Kennedy’s Body Removed To Final Resting Place

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31321, 17 March 1967, Page 12

Kennedy’s Body Removed To Final Resting Place

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, March 16. The body of President Kennedy was transferred without ceremony on Wednesday evening from the temporary grave it has occupied since his assassination in 1963 to its permanent resting place in a granite memorial a few yards away.

The bodies of two children who died before their father, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, and a stillborn infant, will lie near the former President’s body in the memorial. The new Kennedy grave, like the old, is on a hillside in Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac river from Washington. The torch which has burned with only a few interruptions since the original burial on November 26, 1963, was transferred to the memorial grave site. Its flickering light will now be visible from the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington side of the river. Rain fell on workmen as they put the finishing touches to the re'nterment. Great Secrecy While the funeral and burial service alter the assasination were witnessed by millions either in person or on television, the second bur-

ial was carried out in middle-of-the-night secrecy. It was not immediately known whether members of the former President’s family were present. It is estimated that by the third anniversary of the assassination last November, more than 16 million persons had walked up the slope to pause in front of the President’s grave in its simple plot, surrounded by a picket fence. Mementoes Left Servicemen would toss their caps inside. Others would leave behind notes, bibles, flowers and other mementoes, all of which were retrieved by the cemetery staff daily. The memorial has a low silhouette and features a wall upon which are inscribed quotations from the inaugural speech President Kennedy gave on January 20, 1961.

The marker for the President’s grave is engraved: “John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1917-1963.”