisted harness. Old Guard archivists were familiar with the legends of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, whose chargers were sacrificed after the burial of a lost conqueror in the Mongol faith that they passed through “the gate of the sky” to serve their master in after-life. Since then the riderless horse had become traditional in all state funerals. Fort Myer veterans knew that a caparisoned steed would follow the gun carriage, with boots turned backward as a sign that the fallen leader would ride no more. At first the widow thought of using Sardar, a bay gelding which President Ayub Khan had given her; then, at 4 P.M., the fort’s twenty-six-horse stable was ordered to pick one of its own.

  Two chargers were available. “Shorty” was the more phlegmatic and would be easier to handle, but to the stablemen he looked rather like a fat cow. “Black Jack,” his stablemate, was a magnificent seventeen-year-old. He had the vigor
of a young stallion, and picking him was a risk; nevertheless the commanding officer of the Old Guard’s 3rd Battle Group was confident that Pfc Arthur A. Carlson could handle him. Carlson himself was less sure. Black Jack’s temperament was notorious; the crowds, the white traffic lines on Pennsylvania Avenue, and especially the slow progress of the caisson were disturbing prospects. Furthermore, he was even stronger than he looked. Carlson was a sinewy young Alabaman, but if the gelding shied and broke loose, the cavalryman would be left. Both Carlson and the sergeant who would lead the matched grays picked tight cinches, spur straps, and Pelhams (check reins). There was some feeling among old cavalrymen that the horses drawing the gun carriage should be mounted by senior noncoms. They were overruled. The hazards of skittishness were too great. The thought that runaways might gallop across Washington with the Commander in Chief’s coffin was intimidating. Riders were picked for their brawn, horsemanship and experience, and as things turned out the apprehension of the worriers was to be justified.