Then, at two o’clock P.M., another bulletin, this one official: The President was dead… My head was flooded with images of the President the last time I saw him, just seven days earlier, in the Carlyle. He had hugged me and said he’d call me when he got back from Texas… What sent me over the edge was the image of Dave Powers with his hand on the casket, standing in front of it as if he were guarding the President, then lifting it with other aides into the waiting Navy ambulance… My tears turned into violent, racking sobs…
– Intimate JFK friend Mimi Beardsley