Secret Servicemen look back as shots ring out.
Sniper's Rifle Fells Texas Governor Johnson, First Lady Uninjured
DALLAS (UPI) Lyndon B. Johnson today was sworn in as the 36th. President of the United States at 12:38 San Diego time, less than two hours after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas by a sniper's bullet.
Dallas (AP) President John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, was shot to death today by a hidden assassin armed with a High-powered rifle. Texas Gov. John Connally was shot down with him and is in critical condition.
Kennedy, 46, lived about 30 minutes after a sniper cut him down as his limousine left downtown Dallas. Newsmen said the shot that hit him was fired about 10:30 a.m. San Diego time. A hospital announcement said that the President had died at approximately 11:00 a.m. of a bullet wound in the head. Automatically, the mantle of the presidency fell to Vice President Johnson, a native Texan who had been riding two cars behind the chief executive.
Under Heavy Guard
There was no immediate word on when Johnson would take the oath of office. He was placed under heavy guard immediately.
Kennedy died at Parkland Hospital, where his bullet-pierced body had been taken in a frantic but futile effort to save his life. Lying wounded at the same hospital was Connally, cut down by the same fusillade that ended the life of the youngest man ever elected President. He was riding with his wife in the same open top limousine but in the second row forward.
The First Lady Weeps
The First Lady, Jacqueline, cradled her dying husband's blood smeared head in her arms as the presidential limousine raced to the hospital. "Oh, no," she crying. She was not injured.
Connally slumped in his seat forward of the President.
Police ordered an unprecedented dragnet of the city, hunting for the assassin.
They believed the fatal shots were fired by a white man about 39, slender of build, weighing 165 pounds, and 5 feet 10 inches tall.
The murder weapon was a 30-30 rifle. At one time Sheriff's deputies said they were questioning a suspect.
Shortly before Kennedy's death became known, he was administered the last rites of the Roman Catholic church. He had been the first Roman Catholic president in American history.
Even as two clergymen hovered over the fallen President in the hospital emergency room, doctors and nurses administered blood transfusions.
Kennedy died of a gunshot wound in the brain at approximately 11 a.m. San Diego time, according to an announcement by acting White House press secretary Malcolm Kilduff.
Johnson and his wife left the hospital half an hour later. Newsmen had no opportunity to question them.
The horror of the assassination was mirrored in an eyewitness account by Sen. Ralph Yarborough, D-Tex., who had been riding three cars behind Kennedy. "You could tell something awful and tragic had happened," the Senator told newsmen before Kennedy's death became known, His voice breaking and his eyes red-rimmed.
I could see a Secret Service man in the President's car leaning on the car with his hands in anger, anguish and despair. I knew then something tragic had happened."
Yarborough had counted three rifle shots as the presidential limousine left downtown Dallas through a triple underpass. The shots were fired from above from the nearby building. (Just Below. upper 5th or 6th floor.)
(Note the arched brick casing above a square window of the 5th. floor)
One witness, television reporter Mal Couch, said he saw a gun emerge from an upper story of a warehouse window commanding an unobstructed view of the presidential car. (the top two floors)
Kennedy was the first President to be assassinated since William McKinley was shot in 1901.
Roosevelt had been enjoying a vacation when he died. McKinley had been shaking hands at a reception at an exposition in Buffalo N.Y.
Kennedy and his wife had just passed the halfway point in a three-day speaking tour through Texas.
The President had prepared a luncheon address for a Dallas audience, and the prepared text, assailed his ultraconservative critics. Dallas was considered a center of conservative critics. Dallas was considered a center of conservative philosophy and finance. Here on Oct. 24th, Adlai E. Stevenson was spat upon by one heckler and struck by another after making a United Nations Day address.
Connally was rushed into surgery for a two-hour emergency surgery for a bullet wound to the right wrist. Though Mrs. Kennedy (sitting next to the President) cried out, "Oh No", in horror and despair after her husband was shot, she did not collapse or give way to hysteria. When she entered the hospital, her clothing was covered with blood from her husbands wounds.
Scope on the murders weapon: (Oswald's Weapon probably still held by the Government).
Lt. Erich Kaminski of the Secret Service Bureau said the assassin's weapon appears to have been a "high-powered Army or Japanese rifle of about 25-caliber." Rifle that also was equipped with a scope. (a close example is just below)
The entire building from which the shooter used as his perch was immediately evacuated.
