Three days after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, a state funeral was held in Washington, D.C. on November 25, 1963, the same day as John F. Kennedy Jr.'s third birthday. As the funeral ended and JFK's coffin left St. Matthew's Cathedral, John Jr. saluted his father. The image has become ingrained on the national consciousness, and one of the most defining photographs of JFK's assassination.
Now, sixty years later, we're taking a look back at the story behind the photo.
"It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life," photographer Dan Farrell recounted in 2013. "I knew it was a good picture. This I knew. But I didn’t know to what extent it would be. I'm just glad my emotions didn’t take over when I was trying to take the picture." Farrell, a staff photographer of the Daily News, was covering JFK's funeral. The photo would run on the cover of the Daily News with the headline "We Carry On."
As the News reported decades later, "Farrell almost didn’t get the shot. He had only about two seconds to take the photo from the time John Jr. lifted his arm to salute to the time he put it back down. He used a bulky Hasselblad 1000 to take the image from about 150 feet away. The roll of film he used allowed for 12 exposures, and the salute was the only image on the roll." Farrell says, "I took a deep breath, I’m holding this crazy camera and I’ve got it pinkied, and I tripped it with one shot. That was it, a one-shot deal."
Farrell remembered watching Jackie as the coffin left the cathedral and was placed into a horse-drawn caisson (a wagon). Farrell said she leaned down to whisper to her son, "She said, 'John, salute.' He didn't respond at first. I took a deep breath. She said, 'John-John, salute.'" The three-year-old let go of his mother's hand and saluted with his right hand. Farrell took a single frame.
Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent assigned to Jackie Kennedy, recounted ten years ago that John Jr. had been working on his salute for a very different reason. Hill said that JFK was scheduled to visit Arlington National Cemetery on Veteran's Day, and Jackie wanted John Jr. to salute so he could participate in the ceremony. Only problem: the young boy would only do it with his left hand, but during the funeral, a Marine colonel taught John Jr. to do it with his right hand, and how to do a proper salute.
Farrell was later nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for photography for the shot, but lost to Dallas Times-Herald's photographer Robert H. Jackson, who captured the moment when Jack Ruby shot assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
Farrell wasn't the only who snapped John Jr.'s salute; Stan Stearns, covering the funeral for United Press International, also captured the moment. He was in the press pen with around 70-odd photographers. "As the caisson was rolling out to Arlington Cemetery, I asked every photographer I could if they had the salute. Duh! Nobody saw it," Stearns later recounted. "Everyone I talked to had been concentrating on Jackie and the caisson."
Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.
