The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  The vast majority of the infantrymen who were to march had been trained in quickstep cadence. Like the Black Watch pipers, they had to be redrilled. Mrs. Kennedy was unaware of this at the time. Most of the participants were strangers to her. She hadn’t met the marchers, the riders, the musicians, the Irishmen, the Scotsmen, or the generals at Myer and McNair. She didn’t even know the name of the riderless horse. (Had she been told, she would have been startled; her childhood nickname for her father had been Black Jack.) From her eminence in the executive mansion she could only shape broad outlines and leave details to others. Her lieutenants were her husband’s staff; in planning his state funeral she was, in effect, Acting President. She couldn’t have done it alone. The entire Kennedy family, and particularly Robert Kennedy and Sargent Shriver, were indispensable; nevertheless she was the widow, the symbol. She kept a taut check rein on herself. When the pressures on her were at their height, an acquaintance who had been waiting in the second-floor hall outside the oval study noted that “Jackie came out, looking very pale but most composed. She said that an acquaintance had ‘called me to say how wonderful I have been. How did she expect me to behave?’ ” The fact was that her own friends had never fully understood her. Her husband had. Seven years earlier, sitting on the edge of a table in his Boston headquarters, he had remarked to a group of them, “My wife is a shy, quiet girl, but when things get rough, she can handle herself pretty well.” Until now they hadn’t realized that he had been displaying his flair for understatement.

  Saturday’s hardest decision had been the choice of a grave site. The dispute was so intense, the feeling so strong on both sides, that lasting bruises appeared to be inevitable. Until the issue was resolved the President’s friends—indeed, the family itself—was divided into two clear-cut factions, with the Bostonians a heavy majority. In fact, several of the funeral planners didn’t even know that an alternative existed. Except for Taft and Wilson, all previous Chief Executives had been buried near their homes. In Dungan’s office Angie Duke glanced up from his FDR precedent book and inquired, “What’s the Hyde Park of the Kennedy family?” “Brookline,” he was told. He instructed his protocol experts to prepare invitations for a funeral train and be ready with alternatives in the event of orders to move the body from St. Matthew’s by destroyer or aircraft. President Johnson’s staff expected him to attend a Mass in Hyannis and graveside services in Brookline. Following the Cabinet meeting Johnson had told a visitor that he couldn’t schedule any appointments early next week because “I don’t know about after the funeral; I may be in Massachusetts.” At 11:37 A.M. a State Department telecom had definitely informed Ambassador Bohlen in Paris, “The burial will be in Brookline.”

  O’Donnell, O’Brien, and Powers were unshakable to the end. For them the thought of lowering the President’s coffin anywhere else was unthinkable. They were professional persuaders, they were sure they were right, and they had converted both Salinger and Sorensen. Even Jim Reed, who was from western Massachusetts, couldn’t imagine another cemetery. The President’s sisters were definite; Eunice telephoned from Hyannis Port, “We’re all going to be buried around Daddy in Boston.” Robert Kennedy agreed. The arguments, he thought, were overwhelming: the family had come from Massachusetts, their father had made such a difference in their lives, and “the President obviously felt it because he buried Patrick there.” If Brookline proved unsatisfactory, there was always Boston Common. The mafia had a half-dozen plans, and they were ready to discuss anything except a grave outside New England. To them that was outrageous. Consequently the emergence of a strong Arlington faction “made it,” as Bob Kennedy dryly put it afterward, “rather difficult for me.”

  The truth was that none of them was familiar with Arlington. It lay just across the Potomac, and they had seen its markers shining in the sunlight as they drove past, but because of their youth Kennedy men and women were largely ignorant of all cemeteries, national and private. Sorensen pictured Arlington as “a funeral factory.” The sisters felt that it sounded cold and remote. Even the Secretary of Defense, Arlington’s most vehement advocate, was vague about it. His department’s real estate in the continental United States, it must be remembered, was approximately the size of Tennessee. He had reigned over the Pentagon for nearly three years, yet he had scarcely been within the cemetery’s gates. His conviction that the President’s coffin should lie in federal soil would have been quickly dismissed without Jacqueline Kennedy’s support, and her persistence was chiefly instinct. She remembered her intuitive flash of nearly three years ago; she reflected upon how lovely Lee Mansion could be when you drove across Memorial Bridge and saw it all lit up, and recalled that the illuminated pillars had been one of the first Washington sights Caroline had learned to recognize.

