Reclaiming History Read online

  Baker and Truly round the stairwell on the fifth floor and discover one of the freight elevators. They take it to the top floor—the seventh—then climb one more flight of stairs to come out, through a little penthouse over the stairhead, onto the roof. Officer Baker trots over to the west side of the roof and immediately realizes the parapet, five feet high, is too high to look or shoot over. He has to stand on tiptoes to even see the street and the railroad yards below. He starts to check the huge Hertz sign atop the Depository roof, but after climbing ten feet up the ladder attached to it, Baker rules that out too—there’s nothing to hold onto up there.273

  The motorcade rockets along Stemmons Freeway, the president’s car right on the tail of motorcycle escorts Stavis Ellis, Jim Chaney, and B. J. Martin. They know if they lose control of their motorbikes, they’ll be run down by the four-ton monster behind them. They try to put some distance between themselves and the president’s car but each time they accelerate and look back, limousine driver Bill Greer has increased his speed and closed the gap.274

  Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood is still crouching in the backseat of the vice president’s car, trying to shout to Johnson over the roar of the wind and wailing sirens.

  “When we get to the hospital,” he hollers, “I want you and Mrs. Johnson to stick with me and the other agents as close as you can. We don’t know the extent of the emergency in the president’s car, but it may be necessary for you to be acting president. We are going into the hospital and we aren’t gonna stop for anything or anybody. Do you understand? We will separate from the other party the moment we stop!”

  “Okay, pardner,” Johnson says.275

  From his vantage point next to Mrs. Johnson, Senator Yarborough can see Clint Hill, sprawled over the back of the speeding presidential limousine, beating his fist on the trunk, his face contorted by grief, anguish, and despair. Whatever has happened, Yarborough knows it is serious.276

  There is little movement in the president’s car. The governor lapses into unconsciousness, believing, as he closes his eyes, that he is dying. So does his wife. Nellie puts her lips to his ear and whispers, “It’s going to be alright, be still,” though she can scarcely believe it herself. For a moment, she thinks he is dead. Then, his hand trembles slightly. She can only hold on tighter.

  Behind them, they hear the muted sobs of the First Lady, “He’s dead—they’ve killed him—oh Jack, oh Jack, I love you.” There is a pause, then, in shock, she begins again.277

  The motorcade exits the freeway onto the service road, barely slowing to make the right turn onto Industrial Boulevard, where the entrance to the Trade Mart is located. Sergeant Striegel and some other officers are there trying to flag them down, unaware that there’s been a shooting. Striegel steps into the street and waves frantically for them to stop as the lead motorcycles accelerate and blast past him at a frightening speed for a surface street.278

  The motorcade fast approaches Harry Hines Boulevard, where they’ll have to navigate a forty-five-degree left turn toward Parkland Hospital. Just before Harry Hines, the road rises sharply to cross a railroad grade. The motorcycle escorts are familiar with the turn, but limousine driver Bill Greer is not, and he pushes the president’s car faster, moving dangerously close to the motor jockeys. With the limousine’s front grill barking at their heels, the police escorts hit the rise wide open, go airborne, and nearly lose control as they slam to earth in the middle of the boulevard, thirty feet away. On contact, the Harley-Davidson motorcycles bank hard into the left turn, sparks kicking up from their footstands dragging across the pavement. The president’s car is right behind them, hitting the rise with a Whump!, then into the turn on squealing tires. Greer is doing all he can to handle the careening limousine, which bumps J. W. Courson’s motorcycle briefly into the curb.279 The men frantically pull out of the turn and accelerate toward the emergency entrance of Parkland Hospital three-quarters of a mile up the road. It’s a wonder they haven’t wrecked yet.

  12:34 p.m.

  Just four minutes after the shooting, United Press International, getting the story from the Dallas office after its reporter, Merriman Smith, called it in from the radiophone on the dashboard of the White House press pool car in the motorcade, flashes the news, “Three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade today in downtown Dallas,” to its vast network of subscribers—newspapers, radio and television stations, and business offices all over the world. It is the first word to the outside world of what has happened in Dallas.280

  As word of the shooting starts to spread throughout the land into every city and town, and every hamlet with a phone, radio, or TV set, people everywhere are physically staggered and stricken by the news. Groups of people gather everywhere, even around parked automobiles waiting for the next news bulletin over the car radio. Telephone switchboards light up like never before. The news spreads quickly across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the whole civilized world becomes “one enormous emergency room.”281

  12:35 p.m.

