A Kennedy Caravan

John F. Kennedy is the Hector and Achilles of the epic dramas that replay themselves in my dreams. That he was once for real, and that his achievements are as concrete as the granite slab on his grave, all the more add to my fixation on this 20th century prince who paid more than lip service to civil rights in the US and saved the world from nuclear annihilation in the early ’60s (the Cuban missile crisis). I think I memorized the names of the members of his Cabinet even before I could memorize those in President Marcos’ Cabinet for my Social Studies quiz in grade school.

I still turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to stories of Marilyn and Judith and all the rest and don’t think my idol JFK had clay feet because of his passion for pursuits other than his job. Okay, maybe JFK had one clay toe.

In 1989, as part of President Cory Aquino’s press team, I went to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, where she was going to lay a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and address Filipino-American World War II veterans at the amphitheater. I knew JFK was buried there and that patch of earth where he lay in peace was a mecca for the JFK devotee that I am. Alas, I was there to work, and presidential coverages are timed with military-like precision (especially under then RTVM director Maria Montelibano). After Cory gave her speech, there was no more time for me to rush to JFK’s grave and weep like an orphan. I couldn’t help but sigh in grief, “Oh JFK, so near yet so far!” As our press van exited Arlington’s stately gates, I made a silent vow with the fervor of MacArthur, that I was going to return. I held back the tears, but didn’t think I was going to hold them back for 20 years...

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It is 2009, and Camarines Sur Gov. LRay Villafuere invites me to be part of his delegation to the Gawad Kalinga housing summit in Cambridge, which is in the Greater Boston Area. Now JFK was originally from Boston, studied there and graduated from Harvard. After he died, many believed he was in fact going to be buried in Massachusetts.

His widow Jacqueline decided to bury JFK in Arlington (a few hours away by train from Boston), because she believed he belonged not only to his hometown, but “to the people.” Instead, she built the JFK Museum and Library in Boston. Both his burial place and his library are holy sites to me, and though I adore LRay and Gawad Kalinga’s Tony Meloto, I had a hidden agenda in accepting their invitation to Boston.

I wanted to genuflect anew before the altar of my childhood dreams and adult hopes.

After the summit, Chelo Banal Formoso and I took a cab to Harvard Square, just outside the prestigious 17th century Harvard University. Harvard itself is a tree-shaded campus of old sturdy brick buildings, with ivy crawling over most of them. Small compared to the UP or Ateneo campus, Harvard looks more to me like a well preserved Fort Santiago. You are in a fortress, except that this is a fortress of learning, and you know, that as your feet trample on the grass that carpets the campus, you are tracing the steps of people who changed the world, from JFK to Obama.

Outside the main gates of Harvard is a quaint square of bookstores, souvenir shops and other offices called Harvard Square. Its main avenue is named after... you know! I think the Kennedy fan in me feels like she’s on Disneyland’s Main Street.

We retreat to a souvenir shop, The Coop, whose main mural is of a young college student named...you know!

On our last day in Boston, LRay takes us to the JFK Museum and Library by the Charles River, which my husband Ed and I visited in 1996. It was nice to revisit the museum, which has a new addition, a gallery devoted to Jackie. The clothes she wore on her trip to India and Pakistan are on display, aside from her sketches, her poems and countless photographs.

A visit to the JFK museum makes you believe not only in destiny, but also in your ability to chart your own destiny. JFK was the second son and resigned to becoming a professor till his oldest brother Joe died during the war. He was then pressured to fill his brother’s shoes and fulfill their father’s dream of having a Kennedy become the first Irish-Catholic president of the US. JFK had the opportunity to be president, and he seized it. Kennedy is a symbol of fulfilled opportunities, while his death is a symbol of a missed opportunity –– not Kennedy’s, but ours. For in Kennedy was an opportunity to make this world better, more peaceful, more hopeful...

From Boston, I took a train to Philadelphia where my sister Dr. Geraldine Mayor lives. Philadelphia, the US capital before Washington DC became the US capital, is another open-air museum of American history. It is like a three-dimensional history book, which you’ve probably seen in the Nicolas Cage hit, National Treasure. From Philadelphia, my sister and I drove to DC in fulfillment of my 20-year-old vow to return to where JFK was buried.

After paying $7.50 each for tour around Arlington, my sister and I hopped on a tram that took us to four stops around the tourist spot of a cemetery (I believe one reason America is great is because it reveres those who gave up their lives for their country, whether president or unknown soldier). The first stop took us to JFK’s gravesite, a cobblestoned enclosure that includes the graves as well of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and their two infant children, Patrick and an unnamed baby girl. The wife and two minor children of dignitaries buried in Arlington are allowed to be buried there as well. JFK Jr., who was already married when he died, was cremated and his ashes strewn over the Atlantic Ocean.

The grave area is paved with irregular stones of Cape Cod granite, which were quarried around 1817 near the site of the president’s home and selected by members of his family. Clover, and later, sedum were planted in the crevices to give the appearance of stones lying naturally in a Massachusetts field.

Kennedy was said to once remarked during a visit to the Custis-Lee mansion on Arlington, which had a breathtaking view of DC, that he “could stay forever.” Mrs. Kennedy had expressed a desire to mark the president’s grave with an eternal flame similar to that of the French Unknown Soldier in Paris. The Washington Gas Company was contacted and a propane-fed torch was selected, as it could be safely lit during the funeral the following day.

The only other president buried in Arlington is William Howard Taft, 27th president of the US and civil governor of the Philippines in 1900.

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So what was the moment like? After 20 years of waiting to see where JFK is buried, and waiting to behold the eternal flame that burns above his tombstone, what did this Kennedy devotee feel?

She felt like the eternal flame itself, her devotion to the man she never met but knew through stories, books and magazines, burning bright; raging, raging, eternally.

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