Presidential Funerals: How and Why We Mourn Our Leaders

How do we mourn our presidents and former presidents? Where did all those very public rituals come from? And how much input does a president have in their own post-death ceremonies? We break down the history and mystery of presidential funerals with Lindsay Chervinsky and Matthew Costello. This episode of Civics 101 was produced by senior producer Christina Phillps and mixed by Rebecca Lavoie. It was hosted by Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy. Special thanks to Jacqui Fulton. CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:28Speaker 01

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• 1:29Nick Capodice?

  You're listening to Civics 101, New Hampshire Public Radio Show, about the basics of how our democracy works. And today, in the wake of the death of President Jimmy Carter, we have a special episode about how we mourn our presidents.

• 1:43Speaker 04

  But he often said, "When the really tough choices come, it's the country, not me." It's not about Democrats or Republicans, it's for our country that I fought for.

• 1:59Nick Capodice?

  Right now, we are listening to audio from President George H.W. Bush's 2018 memorial service at the Washington National Cathedral. And I want you to listen to how Bush is being described as a human being.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  The George Herbert Walker Bush, who survived that fiery fall into the waters of the Pacific three-quarters of a century ago.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Made our lives and the lives of nations freer, better, warmer, and nobler.

• 2:31Nick Capodice?

  Now, as the video of the memorial pans over the audience, you can see Bush's family, including his son, President George W. Bush, and you also see former presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and the sitting president at the time, Donald Trump.

• 2:46Speaker 05

  And when he died, there was this incredible outpouring of grief, of memorials, of remembrances, people telling stories about him, and they were quite laudatory.

• 3:02Nick Capodice?

  This is Lindsay Trivinsky. She's a presidential historian and co-author of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, where she and her co-author Matthew Costello explore how we remember our presidents when they die. And when she was watching the funeral of George H. W. Bush, one thing stuck out to her.

• 3:21Speaker 05

  When someone passes away, you know, family or friends, they want to put the best version of that person forward. But what struck us as interesting was that people who had been sometimes very critical of Bush 41, here they were talking about how he was kind, and he was decent, and his presidency represented a moment of international strength and international stability.

• 3:45Speaker 04

  I believe it will be said that no occupant of the Oval Office was more courageous, more principled, and more honorable than George Herbert Walker Bush.

• 3:57Speaker 05

  And that seemed to say a lot more about the current political moment that we were living in in 2018 than actually necessarily him. But I think it was more a reflection of the American people's desperate desire to have a little bit more civility, a little bit more stability in our political life, a longing for a time when people on both sides of the aisle could speak to one another even if they disagreed, and a longing for what the presidency could be. Good evening. Former President Harry S. Truman died this morning at age 88.

• 4:33Nick Capodice?

  I'm Nick Capodice. I'm Hannah McCarthy. We're talking about how we as a nation mourn our deceased presidents. The Associated Press is reporting at this hour... That former President Ronald Reagan has died. We're talking about the funerals themselves, but we are also talking about legacy. With the greatest regret, two priests who were with President Kennedy say he has died of bullet wounds. And how ceremony, tradition, and media coverage around a president's death contribute to that legacy. His aims for a better world will be carried on.

• 5:08Speaker 05

  The president died in harness, still working for the better world he hoped to help shape.

• 5:15Speaker 06

  Nick, I know that we're not in the United Kingdom, and we don't have monarchs. But the clearest image I have of a major state funeral is the one for Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. The logistics of that funeral, including the fact that the whole operation had its own title, it was called Operation London Bridge. It was all kind of a spectacle, and it had been planned for years with all sorts of customs that I think we think of as integral to the monarchy. But what about the United States? Do we have specific rules or rituals for mourning presidents?

• 5:54Speaker 02

  There is really no uniform way to mourn a president.

• 5:58Nick Capodice?

  This is Matthew Costello. He is Lindsay's co-author and senior historian at the White House Historical Association. And he says that while there isn't a uniform way to mourn the president, it has become a bureaucratic process, one that is folded into the federal government with plans and staff and defined roles. But it wasn't always so official.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  So obviously, state funerals have evolved and changed over time. And I would say that the state funerals, as we know today, very different. If you go back in the 19th century, presidents and former presidents.