  In Dealey Plaza, motorcycle officers and squad cars are swarming the Book Depository Building.282 In the railroad yard, Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers encounters many police and spectators rummaging around, many beginning to doubt whether shots had been fired at all.

  “Well, they sounded like rifle shots to me,” Walthers tells the other officers. Walthers is familiar with the freight yards, having chased a couple of escapees from the county jail over here before, and knows that there’s nowhere to hide. It’s a wide-open river-bottom area as far as anyone can go, and he quickly begins to question whether anyone would be foolhardy enough to shoot from back here. Deputy Walthers walks back down the grassy slope to Elm Street and begins checking around a sewer cover off the south curb, where it appears that a bullet has chugged through the turf.283

  Nearby, Dallas police motorcycle officer B. W. Hargis has located an eyewitness to the shooting, grabs his radio, and contacts the dispatcher.

  “A passerby standing under the Texas School Book Depository stated that the shots came from that building,” Hargis tells him.284 This is the first police broadcast pinpointing the Book Depository as the source of the shots, but it will not be the last.

  The reports are coming in fast now. The next one is from Officer C. A. Haygood.

  “I just talked to a guy up here at the scene of this, where these shots were fired at, and he said that he was sitting here close to it, and…he thought they came from the Texas School Book Depository Building here, with that Hertz rental sign on top.”

  “Ten-four,” the dispatcher says. “Get his name, address and phone number, and all the information you can. 12:35 p.m.”285

  12:36 p.m.

  Sergeant D. V. Harkness, standing at the west end of the Elm Street extension, is asking for witnesses when young Amos Euins walks up, points to the Depository, and tells him he saw a man shooting from that building.286 Harkness puts Euins on his three-wheel motorcycle and shuttles him to the front door of the Depository.287 Harkness asks Euins which window he saw the man firing from. The teenage boy tells him it was the easternmost window of the floor “under the ledge”288—which makes it the sixth floor.

  “It was a colored man,” Euins says excitedly, “he was leaning out of the window and he had a rifle.”289

  Sergeant Harkness grabs the radio on his motorcycle and notifies headquarters, “I have a witness that says it came from the fifth floor of the Texas…ah…Depository Bookstore at Houston and Elm. I have him with me now. I’m gonna seal off the building.”290*

  As Harkness hangs up the radio mike, Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer, a twenty-three-year veteran of the Dallas Police Force, pulls his car to the curb in front of the Depository. For the last few minutes, the forty-seven-year-old plainclothes officer has been working his way toward the shooting scene from Main and Akard, where he had been in charge of crowd control.291 Sawyer jumps from the car, and Harkness tells him that he’s got a witness who says that shots were fired from the fifth fl
oor of the Depository.292

  “The building is sealed off,” Harkness tells him. “There are officers all around the building.”293 The inspector grabs two officers. “Come with me,” he says, and heads for the front door, intent on going to the fifth floor to check out Euins’s story. Meanwhile, Harkness puts Euins in the back of Sawyer’s car and tells him to stay put until someone can get a statement from him.294

  Howard Brennan, standing across the street from the Depository, watches as the officers seem to be directing their search to the west side of the Book Depository Building and down Houston Street. He runs across the street toward Officer W. E. Barnett, who is at the front of the building.

  “Get me someone in charge,” Brennan tells Barnett, who had just come from searching the north and east sides of the Depository Building. “You’re searching in the wrong direction. The man is definitely in this building. I was across the street there and I saw the man in the window with a rifle.”

  “Which window?” Barnett asks.

  “One window from the top,” Brennan says, pointing to the southeasternmost window on the sixth floor of the Depository Building.295

  When Sawyer returns to the street after his cursory search found nothing, he takes two patrolmen and stations them at the front door to the Depository Building with instructions not to let anyone in or out.296

  James R. Underwood, the assistant news director of KRLD-TV and radio, who had been riding in the motorcade and bailed out at the sound of the shots, approaches the squad car where Amos Euins sits in the backseat.

