Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  “[Unit] One [Curry], are you approaching Ross?” the dispatcher asks.

  “Just approaching at this time,” Curry says over the roar of the crowd.160

  Governor Connally had feared some ugly incident occurring in this most conservative of cities. But these fears have fallen away as the people are friendly, waving, smiling. And it is plain the president is enjoying himself.161

  12:21 p.m.

  Charles F. Brehm is very pleased with his position for the motorcade, on the northwest corner of Main and Houston. Compared to the throngs on Main Street, there are relatively few people here, and a better chance that his son will get a clear view of the president. Joe is five years old. He doesn’t really understand the significance of it now, but his father feels he is old enough to remember seeing John F. Kennedy and his wife for the rest of his life. It’s a story he will be able to tell his own grandchildren one day. The position has another advantage. If the motorcade is moving slowly enough, Brehm may be able to run diagonally across the adjacent plaza to Elm Street for a second bite of the cherry. Little Joe is too big to carry for long, but not too big for a quick sprint down the grassy slope to Elm.162

  12:22 p.m.

  Deputy Chief Lumpkin turns the pilot car right off Harwood onto Main Street and gets his first good look at the crowds awaiting the motorcade. “Crowd on Main Street’s in real good shape,” he tells Chief Curry over the police radio. “They’ve got ’em back off on the curb.”

  “Good shape,” Curry says, barely audible over the shrieks and screams of the cheering crowds. “We’re just about to cross Live Oak.”

  “Ten-four,” Lumpkin replies.163

  At Live Oak Street, two and a half blocks from Main, where the high buildings of downtown turn the streets into deep canyons, the motorcade plunges into an avalanche of roaring cheers from people standing eight and ten deep and hanging out the windows high above. Curry’s men are helpless against the press of the crowd, which closes in, narrowing the passage for the cars and forcing Greer to drop his speed from twenty miles an hour to fifteen, to ten.

  “There’s certainly nothing wrong with this crowd,” O’Donnell says to Powers, beside him on the jump seat of the Secret Service follow-up car. The steady roar from the crowd is deafening. It is by far the happiest and most enthusiastic crowd they’ve seen in Texas. They also see the faces of the president and his wife in the car immediately ahead when they turn to wave to the swarms of people pushing past the police barricades into the street. The president seems thrilled by the unexpected warmth of the welcome, and O’Donnell is pleased to note that Jackie is following his last-minute instruction to keep turned toward her own side of the street, to make sure that the crowds on both sides get at least a glimpse of one or the other of the country’s most famous couple.164

  12:23 p.m.

  Seven minutes from Dealey Plaza, the crowds on Main are the heaviest. This is the mouth of the bottle. Ahead lies a twelve-block-long forest of humanity nestled between the tall buildings and eight skyscrapers of downtown Dallas. Fifteen hundred yards of screaming, whistling, cheering pandemonium. The throngs of people on both sides of the street are so heavy they threaten to choke it off entirely.

  Governor Connally thinks it looks like about a quarter of a million people have turned out to greet the Kennedys in Dallas, an enormous crowd for a city with a population of around three-quarters of a million in 1963.165* Connally’s estimate of the crowd is almost assuredly overblown, but by all accounts, it’s the largest and friendliest crowd so far on Kennedy’s Texas trip. And the crowd is certainly more than Captain Perdue Lawrence expected. As the Dallas police officer in charge of crowd control for the day, he began to realize early on that things are a bit out of hand. The Dallas police simply don’t have enough men, barricades, or rope to handle this kind of reception.166

  Secret Service agent Greer slows the presidential limousine to a crawl as the crowds press in. The motorcycle escorts find their handlebars bumping people standing out in the street.

  “Escort, drop back,” Curry commands. “Have to go at a real slow speed now.”167

  A teenage boy dashes from the crowd, camera in hand, and chases after the limousine. Running between the motorcycle escorts on the right and the president’s car, the boy raises the camera to his eye. Before he can get a picture off, a Secret Service agent jumps from the follow-up car, overtakes the boy, and throws him back into the crowd, causing people to tumble to the ground.168 Chief Curry can see that the lead motorcycle escorts are too far ahead, allowing the crowd to close in behind them.

