According to its website, Arlington National Cemetery was not considered a natural site for John F. Kennedy. However, Jackie Kennedy herself was instrumental in making it so. According to the cemetery’s website, before JFK’s burial only one president, William Howard Taft, had been laid to rest at the grounds. But Arlington Cemetery was especially significant to the Kennedys. On Veteran’s Day in 1961, the year in which JFK was inaugurated, the president gave a major speech at the amphitheater to an audience of 5,000 after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He had visited again on Veteran’s Day just eleven days before his shocking death, meaning the cemetery bookended his short but legendary presidency.
Arlington thus trumped another suggested burial place in Brookline, Massachusetts, where JFK was raised, with Jackie and others close to him deciding that the Virginia site was more accessible for Americans who wished to pay their respects to him. Since Jackie’s death it has become a place of pilgrimage for those wanting to commemorate her life, too.
