The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  That would have been bad enough. But once established form had been broken it became every man for himself. Mike Mansfield saw McNally and his wife entering the first White House car; despite Angie’s anguished pleas Mike took off with the Congressional leadership. All semblance of order collapsed. Supreme Court justices and governors were running around like emerging theatergoers hailing cabs in a downpour. Most of them wound up hitchhiking rides from resourceful colleagues who had commandeered empty limousines.

  Charles de Gaulle declined to use his thumb. He looked down upon the melee and arched his brow at the American chief of protocol. Angie improvised brilliantly. Watching White House secretaries and servants occupying prime positions, he explained to de Gaulle and Haile Selassie that the President’s family should, of course, go first. Naturally, they agreed. Doubtless they had heard, he went on, that the Kennedy family was very large. They nodded. Well, he said, extending his arm in a sweeping gesture, now they knew how big it really was. This seemed to satisfy them. They may have wondered how on earth George Thomas—who was as black as Haile Selassie—could possibly be a Kennedy, but their sense of tact kept them mute. And by now Angie’s assistants had entered the free-for-all. The most eminent of the visiting dignitaries had lost their rightful positions, but they weren’t going to trail everyone else.

  Thus John Kennedy’s last motorcade began, as so many chapters in his life had begun, in disarray. It had been a career of achievement, not of tidiness; nothing had ever been done according to the rules. The national audience, to whom the solemnity of the pageant meant so much, was unaware of the disorder. Throughout the drive to Arlington the networks focused on the progress of the gun carriage and on the waiting grave site three miles away. The watching country scarcely noticed the creeping limousines behind the horses. They were seen only as a hazy black blur. The identity of the occupants seemed inconsequential.

  Sidewalk spectators were more curious. Once the caisson had passed them they ogled car windows, wondering, without much success, who was who. The Cardinal’s bright robes and the Joint Chiefs’ braid identified them, and the new First Family and de Gaulle could be spotted by the agents on either side of their cars, but most of the riders looked alike. There was a flurry of curbside interest as the third limousine dropped out of the procession at Seventeenth and State Place—the kiddie detail was taking Caroline and John directly to the executive mansion—and another murmur when, as the end of the cavalcade passed the Red Cross building, a little blue Ford shot out of E Street and tooled along after the last Cadillac—Barney Ross and two PT 109 crewmen were bringing up the rear. Otherwise there wasn’t much for bystanders to see. Even if they had monitored the conversations inside each limousine they wouldn’t have learned much. The trip to the cemetery took an hour and a quarter, which is too long to sustain a high pitch of emotion. The chatter was low-key, often deliberately so, because taut nerves cried for release. The Kennedy brothers and Jacqueline Kennedy had begun the ride by debating the wisdom of going ahead with the graveside readings. The eulogies were on, then off, and finally they reversed themselves once more and decided to go ahead. Abruptly the subject was changed. Bob and Ted realized that if Jackie were to keep going she had to have some relief, and so they deliberately distracted her, telling her of the miracle of Ted’s pants and speculating whimsically over whether General David Shoup, Commandant of the Marine Corps and one of President Kennedy’s greatest admirers, could bring off a coup d’état. The conversation elsewhere was as trivial. Leaving the cathedral Maxwell Taylor had distributed sandwiches to Shoup and the other Chiefs; crouching low to avoid the crowds’ gaze, they surreptitiously nibbled chow. Eisenhower and Truman speculated briefly over whether the assassination had been the work of a cabal, decided it hadn’t, and then reminisced about the past (delicately avoiding their public rows). In the front seat of the car behind them Joe Gargan peered through the windshield and thought how fine it was that the two ex-Presidents should be on speaking terms once more.

  Outside the church Lieutenant Sam Bird had watched them approach Mrs. Kennedy’s car window to offer their condolences, and he too had been warmed. To the Lieutenant all Presidents were Commanders in Chief, and he would rather his gods not quarrel. Since the return of Kennedy’s body from Dallas Bird had been near it during each stage of the journey—at Andrews Field and in Bethesda, the East Room, the rotunda, and the cathedral. His awe was undiminished. Back down Connecticut and Seventeenth, out Constitution, around the Lincoln Memorial and across the river he marched a few feet behind the caisson, calling out a soft cadence to the body bearers on either side. From the first car Bishop Hannan looked out over Black Jack and marveled at the casket team’s precision; though the gun carriage divided them into two groups, all the men marched as one. The explanation was Bird’s quiet coaching. He was bent upon making this march faultless. An elevated brick ridge separated the lanes of Memorial Circle; it was only eight inches wide, but rather than mar the formation he marched straight down it on his slick steel heel plates.