  The brooding house, with its eight white Athenian columns, belonged to American history. Erected in 1802, it had first belonged to an adopted son of George Washington. There Mary Custis married Lieutenant Robert E. Lee in 1831; there, thirty years later, Lee wrote out his resignation from the U.S. Army, dispatched the letter to the Secretary of War, and assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia. In 1864 Secretary Stanton confiscated the rolling, 420-acre estate—Stanton simply called it “Lee’s Farm”—as a cemetery for the Union dead. Despite all this Arlington had somehow escaped partisan bitterness. The first man to be buried there was a Confederate soldier who had died in a Union hospital, and in 1883 the Supreme Court set aside Stanton’s confiscation. The federal government then bought the land outright from Lee’s heir for $150,000.

  After the Kennedy funeral everyone, including the diehards, agreed that the choice was ideal. Yet the Bostonians were acquiring so much momentum Saturday morning that its chances would have been extremely slight without a freak of human nature, the matutinal habits of Robert S. McNamara. The Secretary had been known to schedule appointments at 6 A.M., which in Washington, a city of late risers, was almost an act of insanity. McNamara was always in his office by eight o’clock, and on Saturdays he came in earlier, because with the brass in the sack he could get more done. November 23, 1963, was a Saturday. He was at his enormous old desk in the E Ring before the mafia proselytized Sorensen, and his first order of business was a self-briefing on the American Battle Monuments Commission and what Defense called “Cemeteries, National.” The man he wanted, he found, was Arlington’s superintendent, John C. Metzler. Jack Metzler was also up, and as ready as he would ever be. That was less than letter-perfect. It wasn’t his fault. The cemetery was a managerial Gorgon. Pyramided atop the complexities of the funeral industry was the rigid caste system of the military: a dead soldier was entitled to taps and a firing party, officers up to lieutenant colonel were given caissons, the caskets of full colonels and generals—and naval captains and admirals—were followed by either Shorty or Black Jack. Men were even buried by rank. That was standard operating procedure in all national cemeteries, but Metzler had special problems. His knowledge of Arlington’s boundaries, for example, was rather hazy. At one time the National Park Service, which maintained the mansion, had been responsible for the hill in front of it. Since then the line had been redrawn, and Metzler didn’t know precisely which blades of grass belonged to Defense and which to Parks—to Interior. There was the further problem of upkeep. Some twenty thousand trees stood on the old estate, and in places the late November leaves were now a foot thick. Raking them all away before Monday was a hopeless task. Untidy foliage would make a bad impression on television, and he had already anticipated the blinding glare of limelight; “I was,” he wrote afterward, “like the proverbial hen on a hot griddle.”

  But Metzler wasn’t unprepared. Although he had received no definite word, Friday’s call from the Shriver-Dungan meeting had alerted him to the fact that an Arlington funeral was a distinct possibility, and while most commentators had continued to assume that the coffin would go to Boston, early Saturday Metzler heard two radio announcers speculating about his cemetery. The superintendent “starte
d to get more apprehensive.” In the gloomy dawn he toured his ten miles of winding roads, and by the time McNamara’s inquiring call reached down through the daedalian tiers of the Department of the Army, the Military District of Washington, and the Office of Support Services, and found him, he and Colonel Paul Miller were ready to recommend three plots: Dewey Circle, a section near the Maine Monument, and the hill below Lee Mansion.

  Then Robert McNamara arrived, accompanied by General Taylor, Secretary of the Army Cyrus Vance, and the rapidly developing mist. McNamara wordlessly took Metzler’s Arlington map, and they all trooped around the three locations. Colonel Miller said he favored Dewey Circle. The superintendent disagreed; the access roads were tortuous, and besides, there were all those leaves. McNamara also shook his head. He liked the slope beneath the mansion. He asked whether he had authority over it and Metzler said no, that was Park Service land. The Secretary made a note to call the Secretary of the Interior, and as he was jotting down Udall’s name Metzler volunteered, “Of course, it is now standard procedure for everyone buried here to have a grave of the same size.” McNamara absently asked for the specifications and was told “Six feet by ten.” The Secretary looked up, incredulous. “The rules should be changed in this case,” he said sharply. “An exception should be made for the President of the United States.”