  “Hold up escort,” Curry orders, then a moment later, “Okay. Okay, move along.”169

  The reception is phenomenal. The First Lady lifts her white-gloved hand and flutters her fingers at the faces on her left, evoking a nearly hysterical “Jackiiieee!” from the crowd. The president is working the right side of the street with equal results. It is the crowning moment of the parade.170

  Howard Brennan’s hunch was right—he does indeed find a great spot, at the corner of Houston and Elm, right across the street from the Book Depository. He even has a seat, a low, ornamental wall curving around the end of the long reflecting pool—or “lagoon,” as Dallas folk call it—along the west side of Houston Street. His aluminum hardhat shields his head from the sun, and he reckons he will have, in a couple of minutes, a good view of the First Family.

  His eyes rove over the swelling crowd. There’s quite a bunch on the steps of the Depository Building across the street, and more people turning up every moment. If the crowd gets too thick he can always stand up on top of the low wall to see well over their heads. He notices quite a few people in the windows of the Texas School Book Depository, in particular three black men on the fifth floor near the southeasternmost side of the building, leaning way out of their windows to chatter to each other, and a fellow just above them on the sixth floor, who for a moment sits sideways on the low windowsill.171 It strikes Brennan as odd that this guy is alone, while almost everyone else is with someone. The man in the sixth-floor window seems to be in his own little world, unsmiling, calm, with no trace of excitement. Brennan, who is farsighted, has especially good vision at a distance, and sees him very clearly.

  12:25 p.m.

  It took Abraham Zapruder a while to find the right spot. At the urging of his secretary, the fifty-eight-year-old Dallas dressmaker, a bespectacled, balding man wearing his trademark fedora and bowtie, had returned home earlier in the morning and retrieved his new 8-millimeter Bell & Howell movie camera. At first he thought he would use the telephoto lens to shoot pictures from his office in the Dal-Tex Building, across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, but after he came back to the office he realized his office window was too far away. So, he and Marilyn Sitzman, his receptionist, went down into the plaza. He tried standing on a narrow abutment along the north side of Elm, but it was too narrow and he was afraid that he’d lose his balance trying to shoot pictures from there. A bit farther down Elm Street he found the perfect spot—a larger, square abutment about four feet high at the west end of the ornamental pergola. The perch would place him right in the middle of that stretch of Elm, and high enough to give him a pretty clear view of the motorcade from the corner of Houston and Elm on his left, down to the Triple Underpass on his right. There is even enough room for Marilyn to stand behind him on the abutment and help steady him if he gets dizzy looking through the telescopic lens.172

  As the limousine proceeds down Main between Ervay and Akard, all eyes in the car instinctively turn to the left to see the giant display windows of Neiman Marcus, the pride of Dallas and, indeed, the premier luxury retail store in the world. As elegant and expensive a shopper as Jackie is, nothing in New York City, London, and Paris, her normal shopping grounds, quite compares to it. The store caters not only to the oil zillionaires of Texas but to those with very deep pockets everywhere. They tell the story about the oil magnate who approached the store’s owner, Stanley Marcus, one day befo
re Christmas and said, “I’ll buy all the window-displays as they stand. Just shift the lot to my ranch, around my wife’s window—it’s my Christmas present to her.”173

  12:26 p.m.

  FBI special agent James P. Hosty Jr., the man responsible for monitoring right-wing political activists in Dallas, watches the motorcade rumble past from the corner of Field Street, about halfway down Main. Hosty is really pleased to see the tumultuous welcome. As a Kennedy Democrat he doesn’t like the radical rightist atmosphere of the city at all, but it’s clear that Dallas has turned out for the president with real enthusiasm. As soon as the motorcade passes, he crosses the street to a restaurant to get some lunch.174

  Senator Yarborough, riding two cars behind the presidential limousine, is astonished at the enthusiasm of the crowds on the sidewalks. But the people looking out the windows on the floors high above the street are a different story. The senator doesn’t see a single smile there, and he imagines that some of those faces express sheer dislike. As the motorcade approaches Dealey Plaza* at the end of Main Street, and he sees the open area sloping down to the Trinity River beyond, he starts to feel relief about leaving the high-rise buildings behind. “What if,” he wonders uneasily, “someone throws a flowerpot down on top of Mrs. Kennedy or the president?”175