At the moment of the assassination, many people were working in their offices and once learning of the shooting, fled immediately. Dallas Inspector J.H. Sawyer said. "Police had found the remains of a fried chicken sandwich and paper wrapper on the fifth floor. Apparently the person had been there for a while waiting for the motorcade.
After the fatal shots were fired at Kennedy, the stricken President's Secret Service driver raced away from the scene at top speed — heading for the nearest hospital (Parkland) and trying to get the presidential party out of range of further gunfire.
Kennedy, Connally and their wives had been riding together in the President's familiar dark blue bubbletop convertible. However, the bubbletop had been removed for today's motorcade in Dallas.
Agent Clinton Hill now moves up on the trunk lid pushing forward as the Presidents car races to the hospital in a Code 3 status.
Agent Hill now covers the occupants with his own body as they race to the hospital.
(Side Note) It was the first death of a President in office since Franklin D. Roosevelt succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia, in April, of 1945.
Secret Service agents riding with the President and in a second convertible following close behind, now drew their pistols and automatic weapons, but were unable to get a shot at the gunman. Immediately, the President's vehicle began a high speed race to the nearest hospital knowing that the President had been hit and the Police on motorcycles immediately assumed a Code 3 mode, as escorts ahead of the Presidents vehicle.
One officer raced to the foot of a nearby railroad embankment with his gun in hand. The crowds along the motorcade route were standing 10-12 deep along the curb, broke apart in pandemonium as the Secret Service sped away. Ironically, Kennedy was shot to death at a spot where there were few spectators - after driving earlier within handshaking distance of many thousands who had turn out this day.
It was announced that Kennedy's body would be moved this very afternoon to Washington. Traditionally, funeral services for Presidents who die in office are held in the capital city. Above: The "Swearing In" of a new President while returning to D.C. on Air Force 1.
• The Lincoln was leased, but received six-figures in upgrades from the White House for the Presidents use.
• The car was fashioned from a stock 1961 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible — retail price $7,347 — that had rolled off the assembly line at parent company Ford's plant in Wixom, Mich. The White House leased it from Ford for a token $500 a year and sent it off for $200,000 in modifications by elite custom coachbuilder Hess and Eisenhardt in Cincinnati, Ohio. (The firm's other high-profile clients included the Queen of England.) In the process, the car gained Secret Service codenames — SS-100-X and X-100 — and the grille of this 1961 model, so it appeared right up-to-date.
 |
Left: The arrival in Dallas on Air Force 1 and above he greets the waiting and joyous crowds wanting to shake his hand. (A Secret Service nightmare moment for those who protect him.) |
At 12:24, Jim Hosty, an FBI agent who was in charge of the Bureau's current investigation of Oswald, watched Kennedy from the curb and then stepped into the Alamo Grill for lunch. He had seen the President, His day, he felt, was made.
When the motorcade reached Main and Market at 12:28, it occurred to Senator Yarborough that anyone could drop a pot of flowers on Kennedy from an upper story. Beyond them, the green of Dealey Plaza was visible. My, that open sky looks good the Senator thought.
At Houston and Elm, Agent Sorrels radioed the Trade Mart that they would reach here in five minutes. Then Agent Lawson automatically scanned the overpass. There were railway workmen on top, a security breach. Through the windshield, he motioned urgently to a policeman there in a yellow rain slicker, indicating that he wanted the area cleared. The officer was unresponsive. He didn't understand.
The JFK arrival in Dallas with Governor Connally waving and 2-S.S. looking away as the President and Governor look and wave at the crowd. ( Leaving the airport.) Note the Secret Service man in the front seat as the car departs always watching.
When the motorcade reached Main and Market at 12:28, it occurred to Senator Yarborough that anyone could drop a pot of flowers on Kennedy from an upper story. Beyond them, the green of Dealey Plaza was visible. My, that open sky looks good the Senator thought.
At Houston and Elm, Agent Sorrels radioed the Trade Mart that they would reach here in five minutes. Then Agent Lawson automatically scanned the overpass. There were railway workmen on top, a security breach. Through the windshield, he motioned urgently to a policeman there in a yellow rain slicker, indicating that he wanted the area cleared. The officer was unresponsive. He didn't understand.
Agent Greer, (the President's driver) recovering from the difficult turn, started to relax. The strain was over. Then he, too, noticed the workmen. Puzzled, he studied the unfamiliar street to see whether he could veer at the last minuet if necessary and take the President beneath a deserted part of span.
