Onassis Laid to Rest at Arlington : Services: Clinton hails former First Lady at rites alongside grave of J.F.K.

As a sultry spring breeze rippled the eternal flame she had lit 31 years ago at another moment of national grief, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was laid to rest Monday alongside President John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery.

The former First Lady, who died of cancer last Thursday at 64, was hailed by President Clinton in a brief graveside service as a woman who handled great gifts and bore great burdens “with dignity and grace and uncommon common sense.”

“We say goodby to Jackie,” Clinton said. “May the flame she lit so long ago burn ever brighter here and always brighter in our hearts.”

The burial was preceded by a funeral Mass at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York, where Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) paid tribute to his sister-in-law as both a friend and an icon of American history and culture.

“She graced our history,” Kennedy said. “And for those of us who knew and loved her, she graced our lives.”

Mrs. Onassis’ body was flown from New York to Washington National Airport aboard a private aircraft. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton attended the funeral Mass and flew to Washington with Kennedy family members, where she was met by the President.

Mrs. Onassis’ children, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and John F. Kennedy Jr., bade her farewell at Arlington with readings from Scripture. They also laid flowers at the foot of her flower-bedecked mahogany coffin. The Most Rev. Philip Hannan, the retired archbishop of New Orleans who presided over President Kennedy’s funeral, sprinkled holy water on the coffin and a Navy chorus sang “Eternal Father Strong to Save.”

In a brief 15 minutes, the burial service was over and the Kennedy family members drifted away, some stopping at the nearby grave of Robert F. Kennedy to pay their respects.

The nation watched on live television as America buried yet another Kennedy. In the hazy distance, the bell of Washington’s National Cathedral slowly tolled 64 times.

And thus ended an era of glamour and hope and tragedy that began with the young President’s inauguration in 1961 and came to a close on Monday on a verdant hillside in the nation’s best-known graveyard of heroes.

The widow of the President who was slain on Nov. 22, 1963, became an image etched in the national memory for all these years, forever young and elegant, mysterious and private and yet a public treasure for two generations of Americans.

Jerry Grasso, 45, a jeweler from Pinellas Park, Fla., brought his video camera to the avenue leading to Arlington cemetery to watch Mrs. Onassis’ funeral procession. He said that he remembered the deaths of President Kennedy and his brother, Robert, as marking America’s “loss of innocence.”

Mrs. Onassis’ death, he said, “marks the end of the Kennedy era. As long as she was still alive, the Kennedy era was still alive.”

The burial ceremony was attended by about 100 members of the Kennedy, Auchincloss and Radziwill families, including Lee Radziwill Ross, Mrs. Onassis’ sister.

Those attending the service were all family except for a few, including Providencia Paredes, the former First Lady’s personal maid in the White House; Paredes’ son, Gustavo, who grew up with John Kennedy Jr. and is still a close friend, and Maurice Tempelsman, Mrs. Kennedy’s close companion for the last 12 years or so.

Buried alongside Kennedy and Mrs. Onassis are the couple’s first child, an unnamed daughter stillborn in 1956, and an infant son, Patrick, who died three days after his birth in August, 1963.

The honorary pallbearers were Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Timothy Shriver, Christopher Lawford, William K. Smith, Edward M. Kennedy Jr., Anthony Radziwill, Lewis Rutherford Jr. and Jack Walsh. All but Walsh are cousins. Walsh was a Secret Service agent who watched over the Kennedy children when they were in the White House.

Rose Kennedy, the 103-year-old ailing matriarch of the clan, remained in Florida but planned to watch the burial on television, a family spokesman said.

The Kennedy grave site was closed all day Monday but hundreds of onlookers lined the route into the cemetery and gathered outside its gates. A cemetery spokesman said that 23 other funerals scheduled during the day at the 612-acre cemetery were going on as planned.

“Whether she was soothing a nation grieving for a former President or raising the children with the care and the privacy they deserved or simply being a good friend, she seemed always to do the right thing in the right way,” Clinton said.

“May the flame she lit so long ago burn ever brighter here and always brighter in our hearts,” the President said. “God bless you, friend, and farewell.”

There were more middle-aged women than any other group along the route to the cemetery, but the crowd was mixed. Some tears were shed, but most people were thoughtful, not outwardly emotional. The crowd was hushed as the relatively modest motorcade of black limousines and mini-buses passed.

Small crowds gathered around mourners who carried radios so they could listen to the burial service taking place inside the cemetery gate.

Many of those who came to pay their respects praised Mrs. Onassis’ fashion sense and elan, but more than anything else they remembered her for the support she provided the whole country during those tragic November days three decades ago, when she proved to the nation, through her composure and calm, that life would go on.

Person after person remarked on how the image in 1963 of the young widow’s face, dry-eyed and draped with a black veil, had remained with them through their lives, a symbol of strength and courage.

Sally Grieb, 50, of Rochester, N.Y., made a point of coming to Washington with her husband, John, during their vacation to pay their respects. “I always looked up to Jacqueline; I think all women my age did,” she said. “She had a lot of sorrows but always kept her head high.”

Laura Frost, 34, of Livermore, Calif., said that Mrs. Onassis preserved her dignity by not appearing on talk shows or writing books. “She was such a graceful, wonderful woman. The world will not be the same without her. An era has passed.”

Times staff writer Jeff Leeds contributed to this story.