Monuments of paper and pen were not the only vehicles of memory through which Jacqueline Kennedy and her family and friends would shape the image of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the years following his death. There were other monuments as well, the most important being sites of memory where the president could be recalled in rituals of remembrance often approved by his widow. Through these sites, as through the many books she influenced, the former first lady would inscribe on the past her own vision of how the president should be remembered: as a man of strength and courage, a war hero and peacemaker, a daring explorer of new frontiers at home and in space, a champion of excellence in all venues, a man of faith and family, and a progressive reformer who had shed his blood – as Lincoln had before him – in service to his country and to all it represented. Her goal was to make John F. Kennedy a symbol of the nation, of what it meant to be an American, or at least of the ideals to which all Americans should aspire. With this goal in mind, she acted quickly to design her husband's memorial grave, launch a campaign to fund the Kennedy Presidential Library, and importune the new president to place his predecessor's name on both the National Culture Center in Washington, DC, and the space center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Much of this memorializing went on while the world remained in deep mourning for the president. It was expressed not only in state-sanctioned commemorations but also in private efforts to remember John Fitzgerald Kennedy, if only through the smallest gesture, the least expensive token. Such acts of commemoration, much like the president's funeral, further assuaged a nation still in the throes of an acute cultural trauma. They relieved the guilt and anxiety that many Americans felt, leaving in their place new symbols of national pride and confidence in the future. They also furthered the process by which the president was transformed into an American icon, very much the larger-than-life figure that Jacqueline Kennedy had in mind. His death would be framed in a narrative of national greatness; his identity linked to that of the nation itself; his life invested with meaning and purpose that would survive the grave.