The Lincoln was now passing a pine oak that momentarily screened John Kennedy from the muzzle in the sixth-floor (top floor) corner window. Abe Zapruder, hunched over his Zoomar lens, was photographing the President car —SS100X in Secret Service code —as it approached him. Nellie pointed to the underpass an said to Jackie, "We're almost through. It's just beyond that." Jackie thought how pleasant the cool tunnel would be. Everything seemed very quiet here. She turned to wave to the left. In the front seat of the follow up car, agent Emory Roberts radioed the Mart, "Halfback to Base, Five minutes to destination."
He then wrote in his shift report, 12:35 pm. President Kennedy arrives at the Trade Mart.”
MacKilduff, misreading the sign on the front of the warehouse, said to Washington correspondent Merriman Smith “What in the hell is a Book Repository/” Further back in the motorcade, Evelyn Lincoln was saying “ Just think – we’ve come through all of Dallas and there hasn’t been a single demonstration.”
The Lincoln moved ahead at 11.2 miles an hour. It passed the tree. Citizen, Abe Zapruder, slowly swinging his camera to the right, found himself photographing the back of the freeway sign.
Momentarily, the entire car was obscured. But it was no longer hidden from the sixth-floor corner window above. The President's car had passed the last branch of the tree just below. Spectator Charles Brend's five-year-old boy (below) timidly raised his hand (perhaps in a salute). The President smiled warmly and raised his hand to wave back. There was a sudden, sharp, shattering sound.
Most of the hunters in the motorcade identified the sound immediately as rifle fire, but the White House detail was confused. The agents were unaccustomed to the bizarre effect created when small-arms fire echoes among unfamiliar structures, such as the buildings around Dealey Plaza. Secret Service Agents Kellerman. Lawson, Greer, Ready and Hill all thought the sound they heard had been caused by an exploding firecracker.
It was only when he saw President lurch forward and grab his neck the Clint Hill who had extraordinary reflexes, leapt out of Halfback, as the follow-up car was known in Secret Service code, and charged forward toward SS100X. The reflexes of the agents nearest the President were crucial in those seconds after the first shot was fired There are standard tests to measure this ability. And any jet pilot who fails such a test is grounded. However, Presidential bodyguards were not required to take them
In addition, a man's reflexes slow down as he ages, and the pace at which he lives may slow them further. The Secret Service pace was furious. Men assigned to the White House detail averaged from 50 to 80 hours overtime every Month. "At forty," they said among themselves, "a man on this detail is old." Yet Service tradition dictated that the posts closest to the president should be reserved for senior men. Greer, The President's driver, was 54. Kellerman, who sat beside Greer, was 48. They were in a position to take evasive action after the first shot, but for five terrible seconds, they were immobilized.
In the VICE-PRESIDENTIAL car, Yarborough thought he smelled gunpowder. "My God!" he yelled, "they've shot the President!" Agent Rufus Youngblood hurtled over the front seat toward Johnson. He was less positive than he seemed; he was thinking that this was going to be very embarrassing if he were wrong. But his voice was firm. "Get down!" he snapped at Johnson.
In the VIP bus, Dr. Burkley was starting out absently at store windows. The President's physician had heard nothing. He was too far back in the motorcade.
The President was wounded, but not fatally. A 6.5 millimeter bullet had entered the back of his neck, bruised his right lung, ripped his windpipe, and exited at his throat, nicking the knot of the Presidents tie.
The Following Images: Two earlier views of Dealey Plaza that were not time stamped.
In the summer of 1966, a former Cornell graduate student published a dissertation that suggested that this first bullet followed a different trajectory. The implication was that a second assassin had aided Oswald. The issue was resolved by the X rays and photographs which were taken from every conceivable angle during the autopsy on the President's body. The material presented was judge too unsightly to be shown to anyone, included qualified scholars until 1971. He then turned this material over to the National Archives with that restriction.
Although the graduate had not seen the above material, he did interviewed three people with special qualifications who examined it before it was put under seal. None of them knew the other two, but all three gave identical accounts of what they have seen in the photographs and X rays. The X rays show no entry wound "below the shoulder," as argued by the graduate student. Admittedly, X rays of active projectiles passing through soft tissue are difficult to read. However, the photographs support them in this case — and clearly reveal that the wound was in the neck area. Finally, the recollections of all the doctors present during the autopsy, including the President's personal physician, agree unanimously with this overwhelming evidence.
Continuing its flight, the bullet had passed through Governors Connally's back, chest, right wrist and left thigh, although the Governor Connally's back, chest, right wrist and left thigh, although the Governor, suffering a delayed reaction, was not yet aware of it.
