Dec. 22, 1963 - Lyndon B. Johnson turned tonight to the words and the shrine of one slain President to say goodbye to another. His short but ringing farewell to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in a candlelight service that ended a month of national mourning, was threaded with phrases and paraphrases from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. About 14,000 persons, the flames of their candles shining in the gathering dusk, stood shivering in the cold at the Lincoln Memorial to share the farewell service with the 36th President. Seven Cabinet members and two Supreme Court Justices were there with Mrs. Johnson and her daughter Lucy Baines. By the time the new President’s family had returned to the White House, the crepe that had darkened the portico of the Executive mansion was gone. Mr. Johnson lighted the national Christmas tree on the Ellipse, a tall spruce from West Virginia. And the nation’s mourning for John Kennedy — the official mourning at least — was over.
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