The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  A year later Dillon and company would have been on the lookout for trap doors and other crazy-house devices, for by then Johnsonian techniques had become capital lore. That afternoon he was such an unknown personality in the Executive Branch that Bundy hadn’t realized how much pleasure he derived from being photographed. A larger measure of the general ignorance was an unfortunate blunder by Ken Galbraith and three domestic Cabinet officers, Freeman, Udall, and Wirtz. Before coming to the EOB Heller had been in Freeman’s office at the Department of Agriculture, at a meeting called on the initiative of the indefatigable Galbraith. Galbraith felt that his version of the joint session speech should be reviewed by what he called “the liberal wing” of the government. Charlie Murphy, who had written speeches for Truman, was present, and he too had been working on a draft. Galbraith read it and found it much like his own. The President wanted Sorensen and himself to do the actual writing, Ken reported; he was eager to hear their suggestions. Under Kennedy this would have been perfectly acceptable. It wasn’t acceptable to Johnson, because he hadn’t been informed of it. Heller tattled. Suspicious, the new President told Heller that the Galbraith meeting was obviously “a liberal caucus,” held in camera, to chivy him. It didn’t help liberal causes, it put everyone who had been present under a cloud, and it spelled the end of Galbraith as a transitional figure. The President was against secret meetings, and any meeting he hadn’t authorized was “secret.” He intended to run everything, literally everything, with a firm hand.

  If he was unfair to the liberals—and it is entirely possible that he wasn’t—it was irrelevant. For the United States the sole imperative was that Johnson swiftly create an atmosphere of confidence, and in that role he was proving superb. It didn’t much matter that he was conjuring confidence, or that he himself may have suffered pangs of self-doubt; wisely he kept any stage fright to himself. Undoubtedly he suffered from it, but only rarely did he permit anyone to peer behind his elaborate stage props and see hesitancy there. Dillon had a fleeting glimpse of it. After the budget meeting the President and the Secretary discussed the Secret Service and tomorrow’s walk from the executive mansion to St. Matthew’s. Since Oswald’s murder strongly suggested an elaborate plot, Chief Rowley didn’t want Johnson to follow the gun carriage on foot. At first the President had agreed. “But then Lady Bird told me I should do it,” he told Dillon, “so I changed my mind.”

  Across West Executive the Shriver-Dungan meeting had become the Walton meeting. Sargent Shriver was upstairs with the family, and Ralph Dungan had stalked out in exasperation. After two days and two nights, it seemed to him, a kind of lunacy was creeping into the funeral preparations. Some fifty people were again jammed into his office and anteroom, and more and more he felt that they were going to wind up staging a jamboree. Godfrey McHugh wanted Aircraft 26000 to fly over Memorial Bridge at five hundred feet during the ceremonies; General Wehle protested that the horses would bolt. Tish Baldridge (“General Baldridge,” as she became known to the meeting) appeared and reported that she had ordered the Old Guard’s scarlet-uniformed fife and drum corps to stand in the green circle on the Virginia side of the bridge; they would toot and rumble as the cortege wound around them. Tenor Luigi Vena, who had sung during the Kennedy wedding, was coming to sing in St. Matthew’s at the funeral Mass; among the selections being proposed for him were “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” “The Boys from Killarney,” and “Anchors Aweigh.” And at the grave site itself the military wanted to construct a tiny waterfall. They thought it would be sort of decorative. Dungan flushed. It was becoming wild—he half-expected the Flying Wallendas to swoop in wearing black tights. His head swimming with phrases like “the Black Watch feed-in” and “laying on the Irish drill,” he struggled to his feet. “You take over. I’m not putting up with any more of this,” he muttered to Bill Walton, adding a short obscenity.