As the Lincoln emerged from behind the free way sign, Abe Zapruder, the amateur movie photograph, saw the stifled look on the President's face and was stunned. Nelly Connally twisted in her seat and looked sharply at Kennedy. His hands were at his throat, but he wasn't grimacing. He had started to slump a little.
Roy Kellerman thought he had heard the President call in his inimitable accent, My God, I'm hit!". Roy looked over his left shoulder. The car, wobbling from side to side, slowly veered out of line — and both saw that Kennedy was hit.
At this instant, the impact of John Connally's wound hit him. He pitched forward, saw that his lap was covered with blood, and toppled to the left, toward his wife. Suddenly, the Governor felt doomed. He panicked. "No, no, no, no!", he shrieked. "There're going to kill us both!"
Jacqueline Kennedy heard him. In a daze, she wondered, Why is he screaming? Already she had started to turn anxiously to her husband.
Greer turned back the cars wheel. Kellerman, hesitant, glanced over his shoulder again. Neither had yet reacted to the immediate crisis.
And now it was too late. Spectator Howard Brennan, openmouthed, saw Oswald take deliberate aim for his final shot. Crooking his arm, Oswald drew a fresh bead with his Italian rifle. His target, startlingly clear in the crosshairs of his telescopic sight, was 88 yards away. He squeezed the trigger again.
The First Lady, in her last act as First Lady, leaned solicitously toward the President. His face was quizzical. She had seen that expression so often, when he was puzzling over a difficult press-conference question. Now, in a gesture of infinite grace, he raised his right hand, as though to brush back his tousled chestnut hair. But the motion faltered. The hand fell back limply. He had been reaching for the top of his head. But it wasn't there any more…
The Interior of the Presidential Lincoln was a place of Horror. The last bullet had torn through John Kennedy's cerebellum, the lower part of his brain. Leaning toward her husband, Jacqueline saw a piece of his skull detach itself. At first, there was no blood, And then, in the next instant, there was nothing but blood spattering her, the Connally's, Kellerman, Greer, the cars upholstery. Gobs of blood as thick as a man's hand soaked the floor of the back seat. The President's clothes were steeped in it, the roses were drenched. Motorcycle Police officer Bobby Hargis was doused in the face by a red sheet. To Kellerman, it appeared that the air was full of moist sawdust.
John Connally screamed again and again in agony; in terror, Nellie began to scream too; they were saturated. Jacqueline rose on her stained knees, facing toward the sidewalk, and cried out, "My God what are they doing? My God, they've killed Jack, they've killed my husband. Jack, Jack!" There was also a reaction in the front seat of SS100X. "Move it out!" Kellerman screamed Greer. Into the intercom microphone, he said, "Lawson, this is Kellerman. We are hit! Get us to a hospital immediately."
The back of the Lincoln was equipped with metal hand grips on the trunk for agents and a step in each side of the spare tire. Clint Hill had his fingers in the left grip and his toe on the left step 1.6 seconds after the last shot. He had just begun to surge forward toward the Presidents Seat when Greer rammed the accelerator to the floor.
The Lincoln sprang forward, dislodging Clint's foot. He was deadweight, and dragging. Mrs. Kennedy pivoted back toward the rear trunk deck area of the vehicle and reach out for him; their hands touched, clenched, and locked. It is impossible to say who saved whom. Neither remembers, and the film taken by Abe Zapruder is inconclusive. Mrs. Kennedy, who was in deep shock, has no recollection of being on the trunk at all.
He could hold on now, but that was a small consolation. From the street, he had seen Kennedy's head wound. He knew it was mortal, and the Secret Service had failed; and in anguish and frustration, he hammered on the trunk with his free hand.
As the Presidential car raced toward the hospital, Governor Connally lapsed into unconsciousness. He believed that he was dying. So did his wife.
Nellie whispered, "It's going to be all right, be still." Yet she didn't believe it. She doubted that anything would ever be right again. For a while, she thought he was already dead. Then one of his hands trembled slightly. Quickly, she put her hand over his.
Nellie heard a muted sobbing from the back seat. In a strange voice, Jacqueline Kennedy was saying, "He's dead — they have killed him - oh Jack, oh Jack, I love you." There was a pause. The she began again. Nellie and Clint could hear Mrs. Kennedy, but she could not hear herself.
Reality came to her in dim flashed. She had heard Kellerman on the radio and had wondered why it had taken the car so long to leave. Next, in her red daze, she had become preoccupied with the President's head.
