Jackie's Newport
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thousands more would wait in line, full in the knowledge they would not
get through in time to view the president’s coffin. Bobby and Jackie knelt at the bier and prayed for a few minutes before Jackie rose, kissed the coffin, and genuflected. Leaving the Rotunda, a middle-aged redheaded woman
recognized her coming toward her and burst into tears. As if greeting a
friend or relative, Jackie walked to her, and the two hugged. No words were 178
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exchanged, only the comforting embrace. They reached the bottom of the
steps, and Jackie eschewed the open car door.
“No, let’s walk,” she said to Bobby, and alone the pair strolled across the lawn, emerging on the street below. On the street a nun recognized the pair and extended her sympathies. “Thank you,” 391 said Jackie, and they moved on with the limousine close behind. For fifteen minutes Jackie and Bobby Kennedy walked the streets of Washington, D.C., among the hundreds of
thousands who had come to mourn President Kennedy. As more and more
people began to recognize them, they retreated to the car and rode home to the White House.
Tomorrow, Jack would be laid to rest.
It was a clear, crisp morning, the sky a brilliant blue, the deep, clear blue that always accompanies the onset of winter as the chill sweeps away the remnants of heavy summer air. In the upstairs dining room Maud Shaw and Caroline
sang happy birthday to the girl’s little brother, John, and he opened two gifts: a helicopter from Caroline and a copy of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit from Miss Shaw. Following breakfast, Miss Shaw put them back into their blue
suits and red shoes, taking Caroline downstairs and leaving John with Dave Powers. Jackie prepared herself to say goodbye to Jack.
On the first floor the logistics of protocol were a complex tribulation, while the security concerns were a full-fledged nightmare. Jackie’s insistence to walk behind Jack’s coffin struck fear in the hearts of formidable, gathered security forces. The Pentagon and D.C. police had over four thousand armed men dispersed among the mourners. The White House detail walked in the
procession along with 64 CIA men, 40 FBI agents, and 250 members of the
State Department security team.
It is not an exaggeration to say that a near panic was brewing. A
groundswell was growing to stop the walking. Cabinet members, the Secret Service, and staffers wanted it stopped, and the director of the FBI, J. Edgar 179
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Hoover, officially weighed in, stating that he “advised against” the march.
Some agents, on an individual basis, were trying to convince some walkers to get into automobiles. Only one person truly possessed the power to call off the march, and she was steadfast and resolute. Gerry Behn, in a last-ditch attempt to stop it, again approached Clint Hill and asked if he thought Mrs.
Kennedy would ride in a limousine with President Johnson. “You can try if you want to,” Hill said, shaking his head. “She really wants to walk all the way, and if it wasn’t for the old men, she would.” 392
Returning to the Capitol steps, Jackie, Bobby, and Teddy Kennedy
emerged from the caravan’s lead car at 10:40 a.m. Wanting just one more
moment of privacy, Bobby suggested the three of them go into the Rotunda.
For ten minutes they knelt at Jack’s bier, then they arose and left, and the casket team moved into place.
Jack’s last ride down Pennsylvania Avenue took nearly thirty minutes,
as the cortege returned to the White House where the world’s mighty
assembled, waiting for Jackie to lead them. The Marine Corps Band, for
which Jack had a special affinity, led the caisson. He had once quipped to Jackie in his patented wry, self-deprecating manner that the Marine Band were “the only troops I command…the rest belong to McNamara.”393 This
was yet another unknown small detail, not lost on Jackie, that brought a deeply personal touch to the majesty of the moment.
Exiting the vehicle in the White House drive, Jackie was taken aback
at the assemblage. In all of her conversations regarding the security dangers of this endeavor, she had given little thought to who would fall in behind her and really didn’t think anyone would. Scanning the faces, her eyes
met the eyes of General de Gaulle. Looking from behind the black veil
that covered her face, she nodded. And she remembered, “He was sort of
nodding and bowing his head, his face just stricken.” 394 It was a tribute to her from the French leader, whom she once said “was my hero when I
married Jack.” 395 Jackie was touched by de Gaulle’s presence at the funeral.
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“You know, he realized who Jack was, and that’s why he came...He didn’t
need to do that.” 396 What Jackie did not know was that upon learning of Jack’s assassination he, a victim of several attempts himself, was one of the first heads of state to contact the United States State Department to say he would attend the funeral.
With the church bells ringing, Jackie started to walk. Bobby moved in
on her right side, taking her hand, and Ted stepped to her left. Beginning their march out the driveway towards Pennsylvania Avenue, the shrill sound of the Black Watch’s bagpipes could be heard. Jackie’s eyes filled with tears, and she teetered. Then came the sounds of muffled drums, and she found
herself, straightened, dropped Bobby’s hand, and stepped forward. With
her head erect and the wind lightly pressing her black veil to her face, she Jackie, flanked by her brothers-in-law, Robert (l) and Ted (r), follows
Jack’s coffin as they leave the White House on their one mile walk to St.