• 6:37Speaker 06

  Presidents, most of these things were just paid for and done by the families themselves. We should clarify, I think, a state funeral means it's run and sanctioned by the government, like a state dinner?

• 6:49Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, and these days, a state funeral is a three-step process that can go anywhere from seven to 10 days. It includes the marching of the casket through the Capitol, public viewing of the casket in the Capitol Rotunda, and live broadcasts of the funeral.

• 7:06Speaker 06

  The public viewing part of the body, we call this lying in state, right?

• 7:12Nick Capodice?

  Right, yeah, we do. State, like the federal government. And we know that this went on at least as early as the 17th century in England, but funeral rites of rulers in the early days were probably more about proving that the old monarch was dead and affirming the legitimacy of the new ruler.

• 7:30Speaker 06

  I feel like you're saying it was political.

• 7:32Nick Capodice?

  Matter of fact, Hannah, and I do think this is something to think about as we talk about presidential funerals in the US. The business of burying a monarch, where they were laid to rest, what kinds of ceremonies were performed, had a lot to do with the transfer of power and the maintenance of power.

• 7:50Speaker 06

  Okay, I'm listening.

• 7:52Nick Capodice?

  Okay, so for example, in the early days, and I'm talking like 14th century, 15th century, the monarchy was not necessarily hereditary.

• 8:01Speaker 06

  As in, the former king's son was not guaranteed the job?

• 8:06Nick Capodice?

  Right, so the new guy in power might use the former king as political propaganda. You know, wasn't he so great? Look, I'm just like him. Or, let's say the opposite, the old king was deposed. You know, we're looking at a conqueror hypothetically. That conqueror might hide or destroy the body of the old king. Pay no attention to what came before me, I'm the new hot ticket.

• 8:30Speaker 06

  That is cold!

• 8:33Nick Capodice?

  It is all part of the game, Hannah. The game of thrones.

• 8:38Speaker 06

  There it is! I knew we would get it in there one day!

• 8:41Speaker 04

  Dragons do not do well in captivity. How do you know this? That's what I do. I drink, and I know things.

• 8:53Nick Capodice?

  Also, you know, Christianity is on the rise at this time. Why not start to model King's mausoleums on saints' shrines?

• 9:02Speaker 06

  That is a clever move. Basically saying to everybody, "The king is godlier than you, plebeian."

• 9:10Nick Capodice?

  Exactly. So for a while there, new rulers were actually anointed as the new monarch next to their predecessors' tombs. It was a way of saying essentially, "Whatever he had, I have it now." Rule is a continuum that passes from one body to the next.

• 9:30Speaker 06

  Whoa, that is how you make a dynasty.

• 9:39Nick Capodice?

  All right, to jump ahead here, the lying in state thing in what we now call the UK had a lot of growing pains. From selling tickets to commoners, to visiting hours so crowded and chaotic that in at least one case, looking at you, Queen Mary II, people lost their wigs. And possibly, depending on whether you trust the scuttlebutt, their lives.

• 10:00Speaker 06

  I bet they didn't get the royal treatment.

• 10:04Nick Capodice?

  So the whole post-death ceremony varied from ruler to ruler as we get into the 1700s. But it tended to be less public, less ostentatious, more solemn, sometimes super-exclusive. More about the eternal salvation of the soul than projecting royalty to the people. Worth mentioning here that the royal coffers were not always overflowing in this era, and giant ceremonies are expensive. Also worth mentioning, from the 18th century on, even though England, suddenly the United Kingdom, is becoming a truly global power... Guess what the royals were dealing with?

• 10:45Speaker 06

  Um, perfecting that wave.

• 10:48Nick Capodice?

  Enlightenment.

• 10:49Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Okay, that was my next guess.

• 10:51Nick Capodice?

  Science, philosophy, government structure, individuality, a body politic parliament is doing its thing. Outside of London, not many people are paying a lot of attention to the person with the crown. Royal pageantry, frankly, is a little much when you're just hoping the monarch doesn't mess with your plans for global domination. Then one of your best crown jewels, America, calls it quits on you and gets really powerful. And then Germany eventually becomes really powerful. And then Queen Victoria is so sad about the death of Prince Albert that she never hangs out anymore. And suddenly Hannah, suddenly the people need a little something.

