Word: caisson
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...servicemen slid the casket from its catafalque, bore it haltingly, laboriously down the 36 Capitol steps past the black-clothed ranks of John Kennedy's family. The drums began a muffled thunder. There was a gnashing of metal as the military men loaded it aboard the glistening black caisson, the same that carried the coffin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt 18 years...
Slowly, the procession began the 1.8-mile route to the White House. Immediately behind the caisson came a caparisoned, riderless horse. A sword in its scabbard hung from the black saddle, a pair of gleaming boots were reversed in the stirrups-a sign that a commander had fallen and would never ride again. Black Jack, a 16-year-old dark chestnut gelding, is the pride of Fort Myer's stable of 27 ceremonial horses, and has performed in dozens of military funerals over the past ten years. Now the animal was skittish, prancing sideways and endlessly tugging...
When the procession arrived at the black-draped White House, Jackie and other members of the President's family left their black limousines, fell in behind the restless capers of Black Jack and the slow-turning wheels of the caisson. Behind them strode President Johnson, and his wife. Next, a limousine carrying Caroline and John cruised out the gate. Then the White House driveway filled, gatepost to gatepost, with a moving mass. Like a slow, powerful river, it poured out onto Pennsylvania Avenue, and not until then did the makeup of that seemingly formless crowd come clear...
...spilled along the hillside, stood within 100 yards of the gravesite. Television cameras and newsmen were stationed within 50 feet of the bright, artificial green sod spread around the opening. Drummers from the Marine Band marched to the top of the hill, hammered out the somber beat as the caisson drew near. The Air Force bagpipe band, moving in slow step, wailed The Mist Covered Mountain...
...rock out of which it was carved is full of cracks and weak places, the Italian engineers plan to remove all the rock over the temple, then drive shafts and tunnels around and under it. In this way, they will construct bit by bit an enormously strong, roughly cubical caisson of reinforced concrete to enclose the temple. The great box with its contents will weigh something like 300,000 tons, will probably be the heaviest weight ever lifted...