
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 24, 1994                   TAG: 9405240092
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

FAMILY BURIES JACKIE

As a sultry spring breeze rippled the eternal flame she lit 31 years ago at another moment of national grief, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was laid to rest Monday alongside the grave of John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery.

The former first lady, who died of cancer Thursday at age 64, was hailed by President Clinton in a brief graveside service as a woman who handled great gifts and bore great burdens ``with dignity and grace and uncommon common sense.''

``We say goodbye to Jackie,'' Clinton said. ``May the flame she lit so long ago burn ever brighter here and always brighter in our hearts.''

Her children, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and John F. Kennedy Jr., bade her farewell with readings from Scripture and laid flowers at the foot of her flower-bedecked mahogany casket. The Most Rev. Philip Hannan, the retired Archbishop of New Orleans who presided over President Kennedy's funeral, sprinkled holy water upon the coffin, and a Navy chorus sang ``Eternal Father Strong to Save.''

In a brief 15 minutes, the burial service was over and the Kennedy family members drifted away, some stopping at the nearby grave of Robert F. Kennedy to pay their respects. In the hazy distance, the bell of Washington's National Cathedral slowly tolled 64 times.

And thus ended an era of glamour and hope and tragedy that began with young Jack Kennedy's inauguration in 1961 and came to a close Monday on a verdant hillside in the United States' best-known graveyard of heroes.

The widow of the president who was slain Nov. 22, 1963, became an image etched in the national memory for all these years, forever young and elegant, mysterious and private and yet a public treasure for two generations of Americans.

Jerry Grasso, 45, a jeweler from Pinellas Park, Fla., brought his video camera to the avenue leading to Arlington cemetery to watch Onassis' funeral procession. He said he remembered the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy as marking America's ``loss of innocence.'' Onassis' death, he said, ``marks the end of the Kennedy era. As long as she was still alive, the Kennedy era was still alive.''

The burial ceremony was attended by about 100 members of the Kennedy, Auchincloss and Radziwill families, including Onassis' close companion Maurice Tempelsman.

by CNB