John F. Kennedy - Eternal Flame
Thursday, June 12th, 2008
I know this is going to sound crazy, being I was about 2.5 years old…but I remember images of this event that had been etched in my memory bank since it’s happening. The images I remember are my Mother ironing clothes, I was on the floor playing with my brother Mark, watching the TV…then my Mom starts crying…
1963: The President of the United States, John F. Kennedy shot dead in Dallas, Texas.
After all the images, through so many years…I finally get to experence “The John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame”. The Flame is a presidential memorial at the gravesite of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in Arlington National Cemetery. The gravesite is aligned with the Lincoln Memorial across the Memorial Bridge.
After the assassination of the President, the widowed First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, requested an eternal flame for his gravesite. She was inspired by the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which she and her husband had seen during a visit to France in 1961…or took inspiration from the “candle in the wind” of the Broadway Play “Camelot.”
The selection of an eternal flame to commemorate President Kennedy was the first time in the US that an individual known person was given such an honor (as opposed to an Unknown Soldier).
Previously, the only eternal flame within the U.S. was the torch burning constantly at the battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in honor of the dead from the American Civil War.
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