This permanent site replaced a temporary grave and eternal flame used at the time of Kennedy's state funeral on November 25, 1963, three days after his assassination.

[1][2] The permanent John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame grave site was consecrated and opened to the public on March 15, 1967.

One was the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which she and Kennedy had seen during a visit to France in 1961.

[15][16] Her brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, counseled against an eternal flame, worried that it might appear ostentatious or that it would compete with other such memorials at Arlington National Cemetery;[16] but she remained adamant.

Overnight, Colonel Clayton B. Lyle and a United States Army Corps of Engineers team built the eternal flame: A propane gas-fueled tiki torch was procured from the Washington Gas and Light Company, tested, and slightly modified for emplacement.

[11] Jacqueline Kennedy lit a taper from a candle held by a nearby soldier, and then brought the eternal flame to life at the end of the burial service.

[28] The enlarged site was due to Jacqueline Kennedy's desire to have her deceased children, Patrick and Arabella (a stillborn daughter born in 1956), reinterred next to their father.

[18][34] A few days later, Warnecke agreed that, although it was not required, he would submit the design for the permanent Kennedy grave site to the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts.

[37] On December 3, 1963, the Army concluded that the Kennedy plot was not part of the official burial section of Arlington National Cemetery, and agreed to continue to allow an eternal flame.

[38][39] Noguchi counseled Warnecke to add a large sculptural cross to the site and to eliminate the eternal flame (which he felt was kitschy).

[43] In the course of the research and conceptualization effort, Warnecke considered the appropriateness of structures or memorials at the site (such as crosses, shafts, pavilions, etc.

We must avoid adding elements that in later decades might become superficial and detract from the deeds of the man," Warnecke wrote[41] This conclusion drove the final design.

[41] Landscape architects Hideo Sasaki and Lawrence Halprin helped design the approaches and setting, but not the grave site.

First, Warnecke intended the grave itself to reflect the early New England tradition of a simple ledger stone set flat in the ground surrounded by grass.

[9] The eternal flame itself would be placed in the center of the grassy plot in a flat, triangular bronze sculpture intended to resemble a votive candle or brazier.

[51] At this time, contracts for the quotation inscriptions, the marble base for the flame, the bronze brazier, and the slate markers had yet to be let.

[52] The white marble for the plaza, terrace, and steps came from Proctor, Vermont, and the granite for the approaches came from Deer Isle, Maine.

[46][54] The burial plot, originally designed to be raised a substantial height above the surrounding terrace, was lowered so that it was just three to four inches higher.

Instead, a 5 feet (1.5 m) wide beige circular fieldstone (found on Cape Cod in 1965) was set nearly flush with the earth and used as a bracket for the flame.

[45] At the same time, the ground was prepared for the emplacement of the granite blocks which would form the low memorial wall on the downslope side of the elliptical plaza.

[53] The government announced that the bodies of Kennedy, Patrick and Arabella would be reburied in a private ceremony at night after the cemetery had closed on the day before the site was opened to the public.

[53][55] For a time in the fall of 1966, the Army considered floodlighting the site to permit night-time ceremonies, but this plan was quickly discarded.

[65] Robert Kennedy is buried on the upslope side of the walkway, his burial vault marked by a white cross and a slate headstone set flush with the earth.

[69] The 220-year-old "Arlington Oak", which stood off-center within the Kennedy memorial grave site area, was uprooted and killed on August 27, 2011, during Hurricane Irene.

[75] [73] In 2010, the carved inscriptions in the low stone wall in front of the site were renewed, which power cleaning and weather had made difficult to read.

[76] In August 1967, an exceptionally heavy rain extinguished the permanent flame and flooding of electrical equipment disabled the spark igniter.

[78] On June 18, a U.S. Army honor guard accompanied Irish Minister of State Paul Kehoe, T.D., in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Kennedy grave site.

)[78] The "spark" traveled back to Ireland aboard a special Aer Lingus flight, accompanied by Kehoe, Irish Army personnel, and a delegation from the New Ross Town Council.

The flame was taken by the Naval vessel LÉ Orla (P41),[81] which traversed the Irish Sea and sailed up the River Barrow to New Ross[79] (the town which John F. Kennedy's great-grandfather emigrated from in 1848).

[84] In 1964, the United States Post Office Department used an image of the Eternal Flame on a five cent official postage stamp issued to commemorate the assassinated president.