Nation: The Family in Mourning

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No sooner had Jackie arrived back at Washington with her husband's body than she served notice that she wanted to be consulted on all details of his services and burial. Well aware that her family and friends might otherwise spare her painful decisions, she insisted that she meant to see to it "that people will remember all the best things about him."

In the bewildering days when she had first moved into the White House, Jackie had often sought refuge from her worries while sitting alone in the Lincoln Room. "It was the one room in the White House with a link to the past," she once recalled. "It gave me great comfort . . . When you see the great bed, it looks like a cathedral . . . I felt a kind of peace in that room . . . I could really feel his strength." Now, she firmly told the family, her husband's funeral must be "as Lincolnesque as possible."

"This Is Perfect." From Bethesda Naval Hospital, where she waited while the President's body was embalmed, Jackie sent word to Artist William Walton, an old family friend, about a book containing sketches and photographs of Lincoln's White House lying-in-state. She even remembered just where the book was in the White House library. Walton found it, made sure that the White House East Room was prepared with the same simple drapings.

White House Aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Peace Corps Official Richard Goodwin rushed to the Library of Congress during the night, found other books on the Lincoln rites. When Jackie entered the East Room with the body at 4:25 that morning, she said: "No matter what happens from now on, Jack's funeral will always be for me as it was when he came back to the White House. This is perfect."

"He Belongs to the Country." It was, in the last analysis, Jackie's decision that her husband be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. There was some family feeling that the President should be with his infant son Patrick in the family plot at Brookline, Mass. Cardinal Cushing advised against this: the plot, he said, was much too small to accommodate all the thousands who would surely want to visit it as a shrine. Jackie herself thought that Brookline would be too out of the way. Said she: "He really belongs to the country as a whole."

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara selected an Arlington site, showed it to Bobby Kennedy and Jean Kennedy Smith. Jackie herself inspected it on Sunday morning, approved, but asked that the grave be on a direct line between the flagpole at the Lee Mansion and the Lincoln Memorial. Army engineers hastened to the scene, conducted surveys, and laid out that direct line.