Posted by Kennedy, 77, was not only an Army veteran, but also a 46-year member of the U.S. Senate, which accords him the right to be buried at the national cemetery in Virginia, across the Potomac River from the Capitol where he served.
The Massachusetts Democrat, who died late Tuesday following a yearlong battle with brain cancer, will be laid to rest near the grave of his brother Robert, who was assassinated in 1968 as he campaigned for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
That, in turn, is near and up a hill from the resting place of their older brother, the president, who was slain in Dallas in 1963. The former president is buried there near other members of his family, including the former first lady, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.
The third of the Kennedy brothers to receive a burial with military honors at Arlington served in the Army from 1951 to 1953, stationed in Europe during the Korean War. He was a private first class in the military police for Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, then located in Paris.
Kennedy’s body will lie in repose at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston starting Thursday. A funeral Mass is planned Saturday at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica — the “Mission Church” — in the city’s Mission Hill neighborhood. The basilica is where Kennedy prayed daily while his daughter, Kara, successfully battled her own cancer.
After the Mass in Boston, Kennedy will be buried later that day at Arlington.
Arlington National Cemetery, site of the Tomb of the Unknowns, also is the burial ground for more than 300,000 people. It was created in 1864 on land once owned by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Some of the veterans of all the nation’s wars rest there, with some from antebellum conflicts reinterred in 1900.
