The Kennedy Half-Century (7 page)

Pope Paul VI issued a special statement that included a reminder that JFK had been “the first Catholic president of the United States.” “We remember that we had the honor of … knowing his great wisdom
(sagezza)
and his good intentions for all humanity,” His Holiness observed. “We offer the Holy Mass tomorrow for the peace of his soul, and for those who mourn his death.”
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After receiving a generous donation in JFK’s name, the Seraphic Mass Association for the support of the Capuchin Foreign Missions promised that “the soul of the deceased John Fitzgerald Kennedy” would “share forever in:

1. 6,000 Holy Masses which will be said each year by the Capuchins exclusively for the members.

2. 500 Conventional Masses said daily.

3. All the prayers and good works of the religious of the Capuchin Order (who number 15, 624).”
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Not to be outdone, Protestants penned missives designed to ease the Kennedys’ grief. R. Bresnahan complimented Rose for producing “wonderful sons” and behaving gallantly “throughout this unspeakable tragedy.” Mindful of Rose’s strict Catholicism, Bresnahan added, “Always in our hearts, you remain the mother second only to the Virgin Mary.” Martin Maehr, a faculty member at a conservative Lutheran college in the Midwest, expressed his appreciation for the “testimony of religious conviction” that the Kennedys had displayed “under such trying circumstances. Maehr also singled out Rose for demonstrating “in a most exemplary way” that the “home is the cradle of Christianity and true citizenship.”
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On Sunday, November 24, Americans flocked to their churches and synagogues seeking spiritual comfort and hoping that religious leaders could find meaning in a senseless act. Preaching at St. George’s Episcopal Church in New York, the influential theologian Reinhold Niebuhr attributed the “dimension and universality” of the grief for JFK to three things: first, the assassination had “cut short the life of a promising career” and robbed the nation of an extraordinary leader; second, unlike some other presidents, Kennedy had perished before his “essential work was done”; and third, JFK took over the presidency at a time when the United States was the undisputed leader of the free world. “This concentration of power and prestige is so great,” Niebuhr explained, “that we must view President Kennedy’s death with mingled gratitude for the providential selection of so gifted a leader to exercise that power, and with an anxious and prayerful attitude about our American world responsibilities in the future.”
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Some religious leaders perceived universal messages and warnings. Monsignor John S. Kennedy (no relation) told his flock, “The head of our nation was carried away in death a few days ago because of what has been in the hearts of too many of us. His death should sober those drunk on hatred of whatever sort and from whatever source.” Rabbi Julius Mark delivered a similar message to a packed house at Temple Emanu-El. “[JFK’s] tragic death was the direct result of the dark hatreds and insane hostilities which poison the hearts of otherwise decent and respectable citizens of our country,” Mark insisted. Norman Vincent Peale—a famous Protestant preacher who had been one of Kennedy’s persistent critics—blamed the crisis on America’s moral decline: “I rode down a street in [New York] this morning looking at the signs on the marquees of the theaters,” Peale said. “Every single one of them implied that the picture they advertised was either one of sex or violence. And if a nation becomes conditioned to violence they need not be surprised when some one man or a group of men take the law into their hands and destroy the man who has been elected by the sovereign people to enforce the laws of this land.” Peale hoped that the shock of the assassination would
lead Americans toward “a new appreciation of the fact that we must insist that this become a nation of reason and law.”
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Dallas certainly seemed like a lawless place on that Sunday. As Americans sat in their pews and prayed for peace, yet another loathsome act of violence occurred in the basement of the city’s police headquarters. Just before 11:30 A.M., Lee Harvey Oswald emerged from an elevator handcuffed to Jim Leavelle, a detective in a beige cowboy hat. The suspect was being transferred to the Dallas County jail in a carefully choreographed attempt to make Oswald visible to the media to prove he wasn’t being mistreated.
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As Leavelle and his partner, Detective L. C. Graves, threaded their way through a mass of detectives and officers, a man in a gray fedora emerged from the crowd holding a snub-nosed revolver. Bob Jackson, a photographer for the
Dallas Times Herald
, captured the famous photograph of Jack Ruby shooting Oswald in the belly. It shows Oswald groaning in agony with his mouth open and his eyes shut. Jim Leavelle, who tried at the last second to pull Oswald out of the path of the bullet, grimaced. Astonishment best describes the reaction of millions at home, who witnessed television’s first live murder. Tom Pettit, correspondent on scene for NBC News, uttered the simple lines that have echoed ever since: “He’s been shot! He’s been shot! Lee Oswald’s been shot!” In the ensuing pandemonium, a scrum of officers wrestled Ruby to the ground and grabbed his revolver.

