A Secret Sculpture Built for John F. Kennedy's Grave Vanished in the 1970s. Half a Century Later, the Mystery Has Been Solved

Assistant Editor, Humanities

When James L. Felder arrived home on November 22, 1963, his telephone was ringing. The voice on the line, his United States Army platoon sergeant, told him to come in right away. He needed to pick up the president’s body.

Hours earlier, Felder, a sergeant with the Army’s Old Guard ceremonial unit, had been at a job interview in Washington, D.C. when a gunman fired on President John F. Kennedy’s limousine in Dallas. The 24-year-old was counting the days—he was down to 57—until he could rejoin civilian life. But first, he would need to stand guard over the slain commander in chief’s casket, which an audience of millions would watch him bury.

The body was on board Air Force One, where the nation’s new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, had just taken the oath of office. Felder and his team met the plane at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and moved the casket to an ambulance. When it arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital, they carried it to the morgue room.

“I witnessed the autopsy,” Felder, now 85, recalls. “I witnessed the embalming. I witnessed the changing of the casket and then, of course, the final services at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, after moving it from the White House to the [U.S. Capitol] Rotunda.”

Honor Guard carrying casket — Members of the Honor Guard carrying Kennedy's coffin into the Capitol, where he lay in state Central Press / Getty Images

The Honor Guard included men from several branches of the military, who meticulously rehearsed their movements ahead of the funeral: The night before they carried the casket up the steps of the Capitol, where the body would lie in state, the Honor Guard filled a coffin with sandbags and practiced marching it up and down the stairs of Arlington National Cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier until 1 a.m.

By the time he carried the coffin into the cemetery, Felder had gotten about six hours of sleep over three days. He stood by for the aircraft flyover, the 21-gun salute and the playing of “Taps.” After conducting the flag-folding ceremony, members of the Honor Guard removed their caps and placed them around the grave’s eternal flame, newly lit by former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

Robert F. Kennedy, the slain president’s younger brother, thought the hats should remain there until they were “crumbling.” Millions of visitors filed past them to pay their respects. Meanwhile, Felder didn’t think much about his hat after the burial. “At this point, I’m trying to get out of the Army—I’m gone,” he says. “Where it landed, I don’t know.”

Flag folding ceremony — Members of the Honor Guard folding the flag at Kennedy's funeral on November 25, 1963 Abbie Rowe / PhotoQuest / Getty Images

To accommodate the crowds who flocked to his grave, Kennedy was later reinterred in a permanent burial on a nearby plot of land. The eternal flame now emerged from the center of a five-foot-long circular stone above a sea of Cape Cod granite. When the site opened in 1967, the hats (or potentially replicas of them) were placed around the central stone. Their presence, however, was not universally welcomed.

“All those military hats on the grave are simply too much,” wrote architecture critic Wolf Von Eckardt in the Washington Post. The moment when the pallbearers removed their hats had been “touching,” he added, but “we’ll have the photographs of the funeral to remind us of that spontaneous gesture. Less is more.”

Weeks later, the hats vanished.

Most Americans forgot about them. But half a century later, they re-emerged as a central piece of a puzzle tying together Arlington Cemetery and a small graveyard tucked away in rural Virginia, where a replica of Kennedy’s famous gravesite crumbles into the earth.

Hats at Kennedy's permanent gravesite — The military hats resting around Kennedy's permanent gravesite on April 6, 1967 Everett Hicks

In 2020, Elinor Crane was cleaning gravestones when she started wondering about a patchwork of strange rectangular slabs—some cracked, others wearing away—that were sunken into the ground. They surrounded the remains of a large, central round stone.

The graveyard was on the grounds of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Upperville, Virginia, which is now run by Crane’s husband, Peter Crane, a former director of Chicago’s Field Museum. The estate had belonged to Paul Mellon, the billionaire philanthropist, and his second wife, Rachel Lambert Mellon, an heir to the Listerine fortune, who was known as Bunny. Bunny was also a close confidante of Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline, and a horticulturalist best known for designing the White House Rose Garden. The first lady enlisted her friend’s landscaping expertise while working on her husband’s permanent gravesite at Arlington Cemetery. Bunny’s biographers thought she’d had the slabs installed at Oak Spring as a mock-up made ahead of Kennedy’s 1967 reinterment.

But that tidy narrative unraveled when Crane, who works as a volunteer at Oak Spring, started chatting with Tommy Reed, a stonemason at the foundation. Like the biographers, he explained that the slabs mirrored Kennedy’s grave. He knew this because he was one of the men who’d laid them.