  The President, Sam Bird knew, had loved American history. As a participant in this moment of history he resolved to dictate his memories of it into his tape recorder before retiring tonight. All along the way he made mental notes: of the teenagers who had scrambled up edifices to watch; of the Negro woman who cried out, “That’s all right, you done your best, it’s all over now”; of the 3rd Infantry’s red-coated colonial fife and drum corps waiting on the green at Arlington’s gate, and, inside the cemetery, of the wildly twittering birds overhead. All these he glimpsed from the corners of his eyes. He kept his gaze fixed on the coffin’s flag, and as the cortege moved up toward the slope McNamara had chosen in the rain Saturday the Lieutenant noticed something he had missed before. On the bunting over the coffin, by the field of stars, was a small label: “Valley Forge Flag Company, Spring City, Pennsylvania.” He thought how proud the makers of the flag would be to know that it had lain over a President, and he decided to write them a letter.

  Awaiting the procession beneath Custis-Lee Mansion were the riflemen, the bugler, Air Force bagpipers, Irish cadets, a platoon from each of the American armed services, and a spectator perched in a dogwood tree. Of the thousands surrounding the hillside, only this one had had the audacity and agility to shinny up to a superb observation point. He didn’t stay there long. As the caisson wheeled past the fifers and drummers he was spotted, and after he had ignored four requests to descend, he was summarily plucked down. The pluckers, significantly, were MP’s. Except for a group of nuns fingering their rosaries on the mansion steps the funeral participants waiting by the grave were all military. General Wehle was guiding the procession in, Lieutenant Bird’s men would carry the coffin the last few feet, and the honorary pallbearers were to be the Joint Chiefs and the three Presidential military aides. The martial tone of the ceremonies was continuing to the last. It was ironic that John Kennedy, whom the world knew as a man of peace, and whose proudest achievements had been the Test Ban Treaty and the successful conclusion of the Cuban confrontation without bloodshed, should be buried as a warrior, but there really was no other way; if he must go in glory, and clearly he must, the troops were indispensable. There were no splendid traditions, no magnificent farewells, for a hero of peace.

  At Hatfield Gate, Superintendent Metzler escorted Wehle up Roosevelt Drive. In spite of the sharp chill Metzler was perspiring. He had been assigned responsibility for the trickiest of the military tributes, the fly-by, and his anxiety had been increased by misinformation; he was under the impression that the jets were rendezvousing over Richmond, ninety miles away. The reason for the error is obscure. Very likely the Air Force didn’t want to trouble him with technicalities. In any event, the superintendent had been warned that if the fifty fighters and the Presidential aircraft were to appear overhead on schedule, the colonel on the hill would need ten minutes’ lead time, which was true. Metzler had broken the time down. He would hold the mourners in their cars for four minutes, allow
two for the national anthem, three for the coffin to reach the grave, and one to get the family in position. He had a stopwatch in his pocket, and he was praying.

  On Sheridan Drive, the curving road at the bottom of the hill, the procession halted. The gun carriage drew up by a cocomat runner leading to the grave. Two cars bearing the Chiefs and aides passed it and parked ahead; the first Kennedy car stopped behind Black Jack and the Presidential flag, still held aloft by Seaman Nemuth. Metzler scrambled up the slope. Behind Mrs. Kennedy the immense caravan wound darkly down to the gate and across the Potomac, vanishing below the shimmering columns of the Lincoln Memorial. Already the vanguard of the formation was breaking up in the cemetery, fanning out along Sherman, Grant, and McClellan drives. Suddenly President Johnson’s limousine pulled out of line and braked beside Mrs. Kennedy’s, hubcap to hubcap. Metzler decided it was time to alert the jets. He punched the stem of his stopwatch and, simultaneously, nodded to Colonel Charles Walton.