Oswald was rushed to Parkland Hospital, where some of the same doctors that had worked on President Kennedy attempted to revive him in the room across from where JFK had lain. The result was also the same. Oswald was pronounced dead almost exactly 48 hours after JFK (1:07 P.M. CST). The .38-caliber bullet had punctured his spleen, stomach, intestinal arteries, and right kidney. Behind closed doors, Ruby offered a motive: “When I saw that Mrs. Kennedy was going to have to appear for a trial, I thought to myself, ‘why should she have to go through this ordeal for this no good son of a bitch?’ ” Was Ruby telling the truth? Or had he been hired to silence Oswald before he could disclose a conspiracy?
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Millions of people subscribed to the latter theory. But the answer to “Who killed JFK?” depended partly on one’s political views and degree of trust in government. Conspiracy theorists across the political spectrum saw evidence of their enemies’ handiwork in Dallas. The KGB quickly concluded that Kennedy had been killed “by a circle of reactionary monopolists in league with profascist groups” who were upset with the president for supporting civil rights, peace with Russia, and higher taxes on oil profits. Khrushchev himself refused to believe “that the U.S. security services were so inept as to have
allowed a madman to kill the president” and thought that the Dallas police must have been involved in the murder. Fidel Castro held similar views. He implicated American “ultrareactionaries,” whom the Cuban media described as power brokers upset over Kennedy’s “weak” handling of Cuba. Similar themes rippled across the Communist world. “Communist propaganda organs in East Europe suggested that the rightists, in their impotence to reverse President Kennedy’s liberal policies,” had “resorted to ‘political terror’ to gain their ends.” A Communist newspaper in Hanoi blamed U.S. “financiers” for the shooting.

People living in other parts of the world put their own spin on the events of 11/22. Many sub-Saharan Africans thought that white racists had murdered Kennedy for his support of civil rights. Middle Eastern commentators viewed the JFK assassination as part of a Zionist plot. “One Cairo newspaper noted that Oswald’s killer was ‘one Jack Ruberstein
[sic]
, a Jew of course.’ ” Right-wingers in Nationalist China and Latin America smelled a Red conspiracy, as did Herbert Philbrick, a rabid anticommunist and FBI counterspy who later expounded his theories in a manuscript entitled “The Strange Death of President Kennedy.” In a matter of hours, JFK’s assassination had become a reflection of each individual’s ideology—people saw what they wanted to see in the events of 11/22 and created narratives that reflected their personal prejudices and predilections.
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Jackie Kennedy appeared less interested in theories of the assassination than in strategies to make sure that John F. Kennedy would be forever remembered as a great president.
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She was disappointed when she learned that a left-wing loner had been charged with murdering her husband. “He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights,” she lamented. “It had to be some silly little Communist. It even robs his death of any meaning.” Her first effort to assign significance to JFK’s life and death was to orchestrate an unforgettable funeral, and she somehow found the physical and emotional strength to do so. On Sunday, three hundred thousand people lined the streets of Washington to watch a team of horses transport JFK’s
body from the White House to the U.S. Capitol. Hundreds of millions more around the globe watched the event on live television. A riderless black horse followed the cortege, twisting and turning but firmly under the control of its handler. The streets of Washington were silent except for the solemn sounds of drums, muffled sobs, and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves.