Replica grave at Oak Spring — The replica of Kennedy's grave at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Upperville, Virginia Max Smith

But Reed said he had worked on the replica in the mid-1970s—maybe 1973. One day, when he returned to the cemetery, pieces of an elaborate sculpture were sitting on the stones. He was told only that they had been placed there “to age.” A few weeks later, they were gone. “Everything was top secret,” he recalls. “They came in at night. Left at night. And back then, we didn’t ask no questions.”

Baffled, Crane peppered Reed with questions. Why would he have built a copy of Kennedy’s grave more than five years after its completion? What was the mysterious sculpture? The stonemason didn’t know, but he did remember one vital detail.

“It’s hats, Elinor,” he told her. “There were hats.”

Crane started searching the property for hats. “I was going into the basement of the Mellons’ house—which has a lot of hats—and I was bringing out hats and saying, ‘Did they look like this?’” Reed kept saying no. The hats were hard, he told her. You could tap on them. Crane eventually enlisted Nancy Collins, the foundation’s archivist, to search Oak Spring’s records.

Through photos and letters, the duo learned that the ornate sculpture had been made to commemorate the hats that Felder and the other pallbearers left at Kennedy’s grave. Designed by the jeweler Jean Schlumberger and created by the sculptor Louis Féron, the artwork was sometimes described in the archives as a “memorial wreath.”

Reed’s memory had been correct: The wreath featured about half a dozen bronze military caps, woven together with sculpted driftwood (representing Kennedy’s love of nature), bamboo and palm trees (a reference to his service in the South Pacific during World War II), Navy rope (honoring his love of the sea), and an oak leaf centerpiece symbolizing hope.

Completed wreath in Féron’s studio — The assembled and completed sculpture in Louis Féron’s studio Oak Spring Garden Foundation

“The branches have different colors, and that comes from different forms of patina,” says Sylvain Cordier, a curator at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and an expert on Schlumberger. Together, they formed a “crown of thorns,” which is a “reference to Christ,” he adds. “It’s the idea of martyrdom, of sacrifice, of someone who dies for the political cause.”

The wreath was built after Kennedy’s reinterment in 1967, but the plan had always been to eventually install it at Arlington Cemetery, where it would circle the round stone at the heart of the gravesite. It was a big project, costing the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars today.

It was also a big secret. Few accounts of the wreath exist, and many contain incomplete or inaccurate information. But over four years, Crane and Collins—with help from friends, staffers, archivists, curators, historians and other experts—pieced together the story.

More than 80 percent of American homes with televisions watched Felder’s team carry the president’s coffin in 1963. “The world got to see what a full honors funeral at Arlington really looked like and what that pageantry was,” says Stephen Carney, the cemetery’s command historian, on the podcast “Everything Is a Primary Source.” “It really completely changed the nature of the cemetery.” In the years that followed, requests for burials at the cemetery increased tenfold. Thanks to Kennedy, Arlington Cemetery had become a destination.

Line at Arlington Cemetery — Visitors lined up to file past Kennedy's grave at Arlington National Cemetery in 1963. Stuart Lutz / Gado / Getty Images

Meanwhile, architect John Warnecke was designing the president’s permanent grave. In preparation, he conducted an extensive study of tombs and memorials built for the giants of history, from King Mausolus of Caria (353 B.C.E.) to Ulysses S. Grant (1897). He consulted with dozens of artists, liturgical experts, landscape architects, government officials and, of course, members of the Kennedy family. In early 1964, Jacqueline asked him to work with her friend Bunny on landscaping.

Two years later, Jacqueline wrote a long note to Robert McNamara, the sitting secretary of defense, who’d also served under her husband, expressing concerns about the grave. Among other things, she wanted to remove a marble wall with the presidential seal that Warnecke had designed, and she asked that all of Bunny’s landscaping suggestions be followed.

“We feel that this letter is the one where Mrs. Kennedy puts her foot down and says, ‘I don’t want any of [these] shenanigans. Let Mrs. Mellon take over,’” says Crane. “This is where we think they begin the idea of the wreath.”

Around this time, Bunny spoke on the phone with Schlumberger, the French jewelry designer known for his work for Tiffany & Company. After the call, Schlumberger wrote to Bunny, saying, “Your idea was so exciting the other night that I couldn’t sleep—so many questions left without answers—but the mere fact that we are sharing something together in a new creative experience is of a great stimulation.”

Jewelry designer Jean Schlumberger was famous for his work at Tiffany & Company. Oak Spring Garden Foundation

Jean Schlumberger at Louis Féron’s studio — Schlumberger at Féron’s studio Oak Spring Garden Foundation

Was this conversation an early brainstorm? Nobody knows for sure. Just weeks later, Warnecke’s blueprints revealed two intriguing additions to the gravesite: a bench for Jacqueline and a “trophy with hats.” An internal Army memo to McNamara around this time similarly noted a “plaque memorializing the military caps left at the president’s grave the day of his burial.”