  That was the first of four visits. He had to leave for the East Room Mass, but the moment it was over he began rounding up Robert Kennedy, Jean Smith, Pat Lawford, and Bill Walton for a second trip. “Let’s go to Arlington,” he said, tugging at Walton’s sleeve, and the two men shared a taxi, for McNamara, with his distaste for special privilege, never thought to order a limousine. Entering Hatfield Gate he was met by a delegation. Udall was waiting by Vance, Metzler, and Miller, and standing off to one side were three ranking officers and their aides. This was one Saturday the brass wasn’t taking off. The Pentagon grapevine had alerted them to the Secretary’s movements. They had drawn the obvious conclusion and were sympathetic. Nevertheless they did form a separate group, and it is a revealing sidelight on the military attitude toward men in mufti that the generals, buttoned up in foul-weather gear, never thought to share their protection with civilians. Two members of the President’s Cabinet were present; the arrival of the Attorney General a few minutes later made three. The cloudburst had been in progress for over an hour. McNamara, lacking both raincoat and rubbers, was not only drenched to the skin; his straight hair was plastered across his face, and at Dewey Circle the soles of his shoes became sodden with mud. Once Metzler attempted to hold an umbrella over him, but the superintendent was another civilian. A poncho briefly sheltered Jean Smith. She was a lady, however, and the officers were being professionally chivalrous. Whatever their political preferences, they were clearly in mourning for a slain Commander in Chief, yet accepting the Secretary of Defense as the Commander’s deputy was something else. They had never been able to bring themselves to cross that threshold. McNamara knew they hadn’t, and he wasn’t surprised that not one of his subordinates—for that is what they were—offered to doff his own oilskin and loan it to him. Bill Walton, an artless taxpayer, was dumfounded. During the past two centuries the United States had established elaborate control of the military by civilian authorities. Everyone paid lip service to it, including West Pointers, but in practice the emotional responses of the soldier hadn’t changed since the Hamites. The man in uniform deferred to only one civilian, his Chieftain.

  In the Presidential apartment Mrs. Kennedy was being handed a note from Bob on White House stationery telling her of the brief trip he and others were making to Arlington.

  Like Bob McNamara and Bill Walton, Bob Kennedy expressed an immediate preference for the slope, and like McNamara he inquired, “Who owns the rest of it?” To him the bottom of the hill (the part Metzler knew he owned) was unsuitable. “It would make a major difference if we could have it higher,” he said, and though he strode off to examine the other two sites, he came back unmoved. The plot by the Maine Memorial had seemed to him to be particularly poor. It was altogether too small and was “right down on the road [Porter Drive].” He still liked this incline, though not the base of it. It was then that Walton pointed out something which had eluded the others. The artist’s eye had noticed that the place Kennedy favored met a classic architectural definition; it lay squarely on the invisible axis between the mansion and the Lincoln Memorial across the river.

  McNamara, delighted, told Udall he would need as much of the “Interior enclave” as possible. He suggested they designate the area on his map and sign it right there. Udall agreed. Unhappily the streaming downpour ruled out any paperwork; signatures would have been washed away. McNamara said, “Have your attorneys examine ownership, Stew, and see if they can make it part of the national cemetery. I’ll have Defense attorneys going over the same problem. We can meet out here this afternoon with plot maps and tapes. I want as much as possible for the sake of safety, and we might as well turn the whole thing over to the lawyers.”