  Later he returned. By then the brouhaha atmosphere had disappeared. The most preposterous proposals had been quashed and most of the crucial issues solved. The best of the selections had been adopted. McHugh was going to have his Air Force One fly-by, together with that of jet fighters, despite vigorous objections from the Federal Aviation Agency. FAA’s Chairman Jeeb Halaby told Godfrey he wouldn’t allow it “unless I have word from the highest authority.” McHugh said, “It now comes from the highest possible authority.” Halaby asked, “Who?” and Godfrey, the man least likely to succeed in the new administration, said, “The President.” That was that; Jim Swindal was ordered to rendezvous with fighter aircraft over Maryland tomorrow and chart a flight course for Arlington. General Baldridge’s troop of Redcoats was still advancing on Washington, but only because Walton, the arbiter of New Frontier taste, approved. At the same time the pack of well-meaning kibitzers had thinned, partly because those who were to walk behind the caisson had to rent full-dress suits. At Fred Holborn’s request rental agencies on L Street and Seventh Street had agreed to remain open until 4 P.M., a poignant reminder of inaugural eve, when this afternoon’s clients had last patronized them. Most important to the restoration of balance, in Dungan’s view, was the fact that “Jackie had got things in control again.”

  Mrs. Kennedy’s headquarters were the West Sitting Room. She rarely left it. Once she stepped into the Oval Room to greet the mafia wives and Mrs. Tazewell Shepard, and once she paused to receive Ted Reardon, clasping his bowed head in her hands and saying, “Oh, dear Ted, the first one with Jack.” Reardon mumbled, “He’d be very proud of you, Jackie.” As he left he felt this had been a “foolish, corny reply.” It wasn’t; it was entirely appropriate.

  Turning, she ordered the sitting room’s doors closed, sealing herself and those around her off from the rest of the Presidential apartment.

  Isolation was important because she had to concentrate, and the mansion was overrun with guests. Arriving from London while everyone was in the rotunda, Stas Radziwill had been reminded of “Versailles after the king had died.” Now it was more like his own Poland in 1939. The corridors reverberated with turmoil and the footsteps of harried strangers. There was even some marching—in the long second-floor hall Dave Powers lined up Caroline, John, and Sydney Lawford, barked “Salute! Left face!” and then hup-hup’ed them up and down the rug. In the Treaty Room Ethel Kennedy and Ken O’Donnell were watching a rerun of the Oswald shooting. Ethel, deeply disturbed, seized Arthur Schlesinger in the passage outside and asked him what it meant, what possible justification there could be for such a murder. Arthur had no answer. As a historian he was naturally appalled, but for Ethel, with her piety, the horror was far greater, and she was distraught.7

  Schlesinger had been passing by, looking for Bob Kennedy. At one point half the mansion’s visitors appeared to be looking for one another while the other half followed servants with suitcases. Bob was being moved to the southeast room so his mother could sleep in the Lincoln Room next door, and elsewhere shifts were made to assure everyone a place. The mansion was near capacity. Young John’s crib was even brought in next to his sister’s bed. That turned out to be unnecessary, and his room was to be unoccupied, but it was the only one which was. The Smiths, the Spaldings, Lem Billings, and Peter Lawford and his agent were on the third floor, and the widowed First Lady would be sharing the second floor with her sister, her mother-in-law, two brothers-in-law, a sister-in-law, a niece, and her own children.

  One objected to his quarters. Lee Radziwill led her husband into the Chief Executive’s suite and told him they would sleep there. He demurred. It was Jackie’s wish, she explained, but the more he looked at the familiar four-poster, the bedside table with its pill bottles, and the rubber boats and ducks which the President had taken into the tub when bathing with John, the firmer he became. In the end they compromised. A cot was brought over from the White House dispensary and set up at the foot of the huge bed. (“Poor Stas!” said Mrs. Kennedy when she saw it.) With his old-fashioned European dignity he stiffly insisted he would be quite comfortable there. He even refused to use the b
athroom. No one knew where he shaved; razor and toothbrush in hand, he wandered through the mansion for ablutions elsewhere.

