Four shattering days
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2013/11/15/four-shattering-days/
A moment that changed everything
How JFK's assassination affected the Secret Service
Saturday, November 23
Sunday, November 24
Monday, November 25
In Washington,
Caroline Kennedy and Maude Shaw produced a toy helicopter and a picture book,
and sang “Happy Birthday” to John, who was turning 3.
Bishop Philip Hannan, participating in the president’s
funeral service at St. Matthew's, read five passages of scripture and then read
Kennedy’s inaugural address as a testament to the man. Three years earlier,
Kennedy, a friend, had asked Hannan after the inauguration what he thought of
the speech. The bishop told him the words were good but that Kennedy hadn’t
read it slowly enough. Now, inside the packed and emotional cathedral, Hannan
read it slowly.
At 1:30, the funeral procession left St. Matthew’s and
proceeded to Arlington,
where the burial site had been prepared by Clifton Pollard, a gravedigger who
normally dug nine or 10 graves in a day, but for this occasion had spent
several hours perfecting one.
Jackie had requested an eternal flame for the grave site.
She’d seen one at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris
and found it moving; this one in Arlington
was constructed by military engineers. Cardinal Richard Cushing had been asked
to bless it and, after some research, determined there was no special blessing
for an eternal flame.
After the Marine Band played the hymn "Eternal
Father," he chanted the general benediction ad Omnia - to all - over the
torch's copper tubing.
The burial completed, the Kennedy family returned to the
White House for a reception.
President Johnson went to a budget meeting.
Cardinal Cushing went to the airport to catch a flight.
Black Jack, once again docile and well behaved, returned to
his stable.
Four Shattering Days was reconstructed from more than four
dozen sources, including interviews, Warren Commission transcripts, newspaper
and magazine articles, personal papers, information from the National Archives
and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, and several books on
the Kennedy assassination, including “Four Days in November” by Vincent
Bugliosi and “The Death of a President” by William Manchester. Chris Lyford contributed
research.
Shortly before midnight at the White House, once Charles de
Gaulle had left and the Duke of Edinburgh had left - once everyone had left,
Bobby Kennedy turned
to Jackie and asked, “Should we go visit our friend?”
Jackie took some lilies of the valley from a cup on a hall
table, and the brother- and sister-in-law drove back to Arlington, which was now empty and dark.
As Monday ended, Jackie, who would later become Jacqueline
Onassis, who would later become Jackie O, who would die in 1994 of non-Hodgkins
lymphoma after returning to the White House only once in her life despite
repeated invitations, left the bouquet next to the eternal flame.