Huddled on the ruined cushion, cradling his shoulders in her arms and his head in her gloves, she crouched over the President. Trying to heal the un-healable seemed to be all that mattered; she couldn't bear the thought that others should see what she had just see.
Kennedy's Last Moments (A Reconstructed Perspective of events 1 Week Later)
DALLAS (UPI) - It now is possible to reconstruct in detail the events that took place in Parkland Memorial Hospital one week ago today shortly after President Kennedy was mortally wounded by an assassin's bullets.
The first call came to Parkland from the Dallas Police Department. "The President has been shot. He is on the way to Parkland."
Surgical teams sprang into action.
Dr. Charles James Carrico, a resident in surgery, was in the emergency room when a secret serviceman burst through the swinging doors. A second one, with a sub-machine gun cradled in his arms, was on his heels.
The first agent asked for two portable hospital carts. He called them "stretchers." One for Gov. John Connally, the other for the President.
The agent with the gun was so agitated, his face contorted with emotion, that hospital personnel were afraid that he might open fire at any moment.
"Everybody clear out of here," the agent shouted. Ambulance driver Aubrey Rike, 25, and his assistant Dennis McGuire ducked behind a desk. Two student nurses also scrambled to the floor.
A man in a business suit dashed in. The secret service caught him with an uppercut. He slammed back against the gray tiled wall of the emergency room, and then slowly slid down to the floor, unconscious. Seconds later, still dazed, he reached for his wallet.
"I've got to call (J. Edgar) Hoover." He said, flashing his FBI credentials to the two secret servicemen.
Moments later, the two portable carts were wheeled into the Emergency Operating Room No. 1. Connally was first. Then the President, with Mrs. Kennedy walking beside the cart, holding his head, her pink suit bloodied.
Connelly was then wheeled immediately into O.R. No. 2, an identical 15 by 10 foot room directly across the hall.
The Vice President Johnson then walked in, with his hand on chest. Sen. Ralph Yarborough, D-Tex., who had been riding in the motorcade with Johnson, was in tears. At first some feared that Johnson might have suffered a heart attack.
The operating table in Room No. 1 had been shoved out of the way. The doctors were moving so swiftly they did not want to take the time to lift the President off his cart
Dr. Carrico, the first man in the room, forced a breathing tube down the President's windpipe as Dr. Malcolm Perry, an assistant professor of surgery, dashed in. Perry decided further help in breathing was needed. The fist bullet had opened the windpipe. Dr. Perry inserted a breathing tube through the bullet hole.
Dr. Charles Baxter, assistant professor of surgery and director of Student Health Science, then also arrived at this time. Mrs. Kennedy still was in the room. Dr. Baxter glanced at her and said, "I believe you had better step outside." (probably to keep her from seeing the procedures that yet may have to be done to keep the President alive). There were five staff members hovering around Kennedy at this time. Whenever one doctor made an observation, the others immediately agreed.
Mrs. Kennedy turned to a White House aid in the corridor and said “Call a priest”. The aid relayed the message to Steve Landregan, assistant to the hospital administrator C. J. Price. Landregan immediately called the nearby Holy Trinity Catholic church.
More doctors rushed to Kennedy's side. There were 15 in all. Besides Perry, Carrico, and Baxter, there were Doctors: William Kemp Clark, chairman of surgery; Robert McClelland, assistant professor of surgery; M. T. Jenkins, chairman of anesthesiology; Fouad A. Bashour, associate professor of internal medicine; Adolph Giesecke, clinical associate in anesthesiology; Paul C. Peters, assistant professor of urology; Ronald C. Jones, senior resident in surgery; Charles Crenshaw, surgery resident; Gene Akin, anesthesiology resident; Jackie H Hunt, anesthesiology fellow; Don Curtis, oral surgery resident and Kenneth Slayer, surgery resident.
Dr. Carrico remembered reading that Kennedy suffered adrenal deficiency and immediately administered hydrocortisone.
Dr. Jones began a "cut-down" on Kennedys left arm to insert a catheter — a device to force more blood into a vein and keep the passage open. Curtis completed the same procedure on the left leg.
Lactated ringers solution (a crystalloid solution sometimes called white blood and used until whole blood can be obtained) was pumped in. In seconds, a technician from the blood bank arrived with "O" negative blood (fm. a universal donor) and it was then started.
To feed the blood faster, hand pumps were used. By now, the cart had been elevated at the foot end to help the blood get back to the heart.
Then one of the doctors noticed a frothing of the blood in the neck wound. "He's bubbling air", the doctor said. This means a hole in the lung.
