“Get the hell over,” came O’Donnell’s reply. “We’re getting out of here…
we’re not staying here three hours or three minutes.” He called to Powers,
“We’re leaving now,” and turning to Kellerman, he said, “Wheel it out.” 333
A tussle ensued as the coffin was being pushed and pulled in the direction of the exit. Behind Dave Powers, Jackie stepped from her cubicle, her pink suit and nylons stained and matted with the president’s blood. She walked 142
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behind the coffin. The policeman yielded his place, and Ward returned to the phone in the nurse’s station, leaving Earl Rose alone. Jackie emerged, her hand within her white, bloodstained glove resting on Jack’s coffin until it reached the ambulance dock to be placed in the waiting hearse.
Clint Hill aided in placing the coffin in the hearse. “We can ride in this car right behind the hearse, Mrs. Kennedy,” he said, gently touching her arm.
“No Mr. Hill, I’m riding with the president,” came her reply. 334 Sergeant Dugger, who had been by her side throughout her horrendous ordeal, opened the door for her. “Thank you,” she whispered to him, and Dugger’s eyes
filled with tears. It was not the first time they exchanged words. He wanted to offer words of comfort, but they would not come, so he simply offered his hand. Gently, she touched it.
“Bob Dugger, ma’am,” 335 were the only words he could find, and he
closed the door. The powerful protector seeking to comfort was comforted.
Before the weekend ended, Dugger received a call from the White House
expressing gratitude for his kindness.
Clint Hill and Dr. Burkley joined Jackie in the hearse, while Andy
Berger took the wheel, telling Vernon O’Neal to follow. It was a high-
speed ride back to Air Force I, and along the way Dr. Burkley handed
Jackie two red roses. “They were in his shirt,” he said. Jackie took them and quietly slipped them into the pocket of her bloodstained suit. In just seven minutes Berger brought the hearse to a halt at the foot of the ramp of the aft section of Air Force I. It was the same ramp from which, just two hours earlier, a glowing Jackie had disembarked while her husband followed,
smiling broadly.
The coffin weighed close to half a ton, and all were aware of the
daunting task before them. “It’s awful heavy,” said General Clifton.
Looking at the steep steps before them, he added, “Do you suppose we can get it up there?” 336 The question became rhetorical, for without a word 143
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spoken, Kenny O’Donnell, Dave Powers, Larry O’Brien, Secret Service
agents, and military aides set about to carry their chief aboard his plane. At the foot of the ramp stood a blood-spattered Jackie Kennedy, and behind
the entourage stood a lonely Dallas police officer, his cap held over his heart.
It took a formidable effort to carry the chief up the steep stairs, only to find his coffin too wide to fit in the door. The men remedied this by breaking the handles to get it on board.
Once on board, Jackie placed a seat as close to Jack as she could before seeking solitude. She wanted just a few minutes alone and made her way
down the narrow corridor to the bedroom she and Jack had shared. Opening the door, she froze in mid-step, for laying on the bed was Lyndon Johnson, dictating to his secretary. Johnson sprang up and clumsily brushed past her, quickly followed by Marie Fehmer. Startled, shocked, and confused, she
returned to the rear cabin and her seat next to Jack.
Still awash in her husband’s blood, Jackie follows Jack’s coffin up the stairs of Air Force I. She refused to change her dress wanting “them to see what they’ve done to Jack.” She said later she actually wished she had not washed the blood off her face.
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A conflict of leadership existed on the presidential plane. Johnson,
unbeknownst to the Kennedy staff, was aboard Air Force I. They thought
he was already bound for the capital. Fearful that Dallas authorities would arrive to take custody of President Kennedy’s body, they were anxious to get airborne. President Johnson had decided that the plane would not depart
until he had been sworn in, and they were waiting for Judge Sarah Hughes to arrive and administer the oath of office. The Kennedy people were shattered.