  Southeast of Andrews, at the flight’s Initial Point, Jim Swindal was still eavesdropping. The H-43 helicopter pilot had been keeping all the fliers posted on the progress of the cortege. They knew it was nearly time to lunge. Now Walton checked the control tower at Washington National, over which the flight must pass. Everything was clear there; all commercial flights had been grounded or sidetracked. Walton gave the flight the countdown, then the go signal, and the fighters screamed away. Aircraft 26000 ripped after them. Prince Georges County fled beneath them; they heeled hard right over the river and darted up its glittering, narrowing band. The F-105’s were losing Swindal; he could see the vacant point of the last V receding. Not much else was visible ahead, because they were flying westward into the sinking sun, and the light was dazzling. It made no difference, Swindal knew the river well. He spun the black trim-tab wheel counterclockwise, taking the plane down to five hundred feet. He had pushed his air speed past 600 mph, and he calculated that two hundred yards before reaching the grave he should start swinging his U-shaped wheel, canting the great wings in a graceful good-bye. Swindal’s eyes were full, he wished he could cry. He stared into the sun and blinked his eyes, but the tears wouldn’t come. He threw all his fuel controls on full and leaned into the wind.

  Jack Metzler had asked the Secret Service agents to keep the Kennedys and Johnsons seated until he gave them the sign. He had no contact with the visiting heads of state, however, and Angie Duke had performed a marvelous feat; he had overcome the McNally handicap by extricating his wards from their limousines on a side road. The man least likely to congratulate him was Metzler. The superintendent was sweating out his first four minutes when he saw Prince Philip loping up the hill, using his sword as a cane. Beside and behind him were Charles de Gaulle, King Baudouin, Haile Selassie—all the pomp and circumstance from abroad. They paused in a phalanx twenty feet away and stared at him. He grinned weakly. With his ovoid figure, pink face, and anxious expression he looked like a hopeful floorwalker. He peeped furtively at his stopwatch and saw, to his horror, that less than two minutes had passed.

  There was nothing to say—the visitors wouldn’t have understood him anyhow—so he decided to look pleasant. He beamed winningly at the semicircle formed by the Kennedy car, the Johnson car, and the august dignitaries. Nobody beamed back, though General de Gaulle appeared fascinated, as though he were examining some new and particularly bizarre specimen of insect life. Metzler’s smile faded. Charm having failed, he resorted to sheer fakery. He thrust his head forward, looked intently over the heads of the heads of state, and slowly revolved his hand in a mysterious gesture. It was a grotesque dumb show, but he could think of no other way to buy time. Most of the illustrious group were transfixed, though “one or two,” Metzler later said, “looked back to see to whom I was signaling. As they could see no one—for no one was there—they looked at me in a most perplexed manner.” Again he peered covertly at his watch. Three minutes and forty seconds had passed. He couldn’t stand the ordeal any more, so he gave a genuine signal, for the Marine Band.

  Opening the doors of Mrs. Kennedy’s car, he motioned Jerry Behn to get the President out for four ruffles and flourishes which were already introducing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  The national anthem had the virtue of immobilizing everyone. It had the defect of unleashing them the moment it was over. In that instant, as Bill Walton put it, the slope became “a mob scene, with people struggling uphill.” Walton ran into Mary McGrory. “Bill, what are we doing at Jack Kennedy’s funeral?” she asked dazedly, and he gallantly gave her his arm. Where men wound up largely depended upon how athletic their wives were. Phyllis Dillon was spry, so the Secretary of the Treasury reached the edge of the bogus grass. Mamie Eisenhower’s foot was bothering her, and both the former Presidents ended, in Eisenhower’s words, “out in left field.” Stewart Udall tried manfully to fetch the Chief Justice and his wife, without luck. The Warrens, deep in the crowd, were to see nothing of the coming services; all they would hear were snatches of the Cardinal’s commitment. Yet priority didn’t depend entirely on physique. Angie Duke’s advance man had reserved one side of the grave for the foreign guests. That was appropriate, though Evelyn Lincoln, Muggsy O’Leary, and Dr. Burkley were also given red-carpet treatment, which was senseless. The most serious slight—and the one which was bound to be bitterly resented—was the treatment of the new President. Metzler had forgotten about him. The only graveside request the superintendent had received was to place “the family and staff” with the widow. He had assumed the President would be with the Kennedys too, and so, apparently, had Johnson. But the Secret Service remained concerned about his safety; they had moved him in with the Supreme Court. Metzler saw him raging at an agent, and General Wehle heard him fume, “What the hell am I doing here?”3