Drs. Peters and Baxter immediately inserted a tube into the right upper part of the chest, just below the shoulder, to re-expand the lungs and keep them from collapsing. Drs. Perry and Jones at the same time inserted a similar tube on the left side.
Doctors and nurses raced in and out. Each time the operating room door opened, Mrs. Kennedy tried to look into the O. R.. "What is happening," she would ask. "How is he?"
Dr. Clark, the neurosurgeon, had run all the way from the medical school (nearby). He was one of the last of the team to arrive. He raced through the emergency room door not more than five minutes after the President was brought in.
Dr. Clark looked down at the President. His eyes were open staring back, but was probably now sightless.
Dr. Clark had a "torpedo" hooked up immediately to the President. This is a small; machine with a scope that shows a heartbeat in waves as a little green light traveling from, one side to the other on its screen. The dot of light moved straight across the screen in a hopelessly steady line. Dr. Clark looked up at Dr. Perry and said: "It's to late, Mac," he said.
But Dr. Perry grabbed a stool, placed his knee on it to give him leverage and began giving Kennedy closed chest massage — using his fist in a rocking, pressing motion over the breastbone to provide, if possible, a 60-70 per minute beat . He and Dr. Clark then took turns together.
A more sensitive cardiotachyscope was brought in by Dr. Bashour.
Electrodes from the machine were attached to Kennedy's left arm. But the green pinpoint of light on the scope did not waver the tiniest fraction of an inch.
An attendant was standing by with two rods that can shock a faltering heart onto beating, but then put them away. The President was dead. He had been dead for minutes, probably before he had even reached the hospital.
Jenkins, monitoring the oxygen equipment, then turned the valves off. The President was dead. He probably had died before ever reaching the hospital. Now motionless, dressed only in his trousers, shorts and back brace for his ailing back.
Two Physicians with great dignity now place a sheet over the President.
Dr. Baxter got a fresh sheet. He and Dr. Jenkins tenderly pulled it across his body and up and over his face. Kennedy's coat, shirt, undershirt and the tie had all been folded and place on one of the steel shelves lining the wall. The floor was littered with empty bottles, bloody bandages, boxes that had contained sterile dressings, and bits of tubing. At the foot of the cart, among the litter, were the President's shoes. A doctor gently picked them up and place them with his coat on the shelf.
"The priest is outside," someone said. There was nothing more the doctors could do.
They opened the emergency room door. The priest, the Rev. Oscar L. Huber, C. was waiting.
Mrs. Kennedy then stood up. Two White House aids stood on either side of her as She walked inside the O.R. and toward the cart where her husband lay. The aids had stayed outside.
At the foot of the cart, Mrs. Kennedy stopped for a moment. The President's feet were flush with the end of the cart, uncovered by the sheet which had been pulled up over his face.
Mrs. Kennedy then reached out, touched his right foot and then bent down and kissed it. Then she walked along side the cart and stood by the President's right shoulder.
Father Huber then entered the Operating Room moments after her. He stopped beside her, glanced up, then stepped around her and stood at the President's head. With great respect, he pushes back the sheet un-covering the Presidents face.
Mrs. Kennedy then bends over him and kisses her husband's right cheek. Picking up his right hand, she holds his hand in both of hers and presses his hand to her left cheek for a moment, then resting his hand on her husbands chest, she lays her head on his hand as the Priest intoned, in Latin, the last rites.
As soon as the priest and his assistant left, the doctors walked from the operating room to the nurse's station on the ward. They gathered together inside the room, Drs: (Baxter, Clark, Perry, and Jenkins). It was nearly 1:10 pm in the afternoon.
They had two things to decide quickly. What time the President died and which one of them should sign the death certificate. Dr. Clark was chosen to sign the certificate because it was felt the President died of a neurological wound. They arbitrarily decided the time should be 1 pm. (immediately after the priest had finished with the last rites.
Dallas (UPI) STAFF WRITER: Bryce Miller (1963)
Photograph at the back entry of the hospital shows employees and staff waiting. The Presidents Limo is stilled parked and now a light colored vehicle is park in backwards to receive the body of our President.
The family of Oswald gather at his gravesite while the Secret Service watches and protects the families privacy in their moment of grief at the gravesite. Without any pre-conditions or held beliefs, the men and women of our Secret Service serve to protect all those who qualify for its protection or as directed by any President then in Office at the time.
Headline: WEDDING RING RETURNED TO MRS. KENNEDY From: NEWS SERVICES (unknown)
WASHINGTON: Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy's wedding ring was not buried with her husband, President Kennedy, the White House confirmed today.