  “Did you see someone with a rifle?” Underwood asks.

  “Yes, sir,” the fifteen-year-old boy answers.

  “Were they white or black?”

  “It was a colored man,” Euins says.

  “Are you sure it was a colored man?” Underwood presses.

  “Yes, sir,” Euins replies.297*

  At Parkland Hospital, the presidential limousine pulls up abruptly at the emergency entrance. Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman leaps from the car and opens the back door. Not a gurney or a hospital orderly is in sight. Almost by the time it took the Dallas police to notify Parkland of the president’s imminent arrival, the limousine was already at the back entrance.298 The Secret Service follow-up car skids to a stop and a half-dozen agents tumble out.

  “Go get us two stretchers on wheels!” Kellerman yells to them.299

  The governor, lying face up in his wife’s lap, begins to regain consciousness.

  “Governor, don’t worry,” Kellerman says, “everything is going to be all right.”

  Special Agent Winston Lawson is the first into the building. He spots two gurneys at the end of a long corridor being pushed toward him. He dashes down and helps Nurse Diana Bowron and an orderly, Joe Richards, race them back to the entrance.300

  Dave Powers and Ken O’Donnell jump from the follow-up car and bound toward the Lincoln. Powers hears Secret Service agent Emory Roberts shouting at him to stop, but he ignores him. When Powers reaches the side of the limousine, he half expects to hear the familiar voice say, “I’m all right.” He and Jack Kennedy have been through so much. He finds his friend in Jackie’s arms, his eyes open, and for a moment thinks he’s conscious.

  “Oh, my God! Mr. President, what did they do?”

  Jackie looks up at him and shakes her head, “Dave, he’s dead.”

  Suddenly, he realizes that the open eyes are in a fixed, vacant stare—the left eye bulging from its socket. Powers breaks down in tears.

  Ken O’Donnell can only turn away.301

  The vice president’s car pulls up and agents hustle Lyndon Johnson, seen lightly rubbing his arm,† into the safety of the building. Senator Yarborough hears one of the Secret Service agents refer to Johnson as the “president,” and he knows that John Kennedy must be dead. He runs over to the president’s limousine and sees Mrs. Kennedy there in the backseat covered in blood, her head bowed.

  “They murdered my husband,” she moans.

  Ralph Yarborough is devastated. It is the most tragic sight of his life.302

  Emory Roberts opens the left rear door of the limousine. He sees the First Lady covering the president’s body with hers and tells her they have to get the president out of the limousine, but she doesn’t move. “Mrs. Kennedy, you’ve got to get out,” an unidentified Secret Service agent shouts imploringly.

  “There’s no need,” she replies faintly.

  Roberts lifts her elbow for a close look at the president, then drops it.

  “You stay with Kennedy, I’m going to Johnson,” Roberts says to Kellerman, undoubtedly aware of the cruelly insensitive mechanical transfer of power.303

  Nellie Connally grows agitated at the men fussing over the president. To her the situation is clear. The president is dead. She saw the gore; no one could live through that. Everyone is fretting over a dead man instead of helping her husband.304 The governor, conscious enough to realize that his jump seat is blocking access to the president in the backseat, tries to get out, then collapses in pain.

  “My God, it hurts,” he groans.305 A gurney rolls up to the side of the car.306 A Dallas police motorcycle officer and two Secret Service agents lift Connally’s body onto the stretcher.307 Hospital attendants push him quickly inside as Mrs. Connally stumbles after them.

  Roy Kellerman folds the jump seats out of the way, as agents turn their attention to the president. Agent Paul Landis grabs Mrs. Kennedy by the shoulders and tries to help her up, but she resists, “No, I want to stay with him!”308

  It is the most pitiful sight. The First Lady refuses to budge, crooning softly as she huddles over the mess in her lap. Agent Clint Hill mounts the rear bumper behind her and touches her gently on her trembling shoulders.

  “Please, Mrs. Kennedy,” he says tenderly.

