Walsh had complete confidence in the drug; he felt sure she would coast off within thirty seconds. Settling her down, he returned to the drawing room, sat in a chair, and instantly fell asleep.
Mrs. Kennedy waited and waited. Ten minutes passed and nothing happened. She looked around for a cigarette. There weren’t any here, so she strolled into the living room in search of a package. As she passed the doctor’s chair he awoke and looked up in disbelief. His astonishment was so evident that it was comic. She smiled down at him and strode on with a firm step. Walsh stared after her, thinking, I might just as well have given her a shot of Coca-Cola.
Major General Wehle raced home, changed from greens to blues, raced back and was confronted by Lieutenant Sam Bird, who reported that the Dallas coffin was marred. He advised the general that the family be notified.
The call to the seventeenth floor was made by Godfrey McHugh. He said, “Bob, the casket we have is cheap and thin, it’s really shabby. One handle is off, and the ornaments are in bad shape.”
“Get another,” Kennedy said.
“I’m not going to leave here.”
“I want you to.”
McHugh refused; he was, he explained, a guard of honor. “But I know a place near here. It’s only a few blocks down Wisconsin. It’s Gawler’s.”
Kennedy had heard of Gawler’s. A friend of his had been buried from there recently. McHugh suggested a bronze or mahogany coffin. But Robert Kennedy was tenacious, too; both he and his sister-in-law had rejected a private funeral home on principle, and upon reflection he decided that the military ought to handle the whole thing. There was no reason to bring in an undertaker. This conversation, like all others, was being screened through Clint Hill, and the mafia was listening. Ken O’Donnell and Larry O’Brien huddled and agreed that Bob was in a daze. He was going through enough; he shouldn’t be asked to worry about this, too.
Ken cut in. “We’ll take care of it, Bob.”
Thus Gawler’s, which had been vetoed by the Kennedy family, became part of the Presidential funeral. The damaged coffin was largely responsible—largely, but not entirely, for the issue of whether or not it was to be closed had not been resolved, and should the coffin have been open during the lying in state, the special arts of the undertaker would have been essential. Quite apart from that, however, the Attorney General was in a dilemma. He could scarcely permit a state funeral to proceed with a battered casket. A subsequent examination revealed that the Lieutenant and the two Generals had exaggerated the extent of the damage to Oneal’s Britannia, and that the casket was neither cheap nor thin, but Kennedy could not have guessed that, nor could he have been expected to come down and make his own inspection. He had been right the first time; they must get another. And O’Donnell was also correct: the mafia must spare him the actual choice.
Dave Powers squiggled:
Around midnight Ken, Larry, and I picked out a coffin for our President
Dave omitted another Irishman. Muggsy O’Leary had been summoned from the morgue. In a night sated with sentiment the journey of this quartet was especially touching. Dave was naturally reminded of a story; it was about himself. “You know, the Irish always measure the importance of people by the number of friends who come to their wakes,” he said in the car. “All my life I’ve thought of my wake being held in a Boston three-decker tenement. I just assumed he’d live longer than me, and I’d be so proud to have the President of the United States at my wake. And now here I am, going to get a casket for him.”
Gawler’s selection room contained thirty-two coffins that night, each of them mounted on a velvet-skirted estrade which in turn stood upon thick, cream wall-to-wall carpeting. Flush overhead lights gleamed softly; a tape recorder provided appropriate background music. Joe Gawler led them in. According to O’Brien, “I said to the man at the display room, ‘Would you show us the plainest one you have in the middle price range?’ I don’t know why I asked him that, but I think it was because I wanted the coffin to represent the American people. Therefore I thought it should be plain. And that’s what we got. He said, ‘Here.’ He showed us several, and we took the one with the simplest interior. I never asked the price.” According to O’Donnell, “The coffin we chose was the second one we looked at. I know that Larry and I had both reached the same decision simultaneously—that that would be the one we would use. It was plain.”
