Jackie's Newport

by Raymond Sinibaldi

  a chilling steady rain, and when the tour ended, the consensus was that the Arlington hillside overlooking the Potomac and the nation’s capital would be the perfect place for Jack to rest. As if by some mystical, cosmic guidance, Walton’s artistic eye noted that the chosen spot lay precisely on the invisible axis between the Custis Lee mansion atop the hill and the Lincoln Memorial across the river.

  Upon their return, Jean told Jackie, “We’ve found the most wonderful

  place,” and Jackie knew the time had come. Jackie and Bobby joined Jean and Pat while Walton, Billings, and Jim Reed followed. Stopping at the Pentagon to pick up McNamara, it was on to Arlington, where Metzler waited in a

  freezing, pelting rain. “We went out and walked to that hill,” Jackie told William Manchester, “and of course you knew that’s where it should be.”

  Jackie glanced at Walton and gave him a nod, after which Walton and

  Metzler slogged their way up the soggy hillside.

  Walton stood for a moment eyeing the mansion at the top of the hill

  and the memorial to Lincoln across the river and pointed to a spot on the ground. “This is perfect,” he said to Metzler, who promptly marked the spot by driving a tent stake through the rain-soaked grass. The following day, the Army Corps of Engineers found Walton to be less than six inches off the actual axis.

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  Jackie returned home and crafted the particulars of the funeral.

  Longtime friend and designer of the Rose Garden at the White House382

  Bunny Mellon arrived. Jackie placed her in charge of the Arlington flowers with instructions to display them, but away from the burial site. General Clifton then approached Jackie with a request from the State Department to withdraw the invitation to the Black Watch to participate in the procession.

  Argentina had offered to send musicians and had been denied, and other

  countries would do the same. The thought was that if all could not be

  accommodated, none should be. Jackie simply looked at Clifton and said,

  “Jack loved bagpipes,” ending the discussion. Shriver came to her asking her to rethink her choice of Bishop Philip Hannan to deliver the homily

  at the funeral mass. Hannan was only an auxiliary bishop, and the church hierarchy would call for an archbishop to perform this function. “Just say I’m hysterical,” she told Sarge. “It has to be 383 Hannan.”384

  Next came the branches of government. The next day the president

  would leave the White House for the final time. A horse-drawn caisson

  would bear him to the Capitol Building, where he would lie in state as the American people paid their respects. Remembering Jack’s affection for

  Senator Mike Mansfield, Democratic majority leader, she told Shriver she wanted him to deliver the eulogy at the Rotunda. Yet another firestorm

  ensued, as this would violate protocol. First, the Rotunda was the home of the House of Representatives, thus the domain of the Speaker of the House.

  Second, the president pro tempore of the Senate, its ranking member,

  should speak, not the majority leader. Finally, of course, what of the

  Supreme Court? They should be represented as well. Shriver felt like he

  was planning a political convention rather than the burial of the commander in chief. Compromises were made, and the Speaker of the House spoke, as

  did the chief justice. However, Mike Mansfield spoke first, and he received a call from Mrs. Kennedy specifically inviting him to do so. He delivered the eulogy.

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  Midnight had long passed when Jackie sent a message to Bobby to come

  see her. “I have to see Jack in the morning…I want to say goodbye to him, and I want to put something in his coffin.”

  “I’ll come with you,” he told her. “We’ll go down there together.”

  Bobby left, and Jackie sat at her desk and began writing, pouring herself onto page after page after page. And when she was finished, she placed it in an envelope and sealed it.

  The November sun returned on Sunday morning, and the family gathered for mass in the East Room. A horse-drawn caisson waited to march the president up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, where he would be eulogized and

  then lie in state. It was the people’s turn to pay their last respects.

  Jackie made her first public appearance since the glimpse America

  caught of her upon the return of Jack’s body to Washington on Friday night.

  Her children—Caroline, who would turn six in four days, and John, who

  would be three the next day—accompanied her.

  Mass ended, and Jackie went upstairs to the family quarters. Caroline

  and John were dressed and ready to journey with her to the Capitol. “You must write a letter to daddy,” she said, handing Caroline a piece of her blue stationery, “and tell him how much you love him.”

  John, too little to write, was told to draw, as neatly as he could, something to give to his father.

  As Maud Shaw assisted the children, Jackie sat, her mind wandering.

  She wanted to give something to Jack, to bury a tangible piece of herself with him. She settled on two things that he loved and that meant the most to him, both gifts from her: a pair of gold cufflinks from their first year married and a scrimshaw carving of the presidential seal that she’d given him last Christmas. The cufflinks he wore at every opportunity possible, and the

  scrimshaw had sat on the corner of his Oval Office desk since the day she gave it to him.

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  When the children’s letters were complete, she took them, sealed them,

  and carried them, along with the gifts, out of the room. Gerry Behn called Clint Hill. “Mrs. Kennedy wants to view the president,” he told Hill, who immediately headed for the East Room. Jackie and Bobby Kennedy were

  standing in the doorway when he arrived.

  “Bobby and I want to see the president,” Jackie said.