While the “trophy with hats” had vanished from Warnecke’s blueprints by late November, records show that Bunny received a shipment of nine hats that had been “removed from [the] John F. Kennedy gravesite” around the same time. They were to be used as “models for the commemorative sculptor work for the permanent gravesite.”

“The night [before] the reinterment—on March 13—Mrs. Mellon presents to Mrs. Kennedy the Schlumberger drawing of what now we call the memorial wreath,” says Crane. “On that same night, Mrs. Kennedy writes [to] Schlumberger.” She expressed her admiration for the sketch, asking him to make a model for her consideration.

To bring his designs to life, Schlumberger enlisted Féron, a French sculptor, goldsmith and silversmith with whom he often collaborated. On June 5, 1967, Féron traveled to Kennedy’s new gravesite at Arlington Cemetery and measured the round stone so he could duplicate it in his studio.

Plaster maquette of the memorial wreath in Féron’s studio Oak Spring Garden Foundation

Almost exactly one year later, an assassin shot Robert F. Kennedy, the president’s younger brother. The former first lady had another burial to plan.

That summer, Jacqueline wrote to Schlumberger and officially commissioned the memorial wreath, which had been on pause for more than a year. She apologized for the delay, explaining that preparing Robert’s gravesite at Arlington Cemetery had prompted her to finish her husband’s.

The president’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, agreed to pay $50,000—around $450,000 today—for the wreath. Féron got to work. On May 7, 1969, he sent the piece to be bronzed at the Modern Art Foundry in New York, packed in three secret shipments. The sculptor’s wife, Leslie Snow, kept meticulous records of his work on index cards—including one dated to 1969 and titled “Kennedy Memorial”:

Memorial for the gravesite of the late John F. Kennedy. Bronze, silver, tin. The theme is an intertwined wreath of stylized branches, richly symbolic of the outstanding events and aspirations of the late president’s life. Made by Louis Féron in New Hampshire from a sketch by Jean Schlumberger. Approved by Jacqueline Kennedy, who commissioned the piece.

“Féron’s very excited about it, because he thinks he’s lived in the shadow of Schlumberger,” says Collins. The two had worked together at Tiffany’s, where the jeweler often got more of the credit; now, “he thinks he’s finally going to get his due.” Around this time, Féron’s wife wrote letters trying to arrange media coverage, explaining that the sculpture would be installed in June 1969.

Louis Féron — Féron working at his studio in Snowville, New Hampshire Oak Spring Garden Foundation

Féron also hired the renowned photographer Evelyn Hofer to take snapshots of him in his New Hampshire studio with pieces of the wreath in May 1969. “He’s holding a piece of the wreath—not the whole wreath, just one piece,” says Collins. “He thinks this is going to be the big photograph that everybody’s going to want in every magazine.”

Major publications never ran Féron’s story. The memorial wasn’t unveiled in June 1969—though it was “nearly complete” by then, according to the Boston Herald Traveler, which published a small piece on the project that month.

Féron had been toiling for two years on a memorial “cloaked in secrecy” that was “believed to be a bigger-than-life-size bronze statue of Kennedy,” wrote the newspaper, erroneously. “Some day soon, Féron and his wife plan to drive to Arlington National Cemetery to install the monument. And they look forward to the day soon when his labor of love will be formally unveiled and dedicated.”

In May 1970, Jacqueline wrote to Schlumberger, explaining that there were complications at Arlington and that she would know more by the fall. This is the last mention of the project in the archives.

Kennedy's permanent gravesite at Arlington Cemetery features an eternal flame surrounded by Cape Cod granite. Joe Sohm / Visions of America / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The wreath never arrived at Arlington Cemetery. For four years, Crane and Collins have been wondering what went wrong.

Perhaps, they’ve speculated, a military tribute was no longer appropriate in the 1970s due to rising antiwar sentiment. The timeline makes sense: When Kennedy was shot in 1963, the American death toll in Vietnam was around 200. By 1970, that number had risen to roughly 50,000.

Collins contacted Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, who was days from her 6th birthday when her father was assassinated. She remembered the wreath but thought it had been deemed too aesthetically heavy.

Jacqueline Kennedy at the grave — Jacqueline and her children, John Jr. and Caroline, visit Kennedy's gravesite on May 29, 1964, which would have been the president's 47th birthday. Bettmann via Getty Images

“Stylistically, it’s interesting, but it is a very ornate piece,” says Cordier. As an expert on Schlumberger, he loves the sculpture, but he can understand why it wouldn’t have been right for Kennedy’s grave, which is “extremely simple, extremely devoid of ornaments or ornamentation,” he adds. “There’s a gravitas to that simplicity.”