Tampering with their moving account is a pity, but the Irish, as John Kennedy once noted wryly, are not noted for their accuracy, and the casket in which he was to be buried is obviously a matter of some historical interest. Undoubtedly O’Brien’s recollection of their intention is correct. Robert Kennedy was thinking along the same lines. He believes he spoke to O’Donnell about price while Ken was at the funeral parlor, and he has a clear memory of talking to a girl who told him, “You can get one for $500, one for $1,400, or one for $2,000.” She went on about waterproofing and optional equipment. Influenced by the Mitford book, he shied away from the high figure. He asked for the $1,400 coffin, and afterward he wondered whether he had been cheap; he thought how difficult such choices must be for everyone.
But all this is mysterious, because no one on Gawler’s staff recalls talking to the Attorney General about price or anything else. Moreover, the casket O’Donnell and O’Brien picked—it was immediately to the left as they entered the selection room—could hardly be called plain. Known to the trade as a Marsellus No. 710, it was constructed of hand-rubbed, five-hundred-year-old solid African mahogany upholstered in what the manufacturer described as “finest new pure white rayon.” Gawler believed his visitors wanted “something fitting and proper for the President of the United States,” which does not gibe with O’Brien’s impression that they had purchased an ordinary coffin. It was unusual, and it was very expensive. In 1961 Jessica Mitford had found that the average bill for casket and services in the United States was $708. Muggsy O’Leary thought the price mentioned in the selection room was $2,000. Even that was low. Gawler’s charged $2,460. In a subsequent decision, the most expensive vault in the establishment went with it. The total bill, as rendered and paid, was $3,160.
Joe Gawler and Joe Hagan, his chief assistant, supervised the loading of the coffin in a hearse, or, as Hagan preferred to call it, a “funeral coach.” The firm’s young cosmetician accompanied them to Bethesda. The two caskets, Oneal’s and Gawler’s, lay side by side for a while in the morgue anteroom; then Oneal’s was removed for storage and the undertakers, Irishmen, and George Thomas were admitted to the main room. The autopsy team had finished its work, a grueling, three-hour task, interrupted by the arrival of a fragment of skull which had been retrieved on Elm Street and flown east by federal agents. The nature of the two wounds and the presence of metal fragments in the President’s head had been verified; the metal from Oswald’s bullet was turned over to the FBI. Bethesda’s physicians anticipated that their findings would later be subjected to the most searching scrutiny. They had heard reports of Mac Perry’s medical briefing for the press, and to their dismay they had discovered that all evidence of what was being called an entrance wound in the throat had been removed by Perry’s tracheostomy. Unlike the physicians at Parkland, they had turned the President over and seen the smaller hole in the back of his neck. They were positive that Perry had seen an exit wound. The deleterious effects of confusion were already evident. Commander James J. Humes, Bethesda’s chief of pathology, telephoned Perry in Dallas shortly after midnight, and clinical photographs were taken to satisfy all the Texas doctors who had been in Trauma Room No. 1.
The cosmetician then went to work. In Hagan’s words, “He was really under the gun. There were about thirty-five people, led by General Wehle, breathing down our necks. We were worrying about skull leakage, which could be disastrous. We did not know whether the body would be viewed or not.” The application of cosmetics required nearly three hours. It was quite unnecessary, but that was not the undertakers’ fault. Neither McHugh nor Burkley, who were in co
nstant touch with the tower suite, could guarantee that the coffin would be closed. McHugh told Hagan it was better to take the time and be on the safe side. “The family may change their minds at any time,” he said. Burkley had spoken to Mrs. Kennedy. He knew her wishes, “but,” he explained afterward, “I was determined that the body be fully dressed and that the face be just right in case people opened the coffin a thousand years hence.”
Dave Powers picked the clothes. From the eight suits and four pairs of shoes George Thomas had brought Dave chose a blue-gray suit, black shoes, and, after an extensive debate between Ken and Larry, a blue tie with a slight pattern of light dots. Lieutenant Sam Bird, standing beside General Wehle, saw the embroidered “JFK” on the white silk shirt sleeve; then it was hidden by the coat. The Presidential valet recalled that his dislike of flamboyant monograms had extended to handkerchiefs. Kennedy had carefully folded them so that the initials would not show, and Thomas did it for him now, slipping the handkerchief into his coat pocket. Completely dressed, the body was wheeled into the anteroom, beside the waiting coffin. A naval officer told Lieutenant Bird, “Clear the area. We don’t want anybody in here under any circumstances. The Secret Service are going to put him in.” Even General Wehle left, but the body was transferred by physicians and undertakers, not agents. Joe Hagan arranged the President’s hands and placed a rosary in them, and Godfrey McHugh, ignoring a naval officer who had ordered him out, carefully watched Joe Gawler close the coffin. The lid latched, he noticed, with a faint, almost imperceptible click. Should it ever be reopened, Godfrey wanted to do it himself.
