On Nov. 25, 1963, first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, her children, Caroline and John F. Kennedy Jr., and other family members leave the Capitol during the state funeral of President Kennedy. /White House photo by Abbie Rowe
By Jimmy Breslin
Newsday
Washington (Nov. 26, 1963) -- Clifton Pollard was pretty sure he was
going to be working on Sunday, so when he woke up at 9 a.m., in his three-room
apartment on Corcoran Street, he put on khaki overalls before going into the
kitchen for breakfast. His wife, Hettie, made bacon and eggs for him. Pollard
was in the middle of eating them when he received the phone call he had been
expecting. It was from Mazo Kawalchik, who is the foreman of the gravediggers
at Arlington National Cemetery, which is where Pollard works for a living.
"Polly, could you please be here by eleven o'clock this morning?"
Kawalchik asked. "I guess you know what it's for." Pollard did. He
hung up the phone, finished breakfast, and left his apartment so he could spend
Sunday digging a grave for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
When Pollard got to the row of yellow
wooden garages where the cemetery equipment is stored, Kawalchik and John Metzler, the cemetery
superintendent, were waiting for him. "Sorry to pull you out like this on
a Sunday," Metzler said. "Oh, don't say that," Pollard said.
"Why, it's an honor for me to be here." Pollard got behind the wheel
of a machine called a reverse hoe. Gravedigging is not done with men and
shovels at Arlington. The reverse hoe is a green machine with a yellow bucket
that scoops the earth toward the operator, not away from it as a crane does. At
the bottom of the hill in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Pollard
started the digging.
Leaves covered the grass. When the
yellow teeth of the reverse hoe first bit into the ground, the leaves made a
threshing sound which could be heard above the motor of the machine. When the
bucket came up with its first scoop of dirt, Metzler, the cemetery
superintendent, walked over and looked at it. "That's nice soil,"
Metzler said. "I'd like to save a little of it," Pollard said.
"The machine made some tracks in the grass over here and I'd like to sort
of fill them in and get some good grass growing there, I'd like to have
everything, you know, nice."
James Winners, another gravedigger,
nodded. He said he would fill a couple of carts with this extra-good soil and
take it back to the garage and grow good turf on it. "He was a good
man," Pollard said. "Yes, he was," Metzler said. "Now
they're going to come and put him right here in this grave I'm making up,"
Pollard said. "You know, it's an honor just for me to do this."
Pollard is 42. He is a slim man with a
mustache who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a private in the 352nd
Engineers battalion in Burma in World War II. He is an equipment operator,
grade 10, which means he gets $3.01 an hour. One of the last to serve John
Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was the thirty-fifth President of this country, was a
working man who earns $3.01 an hour and said it was an honor to dig the grave.
Yesterday morning, at 11:15, Jacqueline Kennedy started toward the grave. She came out
from under the north portico of the White House and slowly followed the body of
her husband, which was in a flag-covered coffin that was strapped with two
black leather belts to a black caisson that had polished brass axles. She
walked straight and her head was high. She walked down the bluestone and
blacktop driveway and through shadows thrown by the branches of seven leafless
oak trees. She walked slowly past the sailors who held up flags of the states
of this country. She walked past silent people who strained to see her and
then, seeing her, dropped their heads and put their hands over their eyes. She
walked out the northwest gate and into the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. She
walked with tight steps and her head was high and she followed the body of her
murdered husband through the streets of Washington.
Everybody watched her while she
walked. She is the mother of two fatherless children and she was walking into
the history of this country because she was showing everybody who felt old and
helpless and without hope that she had this terrible strength that everybody
needed so badly. Even though they had killed her husband and his blood ran onto
her lap while he died, she could walk through the streets and to his grave and
help us all while she walked.
There was mass, and then the
procession to Arlington. When she came up to the grave at the cemetery, the
casket already was in place. It was set between brass railings and it was ready
to be lowered into the ground. This must be the worst time of all, when a woman
sees the coffin with her husband inside and it is in place to be buried under
the earth. Now she knows that it is forever. Now there is nothing. There is no
casket to kiss or hold with your hands. Nothing material to cling to. But she
walked up to the burial area and stood in front of a row of six green-covered
chairs and she started to sit down, but then she got up quickly and stood
straight because she was not going to sit down until the man directing the
funeral told her what seat he wanted her to take.
The ceremonies began, with jet planes
roaring overhead and leaves falling from the sky. On this hill behind the
coffin, people prayed aloud. They were cameramen and writers and soldiers and
Secret Service men and they were saying prayers out loud and choking. In front
of the grave, Lyndon Johnson kept his head turned to his right. He is president
and he had to remain composed. It was better that he did not look at the casket
and grave of John Fitzgerald Kennedy too often. Then it was over and black
limousines rushed under the cemetery trees and out onto the boulevard toward
the White House. "What time is it?" a man standing on the hill was
asked. He looked at his watch. "Twenty minutes past three," he said.
Clifton Pollard wasn't at the funeral.
He was over behind the hill, digging graves for $3.01 an hour in another
section of the cemetery. He didn't know who the graves were for. He was just
digging them and then covering them with boards. "They'll be used,"
he said. "We just don't know when. I tried to go over to see the
grave," he said. "But it was so crowded a soldier told me I couldn't
get through. So I just stayed here and worked, sir. But I'll get over there
later a little bit. Just sort of look around and see how it is, you know. Like
I told you, it's an honor."