• 11:30Speaker 06

  A little show. Something to bring everybody together.

• 11:33Nick Capodice?

  Something to bring everybody together. King Edward VII, Victoria's son, went pageantry everywhere and a proper Westminster lying in state for throngs of crowds to attend. So began a new era of public royal death ceremony that was trying very hard to call to mind an old era of public royal death ceremony.

• 11:58Speaker 06

  In other words, Nick, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but it sounds like they are doing the exact same thing that kings in England had been trying to do like a thousand years ago. Basically, we're telling you that we're popular and important so that you make us popular and important.

• 12:17Nick Capodice?

  A penny for the thoughts of the crown, right? But that feels right.

• 12:20Speaker 06

  Okay, it seems like we do something very similar here, do we not?

• 12:27Nick Capodice?

  Well, I don't know, Hannah. It kind of depends on your point of view. Are our president's posthumous proceedings part of a power play?

• 12:34Speaker 06

  Say that five times fast.

• 12:35Nick Capodice?

  Or are they about honor and national tradition? Or are they both? We are going to have to leave that for our listeners to decide. Speaking of, Civics 101 is about the United States, so I think we should get back on it.

• 12:50Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Onward over the pond.

• 13:00Nick Capodice?

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• 13:45Nick Capodice?

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• 14:28Nick Capodice?

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• 15:12Nick Capodice?

  Just go to incogni.com/civics, or use the code CIVICS at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  Host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are no antibiotics in their meat department, ever, so carve up turkey and spiral-cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from 365 Brand. And guess what? All their delectable pies are made with no high-fructose corn syrup. Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want, only at Whole Foods Market.

• 15:58Nick Capodice?

  Presidential funerals. At least a week of grand to-do.

• 16:03Speaker 06

  Grand to-do put on by the federal government.

• 16:07Nick Capodice?

  That's right.

• 16:08Speaker 06

  So you mentioned marching the casket to the Capitol, days of public viewing in the rotunda, tons of press. I would guess also tons of security, tons of very important invitees. Even us commoners have to shell out astonishing amounts of money for our own wakes and funerals. Who is paying for the late president's ceremonies?

• 16:34Nick Capodice?

  The government pays for the labor, transportation, and security. And the planning of a state funeral typically involves multiple branches of the military, foreign dignitaries, and coordinating with the media. It's almost like a menu of options the president's family can choose. Like that thing, I don't know if you've seen this, Hannah, where a riderless horse with empty boots facing backwards in the stirrups indicates that, quote, "The warrior will never ride again."

• 17:01Speaker 06

  Seriously, is that, is that something that we do? That's like so heavy with import.

• 17:07Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, Abraham Lincoln was the first that we know of to have it. And actually, there was a horse named Black Jack who carried the boots in Kennedy, Hoover, and Johnson's funerals. Black Jack had a reputation as a hot horse.

• 17:22Speaker 04

  He got this job because he was too wild to ride. In the middle of all this solemnity, there's one fool horse having the time of his life.

• 17:32Nick Capodice?

  Also, there are special seating arrangements for the services.

• 17:37Speaker 06

  Like in a wedding where the people who know the couple best get the seats closest to them and everyone pretends not to get their feelings hurt if they're in the nosebleed section? Is that just me who notices that?

• 17:48Nick Capodice?

  Actually Hannah, it's more about avoiding exactly that. You seat foreign dignitaries in a certain order so that nobody can be accused of having a special seat. Everything, every last detail is meticulously planned, down to where the bugler is supposed to stand to play taps.

• 18:07Speaker 06

  All right. But we did hear that things were not always so complicated. What did presidential funerals look like before?

• 18:16Speaker 05

  When George Washington died, he had really specified that he wanted a private family service. No fanfare, no military participation, no parades, nothing like that. And while his funeral was still relatively modest compared to what we've seen later, it certainly was bigger and had more pomp and circumstance than he intended, including 400 mock funerals across the country where people could attend and pay their respects and mourn the process, often with an empty casket, and an official ceremony in Philadelphia where Congress was currently positioned. So they had a funeral for him as well. So that's sort of like the first official one.

