In the shadow of the White House and across the solemn expanse of Arlington National Cemetery lies a story that is at once public ritual and intensely private grief, a story that unfolded in the chaotic hours and days after November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. It is a story shaped not only by national mourning but by the resolve of Jacqueline Kennedy, the discipline of the U.S. military, and, decades later, the rediscovery of a long-forgotten work of art meant to permanently frame the president’s resting place.

When Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base that fateful evening, the nation was in shock and Lyndon B. Johnson had already been sworn in aboard the plane. Waiting on the tarmac was a young Army sergeant named James Felder, head of the Army Honor Guard team that would accompany Kennedy’s body for the next several days. Only 23 years old, Felder had already conducted more than 1,100 funerals at Arlington, including that of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Still, nothing in his experience could have prepared him for what was to come.

The president’s body was transported by ambulance to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where a six-hour autopsy took place. Felder stood watch as doctors worked through the night. The original Dallas casket arrived damaged — one handle broken — prompting Jacqueline Kennedy to order a new one. In the early hours, three of Kennedy’s closest aides were dispatched to Gawler’s Funeral Home, where they selected a massive African mahogany casket weighing nearly 1,000 pounds. Later, the original casket would be filled with cement and consigned to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

Inside the morgue, Felder and his team helped transfer Kennedy’s body into the new casket, a process he later described as deeply emotional given the condition of the president’s head. Jackie Kennedy refused an open casket. When she finally saw her husband in the White House East Room, she cut a lock of his hair, placed her wedding ring beside him, and ordered the casket closed forever.

For the next two days, the casket lay in state — first at the White House, then in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, where lines stretched miles into the night. Felder stood nearby as heads of state, Supreme Court justices, and political rivals filed past. He watched Jackie and young Caroline Kennedy place their hands upon the flag-draped coffin, a moment of quiet dignity that contrasted sharply with the roar of history outside.

On November 25, the funeral mass was held at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. World leaders walked behind the caisson bearing Kennedy’s body across the Memorial Bridge toward Arlington. The casket, now extraordinarily heavy, had to be carried up a steep incline to the burial site beneath the Custis-Lee Mansion — a spot Kennedy himself had once said he could “stay at forever.”

At the graveside, after the final rites and the lighting of the eternal flame, something unplanned and unforgettable occurred. One by one, members of the joint Honor Guard removed their caps and laid them atop the fresh grave — Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines — a spontaneous act of respect that moved even Robert F. Kennedy. “Leave them there until they crumble,” he told his sister-in-law. For nearly four years, a white picket fence encircled the site as the caps slowly weathered away.

In 1967, the grave was moved roughly 20 feet to accommodate the millions who came to pay their respects. Jacqueline Kennedy enlisted landscape designer Rachel “Bunny” Mellon to redesign the site, creating the gently undulating stone terrace that suggests waves — a quiet maritime reference to Kennedy’s PT-109 service. What few knew at the time was that Mellon and famed Tiffany designer Jean Schlumberger were also secretly planning something far more ambitious.

Between 1966 and 1970, they commissioned French sculptor Louis Féron to create a massive bronze wreath meant to encircle the eternal flame. The design incorporated symbolic elements: palm fronds recalling the South Pacific, interwoven branches, and — most strikingly — six sculpted military caps representing the Honor Guard hats left on the original grave. One of them unmistakably mirrored Felder’s Army cover.

The project was treated as top secret. Letters were written in coded language. Féron was paid $50,000 in installments and worked meticulously in his New Hampshire studio, producing 25 interlocking bronze pieces, each cast with intricate detail and aged with special patinas. A full-scale maquette was assembled in 1973 at Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia so Jackie Kennedy and Mellon could evaluate it away from public scrutiny.

Then, inexplicably, the plan stalled. In a 1970 letter, Jackie Kennedy Onassis vaguely referenced “complications at Arlington.” Whether due to aesthetic objections, logistical concerns, or political sensitivities, the sculpture was never installed. Instead, it was crated, shipped to Boston, and placed in storage under Féron’s name — two years before the JFK Library even opened.

For decades, the wreath effectively disappeared from public memory. Only during the COVID-19 pandemic did volunteers at Oak Spring stumble upon records of the maquette, reigniting interest in the lost memorial. Eventually, the pieces were located at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, where they remain today, largely unseen by the public.

The fragments — including the “Integration” centerpiece, the palm branch, and the six caps — reveal what might have been: an eight-foot bronze circle of remembrance surrounding the eternal flame, uniting military sacrifice, maritime imagery, and national grief in a single sculptural gesture. As museum director Alan Price notes, assembling the work takes days and several people, a testament to its complexity and symbolic weight.

For James Felder, now a respected civil rights activist and former South Carolina legislator, seeing a sculpted version of his hat decades later was profoundly moving. He had never imagined that his spontaneous gesture in 1963 would become part of an unfinished national artwork.

The story of Kennedy’s burial — from the frantic decisions at Bethesda to the silent bronze wreath in Boston — reminds us that history is not only what is seen, but what is hidden, altered, or abandoned along the way. Arlington’s eternal flame still burns in its simple stone basin, unadorned by Féron’s wreath. Yet in storage rooms and quiet cemeteries, echoes of a different vision remain.

What endures most, however, is not a sculpture, but the human drama that surrounded it: a widow shaping her husband’s legacy, a young sergeant bearing the weight of a nation’s grief, and artists striving to capture memory in metal. Together, they form a layered, unfinished monument to a presidency cut short — one that continues to provoke wonder, debate, and reflection more than sixty years later.