Moving Out

Jackie Kennedy moved out of the White House on a sunny but crisply cool afternoon late last week. Until her departure, last-minute deliveries kept arriving at the red brick Georgetown house lent to her by Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman.

There was a two-wheeled bicycle, a box marked "John's Toys--N Street," pink and blue covered parakeet cages, hatboxes, a generous supply of French wines, and a bulging briefcase bearing the initials J.F.K. A maid arrived, carrying an armload of White House guidebooks. A Washington florist delivered yellow chrysanthemums. Then, just after 1 p.m., a black White House limousine arrived, and out stepped Jackie, Caroline and John Jr. Accompanying them were Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, who chatted for half an hour, then left Jackie smiling at the front door.

For "Exceptional Bravery." On each of four previous days, two moving vans and a crew of six workers had arrived early at the White House to pick up the Kennedy family's personal possessions. Much was trucked off to storage until Jackie decides on a permanent home, the rest to the Harriman house. John F. Kennedy's papers were also being packed and crated. Presumably his personal files and correspondence would go with Jackie, his official presidential papers warehoused until completion of the Kennedy Memorial Library in Boston.

In the east wing of the White House, letters offering prayers and sympathy for Jackie piled up in stacks six feet high --over 300,000 in all. And at the Treasury Department Building, Jackie, expressionless, watched Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon award the department's citation for "exceptional bravery" to Secret Service Man Clinton J. Hill. It was Hill, assigned to protect Jackie since the day she became First Lady, who ran to the rear of the presidential limousine in Dallas after Kennedy had been killed, clambered onto the bumper and clutched Jackie's hand as she pulled him aboard.

At Their Father's Side. At Jackie's request, the remains of her two dead children--Patrick Bouvier, who died last August less than 48 hours after caesarean birth, and a girl stillborn in 1956--were reburied beside their father in Arlington National Cemetery. There was no advance announcement; instead, the transfer was moved up by a day when it appeared that newsmen might get wind of it. Patrick's body was accompanied to Quonset, R.I., from the Kennedy burial plot at Brookline, Mass., by Boston's Richard Cardinal Gushing and Municipal Judge Francis X. Morrissey, both family friends. The stillborn girl was brought by a Catholic priest from Newport, R.I.

At Quonset, the small white coffins were put aboard the Kennedy family plane, Caroline, as it stood, deliberately inconspicuous, at a far corner of the airfield. Senator Edward Kennedy accompanied them on the two-hour flight to Washington. At 8:40 that evening, a handful of relatives and close friends stood with Jackie during a 20-minute burial service in the flickering light of the "eternal flame" that burns at the head of John Kennedy's grave.

One Other President. Federal rules are explicit about who may be buried in Arlington, and include: persons honorably discharged from active service in the U.S. armed forces, reservists who have served on active duty other than training, all Cabinet members who held office between April 6, 1917 and Nov. 11, 1918, the widows or widowers of persons already buried in Arlington, along with their minor children; and, at the discretion of the Secretary of the Army, unmarried sons and daughters over 21.

The rules limit a family to a single gravesite. The law also provides, however, that the Secretary of the Army, with the approval of the Secretary of Defense, may authorize larger sites. Accordingly, the Pentagon had offered to set aside for the Kennedy family a total of 3.2 acres. At week's end, however, Jackie asked that those plans be canceled, requested only enough space for eligible Kennedy family members, plus a suitable monument for the dead President.

The largest individual Arlington plot previously set aside was the seven-tenths of an acre on which General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, is buried. Only one other President--William Howard Taft--is buried in Arlington, on a plot of six-hundredths of an acre shared by his wife.

$ 10,000-a-Year. By week's end, both branches of the Congress had unanimously voted to pay the expenses of President Kennedy's funeral. The Congress also voted Jackie free office space for six to twelve months, the difference to be resolved by a conference committee, as well as continued Secret Service protection and $50,000 to help pay her personal staff. Following past practice, she will receive a $10,000-a-year widow's pension and free use of the mails for life.

Jackie's temporary home in Georgetown, built in 1805, was purchased by the Harrimans last spring from Pennsylvania's Governor William Scranton for $165,000. It has seven bedrooms, a dining room to seat 18, and a block-long terraced garden with fine old English boxwood, magnolia trees and a swimming pool. There Jackie will be surrounded by the paintings of Cezanne, Matisse, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec. Only three blocks away is the home where she lived for three years while her husband was a U.S. Senator.

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