• 18:59Speaker 05

  Several of the presidents after that really did not have any sort of big service, even the ones that died in office.

• 19:05Speaker 06

  That sounds a lot like what you might see these days when a celebrity dies, right? There's a family funeral, but there might be a television special or a public memorial event. Not necessarily connected to the family, but that is still different from a state funeral that involves government bureaucracy. So, hang on, which president had the first true state funeral?

• 19:31Nick Capodice?

  That was President Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated in 1865. Lincoln was the first president to lie in state. And by the way, this isn't just a tradition for presidents. Government officials, members of the military, and private citizens have also been honored this way. For example, the Reverend Billy Graham's casket was in the Capitol Rotunda for two days when he died in 2018. But that can only happen if both the House and the Senate approve of it. And the reason that Lincoln was the first president with this kind of official, government-run funeral had a lot to do with the way he died and what was going on in the US at that time.

• 20:11Speaker 05

  He was shot on Good Friday. He died the next day, and then that Sunday was Easter Sunday. So there was a real religious sort of connotation to his death, that he had died for the sins of the nation. It was the first funeral in which the telegraph existed, so people were able to learn of his death almost immediately, and so it really did create a national experience.

• 20:35Speaker 06

  Oh, of course. Before the telegraph, depending on where you lived, it might take you a while to learn that the president had died. But afterward, the whole nation could ostensibly learn about it right away.

• 20:48Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, and that made it more of a collective, public mourning. I think it's also important to remember that the Confederacy had surrendered to the Union just a few days before Lincoln was shot. So the country wasn't just grieving a president, they were grieving the person who ended the Civil War.

• 21:08Speaker 05

  He laid in state at the White House and the Capitol, and then he was put on a train, and he was taken throughout most of the north of the nation on his way back to Illinois so that people could see him and express their grief and mourn. So that was the first one where it was a real to-do. It was a big thing, the body was moved several places. There were several opportunities for Americans across the country to witness, and it did have a national feeling because of how quickly news could spread at that point.

• 21:42Speaker 05

  Most presidents immediately after Lincoln did not have that type of funeral. But then I think the the the rise of the state funeral as a regular experience started to occur with Franklin D. Roosevelt.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  This nation has suffered this day a staggering loss. At this moment at Warm Springs, Georgia, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's lives with the problems of his of the nation finally lifted from his shoulders, stricken late this afternoon with cerebral hemorrhage.

• 22:11Speaker 05

  Why Franklin Roosevelt? Franklin Roosevelt was in office for 12 years. And so for a lot of people, if they were relatively young, he was the only president they remembered. And he had led the nation through the Great Depression, through the New Deal, and then through World War II. And so the concept that someone else would be president was almost kind of earth-shattering in its significance and really quite scary.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Everywhere, men at first say, "No, it is not true. I do not believe it. It could not happen now, not now." That is the thought of men who drive taxicabs and who sit in offices.

• 22:51Nick Capodice?

  President Franklin Roosevelt died in Georgia on April 12, 1945, and his body traveled by train to Washington, DC. It took four days, and hundreds of thousands of people showed up on this train's route. So it was like a giant, hundreds-of-miles-long funeral procession. And when the casket finally arrived in DC, about half a million people lined the streets to watch it march from Union Station to the White House. In this hour of national sorrow.

• 23:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've seen footage of this. The crowd is like a wall lining the road. And aside from the music played during the procession, it's really quiet. You know, there are thousands of people, and you can hear the hoofbeats of the horses.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  All the soldiers and servicemen in the crowd, stand firmly at attention.

• 23:45Speaker 05

  And now the case in will start. The mourning was akin to that of Abraham Lincoln because it represented this cataclysmic moment in American history. And then Truman, who followed FDR, he had a relatively modest ceremony, but starting in sort of the 1970s, 1980s, and moving forward, state funerals really have become a little bit more of the norm for presidents, even when they don't die in office.

• 24:17Speaker 06

  What about what happens after the funeral? Are there any rules for where a president is laid to rest or what kind of gravesite it should be?

• 24:25Nick Capodice?

