From the moment it was announced on November 22, 1963 that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated until he was buried four days later, the world’s attention focused on his widow Jacqueline Kennedy. Despite the First Lady’s achievements as a goodwill diplomat, hostess, preservationist and arts advocate, it was the sudden role thrust on her by tragedy which transformed her into an indelible icon.

This was the result of a four-day process shaped by several simultaneous elements, including how she behaved and reacted, what she determined for public display, where she wanted it performed and when she timed it, and why she was motivated to make the decisions she did. What she truly experienced as a private person so blended with how she appeared as a public persona, that the two elements become inextricably interwoven.

This photo essay traces those four days by keeping her as the central visual focus, from the coffin being transported from Parkland Hospital to Air Force One, his successor’s swearing-in ceremony on the plane and its arrival at Andrews Air Force Base for transport to Bethesda Naval Hospital, the laying in state at the White House, memorial service at the U.S. Capitol Building, funeral at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, and burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Parkland Hospital and Air Force One, November 22, 1963

Following the gunfire which struck President Kennedy just after noon, his limousine sped to Parkland Hospital, where efforts were made to determine if his life could be saved. Throughout the ordeal, Jacqueline Kennedy remained at his side, first waiting briefly in a hall and then entering the trauma room, where he was pronounced dead at one p.m. Central Time.

Jacqueline Kennedy insisted on entering the ambulance at Parkland Hospital which would transport the coffin of the late President to Love Field where Air Force One waited to return them to Washington, D.C.

The presidential party, including Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, followed the Parkland Hospital ambulance carrying the coffin of President Kennedy to Love Field Airport, where the presidential airplane, Air Force One, stood waiting. Mrs. Kennedy sat with her hand on her husband’s coffin, seated in the back of the ambulance with him. The coffin was carried up the stairs through the passenger door of the plane, and to the back where four seats had been removed to make room for it. Still wearing her blood-stained pink suit, Jacqueline Kennedy walked behind her husband’s remains, her eyes never leaving it.

Before the plane departed for Washington, D.C. Lyndon Johnson was sworn-in as President at 2:39 p.m.. He asked the late President’s widow to witness the event in the conference area of the plane. Jacqueline Kennedy was not pressured in any way to stand at his side, but rather chose to do so out of her strong sense of history. Recognizing her presence as a significant symbol of the transition of power which occurs on routine Inauguration Days as the outgoing President stands to watch the new, incoming one sworn into office, Jacqueline Kennedy served as a surrogate of sorts for John F. Kennedy. She even managed a smile of acknowledgement for the woman judge, Sarah Hughes, who swore LBJ in as president and who had been appointed by JFK. The plane left at 2:47 p.m. No pictures were taken during the flight, LBJ now occupying the presidential cabin to make phone calls, Jacqueline Kennedy beginning to formulate her vision of an appropriate ceremonial farewell to John F. Kennedy as both her husband and as the nation’s President thus infusing the forthcoming three days with both highly personal gestures and larger, historical references.

Noting JFK’s love of football and plans to attend the upcoming Army-Navy game, for example, she wanted units from the Army, Air Force and Navy academies to march in the funeral procession.

Andrews Air Force Base and Bethesda Naval Hospital, November 22, 1963

Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Waiting there was Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy, who went on to the plane to escort his widowed sister-in-law. Since the casket was so heavy, it was decided that it was best removed from the plane from the cargo hold at the rear and lowered carefully to the ground.

While on the plane, Jacqueline Kennedy asked that a Navy ambulance meet the plane and transport him to Bethesda Naval Hospital, in honor of his World War II service in the U.S. Navy. That request was met when the plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C. She didn’t leave her late husband’s side, riding down in the fork lift which had to be used to transport the one-ton coffin off the plane and down the ground and into the ambulance. Despite having to cram in, she also insisted on sitting beside the coffin in the ambulance.

Once they had departed, the new President delivered brief remarks t the nation on the tarmac.

