Nation: The Funeral

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To each and every one, whether there or participating through the unblinking vigil of television, there was the particular sight or sound that touched the emotions.

To many, it was Jackie Kennedy, still athletic in her springy stride, walking behind her husband's casket. To others, it was Hail to the Chief, or the Navy hymn, or Onward, Christian Soldiers. To some, it was the ageless rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. But to others, it was the fact that those rituals are not changeless—as evidenced when Richard Cardinal Gushing, Archbishop of Boston, who had married John and Jacqueline Kennedy and baptized their children, neared the end of the Requiem Mass and cried in his strangely discordant voice: "May the angels, dear Jack, lead you into Paradise." And to a few, it was the time when Air Force One, the blue-and-white presidential jet, thundered over the graveside ceremony in Arlington Cemetery. Said the pilot later: "The President liked the plane so much. We just thought it would be nice to fly over."

On Sunday, the body lay in state beneath the Capitol rotunda. The casket, draped in a flag and surrounded by a five-service military honor guard, was never to be opened because the President had been deeply disfigured. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield fought through sobs to read a eulogy that, although well-meaning, was cruel in its emotion: "There was the sound of laughter; in a moment, it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands . . ."

He repeated those phrases five times, and as he did so, Jackie Kennedy held her face rigid as stone. Beside her were the children, Caroline and John Jr., dressed in matching powder-blue coats and red shoes. Caroline was solemn and open-eyed. But John-John capered about, tugging at his mother's hand, and had to be sent from the rotunda with his nurse. When he left the Capitol later he was clutching a small flag on a foot-long stick. He had spotted it in the office of House Speaker John McCormack and firmly announced, "I want that flag to take home to my daddy."

"Let's Walk a Bit." Outside the Capitol a multitude—possibly a quarter of a million people—waited to begin a hushed parade past the casket. Eight abreast, they lined up for 32 blocks outside the Capitol in such numbers that even at the rate of 6,000 an hour, there was no chance that those at the end of the line could get in before the funeral procession Monday morning. They never stopped. At 2 a.m., a wornan walked by the bier wheeling an infant asleep in a stroller. A blind man was led by the casket, his companion softly whispering a description of the scene. At 2:30 a.m., Jersey Joe Walcott, onetime heavyweight champion of the world, went by. He had waited eight hours in line.