  That decision is up to the family, but over the years, presidents have gotten more deliberate about making their burial sites into sort of a destination of their legacy. I'm talking about building a library or a museum, something like that on the site. Now, FDR started this trend when he decided he wanted to be buried at his Hyde Park Estate in New York.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  And Franklin Roosevelt is the first president to officially designate a presidential library with the intention of turning over all of his administration's records to the National Archives. The National Archives were created in 1934, and the plan in FDR's mind had always been, at some point, to be buried back at his home Hyde Park. And at some point, the presidential library that was built there would house the records and artifacts and else related to his administration. And he will be buried in the rose garden adjacent to his presidential library.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  And what Roosevelt starts is this more in a recent tradition that we've seen, where presidents or former presidents are buried at their presidential libraries.

• 25:39Nick Capodice?

  And the federal government was on board with this idea, and they made it official in 1955 with the Presidential Libraries Act. This act created a system that allowed presidents and their estates to construct private libraries that were maintained by the National Archives. And to be clear, the construction and operation of these libraries is not paid for by the government. A president might set up a nonprofit or something to fund the construction of the library. And once it's built, the library is transferred to the federal government, and the National Archives oversee its care when it comes to those government records. But many libraries also have events or programs that are not paid for by the government.

• 26:21Speaker 06

  I feel like this gets to the legacy question. And it sounds like, in this case, that legacy is in large part, the receipts, right? Here's proof of what this person did.

• 26:33Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, it makes sense, right? Because after a president leaves office, all that work they did when they were president becomes property of the government. It belongs to the public. And the National Archives makes sure it's properly cataloged and preserved. So it becomes kind of a partnership.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Nixon is buried at the Presidential Library in his family home, Yorba Linda, California. Gerald Ford is in Grand Rapids, close to where he grew up. Ronald Reagan is at the Reagan Presidential Library out in California. So some of these, you can see where it's kind of, well, they just want to be buried on, you know, near family, or close to where they grew up. I mean, all that makes sense. But I think that the decision that they make to place their Presidential Library where they placed them also tells us quite a lot.

• 27:23Speaker 06

  So these libraries are now being constructed while a president is alive. And that president can have a major say in this tomb/legacy repository.

• 27:37Nick Capodice?

  And these libraries aren't just like a storage place for historical documents. Most of them have museums with artifacts and exhibits open to the public. For example, a lot of Presidential Libraries have a recreation of the Oval Office as it looked when that particular president was in office.

• 27:54Speaker 05

  Often, if they've been alive for a while after their time in office, and increasingly that is the case as presidents live longer lives post-presidency, then...

• 28:06Speaker 05

  Our memories of their time in office start to fade a bit. What we do then think about them is how do they compare to where we are today? How do they compare to what we have seen? Did they contribute to the problems? Did they help the problems? And, you know, what does that mean?

• 28:22Nick Capodice?

  Some presidents have also built institutions that allow them to keep doing their work after they leave office. Take Jimmy Carter, for example. He opened the Carter Center. That is a nonpartisan organization for international peace building, and that is next to his presidential library in Atlanta.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  I was one of the youngest surviving presidents in this century. I was only 56 years old. I had a lot of plans ahead of me for the second term that I anticipated, and I wanted to figure out in my own mind, what can I do to utilize this tremendous remaining influence that I carry with me?

• 29:00Speaker 05

  President Carter is fairly unique in that he has been able to redefine his legacy through his post-presidential work. Most presidents are not able to change what their legacy is for the American people, and that message is kind of stuck. And it makes sense, because the presidency is when you have the most power, you have the biggest bully pulpit, you have access to the maximum number of Americans, and you're never again really going to have that kind of influence. But for Carter, because I think he only served one term and because he was so humble, he lived a life of service, his foundation really contributed to the eradication of

• 29:44Speaker 05

  two major diseases and helped with international peace agreements. I mean, it's just really extraordinary work. He's been able to shift how people think about him. I'm sure that a lot of us have thought about what our own legacy will be, or, you know, what we'll leave behind, or how we'll be remembered. But this is just in another stratosphere.

• 30:05Nick Capodice?

