Shortly after being assassinated on 22 November 1963, President John F. Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with an eternal flame. A group of 26 Irish Defense Forces cadets, who traveled to America with Irish President Éamon de Valera, performed a silent drill at the grave site, part of a tribute to Kennedy’s Irish ancestry.

Three years later, in March 1967, Kennedy’s body was re-interred a few feet away with a new flame at the spot now visited by millions of tourists. In June 2013, during celebrations of JFK’s visit to Ireland 50 years earlier, a light from the Arlington flame was carried across the Atlantic and incorporated into the Emigrant Flame memorial a the New Ross quayside, County Wexford.

I was touched to visit both JFK’s grave and the Irish memorial this year.