Army District Engineer, Norfolk, Virginia. Skip past main navigation. Kennedy Fast Facts about John F. Identifier Accession. Rights Access Status. Relation Is Part Of Desc. Subject Geog. Type Category. Format Medium. Format Media Type. Creator Maker. Language ISO Type ARC.
Title Folder. Rights Copyright Status. Relation Container Digid. Riding with them were Texas governor John Connally, who was wounded, and his wife Nellie.
At 1 pm, he was pronounced dead. An honor guard lifted the heavy bronze casket from the hearse, took it into the morgue, and set it on the floor. We lifted the body out of the coffin and put it on a table. I had never seen a dead man before. For several hours Lipsey observed photographers shooting photos of the body, technicians X-raying it, and three doctors, assisted by technicians, performing an autopsy.
There was no question in their minds that the bullets all came from the same direction. The autopsy was completed around midnight, and Lipsey and Wehle returned to their quarters to shower, shave, and change into dress-blue uniforms. They did a remarkable job. We picked him up and put him in the casket. From there, Lipsey and Wehle went to the White House. A Catholic priest held a private service that lasted about thirty minutes.
We were still translating the notes from his meetings with Jackie at the hospital. Wehle had asked him to be his aide when both were stationed at Fort Polk, Louisiana. When Wehle was reassigned to Washington, he took Lipsey with him. In the election, he had voted for Richard Nixon. We shook hands with President Kennedy. Throughout this somber pageant, Mayfield stood near the edge of the drama. He never wanted to be in the spotlight and, even today, shrinks from revisiting these scenes.
Mayfield, though, is no wimp. A Lincoln High graduate, he was drafted into the Army, spending most of his two years of active duty in Virginia.
As a San Diego police officer in , he rescued a man from a burning building. He retired in , suffering from worsening back pains. Over the decades, hundreds of strangers have written to Mayfield. Authors, too, have sought him out. Mayfield had been part the 3rd U. At first, Friday, Nov. Back at the barracks, Lt. Sam Bird took charge. Then just 23 years old, Bird commanded a team of pallbearers representing every branch of the U.
When Air Force One landed, a general aboard the plane refused to relinquish the casket to the honor guard. Secret Service agents struggled with their heavy burden until finally, with help from pallbearers, they loaded it onto an ambulance. Landing outside the hospital, the pallbearers removed the casket from the ambulance and brought it into a private room. Early on Saturday, Nov. The pallbearers removed their precious cargo outside the White House around 4 a.
The additions were welcome, as the pallbearers were working round-the-clock. On the night before that mission, Bird assembled his team at Arlington for a test run. On Monday, Nov. After the funeral Mass, the pallbearers exited the church and fastened the casket to the caisson for the three-mile trek to Arlington. Mourners had mobbed the Capitol and the cathedral, Mayfield remembered, but larger throngs lined the streets of Washington for this final journey.
He did not see John F. Kennedy Jr. But he noticed the silence, broken only by a drum corps rapping out a slow, sad beat. At the grave site in Arlington, the pallbearers faced another challenge. Government agents and local police had positioned guards every few yards along the fence surrounding the cemetery. Louis Saunders, executive secretary of the Fort Worth Council of Churches, was called by Fort Worth police chief Cato Hightower to replace another minister who failed to arrive.
Two floral arrangements covered the coffin, sent mysteriously by someone named Virginia Leach. Grave diggers had the grave covered by sunset, and two policemen were left to stand guard overnight. The long, emotionally burdened day had come to an end. All rights reserved.
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