  You are not wrong there, Hannah. And presidents make plans for their own funerals pretty much as soon as they get elected to office these days. And there is a reason for that.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  And I hope you'll excuse me if I am out of breath. A bulletin, this is from the United Press from Dallas. President Kennedy and Governor John Colley have been cut down by assassins' bullets in downtown Dallas. They were riding an open automobile when the shots were fired. The president, his limp body carried in the arms of his wife Jacqueline, has rushed to Parkland Hospital. And if you'll excuse me if I give some directions and we talk about-

• 30:37Nick Capodice?

  And we'll talk more about that right after a quick break.

• 30:42Speaker 06

  But before that break, you know, while this episode is absolutely chock full of a lot of trivia about funerals and presidents, you have no idea how much we don't put in. But we have somewhere else to put it, that is our newsletter. It is called Extra Credit. It is so quick and easy to subscribe to it at our website civics101podcast.org. And not to toot my own horn here, but I actually think that our newsletter is simply one of those joys to open up and read. It's a little bit of information every other week, and it gives you an idea of what we spend the rest of our time thinking about that. Again, that website is civics101podcast.org.

• 31:29Nick Capodice?

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• 32:33Speaker 00

  Host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are no antibiotics in their meat department, ever, so carve up turkey and spiral-cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from 365 brand. And guess what? All their delectable pies are made with no high-fructose corn syrup. Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want, only at Whole Foods Market.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes, para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro, para los que están lejos, los que no vende lejos, y los que no vende cerca, para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos, para los que piensan y los que hacen, para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola, para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.

• 33:44Speaker 06

  We're back. You're listening to Civics 101. This is a special episode that is asking, in the wake of the death of President Jimmy Carter, what follows the death of a president? We've covered the broad strokes of their literal wakes, their funerals, their final resting places. It seems like a modern president knows more about what their funeral will look like than Huckleberry Finn did. And Nick, you said that there was a really good reason a president plans their funeral as soon as they get into office?

• 34:15Nick Capodice?

  Yes, there is. It is because of the sudden, violent death of one president. Friday, November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in an open-top limousine in Dallas. He was 46 years old, and it was his third year in office.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time. 2 o'clock... Eastern Standard Time, some thirty eight minutes ago.

• 34:48Nick Capodice?

  Now Kennedy didn't have a funeral plan in place. But two days later, more than 250,000 people had lined up for the public viewing of his casket, which lasted for 18 hours. And in the meantime, officials were planning the memorial services for the next day.

• 35:08Speaker 06

  That is a huge undertaking to pull off in such a short period of time.

• 35:12Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, but here's the thing, that kind of rushed planning, it won't need to happen again. Here is Matthew Costello.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  All presidents now, when they're in office, they will create a state funeral planning document. Part of the reason they do this is, well, I think it was in part a lesson learned from, you know, the unexpected assassination of John F. Kennedy, because this, this stuff was, really wasn't planned. He was a young president and, you know, obviously no one expected him to be killed in office. I think it was a much more concerted effort moving forward to making sure that the President of the United States, whoever it was when it came into office, that their wishes were known in the event that they died in office.

• 35:59Speaker 06

  You know, with Kennedy's death in particular, his assassination is a huge part of the story we tell about him, you know, his legacy. Like you said, he had only been in office for less than three years. He was really young and his death was violent and caught on camera.

• 36:17Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, Matthew actually compared Kennedy's death to Lincoln's death because they both had something he called the martyr effect.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  So when we think of a martyr, we think of somebody who is, who was killed, who gave their life in service of others, protecting others. For some presidents, it has made them more memorable.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  But as we've seen, this hasn't uniformly applied to everyone. Obviously with Abraham Lincoln, the country has been at war for four years. The Union Army is closing in, defeating the Confederacy. It appears that federal government will prevail and he's assassinated. Today, we may think of Lincoln as a universally admired and beloved and respected president, but that's how we think about him today, as opposed to how people thought about him in the 1965. Now, if you skip ahead, we do have two other presidents who are assassinated, James A. Garfield and William McKinley. But neither one of them elicits the same kind

• 37:20Speaker 02

  of response as, say, you know, John F. Kennedy in 1963.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Kennedy is a young president, he's assassinated, and he's assassinated very publicly. In a warehouse, a sniper with a rifle poised waits. The cheers of the crowd almost muffled the three shots. The assassin's aim is deadly. The area is a swarm with police, Rangers, and Secret Service men. The murderer slips the net, but a few blocks away, a man is captured after he is reported to have killed a policeman. The Sopruder film, the photographs, I mean, all this is very, very public and very graphic, and it's very jarring, traumatic for many Americans. So even though Lincoln's time obviously had this larger and really profound historical context involving the

