The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  Air travel was possible all day, although it was not recommended. The foul weather was discouraging, and the foreign dignitaries postponed their flights to the capital until Sunday. Even Archbishop O’Boyle and Bishop Hannan lingered in Rome. Lee Radziwill, Jacqueline Kennedy’s sister, made it from London and was met at Dulles airport by her mother and stepfather. Darting down the ramp toward them, she was wrapped in a sheet of drenching rain, which was a common experience; travelers had to expect at least one change of clothes. You didn’t fly unless you had to. Lee felt she had to—at the executive mansion Lem Billings told her it was nice of her to come; she whirled on him and cried, “How can you say that? Do you think that I wouldn’t?”—and so did Mrs. Paul Mellon, whose journey was something of an epic. The fragile patrician took off from Antigua in a tremendous storm; as they gained air speed the captain informed her the field was closed behind them. After circling over Manhattan for two hours he was permitted to land at Idlewild, and she was met by her husband, who said the White House was trying to reach her. Before going through customs she called Mr. West from a phone booth; he asked her to come to the mansion as soon as possible. In her New York apartment she changed clothes rapidly and headed for Washington aboard a Mellon plane manned by her own pilots. They saw no other flights. Peering down she glimpsed “flashing lightning and whipping rain and terrifying gusts—the storm was like the horribleness of the occasion.”

  Skidding across the tarmac of Page Airways, that section of Washington National reserved for private aircraft, they parked beside the Caroline. Her chauffeur and limousine were waiting for her and drove her straight to the mansion’s Northwest Gate. Andrew W. Mellon’s daughter-in-law entered unchallenged, not because of her wealth but because every member of the staff knew her as the custodian of the Rose Garden. On the dripping portico West put his arms around her and led her to the Blue Room. “It’s too awful,” he began. He choked up and continued, “Mrs. Kennedy is the most remarkable woman. She has never lost her head and has directed everything. If you should see her and she should want to talk, let her talk.”

  Bunny Mellon had only the vaguest notion of what he meant. Her odyssey had isolated her from ordinary channels of communication. In New York she had picked up an afternoon newspaper, but the ferocity of the weather had distracted her; she knew that the President had been killed, and little else. On the portico she had seen the lines of sodden soldiers and heard the clicking of their heels. There was no sound here, however, and she had the peculiar feeling that she and West were alone in the great house. From her purse she drew a calling card and wrote across it, “With my deepest love Dearest Jackie/Sorry to take so long getting back—Bunny.” She handed it to him and said she would wait until Mrs. Kennedy was ready to receive her—all night, if necessary.

  “You can’t,” he said. “You have a job tomorrow. She wants you to arrange the flowers at the Capitol, at the church, and at Arlington.”

  Bunny looked blank. She knew nothing about the program, hadn’t even heard when the President was to be buried or where. West explained briefly and said, “Be on the Hill at nine in the morning to receive all the flowers that have come in.” At the time neither of them understood how vast a task this would be, nor that two other women were making floral plans. The mix-up was no one’s fault. If a state funeral is scheduled three days after a Chief Executive’s death, confusion, like toil beyond the limits of exhaustion, is inevitable. Bunny wearily nodded assent. West asked whether she would like to see the catafalque, and she nodded again. Alone she went to the foot of the coffin and knelt among the rigid soldiers. “That moment gave me strength,” she said afterward. “There was an overpowering dignity to the East Room. But the strength came after I had left. At the time I felt utterly drained. The tears would not stop. It was like the fall of all the hopes of youth—as though youth had tried and been thwarted. It seemed to me that this country had symbolically killed something.”

