November 20, 2003 - Portland Press Herald: Aide Harold Pachios remembers Sargent Shriver on day of Kennedy's death

Peace Corps Online: Peace Corps News: Directors of the Peace Corps: Peace Corps Founding Director Sargent Shriver: Sargent Shriver: Archived Stories: November 20, 2003 - Portland Press Herald: Aide Harold Pachios remembers Sargent Shriver on day of Kennedy's death

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-250-225.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.250.225) on Friday, November 21, 2003 - 1:51 pm: Edit Post

Aide Harold Pachios remembers Sargent Shriver on day of Kennedy's death





The late president's body was on an airplane on its way to Washington from Texas, and there were decisions to be made - quickly. Would the body lie in state? Where? When? A colonel was talking about President Lincoln's funeral procession, and how dignitaries walked behind it. Pachios remembers Shriver's calm, his command, his insight, his judgment.


Read and comment on this story from the Portland Press Herald about Harold Pachios, a young aide to Sargent Shriver in the early 1960's, and his memories of Shriver on the day of Kennedy's assassination at:

Witness to History*

* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.



Witness to History

Nov 20, 2003 - Portland Press Herald

Author(s): Joshua L. Weinstein Staff Writer

Even at its most festive, the White House has a certain gravity to it, a formality and seriousness.

The first time Harold Pachios stepped into the building, the place was all the more weighty. There was a funeral to plan - the president's - and Pachios was there, in a corner office, watching John F. Kennedy's brother-in-law, R. Sargeant Shriver, decide what to do, how to do it.

"I knew when it happened, when I was ushered into this White House office, I knew that it was something that was going to be one of the most significant things in my life," Pachios, now a name partner in the Portland law firm Preti Flaherty Beliveau Pachios & Haley, said Wednesday.

"I'll never forget: It was a four-seater brown leather couch in (White House aide Ralph) Dungan's office, and I said to myself, `Try to remember every word spoken in here. It is a historic time and the only people on the whole planet who know what's going on are the people in this room.' "

He had one other thought: "Try to be as still as possible for as long as possible so they would forget I was there."

So for an hour and a half, maybe two hours, the 26-year-old had a close-up view of an intimate moment of one of the biggest events of the century.

Pachios was a night student at Georgetown University Law Center then, working for Shriver at the newly established Peace Corps during the day.

He found himself in the White House by happenstance.

He had been working for Shriver for several years, and knew him fairly well. When he heard, at lunchtime, that Kennedy had been shot, he rushed back to the Peace Corps offices, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.

A few hours later, Shriver's secretary asked Pachios whether he lived nearby, which he did, and whether he owned a black tie, which, as a Naval Reserve officer, he did.

"She said, `Sarge wants me to find him a black tie.' "

The words fell heavy.

Pachios went home, grabbed the tie and called Shriver's secretary, who told him to go to the northwest gate of the White House.

"I had never been in the White House, ever, so you can imagine what's going on in my mind," said Pachios, who as an aide in Lyndon Johnson's administration came to be in the building more times than he knows. "They ushered me into the West Wing for the first time in my life. It was overwhelming."

He stepped into the room, where a handful of people, including an Army colonel, a State Department protocol expert and a Peace Corps physician were meeting with Shriver. He handed over the tie.

Shriver spoke.

"He said, `Stick around for a little while. I may need you to run some errands,' " Pachios said. "He didn't say that because I was the closest aide to him, because I wasn't. He said it because I happened to show up there with the tie."

The late president's body was on an airplane on its way to Washington from Texas, and there were decisions to be made - quickly. Would the body lie in state? Where? When? A colonel was talking about President Lincoln's funeral procession, and how dignitaries walked behind it.

"Shriver said, `Well, wait a minute. Security is going to be an issue. If they can get Jack the way they did today' - He said `they' - `they can get Buffalo Bill coming down the street.' It was very somber. Extremely somber when he said it, and I knew, all of us were aware of the fact, that this might be a conspiracy against the government."

Pachios remembers Shriver's calm, his command, his insight, his judgment.

And then it was over. Shriver left the room to make or take telephone calls, and told Pachios he wouldn't be needed anymore.

As Pachios left, he figured he'd never be in the White House again. He promised himself to remember every word.

He hasn't.

He thinks about it every year around this time, but hasn't talked much about it. Perhaps, he figures, if he had talked more, told the story more, he'd remember.

But Pachios, a renowned storyteller, doesn't particularly like the tale.

"It's kind of a way-out thing in a person's life," he explained. "I had never met President Kennedy. I had never been in the White House. I just happened to be a young aide at the Peace Corps, that his brother-in-law headed, and just happened to have encountered Shriver's secretary, who asked me to get a tie.

"It's a rather mundane set of coincidences that led me to this very interesting experience, and a man had been killed. When you're a minor player in a national tragedy, you really don't feel like making yourself part of it."

But he is glad to finally share his story with a wider audience.

"I wanted to tell it once," he said. "Forty years have gone by and I'm getting older and I don't know I'll be here when it's 50 years."

Staff Writer Joshua L. Weinstein can be contacted at 791-6368 or at:

jweinstein@pressherald.com




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