As an entire nation mourned the loss of the 35th U.S. President,
few truly knew all the details of what happened behind the scenes.
When President John F. Kennedy headed to Dallas for that fateful November day,
no one expected that the following week would be taken over by his funeral. That said,
it's worth noting that things actually happened pretty fast. JFK was pronounced dead at 1 p.m.
on November 22, and LBJ was sworn in about an hour and a half later. Although there's
a general sort of outline that's followed for state funerals, it was Jackie Kennedy
who insisted on several additions that were modeled after the funeral of Abraham Lincoln.
Before that, though, JFK's body was rushed back to Washington,
D.C. Jackie refused to change out of her blood-stained pink suit until the morning
after the assassination when she and JFK's casket returned to the White House's East Room.
JFK's casket left the White House two days to the hour after he was killed. From there,
it was transported to the Capitol Rotunda to lie in state for 21 hours. Somewhere around a
quarter of a million people paid their respects in person. The funeral procession escorted him
to the funeral mass at St. Matthews. After a ceremony lasting exactly one hour and 16 minutes,
one of the nation's most endearing presidents was escorted to Arlington National Cemetery.
As a Secret Service agent on duty at that fateful Dallas parade,
Clint Hill was the one that famously jumped on the back of the presidential limo,
pushing Jackie Kennedy down into the back seat for protection.
In his book, "Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon,
and Ford," Hill recounted the final time that JFK's casket was opened. He was in
the East Room of the White House when Jackie and Robert Kennedy requested that the honor
guard step away for a moment and the flag be pulled back so they could see him one
more time. Hill recalled opening the casket and stepping back even as Jackie asked him to
find her a pair of scissors. He did as she asked, listening to her tears as she cut a few locks of
hair. It was Robert who closed the casket that final time, then escorted her out of the room.
Hill wrote:
"General McHugh and I checked the casket to make sure it was securely closed,
and out of habit I looked at my watch to take note of the time — 12:46 p.m. I had
seen President Kennedy for the last time; the casket would never be opened again."
For the entirety of JFK's funeral — even the private mass conducted only for the
family — his casket remained closed, but not for the reasons you might think.
According to The New York Times, the real reason that Jackie Kennedy ordered her husband's casket
to remain closed was to remain in line with emerging Roman Catholic beliefs. It was
rooted in the idea that after death, the body was nothing more than an empty shell, and the spirit
had moved on to eternal life elsewhere. Actually viewing the body after death was thought to be a
distraction that encouraged mourners to focus on what had been lost in the physical realm
instead of what awaited in the spiritual one: Hence, JFK's casket remained closed.
"There's only one word to describe the picture here, and that's grief."
One of the most iconic sights of John F. Kennedy's funeral was also among the oldest. The riderless
horse, boots turned backward in the stirrups, harkens back to a time when horses were sacrificed
to accompany their riders into the afterlife. For JFK, that horse was an Army Quartermaster-issued
gelding named Black Jack, and on the day of JFK's funeral, he was anything but docile.
Black Jack and his handler, Arthur Carlson, escorted JFK throughout the funeral parade,
and not only did the crowds and the sound of a grate being dragged along the pavement completely
spook him, but he danced, pranced, and pawed for miles. Carlson was unable to do anything,
as protocol dictated he basically stay silent and keep walking. Along the way,
Black Jack actually stomped on his foot outside St. Matthews. He recalled to 12 WSFA,
"I was actively afraid that the horse would get away from me."
Jackie Kennedy bought Black Jack when he retired from military service. Never a riding horse,
he retired in 1973 and died in 1976. His longtime human companion, Nancy Schado, described his
uncharacteristically difficult behavior on the day of the funeral as something deep:
"He wasn't used to assassinations. He
was showing his objection to what happened. Animals sense things."
Among those saying goodbye to John F. Kennedy on that bleak November day were
his children. As if that famous photo of little JFK Jr. saluting his father's casket
one last time isn't heartbreaking enough, consider this: It was his third birthday.
Stan Stearns, who worked for United Press International, and Dan Farrell,
who worked for the New York Daily News, were the only two photographers who snapped that
iconic moment. When Stearns passed away in 2012, The Washington Post ran a retrospective
of the funeral with his obituary. Largely unseen by those who watched the funeral
on television was the press box, with around 70 photographers crammed into
an area measured for a few dozen. As they all tried getting photos of the funeral procession,
many didn't even see little JFK Jr.'s final goodbye. He explained via The Washington Post,
"As the caisson was rolling out to Arlington Cemetery,
I asked every photographer I could if they had the salute. Duh! Nobody
saw it. Everyone I talked to had been concentrating on Jackie and the caisson."
Stearns, however, had seen Jackie pause to say something to her young son,
and with the forethought that makes a really good photographer,
he kept his camera on the little boy. According to The Washington Post, he later reflected,
"One exposure on a roll of 36 exposures."
When around 250,000 mourners converged on Washington,
D.C. to pay their final respects to JFK, one of the things witnesses reported was
the silence. According to the book "Four Days; The Historical Record of
the Death of President Kennedy," United Press International documented the quiet crowds:
"As they turned to look at the flag-covered coffin,
[mourners] seldom showed tears, and most had a kind of blankness."