Each having witnessed their boss’s murder and/or its grisly aftermath, they now found themselves subjugated by the new president. Adding fuel to the simmering cauldron of sadness and rage was President Johnson’s insistence that Jackie be present for his swearing in. O’Donnell thought she was being used, and he resented the request.
Johnson returned to Jackie’s vacated bedroom to change his shirt, after
which Sergeant Joe Ayres, Air Force I military steward, informed her that he had laid out some towels for her to freshen up. Thanking him she went back to her room, and the Johnsons quickly followed to offer their condolences.
Jackie was sitting on the bed, and the president and first lady took a place on either side of her. “Her dress was stained with blood,” Lady Bird Johnson recalled. “One leg was almost entirely covered with it and her right glove…
was caked with blood—her husband’s blood…that immaculate woman,
exquisitely dressed and caked in blood.” 337 Through her tears, Lady Bird groped for words. “Oh Jackie,” she began, “we never even wanted to be vice-president, and now dear God it’s come to this.”
Jackie, her mind still somewhere in the Dallas motorcade, replied with
a question, “Oh what if I hadn’t been there?” Through the horror of it all she found solace and answered her own rhetorical question. “I was so glad I was there.” She found a scintilla of comfort that the man she loved had died in her arms.
Lady Bird, like everyone who encountered Jackie that day, wanted to do
something for her. She recalled, “I asked her if I couldn’t get someone in to 145
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help her change and she said, ‘Oh, no. Perhaps later I’ll ask Mary Gallagher but not right now.’ And then with almost an element of fierceness—if a
person that gentle, that dignified, can be said to have such a quality—she said, ‘I want them to see what they have done to Jack.’” 338
Awkwardness permeated the room. Lyndon Johnson now held the
mantle of power and all the responsibilities that came with it. The emotionally ravaged Kennedy people couldn’t think beyond the fact that the president, their boss, their friend, was dead, and on some level resented Johnson simply for being alive.
Jackie, however, understood and recognized the difficult role Johnson now had to play, and she put him at ease. “About the swearing in,” he cautiously began.
“Lyndon,” she said, and quickly caught herself. Realizing the historical aspects of the gut-wrenching events of the day, she continued, “Oh excuse me, I’ll never call you that again. I mean, Mr. President.”
Downplaying his position, he said, “Honey, I hope you’ll call me that
[Lyndon] the rest of your life.”
An uneasy pause followed, and Johnson brought her back to the moment
at hand. “About the swearing in,” he repeated.
“Oh yes I know, I know,” she replied, “What’s going to happen?”
“I’ve arranged for a judge,” explained Johnson. “She’ll be here in about an hour. So why don’t you lie down…freshen up. We’ll leave you alone.”
“All right,” Jackie said, and they left the room. She lit a cigarette and thought to herself, “My God…an hour?” 339
Laid out upon her bed was the white suit she was supposed to wear at
Friday night’s dinner at the governor’s mansion. Continually urged to change her clothes, Jackie, with an indomitable will, politely refused every suggestion.
&nb
sp; The idea of sitting next to her husband’s coffin bedecked in white was too vile to even consider. She was steadfastly determined to “let them see what they had done to Jack.” Taking the towels off the bed, she entered the powder room, where in a trance-like state she methodically washed Jack’s blood from 146
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her face and combed his crusted tissue from her hair. The pace of the frenetic madness finally began to dissipate, and with the easing the enormity of it all began to seep in. She did not want to be alone. She wanted to be with those closest to him: Kenny, Dave, Larry, and those who understood the measure of what was lost. She wanted to be with those who could feel her anguish, share her pain, and comprehend the emptiness of her shattered heart.
Judge Hughes arrived, and at the fore of the plane preparations were
being made to swear in the thirty-sixth president of the United States. Johnson said they must wait for Mrs. Kennedy, and Pam Turnure thought, “How can
they ask her to do this?” Word was sent back to Jackie that all was ready.