  There is a lot of good-natured grumbling in the Chevrolet convertible to which Bob Jackson has been assigned. The twenty-nine-year-old Dallas Times Herald staff photographer sits on the top of the backseat and wrestles with one of his two cameras, trying to rewind and unload the film he shot at Love Field and during the motorcade procession so he can toss it to the Times Herald staffer who will be waiting for it at the corner of Main and Houston. He and the others—Jim Underwood of KRLD-TV; Tom Dillard, chief photographer for the Dallas Morning News; and a couple of newsreel guys from WFAA, the Dallas Morning News’s radio station, and Channel 11—figure they might as well be in the next county. They are eight cars behind the president. They know because they counted. That far back, their chance of getting a lens on anything worth printing or broadcasting is just about nil. Even from his perch on the rear deck, Jackson catches only occasional glimpses of the president’s limousine. He hopes things will be better at the Trade Mart.176

  12:28 p.m.

  “Crossing Lamar Street,” Chief Curry says into the lead car’s radio microphone.

  “Ah, ten-four, [Unit] One [Curry]” the dispatcher replies. “Is there a pretty good crowd there?”

  “Big crowd, yes,” Curry replies.

  The dispatcher knows there must be. He can hear the squeals of delight in the background of the chief’s transmission. Deputy Chief Lumpkin cuts in, “Uh, notify Captain Souter…[of] the location of the convoy now.”

  “Fifteen, car two [Souter],” the dispatcher calls. “On Main, probably just past Lamar.”

  “Just crossing Market Street,” Curry says, updating the motorcade’s progress.

  “Now at Market, car two [Souter],” the dispatcher quickly repeats.177

  The president is now just two blocks from the open sky of Dealey Plaza.

  On the southwest corner of Elm and Houston, directly across the street from the Book Depository, Ronald Fischer, a young auditor for Dallas County, and Bob Edwards, a utility clerk from the same office, wait at the curb for the motorcade. Edwards notices a white man, on the thin side, among the boxes at the sixth-floor southeast corner window of the Depository Building. “Hey, look at that guy in the window,” Edwards says, poking Fischer. “He looks like he’s uncomfortable.”178

  He does look uncomfortable, Fischer thinks, when he spots the man in the window, a slender man with brown hair in his early twenties, casually dressed. Oddly enough, even though the motorcade is likely to appear at any moment now, this guy isn’t watching out for it. Instead of looking south toward the corner of Main and Houston like most of the crowd, he’s staring west toward the Triple Underpass, or maybe even beyond to the Trinity River. He is curiously still too, not moving his head or anything else. He appears to be kneeling or sitting on something, literally boxed in by the high wall of boxes behind him. Edwards laughs, wondering who the guy is hiding from. Fischer goes on watching him for a while, but never sees a movement. The man seems “transfixed.” It’s very strange.179

  On the southeast corner of Houston and Elm, diagonally across the street from the Book Depository Building, young James Crawford, a deputy district clerk in the Records Building, anxiously awaits the motorcade with his friend and coworker Mary Ann Mitchell. They had left their office on Houston Street just a few minutes earlier but had no trouble getting a good position along the parade route.180

  A sudden jolt of excitement hits the crowd. The pilot car driven by Deputy Chief Lumpkin, its red lights flashing, sweeps around the corner off Main onto Houston Street. They can hear the crowd near Main and Houston begin to break into applause, screams, and whistles. The presidential limousine can’t be more than a minute away now.

  12:29 p.m.

  Five lead motorcycles round the corner from Main onto Houston followed by the white 1963 Ford sedan driven by Chief Curry, its red front grill lights pulsating rhythmically. Suddenly, the presidential limousine bursts into view, the two flags mounted on its front fenders fluttering majestically in the breeze. The crowd in Dealey Plaza breaks into spontaneous applause. As the limousine makes the slow right turn onto Houston Street and heads north, Mrs. Kennedy reaches up and steadies her bright pink hat against the strong wind that whips across the open grass of the Plaza. Two motorcycle escorts flank each rear fender, with the Secret Service follow-up car and its jumble of agents following only a few feet behind them.

