The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [484]
And so they buried him that day. He was a hero of war if not yet of peace, and he was buried among rows upon rows of men who had, many of them, given up their lives for their country. He had followed his father’s laws of manhood, and they had led him to the most exalted position in the land, and to Dallas on a November afternoon, and to his burial here among the brave and true.
As the mourners stood silent on this darkest of afternoons, a thunder of noise erupted in the midst of the stillness. Fifty low-flying Air Force F-105s roared across the sky, disappearing as soon as they arrived. Behind them flew Air Force One, so low that it was not like a plane in the sky, but a great bird that had come to pay its last homage. As the plane that had flown Kennedy around the world and carried his body back from Dallas moved across the cemetery plot, its wings dipped, and then the plane was gone. There were those at the gravesite who had stayed strong until this moment, but now they broke down.
As the burial ended, the president’s widow walked to the grave holding a lit taper in her hands. She reached forward with the rod and a flame burst into life. She gave the taper to Bobby, and he touched it against the flame, as did Teddy. From now on, the Kennedys would come here and look at the eternal flame and seek the light they had lost.
Source Abbreviations
AAML: Archives of the Andrew Mellon Library, Choate AKP: Arthur Krock Papers, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
ASP: Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Papers, JFKPL
ASPU: Adlai Stevenson Papers, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
ATD: Arthur Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965)
AWRH: Carl Sferrazza Anthony, As We Remember Her: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the Words of Her Friends and Family (New York: HarperCollins, 1997)
AWRJ: John F. Kennedy, ed., As We Remember Joe (Cambridge, Mass.: privately printed, 1945)
BP: Joan and Clay Blair Jr. Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming
BPL: Boston Public Library
CUOH: Columbia University oral history, New York
CY: Michael R. Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991)
DHP: C. David Heymann Papers, State University of New York at Stonybrook
DP: William Manchester, The Death of a President: November 20—November 25, 1963 (New York: Harper & Row, 1967)
DPP: David Powers Papers, JFKPL
FBIFOI: Federal Bureau of Investigation Freedom of Information Act request.
FMC: Forbes Magazine Collection
FRUS: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, 1988), many of the documents also available on the Department of State web site, www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/frusken.html.
HSCA: House Select Committee on Assassinations
HTF: Amanda Smith, ed., Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of Joseph P. Kennedy (New York: Viking, 2000); many of these documents also available at JFRPL and other archives.
HUA: Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts
IR: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Senate, 1975)
JEP: Judith Exner Papers accessed as part of lawsuit Judith Exner vs. Random House, et al.
JFKMM: Victor Lasky, JFK: The Man and the Myth (New York: Macmillan, 1963)
JFKOA: Richard D. Mahoney,
JFK: Ordeal in Africa (New York, Oxford, 1983)
JFKPL: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
JFKPP: John F. Kennedy Personal Papers, JFKPL
JMBP: James MacGregor Burns Papers, NHP. Courtesy James MacGregor Burns
JPKP: Joseph P. Kennedy Papers, JFKPL.
K: Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965)
KLOH: JFKPL oral history
KMPK: Kerry McCarthy, “P. J. Kennedy: The First Senator Kennedy,” unpublished manuscript, courtesy Kerry McCarthy
KP: Koskoff Papers, JFKPL
KR: Michael R. Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance (New York: Norton,