Air Force One, the President's plane, is divided, behind the crew's cockpit, into three compartments. In the first of them, women sat weeping and Secret Service agents were trying to hold back tears ("You've heard of strong men crying: well, we had it there that day," recalls a reporter) as the pilot lifted the big jet off the Dallas runway in a climb so steep that to a man standing on the ground it seemed "almost vertical," leveled off for a few minutes, and then, warned that there were tornadoes between him and Washington, put the plane into another climb to get above them. In the rear compartment the widow, her suit stained with blood, was sitting next to the coffin of the dead President. And in the center compartment was the new President.
- From The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro
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