Robbinston man recalls vigil over JFK Coast Guard member chosen for death watch

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ROBBINSTON – When John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, a young Jerald “Butch” Garriott watched firsthand as a nation mourned.

Now, on this Memorial Day, Garriott will be remembering the vigil he kept for the nation’s 35th president and for others.

Garriott, 63, enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1955, when he was 18. He served a regular tour of duty, first training at Cape May in New Jersey, and later was stationed aboard the Coast Guard ship Humbolt, based in Boston.

He spent time at the Attu Loran station in Attu, Alaska, and eventually was transferred to Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Garriott now lives in Robbinston with his wife, Betty.

On Nov. 22, 1963, Garriott’s military duty took a different path.

He was a damage controlman first class at Coast Guard headquarters when he was tapped to participate in Kennedy’s funeral.

“I was doing my normal maintenance repair on the building there, and the captain came down and said, ‘You got to go to Fort Myer for training,'” he said. Fort Myer is a military base across the Potomac River from Washington.

Garriott had been designated as a member of the Coast Guard’s Guard of Honor. He called it something blunter: death watch guard.

Two Marines from Maine, Pfc. Delvin White of Holden and Lance Cpl. Donald J. Burke of Old Town, also were part of the honor guard.

The men were placed in groups of five, each representing his branch of service. Several groups participated in the round-the-clock three-day vigil.

Unlike traditional honor guards trained to step smartly as they march in parades, Garriott said, this team was trained to do everything in slow motion.

After the training, the men were sent to the East Room of the White House, where they would spend more than a day standing guard over Kennedy’s remains. “We were the first watch,” he said. “It was just us five men and the casket.”

Four lighted candles and a single bouquet of flowers were near the flag-draped casket. The hangings in the East Room were similar to those used a century earlier when Abraham Lincoln had lain in state there.

The men, Garriott said, were on watch for 30 minutes at a time, and then were given an hour off.

“We stood at parade rest or at attention with rifles at each corner of the casket. We changed position every few minutes so we wouldn’t go to sleep. Our bodies and minds were exhausted,” he said.

The Guard of Honor was made up of one officer and four enlisted men. An alternate stood by in case one of the men became ill. “Even though no one was looking at you, everything was done in slow cadence. Same way when you were relieved. The headman would nod his head, then one soldier would step back and [the officer] would nod again. Then you would step in front of the [soldier being relieved] and that death watch group would walk off,” he said.

Although a private Mass was celebrated in the East Room for the Kennedy family, Garriott said, the family did not visit the coffin while he was there.

But he recalled that an Air Force colonel quietly entered the East Room, opened the coffin, then left. “That was the only time I saw the casket opened,” he said.

On Nov. 24, the coffin was moved to the Rotunda in the Capitol, and the guard moved there. Kennedy lay in state for one day and a night as more than 200,000 people filed past.

“People were crying. Some of them didn’t want to leave, so they had to be escorted out,” he recalled. “It was a sad situation for our country and our world.”

He said the line of people waiting to pay their respects was more than a mile long and that some did anything to get ahead of the line. He said he was off duty when some people approached him. “I remember these people came from Pittsburgh. They wanted to know if I could get them in early. I told them I was there to just stand guard,” he said.

National and international leaders came to Washington for Kennedy’s funeral. Garriott said he especially remembers French President Charles de Gaulle arriving at the Capitol. He described him as a distinguished-looking man who drew people’s attention.

When the Guard of Honor completed its duty, he said, the men marched back to rooms in the Capitol where bunks had been set up for the guards. He said papers left on desks made it clear that as members of Congress and their staffers learned about the assassination, everything in the nation’s capital seemed to freeze.

“When they got word that he had been shot, they just dropped everything,” he said.

Garriott was tapped again to be part of a funeral for a president when former President Herbert C. Hoover died Oct. 20, 1964, in New York. Garriott and the other members of the guard were flown aboard Air Force One to New York.

That same year, he also participated in Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s funeral. MacArthur, who was the commander of Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific during World War II, lay in state in the Rotunda. Again, Garriott served as a member of the Guard of Honor. “I was an old hand at it by then,” he said.

Garriott remembers the contrasts: “You see, Kennedy was everybody’s hero, while MacArthur was a hero way back when.”

After the funeral, Garriott returned to his regular duties until January 1965, when he was tapped to participate in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s inauguration. “I just ushered people who came who sat on the president’s stand,” he said. He recalled escorting U.S. Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and his family to their seats. Humphrey was sworn in as vice president that January day.