“I will be ready in a moment,” came her reply, and in Turnure’s words,
“She just did it.” 340
Jackie stepped out into the corridor, and looking toward the stateroom
she saw everybody standing, waiting for her. Confused because only about fifteen minutes had passed since Johnson had told her “about an hour,” she paused. Sadness was etched on the faces of the Kennedy staff women, stained with rivers of mascara, and their soft weeping turned to sobs at Jackie’s appearance. Johnson went to her, taking her by both hands and leading her down the narrow corridor, backing up as he went. Entering the room, Chief Curry, who less than an hour before had refused Dugger’s call, inexplicably offered that the police had done everything they could, an odd comment to a widow whose husband’s brains were now crusted on her clothing. Lyndon
Johnson placed her at his left arm.
“This is the saddest moment in my life,” he said, leaning over her.
He quickly introduced her to Judge Hughes, and at Johnson’s behest
White House photographer Cecil Stoughton placed all the subjects to best photograph the historic moment. “What about a Bible?” came a voice from
the assemblage. Joe Ayers remembered that President Kennedy always
traveled with a “Catholic missile” and headed to the bedroom, retrieving it from the drawer at his bedside table.
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From Sarah Hughes’ utterance, “I do solemnly swear,” to Lyndon
Johnson’s, “So help me God,” took only twenty-eight seconds. Twenty-eight interminable seconds, after which the president embraced his wife and then kissed the widow’s cheek. Lady Bird, fighting tears, took Jackie’s hand and guided her to the seat upon which Stoughton stood to capture history. “Sit here, Honey,” she said to Jackie. 341 In a firm voice, indicating his first official presidential order, Johnson said simply, “Now let’s get airborne.” 342 With that, Colonel James Swindal rolled his plane toward the runway and at 2:47 p.m., two hours and seventeen minutes after shots rained down on Dealey Plaza, Air Jackie stands at the side of Lyndon Johnson as he is sworn in as Jack’s successor. In shock and devastated, she remained mindful of the importance of the continuity of government. Many in the Kennedy inner circle were irate at Johnson for asking her to stand with him.
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Force I lifted off, taking John F. Kennedy home. White House pool reporter Sid Davis, one of three reporters who stood witness to history, remembered,
“She was unblinking, in grief…she knew exactly what was going on, she felt it was important…and she had to be in that room.” Reflecting, he offered, “In the annals of history it was one of the most courageous things I’ve ever seen.” 343
Jackie excused herself and returned to Jack’s side. Kenny, Dave, Larry,
and General McHugh were standing around the coffin. Kenny, who had
remained next to his boss during the swearing in of his successor, took
a vacant seat next to Jackie. Their eyes met, unleashing a deluge of tears.
Jackie’s sobs were heard above the roar of the engines as, for ten minutes or more, her soul released its anguish. Kenny didn’t move as these two wounded vessels sat side by side, each consumed with their shared and separate agony.
Finally, Jackie regained her voice.
As the adrenaline dissipated, the burden of what had transpired
descended on her, and as if awakening she uttered softly, “Oh, it’s happened.”
“It’s happened,” came O’Donnell’s benumbed reply.
“Kenny…what’s going to happen?” she inquired.
O’Donnell, lost in his own cauldron of sadness and rage, shot back,
“Jackie…I don’t give a damn.”
Jackie sighed, “You’re right…you’re right. Nothing matters but what
you’ve lost.” 344
The transcendent horror of Dealey Plaza swallowed what had been a
transformative experience for Jack and Jackie Kennedy. The carnage of the presidential limousine obliterated the warmth of the joyous outpouring of the citizens of Texas. The wave of affection that had begun in San Antonio, carried into Houston, reached a frenzy in Fort Worth, and culminated in
Dallas had exceeded any and every expectation. And in just six seconds,
adulation turned to abomination, ravaging the joyful hope that filled Jackie’s heart—the hope that springs from a deeper understanding of one’s self and the world in which we live; the hope born of a love that had reached a new 149
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depth in knowing that she and her husband were about to turn the page on mistakes and tragedies of the past; the hope born of a future that, on this Friday morning, glimmered with a sparkle and brilliance she had not known before; and the hope of more children that had filled her heart at the dawn of this day. All of that was gone, forever.