  Everyone around her is quiet. Seconds pass. Her moans are barely audible.

  “Please,” Hill mumbles again. “We must get the president to a doctor.”

  “I’m not going to let him go,” she finally manages to say.

  “We’ve got to take him in,” Hill pleads.

  “No, Mr. Hill. You know he’s dead,” she answers. “Let me alone.”

  Now, Hill thinks he realizes why Jackie isn’t moving. She doesn’t want everyone around to see the horror she is cradling. He quickly removes his suit coat and covers the president’s head and upper chest with it to shield the horror from photographers, and Jackie releases her husband as a second gurney is pushed closer to the side of the limousine. Several agents pull the president toward them, struggling to lift the lifeless body onto the stretcher. The stretcher is quickly wheeled into the emergency entrance, a flock of people running alongside of it. Mrs. Kennedy is one of them; Jackie’s hat and the red roses she’d been given at Love Field heaped on top of the president’s body.309*

  The national press pool car and several other motorcade vehicles left behind in Dealey Plaza begin to arrive at the hospital. Doors fly open and UPI correspondent Merriman Smith runs up and grabs Clint Hill.

  “How is he?” Smith asks.

  Hill curses, then says, “He’s dead.”

  The reporter dashes into the hospital, bursts into the emergency room’s cashier’s cage, and snatches a telephone. “How do I get outside?” he demands.

  “Dial nine,” she stutters.

  He calls the local UPI office.

  “Kennedy has been seriously wounded—perhaps, fatally,” Smith tells them.310

  12:38 p.m.

  The emergency room* is sheer bedlam. Roy Kellerman, moving as quickly as he can, enters a doctor’s office and asks the medic there, “Can I use either one of these phones to get outside?”

  “Yes, just pick one up.”

  Kellerman calls Gerald Behn, chief of the Secret Service White House detail, in Washington. “Gerry,…the president and the governor have been shot. We’re in the emergency room of Parkland Memorial Hospital. Mark down the time.”

  Kellerman notes it as 12:38,
Behn as 12:41 p.m.311 Officially, the president is logged into the hospital register at 12:38 p.m. as “No.24740, Kennedy, John F.”312

  12:39 p.m.

  Dallas police are quickly mobilizing in Dealey Plaza. More reports are coming in, each focusing on the building commanding the northwest corner of Elm and Houston.

  “Get some men up here to cover this building, this Texas School Book Depository.” Officer Clyde A. Haygood radioes in. “It is believed these shots came from [there].”313

  Officer E. D. Brewer cuts in with another report: “We have a man here that saw [a gunman] pull a weapon back through the window off the second floor† on the southeast corner of that Depository building.”314

  Cecil McWatters, an eighteen-year veteran bus driver for the Dallas Transit Company, has been driving the Marsalis-Munger route for about two years now, zigzagging diagonally across the city from the Lakewood Addition out in the northeast to Oak Cliff in the southwest, and back again. There’s only a handful of people in the forty-four-passenger bus as he heads west on Elm in downtown Dallas, but McWatters more or less expects that, since so many folks went into town earlier for the presidential motorcade.315

  While at a complete stop in traffic on Elm at Murphy (just before Griffin), which is seven blocks east of the Depository, a man bangs on the door and McWatters lets him board, collecting the twenty-three-cent fare, even though, as indicated, he is not at a bus stop. The man takes the second seat back, on the right. From that seat he will be passing right by the scene of the assassination.316

  Mary E. Bledsoe is sitting right next to the front door of the bus. She turns her face away as the man gets on, hoping he doesn’t recognize her. It’s Lee Oswald and there is just something about him that she has never liked. Mary’s been divorced for a good many years, but she’s managed to scrape by and raise her two boys on a little money her doctor father had left her and by renting out two or three of the four bedrooms in her house on North Marsalis. Back in October she had rented a room to Oswald for seven dollars a week, then five days later asked him to leave the premises. He was always fussing with someone over the phone looking for a job. And she didn’t like his big-shot attitude or the fact that while using the telephone once she heard him talking in a foreign language. She told a lady friend of hers, “I don’t like anybody talking in a foreign language.”317