What type of casket was JFK's Dallas casket from Oneal funeral home?

Answer 1

Vernon O'Neal provided a solid bronze double lid (non-glass) sealer casket named "Handley", manufactured by the (former) Elgin Metallic Casket Company of Elgin, Ill. It had an amber "Britannia" finish - Elgin's designation for a partially brushed (i.e. "scratched" looking) casket exterior, the unbrushed parts of which possessed a transparent tint or dye - in this case of amber (reddish) color. The casket had an adjustable mattress and an eggshell velvet interior. The empty weight of the casket was over 300 lbs. O'Neal requested a sales price of $ 3.995 (estimated wholesale price at that time around $ 1.000) from the US-government, but was forced to lower the price later by $ 500. The casket certainly would have been used for Kennedy's burial, had it not been damaged during the loading / unloading process by the Secret Service people who tore off the ornamental attachments of the swing bar handles. For that reason, it was replaced with a new casket (a Marsellus # 710 solid mahogany casket for which Gawler's funeral home in Washington, D.C. charged $2460 ). The original Elgin casket eventually was dumped in the Atlantic Ocean in 1966 by the Airforce in order to prevent it from becoming an object of morbid curiosity. The successor to the "Handley" model is still in production. A few years after President Kennedy's death, the Elgin Company changed the flaring round corner design of "Handley" somewhat by giving it a more pronounced urn shape. After Elgin had been bought by the mattress producer Simmons in 1968, the "Handley" was replaced by the "Winchester" model, which differed from its predecessor mainly by some embossings. The casket is still manufactured by VerPlank Enterprises of Tennessee and can be seen in the Online Catalog of that Company. p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; } a solid bronze double lid model named "Handley", manufactured by the former Elgin Metallic Casket Company of Elgin, Ill. It had an amber "Britannia" finish - Elgin's designation for a partially brushed (i.e. "scratched" looking) casket exterior, the unbrushed parts of which possessed a transparent tint or dye - in this case of amber (reddish) color.