Mourners Brave Chill, Honor JFK

On the 35th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, more than a thousand people came to Arlington National Cemetery on Sunday to visit his grave site.

The late president’s brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, his wife Vickie, and Ethel Kennedy, the wife of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, arrived at the grave in midmorning to pay their respects.

About 200 people stepped aside as the senator walked forward and lifted the metal chain that keeps the public from getting too close to the president’s grave and the eternal flame that has burned since he was buried.

The family prayed and placed white roses and purple flowers on the graves of the president, who would have been 81 in May, his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who died in 1994, and two of their children. The couple had a daughter on Aug. 23, 1956, who was stillborn and a son, Patrick, who lived for only two days after his birth on Aug. 7, 1963.

They also prayed and placed flowers at the nearby grave of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 while running for president.

Afterward, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy thanked the crowd for coming and said he appreciates that so many people still remember his brothers.

More than 1,000 people had filed past President Kennedy’s grave by mid-morning.

Mary Hall, 62, from Baton Rouge, La., braved the cold autumn weather to pay her respects. “I’m surprised at the dedication after all these years,” she said.

“Everybody liked him,” said Andrea Garcia, a 17-year-old high-school senior from San Antonio.

Some of those visiting the grave site left flowers and personal messages. One handwritten note read: “It broke our hearts to lose you, but you did not go alone. Part of us went with you the day God called you home.”

Kennedy was killed Nov. 22, 1963, as he and his wife were driven in an open-top limousine through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

A commission chaired by then-U.S. Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald alone killed Kennedy with a rifle from a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository at one corner of the plaza.

However, a poll released on the anniversary found that 73% of those questioned believe that a conspiracy was either definitely or probably behind Kennedy’s assassination.

Of the 216,000 graves at Arlington Cemetery, president Kennedy’s is one of the most visited by the 4 million people who come to the cemetery annually.

From the grave, there is a sweeping view of Washington across the Potomac River, overlooking the Lincoln Memorial and the Memorial Bridge over which many world leaders walked to Kennedy’s funeral.