Bulletins from Dallas by Bill Sanderson

Author:Bill Sanderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2016-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

SIDEBAR • THE EAST ROOM

Doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital finished President Kennedy’s autopsy early on Saturday, November 23, and released his body to his family. Kennedy’s coffin was then brought to the White House’s East Room, a space big enough for parties, stage performances, and presidential funerals.

Reporters were brought to the East Room at 10:00 a.m. so they could describe the scene. President Kennedy’s body laid in repose in a closed, flag-draped coffin. Pairs of Catholic priests took shifts kneeling in silent prayer, and a military honor guard of four enlisted men—one from each armed service—stood by the coffin’s corners.336 The coffin was to be taken to the Capitol to lie in state on Sunday. On Monday, it was to be moved to St. Matthew’s Cathedral for a funeral. Later that day, Kennedy was to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Henry Brandon, the socially connected reporter for the Sunday Times of London, returned from Dallas late Friday and worked through the night on his story for that week’s newspaper. He was filing his copy at 11:00 a.m. Saturday when Robert Kennedy, the late president’s brother, called to invite him to visit the East Room.

At the North Portico, Sargent Shriver, Kennedy’s brother-in-law, greeted Brandon “with a slight welcoming smile.” “I felt like having entered a cathedral,” Brandon wrote in his diary. “The blinds had been lowered, the curtains and white marble fireplaces were covered with black crepe…. When I entered the East Room, there were six people, two kneeling at the casket … candles were flickering and a guard of honor was holding watch….

“I suddenly felt very close to the President. I saw him laughing and joking. It was a sad farewell.”337

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