Inside Air Force One, trembling with the vibration of its idling engines, Jackie joined a sad and shaken group waiting for Lyndon Johnson to take his oath of office.
The plane's sweltering, gold-carpeted "living room" was crowded with 27 people. At Johnson's right was his wife Lady Bird. Behind them ranged White House staff members; Larry O'Brien and Kenneth O'Donnell were in tears; the shirt cuffs of Rear Admiral George Burkley, President Kennedy's personal physician, bore bloodstains. Federal District Judge Sarah T. Hughes, a trim, tiny woman of 67 whom Kennedy had appointed to the bench in 1961, pronounced the oath in a voice barely audible over the engines. Johnson, his left hand on a small black Bible, his right held high, repeated firmly: I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.
The First Order. The President leaned forward, kissed Lady Bird on the forehead. Mrs. Johnson turned to Jackie, held her hand and said: "The whole nation mourns your husband." Dallas Police Chief J. E. Curry stepped up and advised the widow: "God bless you, little lady, but you ought to go back and lie down." Replied Jackie: "No thanks, I'm fine." Minutes later Johnson gave his first order as President of the United States. "Now," he said, "let's get this thing airborne."
The ceremony in Air Force One occurred at 2:38 p.m., just 98 minutes after John Kennedy was officially declared dead. Technically, Johnson had become President the moment that Kennedy died. But with that ceremony, President Johnson seemed to realize for the first time that the transfer of responsibility was real. And as the blue and white plane sped through clear skies toward Washington at 635 m.p.h., the President, as a President must, began to make decisions. Any personal meditation on the day's events would have to wait until later.
Johnson did what he could to help Jacqueline, discovered that she wanted only one thing: to remain at the side of her husband's bronze casket in a rear passenger compartment. There, crewmen had hurriedly removed two rows of seats to provide space. Four White House aides—Kennedy's longtime friend Dave Powers, his Air Force Aide Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh, O'Brien and O'Donnell—sat with her.
Using the aircraft's radio telephone, Johnson called Mrs. Rose Kennedy, told her: "I wish to God that there was something I could do. I just wanted you to know that." He handed the phone to Lady Bird. "We feel like the heart has been cut out of us," she said. "Our love and our prayers are with you." Johnson called Nellie Connally, wife of the wounded Texas Governor, and said hopefully: "We are praying with you, darling, and I know that everything is going to be all right, isn't it?"