  By now a dense darkness had gathered over Washington. The doleful guns which had thundered each half-hour since daybreak at Myer, McNair, and Anacostia had fallen silent, though in time zones to the west they could still be heard. The sun, which once never set upon the Union Jack, never set on the Stars and Stripes in 1963; seven thousand U.S. military bases ringed the globe. The artillery salutes, the proclamations, the declarations of Monday as a day of mourning were bits and pieces in the intricate mosaic of formal observances. The bereaved population responded spontaneously, but the bereavement of governments must be stylized. Although the Black Watch pipers insisted on paying their own fare to the capital, Queen Elizabeth had to approve the trip personally, for they were to participate in ceremonies for a foreign chief of state, and precedents were involved. Although Kennedy had been the first Catholic President, and the Pope himself was praying for his soul, it was necessary for the Vatican’s Apostolic Delegate to grant extraordinary permission for one requiem Mass tomorrow in each American Catholic church. Here again the issue was precedent. As a rule requiem Masses are never permitted on Sundays or major feast days. Each movement of former Presidents Truman and Eisenhower was being weighed carefully. After his return to Gettysburg the weather had confined Eisenhower to the farm, but he became involved just the same. As he was to recall, “There were so many people of different ranks in Washington that it was a real problem. They called me and said Harry Truman was there without a driver. I said, ‘Hell, I’ll have my car. He can ride with me.’ ” Truman was staying in Blair House, the nation’s official guest house. It had been his home during his second Presidential term, while the executive mansion was being renovated—the Puerto Ricans’ attempt on his life had been made there—and earlier in the day he had told Averell Harriman that his thoughts were very much with Lyndon Johnson, because he remembered how “uneducated” he had been when Roosevelt died.

  Their age and position brought Eisenhower and Truman special consideration. They needed some. Even the eight-block walk to St. Matthew’s was inadvisable for them. The nonstop, round-the-clock vigor of the Kennedy men and women made the quick funeral possible. Yet they, too, had special problems. The problems of parenthood lay beyond the polished skills of Angie Duke’s staff. Taking their sons aside, Nancy Salinger, Margie McNamara, and Orville Freeman did their best to explain what remained inexplicable to adults; understandably the results were frequently bewildering. Bill Pozen’s approach was almost identical to Jacqueline Kennedy’s. He told his daughter that the assassin had been sick, not evil. Agatha said wonderingly, “That means Caroline doesn’t have a daddy, doesn’t it?”—which is precisely what it did mean to her—and then, to his dismay, she began to worry about her own father’s safety. The children of those who had been closest to the President often saw neither parent until two days after the murder. Sargent Shriver’s secretary kept watch over Timberlawn; Barney Ross took Robert Kennedy’s family on little excursions until a strange woman recognized them at a hamburger stand and lurched over, distraught. Senator Kennedy’s wife was the only Kennedy mother who spent Saturday at home, and she was unable to see anyone. Like Montaigne, Joan found the mere contemplation of violence crippling.

  Her behavior was normal. The Chicago survey later revealed that the assassination left only one American in nine physically unmoved. It may almost be said that any mode of conduct was normal Saturday. Aldous Huxley died in Los Angeles, and sixty-three patients perished in an Ohio hospital fire. At any other time these would have been major news events. Today editors barely mentioned them. The national grief was the only consistent factor, and it was almost universal; the NORC study reported that even among anti-Kennedy Southerners, the hard core of his opposition, 62 percent “felt the loss of someone very close and dear.”10 The manifestations of sorrow continued to vary, of course. Among the general population Friday’s most common concern had been anxiety for Jacqueline Kennedy and her children; a sense of shame and unfocused anger had been close behind. In the capital the wrath persisted through Saturday. The Dallas News’s Wash
ington bureau was flooded with threatening telephone calls, and those who knew no Kennedy critics frequently spoke sharply to one another.

  That evening Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur Schlesinger met again at the Harrimans’. Galbraith, still convinced that he would be the chief author of President Johnson’s address to the joint session, described his first draft to Schlesinger. It was like putting his hand in a stove. Galbraith had taken the line that the issue was continuity. America must look ahead; the future “was greater than the life of any one man.” That was what the new President had told him, and he had taken the cue. Schlesinger felt this was heartless. He thought the speech ought to come down hard on Kennedy’s achievements. In his journal Galbraith observed that “Arthur was in an appalling mood and spent a considerable part of the evening attacking me.” Uptown in Cleveland Park Pat Moynihan was in an equally aggressive mood. Throughout dinner in Mary McGrory’s apartment Pat continued to brood about the Dallas Police Department. The sooner Oswald was removed from their custody, he argued, the greater the chances of finding the truth. Otherwise, he said, “We may never know who did it. This could cloud our whole history for a century.” None of the others there disagreed. Among Washingtonians Dallas credit could scarcely have been lower. At one point their hostess said tearfully, “We’ll never laugh again.” Pat answered gently, “Oh, we’ll laugh again, Mary. But we’ll never be young again.”

