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On September 24, 1964, the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy submitted its final report. The investigative panel, known as the Warren Commission after its chairman, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, concluded that accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Many still believe that a larger conspiracy was at work but no conclusive evidence has been found.

Touring John F. Kennedy’s Tomb at Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington National Cemetery is open daily, 365 days a year. Hours are from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. from April through September and 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. from October through March. Admission to the cemetery is free.

Arlington National Cemetery is located across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., at the north end of the Memorial Bridge. The bridge is accessible from Constitution Avenue or Twenty-third Street N.W. near the Lincoln Memorial. The cemetery can also be reached by Metrorail at the Arlington Cemetery stop on the blue line.

Cars are not allowed on the cemetery grounds except by special permission. Paid parking is available near the Visitors Center. Tourmobile offers motorized tours of the cemetery for a fee; Kennedy’s gravesite is one of the tour’s scheduled stops.

Maps of the cemetery are available at the Visitors Center. To reach Kennedy’s grave from the cemetery’s main entrance (Memorial Drive), take Roosevelt Drive to Weeks Drive. Signs clearly mark Kennedy’s grave.

For additional information

Superintendent

Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington, VA 22211

Visitor Center Phone: (703) 607-8000

www.arlingtoncemetery.org

“For anyone who lived through those four shattering days in November 1963, memory conjures a flawless pageant of grief…”

—Richard Norton Smith

Over the years Americans have witnessed with heartbreaking frequency Kennedy funerals. For anyone who lived through those four shattering days in November 1963, memory conjures a flawless pageant of grief, brilliantly choreographed by a young widow. The horse-drawn caisson and riderless horse, the eternal flame, even JFK’s interment in Arlington National Cemetery: all were her doing. But the past, as always, informs the present, and with her love of history, it was hardly surprising that Jacqueline Kennedy should turn to the White House Historical Association and its guidebook—both largely her work—with its engraving of the funeral of that nineteenth-century martyr, Abraham Lincoln.

Incredibly, Mrs. Kennedy found time to send condolences to the widow of the Dallas policeman, J.D. Tippit, who was Lee Harvey Oswald’s other victim. She held out for St. Matthew’s Cathedral and not the massive Shrine of the Immaculate Conception as the site of her husband’s funeral. Determined to walk the eight blocks from the White House to St. Matthew’s, nothing and no one could change her mind. At first, it was widely assumed that JFK would be laid to rest in his native Massachusetts, in the Brookline cemetery where, a few months earlier, he had buried his infant son Patrick. The Navy was even holding a destroyer in readiness to transport the presidential casket.

Robert F. Kennedy’s cross lies on the slope near his brother’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery. In September 2009, Edward M. Kennedy was interred nearby.

Political activist Allard Lowenstein is buried near JFK’s grave

Not until Saturday, the twenty-third, a day of incessant downpours and numbing grief, was Kennedy’s final resting place decided. While the so-called Irish Mafia pushed for Brookline, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara thought the Boston area “too parochial.” Visiting Arlington National Cemetery, McNamara was captivated by the slope in front of the Lee-Custis Mansion whose stately pillars crowned Arlington’s summit. Robert Kennedy was soon converted, as was Jean Kennedy Smith. Returning to the White House that afternoon, she blurted out, “Oh Jackie, we found the most wonderful place!”

Mrs. Kennedy immediately left for Arlington where she, too, fell under its