• 38:10Speaker 02

  Civil War, Kennedy's didn't have that as much, but it was something that was felt so personally by everyone. And I think part of it was the imagery, the film, the fact that his funeral was held on television. I mean, everybody could watch and experience these things. And everybody felt like, you know, even people who didn't like John F. Kennedy or supported John F. Kennedy, it seemed like there was a universal outpouring of grief for Kennedy. The sound of the muffled drums sweeps in melancholy waves over the hushed throng, a hush broken only by a stifled sob, a murmured prayer. A whole people is lifted up in common sorrow and ennobled in their hearts. Down this avenue of sadness, they bring President John F. Kennedy, martyred hero, to lie in state under the great dome of the Capitol.

• 38:56Speaker 06

  When I think about Kennedy's funeral, I cannot help but think about First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, later Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. There's that unforgettable image of Jackie in the bloodstained suit, standing next to Lyndon B. Johnson as he is sworn in as president on Air Force One. And then later on, standing next to her small children, you know, as toddler JFK Junior salutes his father's casket.

• 39:22Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, and so much of how these things go is influenced by the spouse. The funeral arrangements, the mourning period.

• 39:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, the First Ladies are a very interesting part of our history because that position, of course, is not in the Constitution. So it doesn't have any written responsibilities. It doesn't have a theoretical office. And yet, we of course, expect the president to have a spouse. We expect the spouse to play a role. What that role is, I don't think we've ever fully agreed upon. And I don't think they've ever fully agreed upon because each first lady does things a little bit different. For Kennedy, that that case in particular, he died in such a tragic way. And she was so instrumental to shaping what that that mourning process was going to look like and how involved the family would be.

• 40:14Nick Capodice?

  It is remarkable how massive and logistically complicated Kennedy's funeral was, considering the circumstances. The first lady had a vision and she was able to pull it together in a couple of days.

• 40:27Speaker 05

  And Jackie Kennedy was not alone in in the role that she played in crafting those experiences. Most first ladies, I would say on average, first ladies tended to outlive their husbands. And so the families, whether it be the wives or the spouses or or the children, they do play a central role in deciding what the funeral is going to look like, who is going to be involved, where it's going to take place, what music is going to be played, is there going to be a military component? What is the messaging around the event? These are all things that first ladies and first families usually have first say.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  The former presidents will continue to revisit these planning documents. You know, sometimes things change. Sometimes you decide you want different music. Sometimes you decide you want different guests or you want different eulogists. So those are the types of details that can obviously shift and change over time because we're talking about relationships or friendships or or even, you know, something like the current climate, you know, something to be thinking about in terms of politics.

• 41:32Speaker 06

  Okay, so former presidents aren't just updating, you know, their wills like some of us might. They also have to update their own funeral plans.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Ronald Reagan was the oldest former president in American history. He was 93 years old when he died today. He has been out of the public eye for most of the past decade since announcing to the whole world he had Alzheimer's. You know, Reagan, his last goodbye to the American people was publicly announcing that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1981. But he lives another 10 years. And so this is where, you know, having President Reagan's plan pretty much ironed out, but then entrusting his wife, First Lady Nancy Reagan, and the Reagan family to ensure

• 42:21Speaker 02

  that President Reagan's wishes were followed and adhered to as agreed upon, or if they felt that they should change things on his behalf, you know, certainly that's a situation where they could. The Reagans, generally speaking, between the two of them, they, I mean, they always knew the importance of performance. It appears to an observer that after 33 years of marriage, you two are still absolutely nuts about each other. Mrs. Reagan, how do you plead? Guilty. Guilty. Explain it. I mean, it isn't. And I think that was true when they were in the White House. It's true when he was Governor of California.

• 43:02Speaker 06

  I know most presidential families have carefully crafted public personas, but I think the Reagan image involved another level of cultivation. I can only imagine that that funeral was extremely detailed.

• 43:19Nick Capodice?