Matthew’s Cathedral for the president’s funeral.
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walked, cognizant only of the voices of Bobby and Ted while the millions of people who lined Washington’s streets saw only her.
Thirty-nine minutes was all it took from the time the caisson rolled out the front gate until the military honor guard wheeled the president’s coffin down the center aisle of St. Matthew’s Cathedral. In that time frame,
Jacqueline Kennedy received worldwide veneration that few have known.
Across the Atlantic, Lady Jeanne Campbell wrote in London’s Evening
Standard that Jackie had “given the American people, from this day on, the one thing they’ve always lacked, majesty.” 397 On the other side of the world Australians touted “Mrs. Kennedy’s Courage.” 398 North of the border, they thought her “sustained by some unknown inner strength…she walked
purposeful and erect, never faltering.” 399 And back in Great Britain, Hella Pick mirrored Campbell’s sentiment in London’s Guardian: “The steadfast bearing and dignity of Jacqueline Kennedy…the dignified display of love
and sorrow, her luminous beauty have been the universal admiration of the American nation.” 400
Across the American nation, cities and towns, hamlets and villages,
echoed with their own expressions of respect and admiration. Pittsburgh
saw how “she met unspeakable tragedy with serenity and heroic poise,” 401
and Boston found Jackie “had given his death a grandeur an assassin’s
bullet tried to take away.” 402 Her beloved Newport noted how “bravely
she walked…a black veil covered her face,” leading “one of the greatest
assemblages of world statesmen ever seen.” 403 “Jacqueline Kennedy, who
captured the heart of the American people as first lady,” New York declared,
“won new respect today for her courage and dignity as a woman.” The paper added, “Few women could meet the standards Jacqueline Kennedy set for
herself in her bereavement.” 404 Los Angeles “marveled at the strength and spirit of Jacqueline
Kennedy…a queenly and sorrowful figure.” 405 In Tampa, where Jack had visited days before Dallas, they declared her “Majestic in 182
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Her Sorrow…ever erect, never faltering…her head high even in grief…
she enthralled the world with her emotional composure.” 406 In the fiftieth state, Hawaii, Senator Daniel Inouye said, “Seeing her I couldn’t help but be inspired. She is the pride of American womanhood.” Congressman Spark
Matsunaga added, “In Jacqueline Kennedy, American womanhood—long
epitomized by the pioneer’s wife—has blossomed into full bloom for the
entire world to hold in admiration.” 407
The Kansas heartland was effusive with praise. “None can know…
the yearning misery…of the long dark hours…A courageous American
woman…composed and dignified…accepting with fortitude the inevitable.
It is said that in times of tragedy and great sorrow, some have the capacity to rise to the heights. This, we believe, certainly applies to Jacqueline Kennedy.
In the eyes of her countrymen, her darkest hour, has been her finest.” 408 In Washington, watching the cortege from a fourth-floor window, National Geographic magazine editor Melville Grosvenor observed, “Jacqueline Kennedy walked with a poise and grace that words cannot convey…as regal
as any emperor, queen or prince who followed her.” 409
Perhaps the most poignant praise came from the most unexpected source:
the editorial pages of the Montgomery, Alabama Journal. This was Alabama,
“with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification,” 410 who said, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
On Friday, as Jackie Kennedy was sitting outside Parkland Hospital’s
trauma room one, awaiting a coffin for her husband, students at Montgomery’s Lanier High School cheered and applauded the news of the president’s death.
In another section of the city, an automobile with anti-Kennedy adornments and cheering passengers drove about blaring its horn.
The editorial board of the Alabama Journal was not enamored with the politics of the Kennedy administration nor the lifestyle of its first lady.
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However, watching Jackie publicly carry the weight of her seemingly
insurmountable burden revealed to them qualities within her they never
expected to see. Transformed and moved, they chose to speak, and they spoke in recognition of the agony of her loss of both Patrick and Jack:
Comment on President Kennedy’s death cannot be
closed without paying tribute to the regal comportment
of Jacqueline Kennedy, who has displayed qualities few
of us knew were in her. As first lady she seemed most
interested in the glittering cosmopolite…exciting life
that fate had handed her…Proving once again that it’s
an error to judge human character by superficialities.
Mrs. Kennedy first demonstrated her qualities of faith
and strength on the death of her prematurely born
child a short time ago. Few women have to endure
another grief so soon. The nobility and grace of her
bearing of the ordeal, which has not ended for her and
never will be, was all the more admirable because she
was at her husband’s side when he was taken from her
so violently…she was there when an assassin’s bullet
shattered her husband’s head, in a moment of smiling
triumphant reception by the people of Dallas. She tried
to hold life in him when seeing the grievous wound, she
must have known that their time together had ended.