  In spite of Bunny Mellon’s impression of solitude, the executive mansion had not been so crowded since President Kennedy’s inauguration. Upstairs every bedroom was occupied. Maude Shaw, leading Caroline and John away from the swarming traffic in the great east-west corridor, plucked at a curtain hem occasionally and peered down at the undiminished mob in Lafayette Park, and in other parts of the White House several men lingered because they wanted to be close to the catafalque. Godfrey McHugh, for example, made up a bed in his office, and while Lieutenant Sam Bird was off duty and should have been asleep in Fort Myer’s BOQ, he stayed all night on the first floor of the mansion, wandering from hall to hall, munching sandwiches from the platters, noticing the little Kennedy touches and thinking in awe, This is the President’s house; this is where he actually lives.

  This was where he had lived. Yet hardly anyone switched tenses. His presence was too evident. Even as he lay in state the dinner guests in the White House were his relatives and close friends. Maître Fincklin had set the table in the family dining room for twelve. Among the diners were Bob and Ethel Kennedy, Lee Radziwill, the Smiths, the Dillons, and the McNamaras—Bob McNamara with the blotched pink complexion of one who has lain too long in a bathtub. Dillon thought the younger Kennedy looked awful, and McNamara told Jean Smith, “Bobby should take a rest and go away and forget everything for a while. I’m afraid he’ll get into a fight with Johnson.” This was an aside; the run of the conversation was not grave. The diners had formed a tacit pact to avoid the tragedy, and they succeeded, perhaps because men and women in public life cultivate an iron self-discipline, partly because recoil is part of shock.11 There was even some puckish horseplay. Everyone present knew that when Ethel didn’t have time for a hairdresser she wore a wig; it was snatched off and passed from head to head, winding up, in a pinnacle John Kennedy would have relished, on the slick, wrinkled pate of the Secretary of Defense.

  After coffee the false façade crumbled. Suddenly there was nothing to say. In this hush the group stepped into the marble hall and drifted toward the East Room. None needed to be reminded that this would be President Kennedy’s last night in the White House, and they moved up to the catafalque, some individually, some in pairs. Douglas and Phyllis Dillon entered together. They knelt by the coffin, and the Secretary of the Treasury, attempting prayer, could only bow his head and whisper, “Good-bye, Mr. President.”

  Jacqueline Kennedy did not attend the dinner. Fincklin kept approaching her with sandwiches, and she kept shaking her head and murmuring, “No thank you, not right now.” The most she would take was a cup of broth. She knew the cortege would leave the executive mansion at noon tomorrow. The pause for final instructions was shortening to hours, and it was now, not Friday night at Bethesda, that those around her felt an incisiveness in her. In the tower suite she had deferred and reserved judgment, even biding her time with her brother-in-law and McNamara on the vital issue of the closed coffin. By Saturday evening, however, her self-confidence was at its height. A State Department functionary protested to Clifton that the invitation to the Black Watch had to be withdrawn; Argentina had requested permission to send musicians and had been turned away, and other nations might offer bands. Mrs. Kennedy said crisply, “Jack loved bagpipes,” and there was no more talk of the Argentine. Shriver again raised the question of Church seniority, pointing out that the laziest Catholic knew an archbishop outranked an auxiliary bishop. She replied tightly, “Just say I’m hysterical. It has to be Hannan.”

  Bob rode up from the first floor with Ethel, and they agreed to postpone any discussions of encomia. The one matter which could not be put off was tomorrow’s ceremony. It had to be settled tonight, Shriver reminded them; he was coming down to the wire. Plans for Monday could be redrawn after they had returned from Capitol Hill, but the rotunda was imminent. Momentarily the widow hesitated. Congress was something of a mystery to her. Her husband had understood legislative maneuvers; she had only seen Senators and Representatives on social occasions, and she wasn’t sure what would be appropriate. Then she remembered a small White House party the month before. Ben Bradlee had been there, goading the President about the sluggish progress of the tax cut and the Civil Rights Bill. Kennedy had snapped back, predicting that both measures would pass and even specifying when.12 He had gone on to say, “Why don’t you put Mike Mansfield on the cover of Newsweek? Mansfield’s the greatest Majority Leader we’ve ever had.…” Then, in a display of Kennedy virtuosity, the Chief Executive had rattled off a series of statistics, citing the high percentage of legislation which had passed under Mansfield. Now Jacqueline Kennedy remembered her husband’s affection for the Senate Majority Leader. She said, “The only person I want to speak in the rotunda is Mike Mansfield.”