If the wreath isn’t at the grave, then where did it go? The project, planned in secrecy, is largely absent from history books. Outside of archival records and sketches, it is described only briefly.

A 2022 biography of Bunny mentions that Schlumberger designed a “grave plaque carved with a wreath of flowers”—an artwork that was “never made,” writes author Mac Griswold. “In the end, only the drawing remains.”

But this wasn’t true. The finished artwork was eventually delivered to Oak Spring, where it was placed atop the stone slabs laid by Reed. For Crane and Collins, this is where the trail went cold. But unless the sculpture had been destroyed—which they doubted—it was out there somewhere. Caroline provided a few more hints: She thought the Mellons had paid for the wreath, and that it had ultimately gone to a Virginia museum.

Plan for the replica of Kennedy’s gravesite at Oak Spring, circa 1970s Oak Spring Garden Foundation

As such, the early days of the hunt were “very Mellon-focused,” says Crane. But the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, which the Mellons had supported, didn’t have the wreath. So Crane and Collins expanded the search to houses once owned by the Mellon family—maybe it had been stashed away in a barn—and other museums they donated to. No luck. The Boston-based John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum didn’t have it. Neither did Arlington Cemetery. Could the wreath be hidden in plain sight on the Oak Spring property? If they brought a metal detector to the cemetery, would they find it buried beneath the crumbling stone slabs?

The pair also hired author Gretchen Henderson to write an account of their search, which was accepted by the literary journal Ploughshares. They hoped that if they got the word out, someone who knew something might emerge from the shadows.

But then, just before Ploughshares’ story went to press, Collins had a hunch.

“I don’t know why,” she says, “but it came into my head that I should loop back around with the Boston Museum [of Fine Arts],” where some of Féron’s collections resided.

Collins had contacted the museum during the early stages of the search. However, due to logistical mix-ups, some files on Féron never reached her. When she followed up earlier this year, she received a large batch of records—including one particularly intriguing piece of correspondence. “We call it the ‘smoking gun’ letter,” says Crane.

It was a note to Féron from Dave Powers, the curator of the Kennedy Library at the time: “Mr. Stephen Smith, president of the John F. Kennedy Library Corporation, informed me that the corporation would pay $1,500 to have the wreath disassembled and crated by you for shipment to the John F. Kennedy Library.”

Armed with Féron’s letter, Collins went back to the Kennedy Library—one of the first institutions she’d contacted. But the date of Féron’s letter proved important: April 4, 1977. That was also the year workers broke ground on the library, which wouldn’t open until 1979. Many items received in those interim years went into storage.

In February, Collins received an email from the library. The wreath was still packed away in six crates, virtually untouched since Féron had boxed them up.

She texted Crane: “We found it.”

When the pair met in front of the Mellon house, “we just started screaming,” says Crane. The news spread to others on the property who had been helping with the search, and soon they were all screaming.

“Peter and I went up [to the library] in March 2024, and they opened one crate, and they took out a couple of hats and the centerpiece with the oak leaf of hope,” says Crane. “And then Nancy and I went up with [Cordier] in July, and they took out a few more pieces.” They identified Féron’s signature on one of the branches, which the sculptor had packed in hay five decades ago. He had also fastened a small tongue depressor with handwritten assembly instructions onto each of the pieces.

Memorial wreath in July 2024 — One branch and two hats from the memorial wreath at the Kennedy Library in July 2024 Nancy Collins

Louis Féron's signature is visible on a piece of the sculpture. Nancy Collins

Crane, Collins and Cordier are eager to put the pieces together. But they’ll have to wait until winter, when the library will be able to furnish a room large enough to assemble the parts. The Oak Spring team hopes to take photographs and create a 3D scan—and perhaps even produce a replica for the foundation.

Cordier wants to borrow the artwork for an exhibition on Schlumberger opening at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 2027. He’s thinking about dedicating a section of the show to the relationship between the artist and the first lady. “It’s really the object that probably no one expects to see in an exhibition dedicated to someone known for jewelry designs,” he says.

Last month, Oak Spring held a gathering for the many individuals and institutions that helped with the project—including Felder, whom Crane and Collins had tracked down during the search.

After leading the group to the crumbling maquette at the cemetery, the duo gave a formal presentation on the results of their research efforts. Near the end, they displayed a photo showing some of the pieces they’d removed from the crates: the oak leaf centerpiece and two bronze military caps. Crane pointed out the one on the left and turned to face the onetime presidential pallbearer.

“Mr. Felder,” she said, “that’s your hat.”

A Secret Sculpture Built for John F. Kennedy’s Grave Vanished in the 1970s. Half a Century Later, the Mystery Has Been Solved