State papers: JFK's wife Jackie requested Irish army cadets take part in his funeral
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President John F Kennedy's wife, Jackie, phoned the Irish Embassy in Washington just hours after his assassination in Dallas 60 years ago to request that cadets from the Irish army participate in his State funeral.
Secret papers released by the National Archives reveal Irish officials took immediate steps to respond to Mrs Kennedy’s call in recognition of the historic significance of members of the Defence Forces having a role in the funeral of the Irish-American president.
JFK had made the first-ever visit to Ireland by a serving US president just months earlier.
Documents also show officials originally believed the approach had been made by the US ambassador in Dublin via the US State Department rather than directly from the president’s wife.
Irish civil servants were determined to ensure Ms Kennedy’s request, in recognition of her husband’s pride in his Irish heritage, would be acceded to with the approach recorded for posterity in files kept on the assassination which have been released for the first time.
Some of the records are also currently on public display in the National Archives in Dublin.
President Kennedy was shot and killed as he toured Dallas in a motorcade on November 22, 1963.
The circumstances of his death remain the focus of one of the greatest conspiracy theories in history, although evidence points to him being killed by a lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
The vice-president, Lyndon Johnson, was sworn in as US president on Air Force One as it transported President Kennedy's coffin back to Washington.
The files show Mrs Kennedy, who had returned to the White House while still wearing clothes that had been splattered with her husband’s blood, began to prepare arrangements for the State funeral almost immediately.
One of her first actions was to ask for cadets from the Defence Forces to participate in the ceremony.
She called the then-Irish ambassador to the US, T J Kiernan, in “the early morning hours” of the day after his assassination to ask if military cadets from Ireland could be sent to the US for his funeral.
The taoiseach, Seán Lemass, gave his immediate assent to the request and a contingent from the Officer Cadet School flew to Washington the following day on the same plane that brought the president, Éamon de Valera, to the funeral.
The revelation that Mrs Kennedy had personally phoned the Irish Embassy just hours after her husband's assassination fascinated officials.
An embassy official in June 1965 said although a formal approach for the participation of the cadets at the ceremony was made through the US ambassador in Dublin, Ms Kennedy’s direct approach should be recorded as it was “of considerable historic interest”.
The US president and his wife were on close terms with Dr Kiernan, who had played a pivotal role in organising their highly successful four-day State visit to Ireland in June 1963, including a visit to his ancestral home town of New Ross, Co Wexford.