  Shriver returned to Dungan’s office and announced to the marathon meeting, “Jackie’s decided about tomorrow. She wants Mansfield to deliver the eulogy in the rotunda.” He heard someone cough. It was William M. “Fishbait” Miller, doorkeeper of the House of Representatives, major-domo of the Hill, and legislative liaison man. After shuffling his shoes several times Fishbait flatly told Shriver that Mrs. Kennedy would either have to withdraw her request or settle for a compromise. “That part of the Capitol is under the jurisdiction of the House,” he explained. “It belongs to the Speaker.” Sarge asked in astonishment, “You mean he owns it?” Fishbait swallowed. “He doesn’t exactly own it,” he said, “but if you have any request concerning the rotunda, it will have to be made to the Speaker. It’s just the way things work up there. That’s going to be the Congressional part of the funeral, and you can’t just walk in and say Mike Mansfield’s going to speak, whatever Jackie’s wish. You might hurt the Speaker’s feelings.”

  Shriver had the feeling that he was dealing with a foreign potentate. Then someone observed that there was a third branch of the government—that a role must be found for the Chief Justice—and Sarge concluded that it was more like a political convention; each factional leader had to be given his turn at the rostrum. The White House operators put through a series of hurried calls, specialists in parliamentary etiquette were canvassed, and the consensus was that there should be three eulogists: John McCormack, Earl Warren, and Mike Mansfield. “I’ll accept that,” said Shriver. Actually, even this was violation of convention. With the elevation of Lyndon Johnson the ranking officer of the Senate was the President Pro Tempore, Carl Hayden. No legislative body is more sensitive to prerogative than the U.S. Senate. Selecting the Majority Leader could only be justified on the ground that he was the choice of the widowed First Lady, although no one, of course, was
prepared to challenge that.

  The word went out, and the three men set to work—McCormack and Warren in their hotel apartments, Mansfield in his office. All wrote in longhand; otherwise their evenings differed sharply. The Speaker finished quickly. He had a hazy impression of rain blurring the window by his desk, then he was done. Earl Warren didn’t finish at all. The Chief Judge’s thoughts were incoherent. He fought with a series of soft pencils, scrawled a few ragged passages, read them over, and realized that they were quite unsatisfactory. He abandoned the struggle and turned back to the hypnotic eye of television, making a mental note to rise early in the morning and make a fresh start.

  Mansfield was the only one to hear from Mrs. Kennedy herself. He instantly agreed and then, hanging up, strolled restlessly through the rooms of Senate suite S208, poking at the fireplace, peering up at the chandelier, and examining his tall gaunt image in the gilt-framed Victorian mirror. He wondered what on earth he could say. His mind remained vacant until he remembered a broadcast yesterday afternoon. During an interview a Parkland attendant had described how Mrs. Kennedy had placed her wedding ring on the President’s hand. Awaiting Air Force One’s return at Andrews Field the scene had preyed on Mansfield’s mind, and tonight he resolved to make that his theme. Chewing his pipe and fighting back tears, he wrote a first draft on a yellow pad, took it home, and worked it and reworked it. In the early hours of Sunday morning he was still dissatisfied, but it was nearly complete. Then he laid his blunted pencil aside and attempted to read it aloud. He tried several times and never got past the third paragraph. The Majority Leader had been a public speaker since his youth, yet this might as well have been his first speech. He gnawed at his pipe stem until a semblance of self-control returned, then fell into bed exhausted.

  Between 1 A.M. and 2 A.M. television channels signed off with the national anthem. In Dungan’s office the ceaseless flow of orders and assignments went on, and on the floor above Mrs. Kennedy prepared to retire. Her sister having moved into the President’s bedroom, the Auchinclosses had returned to Georgetown. As Lee, Jean, and Pat saw Jackie to bed, she thought fleetingly how good it was to have her family around her. She had but to step into the corridor and a familiar figure would spring up, eager to help. Because they knew one another so well their conversations today had not all been solemn and grim. There had been wry asides, tart exchanges, small ironies—echoes of a pleasanter past. Wake? she wondered. Is this what wakes are like? She had never been to one. They had always sounded rather brutal to her. The Kennedys, Bouviers, Auchinclosses, Lawfords, and Smiths had deepened her understanding of mourning; by being themselves they were both supporting one another and honoring the President’s memory. There was no brutality here. She had left that in Texas.