The president’s coffin was placed in the Dome Room of the Capitol, where Mike Mansfield, the Senate majority leader, delivered the most moving speech of his career. “There was a sound of laughter; in a moment, it was no more,” Mansfield began. “And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands,” a reference to Mrs. Kennedy’s action in Parkland’s Trauma Room One as she said good-bye to her husband. The senator offered a series of tributes, all ending with the same refrain about the transferred wedding ring. His address was a source of great comfort to Jackie. In her ears, it sounded “as eloquent as a Pericles oration, or Lincoln’s letter to the mother who had lost five sons in battle.” “A piece of each of us died at that moment,” Mansfield continued. “Yet, in death he gave of himself. He gave us of a good heart from which the laughter came. He gave us of a profound wit, from which a great leadership emerged. He gave us of a kindness and a strength fused into a human courage to seek peace without fear. He gave us of his love that we, too, in turn, might give.” When Mansfield finished, he approached Jackie and handed her the manuscript. “How did you know I wanted it?” she asked. “I didn’t,” said Mansfield. “I just wanted you to have it.” Jackie then led daughter Caroline over to the president’s catafalque—together they kneeled and kissed the flag that lay draped across his coffin. It was a fitting farewell that brought a shattered nation together.
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Hundreds of thousands of people waited in line for a chance to file past the president’s casket. “The overflow spilled down the streets between the congressional office buildings, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the Folger Library, and to the west it ran from the Botanic Gardens to the Taft tower.” Every citizen, it seemed, wanted to say good-bye in some personal, significant way. Filmmaker Robert Drew, father of the cinema verité movement, captured the sad expressions on the faces of those who shuffled through the Dome Room on that bleak autumn day. The resulting film,
Faces of November
, later won two first-place awards at the Venice Film Festival. We see black and white, old and young, men and women joined together in an outpouring of anguish, perhaps sad also for the loss of national innocence. Despite a long history of political violence, people were genuinely aghast that such a thing could have happened in the United States.
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Kings, queens, emperors, princes, ministers, chancellors, presidents, and ambassadors from a vast array of countries arrived for the Monday funeral. Jackie insisted on walking to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, which meant that
President Johnson and visiting heads of state would walk in the open, too. The Secret Service objected strenuously, deathly afraid that something else might happen on their watch, but to no avail. Escorted by Bobby and Ted, the remaining brothers also frightfully exposed, Jackie stayed close to the caisson as it rolled toward the church. The Royal Highland Black Watch Regiment paid their respects with a somber bagpipe tune. The sound seemed to bring Mrs. Kennedy to the verge of tears, but she remained supremely disciplined. Hauntingly beautiful, she simultaneously projected strength and fragility beneath her black veil, which stirred gently in the breeze.

At Jackie’s behest, the Most Reverend Philip Hannan, a young auxiliary bishop stationed in the nation’s capital, delivered the president’s eulogy. Hannan mentioned a few of JFK’s favorite Bible verses (such as “Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions”), and then he recited the 1961 inaugural address. It was an exquisite choice and temporarily lifted the spirits of those in attendance. Ted Sorensen, Kennedy’s inaugural co-writer, later told Hannan that his eulogy would “be remembered … for a long time.”
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Then it happened, the moment that no one alive at the time will ever forget. It was a child’s simple gesture, and yet it brought home the true personal tragedy of November 22. As the president’s flag-draped coffin was being removed from St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Jackie leaned over and whispered in her son’s ear. Just weeks before the assassination, the son had been taught by his father and several Secret Service agents how to salute the flag. John F. Kennedy, Jr., fatherless on his third birthday, dutifully stepped forward and pressed his tiny right hand against his forehead to say good-bye. America wept as one.
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President Kennedy’s body was then taken across the river to Arlington National Cemetery, once the estate of Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy’s greatest general. “Fifty jet planes of the Air Force and Navy, one for each state, roared low overhead as the caisson halted beside the grave. The apex of the last V formation was empty, symbolizing a fallen leader. The president’s jet, Air Force One, trailed the formation and dipped its wings…” An honor guard of Irish military cadets, rifles reversed, executed a manual of arms in Gaelic. Next, Cardinal Richard Cushing, the Kennedys’ chief spiritual adviser, led the assembled dignitaries in the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary. Cannon boomed a twenty-one-gun salute; a lone bugler blew Taps; a group of servicemen handed Mrs. Kennedy a folded American flag.