The entire nation joined in on that silence to a certain extent. According to Reuters,
the Nielsen TV ratings group reported that 81% of homes with a television were watching
the funeral. When surveys were conducted later, the majority of people who watched
the funeral reported having a physical reaction to it. Perhaps an even better measure of how
the nation mourned along with the Kennedy family was when the televisions were turned
off. A massive drop in viewers was noted at the same time JFK's funeral mass started.
"I will repeat with the greatest regret, two
priests who were with President Kennedy say he has died of bullet wounds."
Jackie Kennedy had a few requests when it came to her husband's funeral, and with one,
JFK became the only U.S. president to have a foreign military presence at his
graveside. That foreign military was Ireland, and getting there was no small challenge. When
cadets at a County Kildare barracks were issued an invitation to come and perform a centuries-old,
deeply meaningful drill at JFK's grave, they were out on a short leave. Summoned
back from as far away as Dublin, they had hours to prep the Queen Anne Drill,
which was once used to honor 17th-century soldiers. This very drill had, in fact,
so impressed JFK when he'd seen the previous class perform it just months before his death.
After practicing for an hour, they grabbed some sleep, hopped on a plane,
and were met by the Secretary of State on the other side. And
when they got to the funeral, it wasn't what they expected.
James Sreenan — who went on to become the Chief
of Staff for the Irish Defence Forces — told The Irish Examiner,
"We were told that you're going to carry out the drill at the graveside."
But as Irish and American funeral traditions can be pretty different,
it wasn't clear to the cadets what they were being asked to do, especially given the fact
that they knew the U.S. Army was going to be there, front and center. Sreenan recalled:
"It was an absolute shock that we were standing right at the graveside."
Lyndon B. Johnson went from JFK's second to the president of a grieving and shocked nation.
Even as he appeared in public, mourning alongside other mourners, behind the scenes,
it was a bit of a different story. In his memoir, "The Vantage Point: Perspectives of
the Presidency," Johnson wrote that he had immediately considered himself fortunate
that JFK had always included him in foreign affairs discussions and kept him up-to-date.
That said, the funeral was attended by scores of world leaders — and for Johnson,
it was a time to watch, observe, and talk to them for the first time as president.
Some meetings were incredibly strained: When France's Charles de Gaulle landed in D.C.,
it wasn't long after making comments that the U.S. couldn't be depended on,
especially if European countries found themselves at war with the Soviet Union.
Johnson noted in his memoir,
"Like every American, my own spirit was heavy with grief;
but the work had to go on. [...] There was the frenzied pace of meetings and briefings
held behind closed doors, then the measured cadence of the funeral march; there was the
harsh glare of office light burning deep into the night, then the somber hush and the dim,
soft light in the East Room from the four large candles flanking John Kennedy's coffin."
In his memoir, "As I Saw It," then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk wrote about the chaos of
not only arranging a funeral but making sure everything went according to plan,
even as they feared this was just the beginning of
more trouble. Some leaders were viewed as more at-risk than others. He wrote,
"We were especially concerned about French President Charles de Gaulle's personal
security during the Kennedy funeral. Political tensions were high in France,
resulting in threats to his personal safety."
George Ball was the Under Secretary of State at the time, and in his memoir, "The Past Has Another
Pattern," he echoed Rusk's concerns. In addition to fears of a larger plot, there was also the
reaction to consider: Would extremist groups take matters into their own hands? Ball also
mentioned speculation that de Gaulle could be a target, along with leaders from the Soviet Union.
Concern was so great that Ball didn't attend the funeral at all. He wrote that he was instead
tasked with standing by as the first line of defense if there was another assassination
attempt or other political emergency. He was actually fine with it. He wrote in his memoir,
"I have a distaste for the pomp and panoply of state funerals;
we were treating the dead President as a king, rather than as a warm, human,
lively, glittering young American elected by the popular vote of a great nation."
The eternal flame remains one of the most powerful symbols of John F. Kennedy's impact on the U.S.,
and it was first lit at his funeral. The moment was somber and just as powerful as the imagery
of it, but behind the scenes, it had been a wild scramble to get the temporary flame installed.
It came together thanks to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Inspired by Paris's eternal flame at
their memorial to the Unknown Soldier, Jackie Kennedy asked for an eternal flame for JFK's
grave ... the day before he was buried there. According to Lt. General Walter K. Wilson Jr.'s
book, "Engineer Memoirs," the hurried work was done from scratch even as the lying-in-state had
begun. Without time for plans to be drawn up, the flame was cobbled together, based around a propane
tank and a tiki torch. Thirty hours and one test-lighting later, Jackie lit the eternal flame.
"Eventually, engineers designed a permanent structure with two
gas lines running to the flame."
Wilson wrote about feeling grateful that he'd been a part of the task,
as it had been an important addition to the proceedings. He noted in his memoir,
"Little things like that helped ease the pain."
Col. Clayton B. Lyle, who made the torch, echoed those sentiments,
saying it was one of the most important moments of his decades-long career.