In the corridor outside the morgue one of the undertakers handed Lieutenant Bird an American flag. It was standard Veterans Administration issue, 5½ by 9 feet; funeral parlors regularly acquired them from the VA for veterans’ burials. Because so many military families used Gawler’s, the firm had a stock of them, and this one had been kept on hand for the funeral of the next man who had worn the uniform. The flag was folded, as usual, in a triangle. The Lieutenant didn’t have to be told what to do with it. Flag drill is as familiar to men stationed at Arlington as the manual of arms is to Marines. After the casket team had carefully packed the floor of the ambulance with blankets—the ambulance lacked the rubber pins and rollers of a hearse, and Gawler was determined that his coffin not share the fate of Oneal’s—the team formed two facing ranks. When the casket had been wheeled between them, the flag would be neatly handed from man to man, unfolding as it went until, fully unfurled, it was being held above the lid. Then it would be draped over the coffin and all hands would salute.
Waiting there, Lieutenant Bird suddenly recalled the colonel’s widow in Section 35 of Arlington the previous noon. He remembered her stumbling down the slope just before he heard the President had been shot, and how she had refused to let her son relieve her of the flag. She had clutched it tight against her heart with both forearms. He realized that he was holding this one the same way.
During General Wehle’s absence from his customary command post at Fort McNair, the Military District of Washington was gripped by a strange inertia. A martyred Chief Executive was about to be returned to the executive mansion. Every soldier at McNair and Myer, every sailor at Anacostia, every Marine from Quantico should have been alert. They weren’t. They were either in their bunks or watching the atypical late shows. The Secretary of Defense, with two and a half million men under arms, hadn’t been able to muster an appropriate guard for the White House. He was bewildered. The Attorney General, also puzzled, said icily, “If we can get twenty thousand troops to Oxford, Mississippi, we can get enough troops to Washington, D.C., for this.”
It was a reasonable assumption. It didn’t work. Sargent Shriver, who was keeping Kennedy and McNamara posted, was frantic. This was not, after all, Valley Forge; it was peacetime, and the Pentagon was maintaining the largest standing army in history. Yet the only standees at 3 A.M. were Lieutenant Sawtelle’s Death Watch and Lieutenant Bird’s casket team. The smoothly oiled military establishment had inexplicably clanked to a halt. Orders were issued, but not obeyed. The businessman in Shriver was choleric. “We have a fifty-billion-dollar defense budget,” he barked at Taz Shepard and Paul Miller. “The guy in charge of it is coming home. Can’t you find somebody?”
The Navy Captain and the Army Colonel squirmed, exchanged uncomfortable looks, and hurried off to make calls. They returned. No troops arrived.
In Bethesda Mrs. Kennedy finished her cigarette and turned the television on again. More organ music. More pictures of her husband. Another glimpse of the swearing in. Scenes of thousands of Americans praying in churches. She watched a while, crying alone, and then crossed to the kitchen, where Bob Kennedy and Bob McNamara were talking quietly.
Her brother-in-law mentioned Officer Tippit’s widow. “Do you want to speak to her?”
She didn’t; it was so hard to concentrate on anything except the President who lay below. Perhaps Mrs. Tippit’s loss had been as great as hers, but she couldn’t think so. She could only marvel at Bobby’s thoughtfulness.
Muggsy O’Leary, just back from Gawler’s, peered in. She asked, “Please, Muggsy—don’t ever leave me.”
“I won’t.”6
While Bob was telephoning in the drawing room, she broached the issue of the open coffin with McNamara. It was now urgent. Friday had become Saturday. Dawn was approaching. In a few hours President Kennedy would be lying in state. The memory of her father’s funeral returned again, and she said, “I want the coffin closed so badly. You can’t have it open.”
He disagreed. “It can’t be done, Jackie. Everybody wants to see a Head of State.”
“I don’t care. It’s the most awful, morbid thing; they have to remember Jack alive.”