  He had forgotten that a lawyer was present. The soggy Attorney General was taking a hard look at that grassy bank. Few men could stare as intently as Bob Kennedy, and none had access to so much legal talent. On his return to the capital the brightest men in the Justice Department’s Lands Division began probing into ownership. Almost simultaneously they and their colleagues in Defense and Interior discovered that the superintendent had been wrong about his frontier; the National Parks line ended twenty feet from the mansion portico. Udall’s consent was, therefore, unnecessary. But the Lands Division didn’t stop there. The young attorneys opened up Arlington’s county courthouse, studied the entire history of the property, pored over the actual deed of March 31, 1883, under which the federal government had acquired ownership of Arlington, consulted all pertinent statutes, carved out a two-and-a-half-acre tract for the President’s grave, and then submitted an airtight brief concluding that “title to the John F. Kennedy cemetery plot is vested in the United States of America in simple absolute fee, without any restrictions or encumbrances of any nature.” While McNamara was rightly considered an actionist, he had left Hatfield Gate, Arlington’s main entrance, with the vague feeling that the cemetery should become a burial ground for national heroes, an American Westminster Abbey. It was Justice which tied and double-knotted every conceivable loose end. The legal craftsmanship was exquisite and fitting; this punctilious attention to particulars had been a JFK trademark.

  Jean Smith and Pat Lawford re-entered the executive mansion dripping but converted. Both had abandoned the Boston camp. Jean’s notes on the trip—“Went to Arlington with Bob McNamara, Bobby and Bill Walton to look at site”—carried no suggestion of endorsement. Her greeting to Jacqueline Kennedy did: “Oh, Jackie, we’ve found the most wonderful place!” Jean had gone to Virginia with foreboding, envisioning dreary ranks of grim stones, and the gently sloping lawn had been an inversion of everything she had expected. Even in the rain, with the autumnal grass drab and bleak, it had seemed splendid. Mrs. Kennedy, hearing this and other enthusiastic reports from those who had crossed the Potomac, realized that it was time to decide. The next step was to form a group, headed by her, and at 1:58 P.M., she bade Douglas and Phyllis Dillon good-bye upstairs and left the White House in a black Mercury, accompanied by Jean, Pat, and Bob. A motorcade followed: Walton, Lem Billings, Jim Reed, other house guests, the Secret Service. At the Pentagon they stopped to pick up the Secretary of Defense, who by now looked like the survivor of a shipwreck. His socks gurgled as he walked. He had brought a raincoat from his office, but he never wore it; he gallantly presented it to Jean, and once more his trousers became frigid about his knees and calves. Walton had hurried out to Georgetown and changed—unwisely, as it happened, because he was now wearing his last dark suit, and it was doomed; he would have to attend the rest of the ceremonies in tan gabardine. (At one point Bob Kennedy was to regard him reproachfully and murmur, “No mourning?” Walton spread his hands in a gesture of
defeat.)

  Jacqueline Kennedy’s first visit to Arlington was like the opening of the final act of Our Town. The steady rain was glacial, numbing. The arrival of the Commander in Chief’s widow raised martial chivalry to a new pitch, and she stood beneath massed umbrellas, contemplating the silent scene for fifteen minutes. Her entourage was quiet. There was little to say. The fact that they were gazing upon the future grave of the President was awesome, and she obviously needed no words of persuasion; her own recollection of that quarter-hour is simple and direct: “We went out and walked to that hill, and of course you knew that was where it should be.” At a nod from her, Walton slogged up the saturated turf and pointed at a tuft. He said, “This is perfect.” Metzler came up and drove a tent peg in the ground. The artist’s eye was uncanny; next morning a team of surveyors found he had been less than six inches off the axis.

  The Bostonians had been routed by a fait accompli. The destroyer was still standing by, and an hour and a half would pass before the national audience would hear—from a correspondent covering the State Department, of all places—a report that “a grave site has been picked out in Arlington Cemetery.” Nevertheless it was all over. The Irishmen were dismayed, but this was clearly the widow’s prerogative; they kept their disappointment to themselves. In Dungan’s office the planning team proceeded on the assumption that Monday’s cortege would ride from St. Matthew’s to Arlington’s Hatfield Gate. This is what happened, but Jacqueline Kennedy’s visit and the driving of the stake were not the end of Saturday’s activity on the hillside. The Justice Department lawyers had yet to submit their findings. Angie Duke’s elegant protocol officers had to chart graveside assignments; the military services conferred over who would stand where; Mrs. Kennedy pondered her own wishes, and Shriver translated them into orders.