A Tomb for J.F.K.

Almost a year to the day after President Kennedy was assassinated, plans for his permanent grave were approved. It will remain on that rolling slope in Arlington National Cemetery where he was first buried. Embellished with a minimum of architectural detail by Kennedy's friend, Architect John Carl Warnecke, the grave is far more modest than another illustrious tomb in Arlington, that of the Unknown Soldier.

Warnecke, 45, was a logical choice to design the site. Kennedy idolized his heroics as a Stanford University football hero and with his art adviser Wil liam Walton, picked him to renovate Washington, D.C.'s Lafayette Square. "This may be the only monument we leave," said Kennedy. His widow chose Warnecke to leave one more.

Approached by a circular walkway, the tomb rises a few steps above an elliptical plaza, completing a 1.3-mile axis with the large Lincoln Memorial across the Potomac. The graves, including those of his two dead infants, are marked by flat slate stones set in a grassy plot bordered by a low plinth, where the eternal flame, cupped in a modern version of a classic oil lamp, will continue to burn. Behind it, but subordinate to the classic-revival facade of the historic Custis-Lee Mansion atop the slope, is a low, short wall, flanked by flowering magnolias, which will bear the presidential seal and short quotations from Kennedy's speeches. How much the memorial will cost is not clear. "Don't know," commented Walton. "Glad I don't. Plenty."

The design is more an appreciation of a natural site than a monument of masonry. Visitors who will go there cannot avoid pondering the powerful poetry of the vista toward the capital. It was one of Kennedy's favorites. Some time before his death, he and a friend stood where he now is buried. Remarked the late President: "I could stay here forever." That came true too suddenly, but his observation has only enhanced his resting place.

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