WASHINGTON (UPI)-- The picture of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting the casket of his father is one of the most poignant images of the weekend 40 years ago that shook the nation. UPI photographer Stan Stearns took the picture outside St. Matthew's Cathedral, after the Kennedy family emerged from the church following the funeral of President John F. Kennedy on Monday, Nov. 25, 1963. He was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Helen Thomas, now a columnist for Hearst Newspapers, was a United Press International White House reporter at the time and was stationed outside the cathedral. "I was on the steps of St. Matthew's with a portable telephone, which was like (the size of) a battery for a car timberland portugal online," Thomas recalled. Thomas saw Mrs. Kennedy bend down and whisper to John Jr., known as John-John, who brought his hand up in salute. She called in the details to Robert Andrews in the Washington bureau, who was writing a color story about the child, who had turned 3 the day of the funeral. Andrews wrote: "A little boy at his grieving mother's side saluted the passing casket. And in that moment, he suddenly became the brave soldier his father would have wanted him to be on this day, of all days." Kennedy Jr. died July 16, 1999, in a plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard, Mass. He initially had embarked on a career in law after graduating from New York University Law School in 1989 Botas timberland, serving a brief time as a prosecutor in Manhattan, N.Y. In 1995 he founded a magazine, "George," which he tagged "not politics as usual." Stearns' photo shows the boy in coat and short pants, right hand at his forehead in salute, his left hand bent in to touch his side. Stearns was stationed outside the church with about 75 other photographers. He said he had a hunch, so he focused a 200mm lens on Mrs. Kennedy. "All of a sudden she bent down and whispered in his ear," Stearns said. "His hand went up and 'click,' that was the picture." Stearns took one picture of John-John, the first frame on a 36-frame roll of Kodak Tri-X black-and-white film shot on a 35mm Nikon camera with a manual film advance. "One exposure, that was it," he said. Stearns said in those days timberland portugal, most news photographers had grown up in an era of bulky Speed Graphic cameras, which used film on 4-by-5-inch sheets. Photographers would take one "bread-and-butter" establishing shot "and then wait for something to happen." "Most photographers today are going 'click-click-click' and editors pick the shots," he said. "They don't think like we did back then." Stearns said he was supposed to follow the entourage to Arlington National Cemetery, but instead walked his film back to the office. He said he went to a camera store and bought fine-grain developer to develop the print, not trusting the regular "soup" in which other pictures were being developed. He said his bosses were alarmed when he showed up in the office ahead of schedule, but understood when they saw the picture. Stearns, 68, has a commercial photography business in Annapolis, Md. "I'm very proud to have made that famous photograph, I really am," he said.

• Singer Plant donates to Mali musicians
• Slovakian candidate NATO friend to Russia
• Teen sniping suspect admits shooting