  Behind the double doors, Shriver had taken up a station by the white princess telephone, relaying instructions to the meeting he had chaired. Jacqueline Kennedy made few calls herself. Immediately after returning from the Hill she had phoned the three eulogists to thank them (with the result that all three became incoherent), but most of the time she sat in the center of the couch by the window overlooking the Rose Garden, flanked by various Kennedy aides. Robert Kennedy paced about; other members of the family came and went. There was no agenda and, apart from her doodles, no record of deliberations. Judgments had to be made rapidly, based on her own sense of the fitness of things, for with time so short everything was coming at her at once. She was shaping a state funeral, and, at the same time, making certain tentative decisions about her own immediate future. She had no home now. This house had become the legal residence of the Johnson family. Their move here couldn’t be delayed indefinitely, despite Lady Bird’s kind offer. The mansion was the headquarters of the Chief Executive. That meant that every vestige of the Kennedys, including Caroline’s White House school, must go elsewhere. At the moment she couldn’t think where that would be.

  Yet with so many resourceful friends around temporary solutions were offered very quickly. In midafternoon the matter of moving was virtually settled within a few minutes by two callers—Ormsby-Gore, who volunteered to house the school in the British Embassy, and Ken Galbraith. Galbraith was continuing to express his desolation in his own peripatetic fashion. He described, with the pride of authorship, his revised version of President Johnson’s address. Observing Mrs. Kennedy’s distress, Ormsby-Gore quickly put in, “Make it as good as you can, obviously, but good as it will be it won’t match Kennedy’s speeches.” Galbraith replied, “As you are a loyal Tory, I am a loyal Democrat.” The Ambassador answered edgily, “On occasions of this sort I am prepared to be a very disloyal Tory.” Their laughter was brittle.

  Galbraith then turned to the widow’s housing problem and solved it brilliantly. When she told him that she didn’t know how much money she would have or when she would have it, he pointed out that Averell Harriman “has more real estate than he knows what to do with. He could buy a house in Georgetown and turn it over to you—it would be a sensible investment for him.” It wasn’t quite that simple. There were problems of furniture and domestic staff. But Harriman volunteered to move his family to a hotel and turn his own Georgetown home over to Mrs. Kennedy, and after three telephone calls Galbraith reported to Robert Kennedy that it had been settled that way.

  He reported to Bob, not Jackie, for by then she was once more absorbed in ceremonial details. To suggest that she was complete mistress of herself would be inaccurate. She wavered, for example, over the design of the Mass card. Dr. English had sent up prayers of St. Ignatius and St. Francis, and Ethel brought in a third from her parents’ card. The widow said, “I don’t want any of these on the back. I’m not going to be pleading with God to take Jack’s soul to heaven.” Sketching the card for Shriver, she said, “Well—I guess you could put a cross on the top if you want.” Ethel protested that there had to be some mention of God, and then Jackie did precisely what she said she would not do. She wrote out the plea: “Dear God—please take care of your servant John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Please take him straight to heaven.” She meant both sentences to be included, but Bob, under the impression that she intended him to make a choice between the two, struck out the second. Other of her instructions miscarried or proved impractical. She wanted Luigi Vena to sing Bizet’s “Agnus Dei,” as he had at her wedding—instead, he was told to sing “Pie Jesu” and “Ave Maria”—and she specified a black border for the Mass card and didn’t get it. Ethel was against black because she felt it should be “not sad, not reminding you of death.” For Jackie that was the very purpose of the card, but it was too late; no printer could include a border in the time left. As it was, the only way Sandy Fox could get the job done before the Mass was to use the Central Intelligence Agency press. The CIA agreed to run it through the night. (When Fox reported this to the meeting in Dungan’s office, everyone there was dumfounded. None of them had known the spies had a press.)

  The issue of tomorrow’s eulogies became the subject of a more protracted debate. The cortege would pause twice, at St. Matthew’s and in Arlington, and as things stood Sunday afternoon tributes were to be delivered at both. Bishop Hannan was going to speak in the cathedral, of course, between the Mass and Communion. The consensus was that he should be joined by a layman. But which layman? Three names were advanced: McNamara, Bundy, and Sorensen. All were discarded. McNamara was out because they couldn’t have him without Rusk, and Bundy hadn’t joined Kennedy until after his election.