Air Force I carried two presidents back to the nation’s capital. The thirty-sixth president occupied the state room, where most of the talk focused on the continuity of government. In the aft of the plane, Jackie Kennedy sat next to the coffin. The Irish mafia did not leave her side. Space was limited, and there was but one chair next to Jackie. O’Brien and Powers stood throughout the flight, while O’Donnell intermittently sat next to her.
Jackie Kennedy now occupied a singularly unique place in American
history, having stood at the arm of two presidents as they swore to “preserve, protect and defend” the United States Constitution. Now as she sat next
to Jack’s coffin, sharing reminiscences with his dearest friends, she began to formulate the pageantry of his funeral, taking her first step to preserve, protect, and defend his legacy.
As Colonel Swindal, battling tears, piloted Air Force I home to a shocked and grieving capital, Jackie set about to do just that. Malcolm Kilduff, whom President Kennedy had playfully nicknamed “McDuff,” was summoned.
“Mac,” she instructed him, “you make sure…you go and tell them that I
came back here and sat with Jack.” 345 Kilduff assured her he would do so.
Throughout the flight, various Kennedy staffers made their way back to pay their respects to Jackie as the two-hour and eighteen-minute ride home took on the characteristics of an Irish wake.
She remembered how much Jack loved the voice of Boston tenor Luigi
Vena. Vena sang at their wedding in Newport ten Septembers earlier, and
recalling that day Jackie decided he would sing at Jack’s funeral. The “Ave Maria,” which Jack and Jackie listened to kneeling together in the sanctuary 150
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of St. Mary’s, would waft over his coffin and the congregation of St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Of course Cardinal Cushing would preside,
and it would be a low Catholic mass to lessen the pomposity. Jack
preferred that to the solemnity of the high ritual.
Dave’s mind wandered back just one month to Jack’s last trip to Boston
and his last visit with his dad. Jackie sat with rapt attention as Dave described their parting. Since impaired by a stroke suffered in December 1961, the ambassador’s wheelchair was wheeled onto his porch to watch the chopper
land and to say goodbye to his son when it departed. An early morning fog had dissipated, and Jack made his way across the lawn. He “went to his
father, put his arms around the old man’s shoulders and kissed his forehead.”
He started to walk away, then paused and “went back and kissed him a
second time” before coming aboard. Jack was looking at his dad through the window of Marine I, a man once among the world’s most powerful men but
now frail and debilitated. Dave saw tears come to Jack’s eyes, and he said,
“He’s the one who made all this possible and look at him now.”
“It almost seemed,” Dave said to Jackie, “as if the president knew he was seeing his father for the last time.” 346
Kenny could not shake from his mind the conversation he, Jack, and
Jackie had had just six hours earlier in suite 850 in Fort Worth’s Hotel Texas.
“You know what, Jackie?” O’Donnell said. “Can you tell me why we were
saying that this morning? What was it...Last night would have been a great night to assassinate a president? Can you tell me why we were talking about that? I’ve never discussed that with him in my life.” 347 Jackie just shook her head; none of it mattered anyway.
Evelyn Lincoln, Jack’s longtime secretary, came back to offer comfort,
but as everyone else that day, she could not find the words, stammering out a banal, “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Oh, Mrs. Lincoln,” replied Jackie as Kenny sprang from his chair. One
thing both Kenny and Jackie knew was “all right” would never be the same.
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“You know what I’m going to have, Jackie?” Kenny said. “I’m going to
have a helluva stiff drink.” He suggested she join him.
Jackie was hesitant, fearful that alcohol would unleash the torrent of
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