Background: Mrs. Kennedy had taken her wedding ring from her finger in the Dallas hospital and placed it on Kennedy's finger before the lid of his casket was closed. But Kennedy's appointments secretary, Kenneth O'Donnell, removed the ring from Kennedy's hand at the Bethesda Naval Hospital and returned it to the widow, the White House said.
When she placed the ring on Kennedys finger, Mrs. Kennedy had ask "Do you think it was right? Now I have nothing left." "You leave it there" O'Donnell replied, but later realizing her need for the ring — he later removed it from the President's hand, and returned it to her before interment. End
"A better leader no man hath known. No better leader could defend our homes. Now he has left us, he's with the leaders of the past; he will always be remembered in our hearts to the last.
A world he loved mourns in silent prayer. Let's hope that John F. Kennedy will be happy up there. As a man he died, as a leader he will live on forever. His words will ring forever through this world's great throngs.
As we glance across this wondrous land, let us all thank God we served in Kennedy's command. Thank you, John Fitzgerald Kennedy."
Author:(of this second clipping just above) Signed as: 422-13-44, Possibly: U.S. Navy or another branch of the "Services". (undated).
This Writers footnote to the second clipping just above: (945-XX-83, my Father's Serial number in U.S. Navy in WW2, now deceased, and 37X-XX-99 this compiler, who served on board the USS Stoddard DD-566 (1960-1964), which now has been sunk off Hawaii in a missile range due to old age some years ago.) …perhaps we were all Navy men. (To see the controlled explosions and the slow slippage of the USS Stoddard going under the blanket of the sea in a missile test range off Hawaii, …go to the (USS Stoddard's Web Site: http://www.ussstoddard.org/ to see the short movie record of this destroyers sinking)
One Additional Article:
Friday., Nov. 29, 1963 by Arthur Everett (from the San Diego Union)
Dallas Tex. (AP) Lee Harvey Oswald went to a lonely Texas grave this week in a plain wooden coffin, with a single spray of flowers atop it. Buried with him is the secret of his roll in President Kennedy's assassination.
"This man killed the President," says Dallas homicide Capt. Will Fritz. But saying it is not the same as proving it.
Did he? Most probably. But why? Only the 24 year old Oswald could answer these questions specifically.
"He readily admitted that he was a Communist," said Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry after Oswald's arrest. "Apparently he was proud of being a Communist. He didn't try to hide it. Last year, Oswald said in New Orleans. . . he was not a Communist but a Marxist. But actually Oswald has never drawn any distinction between the two."
Evidence Told: Had he not himself been killed by the owner of a Dallas strip tease joint, Oswald eventually might have been brought to trial. Presuming he stood firm in his denial that he shot President Kennedy Nov. 22, what evidence would a jury have to consider?
First, as to motive: Oswald very likely was a Communist of sorts, at least a Marxist, a follower of the 100-year-old philosophy upon which much of the Communist ideology is based.
Data on Communism: Dallas Dist. Atty. Henry Wade says: "No, there was no evidence that said he was a member of the Communist party. However, there was lots of material dealing with communism, such as the Daily Worker paper, and there was even more material dealing with the "Fair Play for Cuba" organization.".
In 1959, just out of the U.S. Marines, Oswald went to Moscow, where he sought to renounce his American citizenship. He declared then:
"I've made up my mind, I'm through. Capitalism has passed its peak. I've seen so many poor folks here (edit out now of offensive wording), and that was a lesson. People hate because they've been told to hate. It's the fashion to hate people in the United States."
Apparently becoming disenchanted with Russia. Oswald talked his way back to this country on the grounds that he never actually had obtained Russian citizenship. He came home in 1962, to New Orleans.
There he showed signs of sympathy for Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro. His landlady twice made him take down pro-Castro signs he plastered on her porch. And he had a fight with anti Castro Cubans who found him handing out pro-Castro literature.
Photos Found: Curry says that after Oswald's arrest, photographs were found, showing his standing with a rifle in one hand and in the other, a copies of the Communist newspaper the Worker. (just above pg. 29)
Also, Castro's Havana government has announced that Oswald tried on September 27th. to obtain a visa, permitting him to go to Cuba and thence back to Russia. Had his disenchantment left him? Did he want to resume life behind the Iron Curtain? Or was he making preparations for an escape route — after the assassination of the President, perhaps?
All this jury would have to consider in seeking a motive. Oswald himself could not be made to testify if he did not wish to.