During the long hours spent in the 17th floor suite at Bethesda, waiting for the autopsy and embalming to be completed, the widowed First Lady began to set in motion her vision for the funeral. She directed several friends (artist William Walton, presidential adviser and historian Arthur Schlesinger, Peace Corps official Richard Goodwin)and one brother-in-law (Sargent Shriver) to find some books she knew of with illustrations of assassinated President Lincoln’s funeral, and asked that the East Room of the White House be hung with black crepe mourning in as close a style as possible to that done for Lincoln.

The White House, November 23, 1963

It was 4:22 a.m. when the Bethesda Naval Hospital ambulance returned her and the President’s now flag-draped coffin back at the White House. She oversaw the coffin placed on a black catafalque like Lincoln’s in the center of the room. The chandeliers and mantlepieces were hung with mourning crepe as they had been for Lincoln. Two Catholic priests were already there in prayer; at her request they would maintain such a vigil throughout the hours JFK laid in state in the East Room.

She returned to her room but did not sleep. Instead, she began composing lists of guests she wanted invited to the funeral, both heads of state and private individuals, ranging from JFK’s young cousin Mary from Ireland to Aristotle Onassis.. She asked that the Black Watch bagpipers return to perform in the procession to the church where a funeral mass would be said and that Irish cadets also march, a gesture of the affinity her husband had with his ancestral country.

At 10 a.m. a private mass was said for the late President’s wife and children. They placed letters and small gifts in his coffin, which was then sealed. She met with the President and Mrs. Johnson in the family quarters after that, for about twenty minutes.

This day was set aside for the late President to remain lying-in-state in the East Room. The Supreme Court, Senate and House leadership, the diplomatic corps and other officials were invited to pay their respects at the late President’s coffin. Among them were former Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, and congressional leaders which included Gerald Ford.

In the latter afternoon, family members and close friends began arriving at the White House for a private Catholic mass which Jacqueline Kennedy requested be arranged. There was a supper in the Family Dining Room preceding this, presided over by Robert and Ethel Kennedy.

By early evening, the late President’s brother Senator Edward Kennedy arrived with his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver from Massachusetts, where they’d gone to escort their mother Rose Kennedy to Washington. Sister and brother-in-law Patricia Kennedy Lawford and Peter Lawford arrived with their children from California. Jacqueline Kennedy’s sister and brother-in-law Lee Bouvier Radziwill and Stanislaus Radziwill arrived from London, England, and her stepbrother and his wife, Hugh D. “Yusha” Auchincloss and Alice Auchincloss arrived from Rhode Island.

The White House, November 24, 1963

Early this Sunday morning, Jacqueline Kennedy slipped out of the White House to inspect the site on a greensward at Arlington National Cemetery where she had determined to have her husband buried ,against the wishes of some of the late President’s family who hoped he would be laid to rest in his native state of Massachusetts.

It was a spot she had first come to love and always remembered from her first visit to Washington in 1940 and the late President had remarked to her about how he long stay there forever, it was so beautiful, when he returned to the White House from the Veterans Day ceremony held there less than two weeks earlier.

This day was one designated for the public to pay respect to the late President. At approximately 12:30 p.m. the flag-draped coffin of President Kennedy was carried from the White House East Room through the Cross Hall and North Lobby, onto the North Portico and placed on a horse-drawn caisson. He would not return.

In widow’s black, Jacqueline Kennedy held the hands of her two children, dressed in matching blue coats and red shoes, and exited the White House behind the coffin.

The widowed president’s wife and family pause as the coffin is placed on the caisson.

The U.S. Capitol Building, November 24, 1963

Jacqueline Kennedy and her children proceeded in the same limousine with the President and Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson, slowly following the caisson to the U.S. Capitol Building. The caisson was the same one which had carried the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt from the White House to the Capitol upon his sudden death eighteen years earlier.

The coffin was carried up the east portico steps of the U.S. Capitol Building and placed on a catafalque in the center of the floor of the Rotunda. Jacqueline Kennedy wanted this to follow in the historical tradition of others who had laid in state at the Capitol Building, including the three other assassinated Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley. Those in attendance during this memorial service were federal officials, including members of the Supreme Court, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

When her son John Kennedy became impatient with the solemnity and restraint of the public event, he was placed in the care of his nanny Maude Shaw to wait in the car.

Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter proceeded to the coffin to kneel in silent prayer. Caroline Kennedy then saluted her father.

When the U.S. Capitol Building service concluded, Jacqueline Kennedy and her party returned to the White House and the doors of the building were opened for the waiting general public to file by the coffin and pay their respects.

While standing on the Capitol steps with her children, the late President’s widow briefly broke down into sobs, her only overt display of grief.

Initially, it was planned that the doors would be closed at 9 p.m. but there were still thousands of people lined up and it was decided to keep the U.S. Capitol Building open for them. Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy again returned here at about 9 p.m. to again pay their respects.

The White House, November 25, 1963

Jacqueline Kennedy, with her two brothers-in-law, returned to the U.S. Capitol, to escort the horse-drawn caisson carrying the late President’s coffin back to the White House, driven in a car behind it in a slow processional down Pennsylvania Avenue. At the White House, the military escorts organized in place. The caisson pulled onto the crescent-shaped north driveway, and then paused as the Kennedy family and the visiting foreign heads of state gathered in place behind it.

Jacqueline Kennedy had insisted on walking the distance from the White House to Saint Matthew’s Cathedral, despite the urging by the Secret Service that she not do so. Walking behind her and the late President’s family would be the heads of state from European, South American, Asian and African nations. Two hundred representatives from ninety-two countries were in attendance.

Her young children would follow, driven the sort distance in a car. They would join their mother at the entrance to the cathedral.

St. Matthew’s Cathedral, November 25, 1963

During the few weekends which the President and Mrs. Kennedy had spent in the White House, they went to church on Sunday not at their old parish in the Georgetown section but rather at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, in the general downtown areas. On at least one occasion they walked there from the White House with their Secret Service detail, a rare incident of “normal” life for them where they joked along the way that it left an indelible impression on her. On a few other occasions, President Kennedy had also stopped impromptu at St. Matthew’s. For these reasons, she designated it as the place for his Catholic funeral mass.

It was also a primary reason why she determined, even in defiance of the Secret Service, that she would walk the entire length from the White House to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, following the same path which she and the President had taken that one previous Sunday.

When she arrived at the cathedral and paused to grasp the hands of her children, Jacqueline Kennedy broke into the only broad smile she displayed during the four days. She did this in response to seeing that several rows of people behind her the new President and First Lady had also defied the Secret Service in a sign of solidarity with her, and also walked the distance from the White House.

Although given a flag to wave and distract himself with, John Kennedy grew fidgety during his father’s funeral and was briefly led away as the mass was concluded. On the steps of the cathedral, his mother whispered to him and the late President’s son responded with a salute to the coffin, a gesture he had begun learning before his father had been killed.

Arlington National Cemetery, November 25, 1963

Following the conclusion of the late President’s funeral mass, the caisson led the procession through the streets of Washington and over the Memorial Bridge into Arlington National Cemetery for his burial there. At Jacqueline Kennedy’s request, the U.S. Navy Hymn was played by the Navy Glee Club, and the Air Force bagpipers played one of the late President’s favorite tunes, The Mist Covered the Mountain. As family members, friends, officials, and heads of state looked on, a burial blessing was said.

Taps was played, and the flag was removed from the coffin and folded into a tricorner, handed to Jacqueline Kennedy.

 Jacqueline Kennedy had wanted to create not only a final place of rest for her husband but a permanent dynamic of movement there as well. Taking her inspiration for an “eternal flame” from the one at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, she and her two brothers-in-law lit the small temporary one put in place where his coffin rested. The Lord’s Prayer was recited.

The burial service concluded just after 3:30 that afternoon.

(Life/Getty)

(Life/Getty)

(Life/Getty)

(Life/Getty)

President Kennedy in Arlington National Cemetery. exactly two weeks to the day he was buried there.

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Categories: First Ladies, Presidents, The Kennedys

Tags: Air Force One, Arlington National Cemetery, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, John F Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Parkland Hospital