  Meanwhile the ceremonies were moving forward. The last double note of the anthem was the cue to a cue: the Air Force bagpipes began the dirge “Mist-Covered Mountain,” swinging in slow march toward the lip of the hill, and with the first cry of their pipes Lieutenant Bird ordered the coffin raised from the caisson. Up the fiber runner the body bearers moved haltingly, the Presidential standard and the honorary pallbearers behind them and an honor cordon of green-bereted guerrilla fighters on either side; then, on command, they deliberately overshot the grave and looped back in a wide arc so that the head of the coffin would be pointing toward the crest of the grave and facing east. Black Jack was led to one side. The horse’s spirit seemed broken. His proud head was lowered; he stood docilely beside his exhausted guardian. All troops were presenting arms, all officers saluting until the coffin had been lowered to the metal device over the grave. Then:

  “Pa-rade Rest!”

  The casket team held the flag from Spring City in a smooth, waist-high plane while the Lieutenant, at one end, and a cemetery employee, at the other, crouched to jockey the coffin into position. They were still stooping when the fifty jets shrieked above them. The fighters were a trifle early, but for Colonel Swindal the timing was near perfect. The startled crowd glanced up, and in the interval after the last echo of the F-105’s the Presidential aircraft, racing ahead of its own thunder, loomed soundlessly overhead. For an astonishing instant the beautiful plane appeared to hang suspended, so low that one felt one could almost reach up and touch its blue flashes. Then Swindal rocked the swept-back wings 20 degrees to the left, came level directly above the taut flag, rocked right in another deep, three-second dip, and streaked off toward the Key Bridge. Godfrey McHugh thought it the most exquisite maneuver he had ever seen. For those who made the terrible trip back from Love Field over the hump of Friday’s storm Swindal’s fly-by was especially affecting, but all who knew of the President’s love for Air Force One were moved, and as the mighty tail with the bold blue numerals “26000” vanished over the naked trees, into the vapor trails left by the fighters, Lee Radziwill wept.

  Her sister had missed it. The hill had been so transformed since Mrs. Kennedy’s visit Saturday that it was scarcely recogni
zable, and the hideous grass-type matting was befuddling. Walking up she saw only the coffin. She didn’t know what was expected of her, or even where she was supposed to go. Thinking to kneel beside it she started toward the grave. Bob checked her; he steered her along, literally holding her up by the elbow. In his other hand he was holding the four selections he was to recite during the ceremony—Steve Smith had just darted up to him with Sorensen’s final version—so he didn’t see Jim Swindal’s tribute either. Ted Kennedy did, though. He squinted up at the plane, looked down at the Irish cadets, and remembering how much both would have meant to his brother, he realized that they were far from being through the most moving moments of the funeral. In the car they had agreed that he would read first. He still doubted that the recitations were wise. Joan Kennedy, looking over at him, wondered whether her husband would be able to go ahead. The huskiest of the Kennedy men was obviously shaky.

  Metzler was beckoning and gesturing, going through what in cemetery jargon is known as “positioning.” Although the placing of individuals was largely being determined by factors over which the superintendent had no control, he strove to follow the chart Shriver had approved, and achieved a partial success. Most of the front-row positions, at least, were properly occupied. The Cardinal, Archbishop, and Bishop faced the head of the coffin, with the unlit flame between them and the field of stars. Behind the prelates were the Joint Chiefs and behind them, on the steepest part of the incline, the military aides. Counterclockwise from the flame were the family; staff and friends; governors; heads of state, with General de Gaulle at the very foot of the grave, facing Cushing; the Irish team; the Supreme Court; and the Marine Band. Beyond the band Bunny Mellon’s blanket of flowers lay banked on its little rise; behind the family, in the space which had been set aside for Johnson, Truman, and Eisenhower, were the Congressional leadership and the Cabinet.