Episode 13: "I Could Stay Here Forever"

Aside from being a president cut down in his prime by an assassin's bullet, John F. Kennedy was a war hero. He was a naval officer who commanded a Torpedo Patrol Boat and saved the life of one of his sailors when their boat was sunk. I am sure that I will come back to that story in a later episode.

After LT Bird's casket team brought Kennedy into the Capitol Rotunda to lay in state, it was placed on the same catafalque (box) that President Lincoln's casket was placed on.

Jacqueline, holding the hands of her two children, Caroline and John, Jr., left the White House with her brother-in-law Robert, and moved to St. Matthew's Cathedral for JFK's Requiem Mass.

It was outside the church after the mass that John-John snapped off his famous salute to his father. 

President Kennedy was ultimately brought across the Memorial Bridge and laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, where, just a few months earlier, he had told a park ranger he could stay forever.

Many people worked behind the scenes to make sure the funeral went off without a hitch. One of those was Captain Michael Groves, the commander of the Old Guard Honor Guard company. A few days after the funeral, he collapsed at his dinner table, dead of a heart attack at age 27. He was laid to rest in Section 30, Grave 897-LH, within site of President Kennedy's gravesite. I had the honor to lay a wreath at his grave in December 2018 for Wreaths Across America, and this is my favorite picture that I have taken at the cemetery.

The rifle volley and Taps from President Kennedy's Funeral: