President Kennedy, like every president, made many visits to Arlington National Cemetery.

On one of those visits, he was in an especially somber mood.  He had just received a letter from a retired Marine Corps Major thanking him for the lives he had helped save 20 years earlier in the Solomon Islands. The letter made his visit to Arlington especially moving as the President remembered one soldier who had not been saved and saw before him a tangible reminder of the human toll of war. 

Kennedy so loved Arlington he said that day “I could stay here forever.”  The date was November 11, 1963.  Little did the young President know, that fourteen days later, he himself would be laid to rest at Arlington.

President Kennedy’s funeral changed Arlington forever.  In the year before his death, about one million people a year visited Arlington. In the years following Kennedy’s funeral, that number has risen to over 4.5 million visitors each year.