The crowds led to the construction of a permanent grave that was completed in 1967. An estimated 50,000 people came on weekends and more than 16 million people in all paid their respects in the three years after his assassination. More than 3,000 people per hour visited Kennedy’s first grave site, surrounded by a white picket fence, in the year after his death, according to Arlington National Cemetery. Initially a propane-fed torch provided by the Washington Gas Company, it was lit by Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert F. Perhaps the most famous grave in the United States is Kennedy’s, marked by an eternal flame at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington. Reported by Matthew Barakat in Arlington, Va. On Friday, Wallace and his Special Forces comrades left a Green Beret at Kennedy’s grave and walked away. “I said, ‘That doesn’t happen here.’ I was in disbelief, even when I saw it on the news,” Wallace said. He remembers being at the Officers’ Annex at Fort Benning, Ga., when he heard Kennedy had been shot. Wallace was a young lieutenant in 1963 when Kennedy died. “He authorized that headgear right on the spot,” Johnson said. Wallace said Kennedy holds a special place in the hearts of Special Forces members, noting that Kennedy gave his instant approval to the group’s iconic green beret on a 1961 visit to Fort Bragg. On Friday, though, he joined two other members of the Special Forces Association to pay their respects at Kennedy’s grave, walking up the hill to where an eternal flame keeps vigil over the grave site. “It brings back some really bad memories,” he said, fighting back tears. So many of the Special Forces veteran’s comrades are buried here. Visiting Arlington National Cemetery is not an easy task for Wallace Johnson, 74, of Dumfries, Va. ‘IT BRINGS BACK SOME REALLY BAD MEMORIES’ Reported by Jerry Schwartz in New York. 25, 1963.Īt the time, only 50.3 million households had televisions. It’s been estimated that 41.5 million households in America tuned in to watch a horse named Black Jack - saddle empty, boots backwards in the stirrups - follow Kennedy’s body through Washington to his final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery during the funeral on Nov. Reported by Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo and Matthew Barakat in Arlington, Va. She was accompanied by 10 Kennedy family members, who then prayed and left roses on the grave before leaving quietly. In Arlington, Va., the only surviving sibling of JFK, 85-year-old Jean Kennedy Smith, laid a wreath at her brother’s grave.
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