  The crowds lining both sides of Houston Street cheer wildly. Nellie Connally is overwhelmed by the unexpected response of the people of Dallas. She turns and beams brightly at the president.

  “Mr. President,” she says, as the president leans toward her, “they can’t make you believe now that there are not some in Dallas who love you and appreciate you, can they?”

  The president leans back, waves, and flashes the famous Kennedy smile at the passing faces.

  “No, they sure can’t,” he grins.181

  The limousine moves slowly up Houston toward the large brick Texas School Book Depository Building looming over them just ahead, and to the left. Mrs. Kennedy, looking to her left across the reflecting pools onto Elm Street, can see that the pilot car of the motorcade is heading toward an underpass and thinks how cool the shade will feel after basking in the warm rays of the Texas sun.182 As the first three of the five lead motorcycles round the corner at Elm and Houston, Abraham Zapruder begins filming. After a few seconds, he stops his home movie camera and waits until the president comes into view.183 Chief Curry, right behind the three motorcycle escorts, swings the lead car left off Houston, through the hairpin turn, and onto the gently curving downslope of Elm Street.

  “Approaching the Triple Underpass,” Curry tells the dispatcher.

  “Ten-four, [Unit] One [Curry],” the dispatcher responds.184

  Secret Service agent Winston Lawson, in Chief Curry’s car, contacts the agents waiting at the Trade Mart.

  “Five minutes away,” he says into his radio.185

  Charles Brehm, with little Joe in his arms, runs down the lawn of Dealey Plaza from Houston to Elm, and arrives well before the presidential limousine. He puts Joe down and tells him to get ready to wave to the president. There’s hardly anyone that far down Elm, and he and his five-year-old boy have a completely unobstructed view as Chief Curry’s lead car sweeps past them—the presidential limousine just beginning the turn onto Elm.186 It is sunny and the temperature is sixty-five degrees.187

  While the NBC television affiliate covered the president’s appearance in Fort Worth that morning and the CBS and ABC affiliates covered the president’s landing at Love Field, no live TV cameras are even remotely close to Dealey Plaza, and there is also no live radio coverage of the motorcade in the plaza.

  As noted earlie
r, President Kennedy had requested that Secret Service agents not ride on the two steps built into the rear bumper of the presidential limousine, but Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent riding on the left running board of the follow-up vehicle just five feet behind had disregarded this request for four separate but brief moments since the motorcade left Love Field when he felt the situation created an increased danger, all of which happened on Main Street, where the crowds were the greatest. (Since Mrs. Kennedy was Hill’s primary responsibility this day, he got on the left rear step.) On at least one of the four occasions, when the limousine stopped for the president to shake hands with people alongside the road, Secret Service agent John Ready, Hill’s counterpart riding on the right running board of the follow-up car, had left the running board and gotten on the rear step on the president’s side of his limousine.188 But the crowds are lighter now and neither Hill nor Ready see any need to stand on the two rear steps of the presidential limousine.

  12:29:45 p.m.

  The glistening, dark blue limousine carrying the president of the United States—license plate number GG300 under District of Columbia registry—approaches the Texas School Book Depository Building. Cheers from the crowd ripple across the plaza as the president’s limousine commences its turn onto Elm Street.

  Bonnie Ray Williams, Harold Norman, and James Jarman, the three black stock boys seen by people on the street below, have a perfect view of the president from their fifth-floor Depository perch. Sunlight glints run down the length of the chrome trim as the presidential limousine completes its turn onto Elm Street, straightens out, and passes directly below their window. Bonnie Ray and Harold can see the president brushing his chestnut hair back from his face.189

  Zapruder points his camera at the approaching limousine and again presses the camera’s release button, which sends film shuttling through the camera with a soft, whirling sound. The clock on the Hertz sign high atop the Texas School Book Depository rolls over to twelve-thirty.190