  The funeral plan was somewhere between 130 and 300 pages long, and the news coverage was extensive, with multiple media outlets covering hours of mourning live for almost a week straight.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  The idea of creating something that was really such a spectacle that, you know, people felt like they were a participant in what was unfolding right before their eyes. I think all of that was true with President Reagan's state funeral. It was a poignant moment in a day filled with emotion and somber pageantry.

• 43:54Nick Capodice?

  As America came to a virtual standstill to mark the passing of the 40th president. For example, after the funeral, his remains were brought back to California, where they had another service overlooking the mountains at the Reagan Presidential Library.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  They're very cognizant of doing it at sunset at the Reagan Library that really it's sort of, you know, the sun has set on Reagan's time here. I mean, it was all very symbolic, I think.

• 44:22Nick Capodice?

  In the announcement Reagan wrote in 1994 about his Alzheimer's diagnosis, he said, quote, "I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life."

• 44:32Speaker 02

  I think Reagan's story in particular shows just the influence of family in shaping and planning the funeral itself, but also how we've come to remember the figure in question.

• 44:48Speaker 06

  You know, over time, it sounds like these funerals, they just keep getting bigger. They become more of a spectacle or, you know, a different kind of spectacle. And maybe that is in part because we have more access to them with the advent of 24-hour news and social media. But we talked about the British traditions around the death of a ruler. And in the case of the UK, it makes a lot of sense to me because all that pageantry and idolatry for a ruler who, you know, for a long time, people thought was ordained by God, worthy of worship, or something close to it. It's also a way to reaffirm this connection between the people

• 45:31Speaker 06

  and the monarchy, and I guess provide one last opportunity to bow before the crown. And I know that we have borrowed a lot from British tradition, but, you know, our process, is that a little odd in a country that's not monarchical?

• 45:52Speaker 06

  Where the leader is not the ruler, but technically, a member of the public, just like the rest of us.

• 46:01Speaker 05

  As we think about how we mourn presidents, and especially as state funerals have become the norm and the tradition, it's worth asking whether or not it should be that way. And the reason I say that is because if anyone watched the footage of George H. W. Bush's funeral, and then watched more recent footage of Queen Elizabeth II's funeral, there are a lot of similarities, and they looked often pretty close. You know, we have less crowns, we have less carriages, but nonetheless, there's, you know, there were a lot of things that weren't all that different. And we are not a monarchy, or at least we're not supposed to be. And when the president dies, they do retain Secret Service protection,

• 46:46Speaker 05

  and, you know, they can bring in a very hefty speaking fee, and often, you know, live in very nice homes, but they are supposed to be just an average citizen. They're supposed to be just like everyone else. And that's what a republic means. It means that everyone is the same in theory, under the law. And so, by according these enormous celebrations, all of the pomp and circumstance, and all of the fanfare, is that appropriate for a republic? Is that the way things should be? Or are we sending a message that presidents, even once they leave office, are somehow something else, or something different?

• 47:26Speaker 02

  So, to talk about presidents' legacy, in 1960, you know, it's gonna vary, probably. You know, by 1980, by 2000, by 2020, you'll see these changes over time. And a big part of that is shaped by the present moment. You know, whatever experiences that we're going through as a country, as a society, as a culture. And so, in a way, even though the presidents are gone, their legacy is still sort of part of that foil of reshaping and influencing American culture.

• 48:01Nick Capodice?

  Wellens the Future.

• 48:11Nick Capodice?

  If you want more Civics 101, you can find all of our episodes and teaching materials and a whole bunch of other stuff at our website, civics101podcast.org.

• 48:26Nick Capodice?

  Music in this episode by Epidemic Sound and Chris Sabriski. Civics 101 is a production of NPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

• 48:42Nick Capodice?

  Did you know that if your spouse goes missing and you don't tell anyone, that's not necessarily a crime? That surprising fact is at the heart of the brand new season of Bear Brook, the critically acclaimed true crime podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm your host, Jason Moon. In this season, Bear Brook investigates another New Hampshire mystery. A Christmas tree farmer with dementia vanishes. His wife never reports him missing. Can he still be found? Don't miss it. Follow Bear Brook wherever you get your podcasts.