The Attorney General came back, and the three of them perched where they would go—he on top of the refrigerator, McNamara on the sink, Jackie on the floor. She said again that she couldn’t stand the idea of what undertakers called “viewing the remains.” Bob Kennedy, like Bob McNamara, said that this was an exceptional situation. He didn’t see how a President’s funeral could disregard the public; private preferences had to be set aside. She had always listened to men. These two had been among that select handful whom her husband had trusted completely, and eventually she lapsed into silence—as she put it, “I just sort of accepted that with such misery.” She didn’t really accept it. It was clear that she felt something precious to her was at stake. Womanlike, she was waiting. “The tension in that kitchen,” McNamara said later, “was unimaginable.”
Behind the North Portico, still undistinguished by the presence of a single soldier or sailor, the decoration of the East Room was proceeding in an atmosphere of controlled frenzy. As the number of people in the tower suite had dwindled, the decorating force had grown. Bill Walton commanded a manifold crew: Shriver, Dungan, Schlesinger, Goodwin, Taz Shepard, Dean Markham, Colonel Miller, Mr. West, General Clifton, Dr. English, Maître Fincklin and his six butlers; Cecil Stoughton; Traphes L. Bryant, the President’s dog handler; Lawrence Arata, the White House upholsterer; and Mrs. Arata. Pam Turnure and Nancy Tuckerman had come here from Bethesda, and the Auchinclosses looked on briefly.
“How do you like it?” Walton called down to them. He was standing on a steep stepladder, engulfed in crepe.
“Oughtn’t there to be a flag?” Mrs. Auchincloss inquired.
He looked startled. He said, “Of course! A flag!” and swayed on, looping great bolts of cloth around a massive crystal chandelier.
Upstairs Janet Auchincloss tapped on Miss Shaw’s door. She anticipated that Caroline and John might run into their father’s bedroom when they awoke, expecting to find him there. She said, “Tell the children Uncle Coo and I will be in the President’s room.”
The Auchinclosses retired to the President’s four-poster. They did not rest. The bed was board and horsehair. Janet had heard about these boards. Contact with one was something else. There was no resilience whatever. It actually hurt, and
she thought of the President sleeping all these years in constant pain, bearing the strain of office each day and then stretching out on this. She had been his mother-in-law, but she had not known; it still did not seem possible.
Downstairs the volunteers toiled on, fueled by vats of coffee. Afterward their task looked easy. Few appreciated how staggering it had been. “I was supposed to be a pro about this sort of thing, and I didn’t even know how to start,” said Nancy Tuckerman. The East Room of the White House is the largest room in the mansion. Originally known as “the Public Audience Chamber,” it is paneled in white-enameled wood and illuminated by five great windows and three gigantic chandeliers, any one of which would mash a man to pulp. The sheer dimensions of the room are defeating. To relieve its bare aspect, Andrew Jackson had spent over $9,000, a remarkable sum then, and all Jackson did was fill it up. Walton’s challenge was quite different. He had to transform this gay ballroom into a funeral hall.
At the outset he didn’t think it possible. He studied the Library of Congress engraving and doubted there was that much crepe in Washington. Luckily that much was unnecessary. The closer Walton examined the sketch, the more he realized that Mrs. Kennedy would recoil from such a display. It resembled a grotesque carnival of death. Everything had been overdone. If the engraver had been accurate (it was possible, of course, that he hadn’t even been in the capital), the chandeliers had been wholly enveloped in crepe, transforming them into horrid beehives. Borders of crepe would be more appropriate, provided it was available. It was; thick bolts miraculously appeared. Lawrence Arata had been storing them for chair upholstery, and when his supply was exhausted he sent out for more from a shop. Because of the uncertain deadline, the decoration proceeded in phases. Clifton’s first word from McHugh had been that the body would be brought through the Northwest Gate before eleven o’clock. Between then and McHugh’s next call Walton ignored everything except the chandeliers. After the first postponement he turned to the windows, fashioning curtains of black. As delay followed delay Walton, Shriver, and Arata dashed about brandishing cloth and hammers, carpet tacks gripped in their teeth, darkening the mantel and the door. The mansion entrance and the North Portico were to be left until last; they would do them if they had time.
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