  “All right, Mrs. Kennedy. Let me make sure everything is okay.” Hill

  and General McHugh went to work clearing the honor guards from the

  room.

  As they began to file out Jackie whispered to Bobby, “They don’t have to leave the room…Jack would be so lonely…if they were gone. Just have them turn around.”

  Bobby spoke to the lieutenant. “I don’t want that,” he said, and the lieutenant halted his men and ordered an about-face, which he himself also executed.

  Hill and McHugh had reverently opened the lid of the coffin. At the

  sight of the president, Hill struggled to keep his composure while he and McHugh moved to flank the honor guard. Bobby and Jackie knelt at the

  open coffin. “It’s not Jack, it’s not Jack,” 385 she thought and was ever grateful that there were no public viewings. Through anguished tears Jackie slid the letters, the cufflinks, and the scrimshaw into the coffin.

  Bobby removed his PT 109 tie pin and, looking at Jackie, offered, “He

  should have this, shouldn’t he?” She nodded and whispered yes, and then

  Bobby reached into his pocket and removed an engraved silver rosary that his wife, Ethel, had given him for a wedding present. He placed it in his brother’s coffin.

  Jackie turned to Clint Hill. “Mr. Hill,” she said, “will you get me

  scissors?” 386 Hill retrieved scissors from the office across the hall and watched as Jackie clipped locks from Jack’s hair. Bobby then gently closed the lid of the coffin, and he and Jackie, both near inconsolable, turned away. Hill stayed close, fearing she might faint as she clung to Bobby as they left the room.

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  “The sight and sound of their agony is something I will never forget,”

  Hill wrote fifty years later. 387

  Shattered in anguish and crushed with grief, J
ackie had little time to

  allow it. The Marine Corps Band was assembled on the White House lawn,

  and the caisson was moving into place. In twenty minutes she would walk

  out the front door of the White House, a child in each hand, to follow their father’s flag-draped coffin.

  The casket team wheeled the coffin into the White House entrance

  hall. A day short of three years old, John had two passions in life. One was helicopters and the other soldiering. Enamored at the contingent of soldiers in full dress uniform, he intently watched as they delicately moved his father’s coffin toward the door. “Mummy,” he asked, “what are they doing?”

  “They’re taking daddy out,” came her gentle reply.

  Not satisfied he wanted to know, “Why do they do it so funny…

  so slow?”

  “Because they’re so sad,” Jackie whispered. 388

  It was a silent forty-one-minute ride up Pennsylvania Avenue, as Jackie

  and the children shared a ride with Bobby and President and Mrs. Johnson to the foot of the thirty-six Capitol steps. Thousands lined the avenue, and thousands more followed behind the cortege. The casket team now faced

  their most daunting challenge: carrying the near one-thousand-pound coffin of their commander in chief up those thirty-six steps. Jackie emerged from the car with Caroline and John in tow. Hand in hand the three walked to the base of the steps to await the removal of the coffin from the caisson. First, however, the United States Marine Corps band paid tribute to their chief. In a slower than normal tempo, they played “Hail to the Chief.”

  Jackie was overcome. Bowing her head, her shoulders shook and her

  body was racked with sobs, yet within seconds she gathered herself and, with the singularity of purpose she’d shown since Dallas, her head lifted and she stood erect as the band finished their tribute. Jack’s sisters, Jean, Eunice, and 173

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  Under the watchful eye of his wife and children, Jack’s coffin is placed on the caisson for the trip up Pennsylvania Avenue to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. Behind Jackie are Jack’s brother Bobby, sister Eunice Shriver,

  brothers-in law Stephen Smith and Sargent Shriver, and President Johnson.

  Patricia, were also struck deeply by the band’s slowed version of a song they’d come to love. Patricia was inspired by Jackie’s composure. Her eyes never left her. “If Jackie can do it,” she told herself, “so can I.” 389 Jackie waited until the coffin was halfway up the steps and then, with children in hand, followed her husband. The powerful men of the nation fell in step behind her.

  The ceremony inside lasted only fourteen minutes as Senator Mike

  Mansfield, Speaker John McCormack, and Chief Justice Earl Warren

  delivered eulogies. Mansfield spoke first, and his words wove the theme

  of Jackie’s horror in Parkland Hospital. “There was a husband who asked

  much and gave much, and out of the giving and the asking wove with a

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  woman what could not be broken in life, and in a moment it was no more.

  And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands, and kissed him and closed the lid of a coffin.” Finishing, Mansfield walked to Jackie and handed her his manuscript.

  “You anticipate me,” she said to him. “How did you know I wanted it?”

  “I didn’t,” came the senator’s reply. “I just wanted you to have it.”

  In the majesty of the Capitol Rotunda, the eulogies came to an end.

  President Johnson, on behalf of a bereaved nation, laid a wreath at the bier.

  Jackie, not quite ready to leave, bent and whispered in her daughter’s ear. Then, with Caroline, she walked toward the coffin. The only sound was Jackie’s heels as she led her daughter to kneel at her daddy’s bier. Caroline watched her every move, emulating each one. Jackie knelt next to the coffin, took the flag in both hands, and placed a kiss upon it. Caroline reached beneath the flag, getting as close to her dad as possible, and laid her hand on the coffin. Audible cries rose from the gathered, and tears fell down the faces of the mighty of the nation.