Through it all she bore up with remarkable composure,
sustained we must assume, by a faith stronger than
death. To Jacqueline Kennedy, whom many of us have
misjudged, a salute. She has set an example for the nation
which it will never forget. 411
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On the steps of St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Richard Cardinal Cushing stood
waiting for his president, his friend, his widow. Glimpsing the flag-draped coffin brought tears to the vicar’s eyes, which he wiped with a trembling hand. Jackie spotted him and was struck by how “enormous” he appeared. 412
The caisson stopped in front of the church, and Agent Foster, who rode with the children directly behind her, delivered them to her. Taking them by their hands, Jackie stood while “Hail to the Chief” again was played. The hymn
“Prayer for the Dead” followed, after which Cushing opened his arms to
Jackie and then the children. He kissed her, and in her words, he “shepherded me in” to the church.
Sitting in the first pew, with Caroline at her side (Foster had once again rescued John), Jackie sat as the ritual of her lifetime unfolded. For ten years she and Jack had shared Sunday mass together in Hyannis Port, Washington, Virginia, and of course, at St. Mary’s in Newport.
Cardinal Cushing led the procession down the aisle, and as he donned
the vestments for the mass, the casket team wheeled Jack’s coffin into place beside Jackie. From the balcony, as it had a decade before while she knelt with Jack at the altar of St. Mary’s, came the voice of Luigi Vena singing the words of the “Ave Maria.” The song washed over her. All of it washed over her—her wedding day, Arabella, Patrick, Dallas. She had almost lost him
twice in the nascent years of her marriage, and now he lay in a coffin next to her, forever gone. Cushing, dressed in the black vestments of the funeral mass, began the prayers in the Latin of the Roman Catholic ritual.
Jackie, veiled in black, hung her head, and the tears came. The weight
crashed down upon her, and she was now crying uncontrollably, her shoulders shaking with spasmodic sobs. She had made but one seating request, and that was to make sure that Clint Hill sat behind her. Hill reached into his pocket and handed her a handkerchief, and the sobs still came, emptying her soul.
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her mother’s anguish. The spasms subsided, and her composure, which had
defined her, returned.
The mass she had carefully crafted was elegant in its simplicity. The only voices heard were the nasal, gravelly intonations of Cardinal Cushing and the smooth recitations of Bishop Hannan. Hannan read from five Scripture passages, most of which the president had used in speeches. And, of course, he read from Ecclesiastes. He closed with selections from Jack’s inaugural address, ending with the words: “Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help but knowing that here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own.”
With the mass itself officially ended, the cardinal made his way to the
bier. Intoning in Latin as he had done throughout, he began the parting
prayers. Finishing the first segment, he paused. Looking toward the heavens, he sighed. “May the angels, dear Jack,” he prayed, “lead you into paradise.
May the martyrs,” and he again paused as his mind searched for the English translation to the Latin words he’d uttered countless times, “receive you at your coming.” Then he finished, “May the spirit of God, embrace you, and mayest thou, with all those who made the supreme sacrifice of dying for
others, receive eternal peace. Amen.” 413
Jackie could see the tears in his eyes, and as he made his way to the side of the altar to change from the black vestments of the mass, she thought to herself, “He was the one person who had the right to call him ‘dear Jack.’” 414
For “he [Jack] was devoted to Cushing and Cushing was devoted to him.” 415
/> The pathos of the moment struck her and, once again, so did the tears.
Looking up at her mother’s tear-stained face, Caroline clasped her hand.
“You’ll be all right, Mummy. Don’t cry. I’ll take care of you.” 416
While changing vestments and fighting back his own tears, Cushing
noticed Caroline comforting her mother. Now adorned in the royal, scarlet red of his station, he stepped from the altar and went right to Jackie. Taking her hand, she rested her cheek against his. “I’ll never forget you calling him ‘dear 186
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Jack,’” 417 she said, still seeking her composure. He squeezed her hand tightly and then reached for Caroline. Taking the girl’s hand, the sixty-eight-year-old prelate drew her closer and stretched forward to peck her cheek. Cardinal Cushing had known Jack for two decades. He had married him, baptized his daughter, prayed at his inauguration, and buried his son. And now he led his coffin down the aisle of St. Matthew’s. Agent Foster returned with John, and with the children again in hand, Jackie followed Cardinal Cushing and Jack’s coffin as outside “Hail to the Chief” played for Jack one last time.
They followed the casket down the stairs, and when they reached the
bottom, Cardinal Cushing sprinkled holy water on it before placing a kiss on the flag. Lieutenant Bird’s team then gently returned the president to the caisson for his final trip to Arlington. The band was playing “Holy God We Praise Thy Name,” and as the honor guard fastened the straps over the coffin, Jackie bent down and whispered in John’s ear. “John,” she said, “you can salute daddy now and say goodbye to him.”
John loved to play soldier with his dad, and a part of that play was
saluting. It had always been playful, and Jackie once described John’s salute as “sort of droopy.” 418 But not on this day. Something had touched the little boy, who was today three years old. He stepped away from his mom, and
perfectly cocking his right elbow, he brought his hand over his right eye to where it just touched his hair. His left arm was rigid at his side, and his red shoes stood perfectly side by side. With his shoulders squared and his chin in, he held his salute for six seconds.