Secondly, as to opportunity: Did Oswald have an opportunity to kill the President? He certainly did.
President Kennedy was shot by a sniper from a window on the top floor of the six story Texas school book depository building, which overlooked the route of the presidential motorcade.
Access to a Window: Oswald went to work for the firm last September, soon after it was announced that President Kennedy would be visiting Dallas. A man working with Oswald shortly before the President was shot says he told him: "Oswald, let's go see the President." "No," he quoted Oswald in reply, you go on down and send the elevator back up." (See image on page 14 of Oswald's View.)
So Oswald was now in the building and now had access to the window from which the President was shot.
The death gun found at the sniper's stakeout in the depository building was a 6.5mm Italian carbine, the Dallas District Atty. Henry Wade maintains: The gun was here, his prints were on the gun that killed Kennedy, his palm prints were on the box on which the killer sat, and witnesses put him on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting." There was further evidence.
Killed Policeman: Oswald learned how to handle a gun in the Marines. Wade said he bought the assassination rifle last March for $12.78 from a Chicago mail order house. Authorities said they have a written order in Oswald's handwriting for the gun. A Federal Bureau of Investigation check is said to show the serial number of the mail order rifle matched that of the assassination weapon.
After the assassination, Oswald turned up four miles away from the depository building, near the rooming house where he lived in Dallas. When Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit tried to question him, eyewitnesses said he shot the policeman dead with a pistol. If he wasn't running from the scene of another crime, why did he fear the officer?
After Oswald's arrest, paraffin tests were made in an effort to detect any particles of gunpowder on Oswald's hands, and district attorney Wade reported: "Paraffin test on both hands showed he had recently fired a gun."
Even more damming evidence was found in Oswald's Dallas room. It was a map of the city of Dallas. On it were marks at various intersections where the Kennedy motorcade was due to pass. There also was a line drawn from the school book depository building to the spot about 75 yards away where the bullet struck the President - a trajectory faithfully followed by the assassin.
By: Arthur Everett
Friday., Nov. 29, 1963 by Bob Finley (from the San Diego Union)
DALLAS, AP (UPI) Lee Harvey Oswald was such an obnoxious character he was even hated by the Russians, The Dallas Times Herald said yesterday by staff writer Bob Finley. His story now follows:
Even the Russians didn't like him.
He beat his wife. He forbade her to wear lipstick or to smoke. He read Das Kapital, argued and had a prideful disdained of gifts of clothes for his child.
Lee Harvey Oswald, the man nobody liked, "was the same type of sick person that Eichmann was", says a Russian-born Dallas woman in whom Oswald's wife Mariana had confined some of the most intimate secrets of their stormy marriage.
Wife Mariana Drew Sympathy:
It was his wife Mariana, thin, naive and speaking in Russian because Oswald refused to converse with her except in that language, who drew the sympathy of the community of Russian-born and descended persons in the area.
"Frankly, you look and you like a person or not. And I don't like him," says the Dallas woman who wishes to remain anonymous.
He and Mariana had appeared at a party in September of 1962 and she had bruises on her face.
"But about a week after that she called a friend and said she wanted to leave him for good, that he was mistreating her."
"He would beat her, She smoked — something she had learned in Russia — but when she picked up a cigarette, he would hit her.
It was in October of 1962 that Mariana and her child did leave Oswald, staying with one Russian woman three or four days and the following week moving in with the woman who recounted this story"
"He was a real negative type of person — the kind you couldn't discuss anything with. One of my friends talked to him about that — that it was criminal not to teach Mariana English." When the first child had gotten sick, it was a friend who had to take the baby to a doctor.
All in all, Oswald was a Castro nut, and his wife, who had live two years in a slave labor camp earlier in life, was his captive.
Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.
Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.
Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939. (This writer was born in June of 1939, and is still working via a computer).
Both assassins were know by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.
Lincoln was shot at the theater named "Ford." Kennedy was shot in a car called 'Lincoln' made by "Ford Motor Co.".
Lincoln was shot in a theater and his assassin ran and hid in a warehouse. Kennedy was shot from a (6th floor window of the Texas School Book Depository — a warehouse for text books).
On the morning of November 24, while being transferred from a jail cell to an interrogation office, Oswald was shot by a distraught Dallas nightclub owner, Jack Ruby (above). Ruby was tried and found guilty of murder (March 14, 1964) and sentenced to death. In October 1966 a Texas appeals court reversed the conviction, but, before a new trial could be held, Ruby died of a blood clot, complicated by cancer (January 3, 1967).