Politics & Government

Obama, Clinton to Visit Kennedy Gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery

The 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is Friday, Nov. 22.

Originally posted by Jason Spencer.

President Barack Obama will visit the John F. Kennedy gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday afternoon to honor the late president just days before the 50th anniversary of his assassination.

The president and First Lady Michelle Obama will be joined by former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a brief wreath-laying ceremony Wednesday afternoon at the gravesite, according to the Associated Press.

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Members of the Kennedy family will also attend, according to the president's official schedule.

Obama, too, will speak Wednesday evening on President Kennedy's legacy of service at the Smithsonian American History Museum, according to the AP.

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The sitting president quoted Kennedy earlier this year in the State of the Union address, saying, "the Constitution makes us not rivals for power but partners for progress. … It is my task to report the State of the Union — to improve it is the task of all."

Arlington National Cemetery is expecting large crowds this week.

Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, at age 46. The 50th anniversary of that event is Friday.

Five decades later, conspiracy theories abound as to exactly what happened that day, and people the world over who were alive at the time still remember where they were when they first heard the news.

Wednesday morning, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and other dignitaries will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Arlington National Cemetery Executive Director Patrick Hallinan and Maj. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Military District of Washington, will participate in a brief wreath-laying ceremony Friday morning, on the actual anniversary of Kennedy's death.

And the Irish Defence Forces 37th Cadet Class, which provided the honor guard during Kennedy's funeral, will hold a remembrance ceremony at the cemetery on Monday.

Late last month, the eternal flame at the Kennedy family gravesite was restored after a six-month upgrade.

During the maintenance, a temporary flame — lit from the permanent burner — was on display for the public.

Kennedy first formally visited Arlington National Cemetery on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1961, to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, according to the cemetery's website.

That day, the president spoke to more than 5,000 people at the cemetery's Memorial Amphitheater.

"We meet in quiet commemoration of a historic day of peace," he said, according to the cemetery's website. "In an age that threatens the survival of freedom, we join together to honor those who made our freedom possible. ... It is a tragic fact, that war still more destructive and still sanguinary followed [World War II]; that man's capacity to devise new ways of killing his fellow men have far outstripped his capacity to live in peace with his fellow man."

In November 1963, 42-year-old Clifton Pollard dug Kennedy's grave. He made $3.01 an hour.

"Now they're going to come and put him right here in this grave I'm making up," Pollard said at the time, according to a famous account by the New York Herald Tribune. "You know, it's an honor just for me to do this."


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