  They lingered over Sorensen’s name much longer. He himself felt he would be inappropriate because he had never been inside a Catholic church. Furthermore, he hadn’t been quite as close to the President as the public assumed; his role had been largely confined to Kennedy’s public life. Thus the idea of a lay speaker in the church—which Cardinal Cushing would have scuttled anyhow—was set aside. That left the cemetery. Jackie said to Bob, “If anybody’s going to talk, it should be his brothers. You and Teddy will have to say something somewhere. So you will say it there at the grave.”

  To help them determine what should be said, Bundy and Sorensen were summoned. Bundy wrote afterward: “At the end of Sunday afternoon Ted and I went over to the mansion to talk with Jackie and Bobby about readings for the funeral. In talking with Jackie earlier… I had suggested that the best tribute would be to use some of his own words. She agreed, but also wanted Bible readings. Ted thought of doing some of JFK’s quotations from Scripture, as well as some of his own quotations. Now with a variety of excellent suggestions at hand from Ted, we all set ourselves to choosing and judging.” Sorensen had a long list; from the moment he heard of the drift of discussion in the Presidential apartment he had been poring over the President’s papers. (Galbraith had heard of it, too, and had deposited on Ted’s desk a marked copy of the inaugural address showing the lines he felt should be read during the funeral.) At Mrs. Kennedy’s request, Sorensen drew up a “ballot” of selections, and Sorensen and Bundy marked it, indicating their choices.

  Four passages were picked for each brother, and they then turned to Bishop Hannan’s manuscript. Here the judging and choosing took rather longer. Mrs. Kennedy wanted something supremely appropriate. The Attorney General suggested the Beatitudes, the nine declarations in the Sermon on the Mount. He particularly liked Matthew V:9 (“Blessed are the peacemakers”), because he felt that the Test Ban Treaty had been his brother’s greatest achievement. Jackie shook her head. She wanted a somber note, and sitting on the couch between Bundy and Sorensen she said, “What about Ecclesiastes? Because he loved that so. The third chapter…” She crossed to the bookshelves lining the south wall and handed Sorensen the Bible she had studied at Vassar. He riffled through it, reading silently while she studied the speech excerpts in Mac’s lap. Suddenly Ted said, “Well, this mightn’t be wrong at all.” He began reading:

  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

  A time to be born, and a time to die.…

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed. It was, she recalled afterward, “so right that it just made shivers through your flesh.” Like Sarah Hughes, Sorensen was under the impression that there was a “Catholic Bible,” and he asked the widow whether she wanted him to check the Scriptural passages with the other one. “The Catholic Bible!” she said, and then told him about her youth in the Church and how much she liked the King James version.

  Bundy wrote of the meeting that “it came out right—as did just about everything that Jackie touched those days—and she touched nearly everything.” That was written after the funeral, however, when it could be seen in retrospect. At the time there were grave doubts about certain aspect
s of it, and her most controversial decision came shortly after her return from the rotunda. The men had been going through papers while she sat alone, lost in thought. Abruptly she said, “And there’s going to be an eternal flame.”

  She remembered afterward that “the thing just came into my head.” She also recalled that everyone else in the room looked “rather horrified.” Shriver was particularly uncomfortable. “We’ll have to find out if there’s one at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,” he said hesitantly, “because if there is, we can’t have one.”

  “I don’t care if one is there,” she said. She assumed that there was. She had seen France’s under the Arc de Triomphe. She thought there must be a flame at every Unknown Soldier’s Tomb. Yet that didn’t matter; she wanted to make certain the country never forgot her husband, and she told Shriver, “We’re going to have it anyway.”

  Sarge had made the same assumption. “I think the only places with eternal flames are Paris and the one already out at Arlington,” he said. “I want to be sure you’re not subjecting yourself to criticism. Some people might think it’s a little ostentatious.”

  “Let them.”

  Shriver still felt a twinge of apprehension. Turning to the phone he asked the military for clarification. To his amazement he discovered that Arlington hadn’t a flame after all. To the best of the Pentagon’s knowledge, the only ones in the world were France’s and Gettysburg’s. He ordered an immediate installation on the hillside. “And fix it,” he added, “so she can light it.”