Anybody Who Remembers the JFK Funeral in 1963 Remembers the Riderless Horse, Black Jack

(sometimes written as "Blackjack"). The man who was leading the horse, who proved to be a handful, talked about him the other day:

Carlson also had no idea the kind of fight Black Jack was going to give him.

"He'd always been a calm horse. He knew his job and he did it. No problem," Carlson said.

The Sunday after the assassination, the day Lee Harvey Oswald was shot, they followed the coffin to where Kennedy would lie in state. A metal gate resting against the wall of a tunnel they passed through came crashing to the ground.

"It made a hellacious noise," Carlson said. "Black Jack got spooked, he stayed wild for two days and then he was back to normal."

The next day, as they followed the caisson with Kennedy's coffin to Arlington, Carlson had to keep control of a terrified horse. Prior to the military, Carlson said his only experience with horses was seeing them in the movies.