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Frances Perkins - Interview 99, side 2-17 May, 1955 - This interview taken on a tape-recorder.

You were telling how you were driving up the hill on the Hyde Park grounds, and the caisson holding the casket got stuck in the mud.

Well, it got stuck very briefly. I mean, it wasn't very much of a stick, but it was Just enough to rivet in my mind that this could be complicated--I think I told you it was very early spring, very cold and raw, and no sign of vegetation except on the very tops of big trees where little bits of buds were beginning to come out. There was no green on the ground. There may have been a few clumps of ferns-- those fiddleheads, you know, that come up early.

It was very brown, very cold--very different from what the climate had been in Washington--and the wind was blowing. We went up into the garden, and of course from the time we came over the hill, there was a band playing a funeral march. I don't know where it was or what band it was, some military band, I assume. And there was a military escort-- not a very large one. It was quite simple. The procession went right along, out through the principal gate and in at the other gate, and drew up at the little garden, and we all got out.