  Senators, congressmen, generals, and agents alike united in a heart-wrenching moment that illustrated the true measure of what was lost.

  Jackie stood, taking Caroline’s hand, and retraced her steps toward the

  exit. John rejoined his mother and sister as they walked down the thirty-six steps to the car and the trip home to the White House. Eyeing Lady Bird

  Johnson, Jackie approached her. “Lady Bird,” Jackie said to the new first lady, “you must come to see me soon and we’ll talk about you moving in.”

  Completely caught off guard, Lady Bird let Jackie know she could “wait till whenever you’re ready.”

  “Any time after tomorrow,” came Jackie’s retort. “I won’t have anything

  to do after that.”

  Bedlam reigned in the White House as family and intimates arrived.

  Sleeping arrangements took on the tenor of an impromptu slumber party,

  with various people moving from one room to another, and cots were rolled in and out. The arrangements were fluid based on who had arrived when.

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  With the details for Monday’s funeral far from finalized, Shriver, Ralph Dungan, Walton, General McHugh, and Tish Baldridge gathered to finalize them. The murder of the accused assassin found the Secret Service revisiting the prudence of President Johnson walking behind Jackie. Initially he had agreed and removed himself from the walking list, but he rejoined after

  Lady Bird told him he should do it.

  The enormity of the task, coupled with the enormity of the loss, was

  exacerbated by the fact that all parties involved were now into the third day with little, if any, sleep. Sadness and exhaustion combined with the pressure of executing the chief’s funeral with the solemnity, dignity, and majesty it warranted resulted in frayed nerves and quick tempers.

  Jackie and Caroline say goodbye to Jack. “We’re going to say goodbye

  to daddy, we’re going to kiss him and tell him how much we love him

  and how much we’ll always miss him,” Jackie told Caroline before they

  approached the bier.

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  Jackie returned from the Rotunda and sealed herself off in her sitting

  room upstairs. She immediately placed calls to Mansfield, McCormack, and Warren to thank them for their words, leaving each man unable to speak.

  She was mindful of the urgency of funereal decisions, and she made them, bringing calm to the contentious decision makers. “Jackie had got things in control again,” said Ralph Dungan.

  With Bobby, Ethel, and Sarge, Jackie put together the details for the

  funeral mass. It was the selection of words that required the most thought, and for that Ted Sorensen (Jack’s primary speech writer) and McGeorge

  Bundy were summoned for help. Jackie wanted a collection of Jack’s words and Bible verses. Bobby opted for the beatitudes written by Matthew.

  “Blessed are the peacemakers” struck closest to Bobby’s heart, as it would serve as a testament to President Kennedy’s recent signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In his mind, and the mind of many, this was his brother’s greatest accomplishment.

  Jackie, sitting on the couch between Sorensen and Bundy, shook her

  head no. She wanted something mournful. “What about Ecclesiastes?” she

  offered. “He loved it so.” She went to her bookshelf and handed Sorensen her Bible. “Third chapter,” she told him and sat back down.

  “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under

  heaven. A time to be born and a time to die,” Sorensen read aloud. “This mightn’t be wrong at all,” he said upon completion.

  Jackie later recalled, “It was so rig
ht that it just made shivers through your flesh.”

  Bundy and Sorensen were poring over Jack’s words while Jackie sat

  apart from them, deeply lost in thought. Suddenly and seemingly from out of nowhere, she said, “And there’s going to be an eternal flame.”

  Everybody stopped, and all heads turned to her looking “rather

  horrified.” Sarge spoke. “We’ll have to find out if there’s one at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,” he said. “Because if there is, we can’t have one.”

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  “I don’t care if one’s there,” she replied, undaunted. “We’re going to

  have it anyway.”

  Sarge placed a call to the Pentagon and to his surprise learned that there were only two eternal flames, one at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (from

  where Jackie got the idea) and one at Gettysburg. And with that he ordered one be installed, adding, “And fix it so she can light it.”

  Richard Goodwin took on the role of liaison between Jackie and the

  Pentagon in the installation of the single most powerful attribute to sustain the legacy of her husband. Jackie was moved by the fact that the lights

  “on the top of the hill” at Arlington (Custis Lee mansion) were the first thing Caroline recognized as part of the Washington landscape. Now the

  flame burning at Jack’s grave would also mark the landscape of the nation’s capital. It would be an eternal reminder intoning the words of his inaugural address that “the torch had been passed to a new generation of Americans…

  And the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so my fellow

  Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

  Jackie’s resolute strength, courage, and determination ensured her

  objective: countless generations to follow would not forget her husband.

  “It came out right,” McGeorge Bundy would later write, “as did just about everything that Jackie touched those days…And she touched everything.” 390

  At 9:00 p.m. Jackie and Bobby returned to the Capitol. The line of

  people stretched for three miles and was eight, ten, and twelve across. Some estimates said that 500,000 people would pass through the Rotunda, and