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RFK Visits Brother’s Grave Before and After Inauguration

Jan. 20, 1965 - On a bleak, snow-topped hillside above the Potomac, a silent cluster of visitors chose to pay their respects to the 35th President today while the 36th was being inaugurated.

As noon passed and President Johnson assumed in his own right the post that had been President Kennedy’s, three dozen spectators stood outside the white picket fence in Arlington National Cemetery surrounding the quadrangle of the Kennedy grave.

Little more than an hour before, Senator Robert F. Kennedy (pictured listening to Johnson’s Inaugural address today) had paused on the way from his Virginia home to the Capitol to visit his brother’s grave. He stood there for a moment, head bowed in silent prayer, before proceeding to the Inaugural ceremony. He was there again after the ceremony.

Another morning visitor was Dave Powers, one of the late President’s closest personal associates, who resigned as a special assistant to the White House last Saturday.

As President Johnson began his address, the sun brightened over the small silent plot, the wind died for a moment, and the flame on the tomb of John Fitzgerald Kennedy shot up once more. On the hillside above, a single television camera was directed toward Capitol Hill as the cemetery bells pealed out over the river.

There, the two Senators Kennedy, Robert from New York and Edward from Massachusetts, walked side by side with their colleagues from the Senate chamber through the Capitol to their seats on the Inaugural platform.

Like President Johnson and Vice President Humphrey, neither of the brothers wore an overcoat against the frosty weather. Edward walked with a cane, still recuperating from the broken back he suffered in a plane crash last summer.

After the ceremony, most of the Senators went back into the Capitol and took the subway to their offices. But the two Kennedys took the overland route, striding through the dispersing crowds to applause and cries of recognition.

On his way back to his family in Virginia after the Inaugural, Robert Kennedy found time to stop again at his brother’s grave. As he stood with his head bowed, he picked up a piece of snow in his left hand, silently crushed it, turned and walked down the hill.



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