The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  Sitting in the Vice President’s chair was regarded as an honor, but Ted Kennedy, like his brother before him, regarded it with mixed feelings. The Kennedys were active. They all liked rough games, competition, challenge; and Attorney General Kennedy was undoubtedly more serene than Senator Kennedy at that moment. All day Thursday and throughout Friday morning the Attorney General had been holding marathon meetings in the Justice Department on ways to combat organized crime. The sessions were to resume in the afternoon. Meanwhile he had brought two luncheon guests to his McLean, Virginia, home—United States Attorney Robert Morgenthau of New York and Morgenthau’s assistant. Robert Kennedy had taken a quick dip in the backyard swimming pool, changed to dry shorts, and joined his wife and their two guests around a table by the shallow end of the pool. As they ate chowder Morgenthau idly watched a man in overalls working on the mansion’s new wing, which had become a necessity with the Attorney General’s growing family. The workman was hanging shutters with one hand and holding a transistor radio in the other. His painter’s hat was jammed over his ears; he seemed completely divorced from reality. Few men were closer to reality than his employer. Because of Robert Kennedy’s unique position in the government the Signal Corps had installed a battery of White House phones in and around his house. NAtional 8-1414 reached Robert Kennedy as quickly as John Kennedy. While Lyndon Johnson had only one line to the mansion switchboard, this yard alone had two: Extension 163, housed in a small green wooden structure at the foot of the pool, and, in another box by the tennis court on the far side of the rolling lawn, Extension 2324.

  In one sense the Kennedys were an anachronism. The mobile society of the 1960’s loosened familial ties more and more each year, but their clan remained tightly knit. Intimacy with cousins began at a very early age, and John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s playmates at 1:21 P.M. were little Edward M. Kennedy, Jr. and his sister Kara. Teddy and Kara were busy with a fire engine. Young John had flung his legs over the brown rocking horse in his second-floor room. He was shouting lustily and whacking its already battered head. Maude Shaw looked wistfully at the clock. In nine minutes Teddy and Kara’s Irish nurse would take them home to Georgetown. Miss Shaw could then tuck John in for his 1:30 nap and hope he would drop off. Sometimes she felt she was getting too old for such a vigorous child. As often as not he would writhe beneath the covers for a quarter-hour and then come charging out, a toy plane in his hand, ready to pursue her. Caroline was so different, quiet and pensive like her mother. Miss Shaw was going to miss Caroline tonight. Momentarily she hoped the girl would miss her, too; then she dismissed the thought as selfish.

  The White House school had ended its daily session at 1:15. Downstairs on the South Portico the President’s daughter was standing in a powder-blue coat and new red lace-up shoes, patiently holding her suitcase in one hand and her pink bear in the other. With her were Agatha Pozen and two other classmates. They were awaiting Agatha’s mother, the Friday car pool driver, who was about to become Caroline’s overnight hostess. It was a familiar social ritual for girls approaching their sixth birthday, and in most ways it resembled thousands of similar partings on other, less imposing American porches. There was one conspicuous distinction. As a member of the First Family Caroline had to be guarded. Tom Wells, a dark young agent, would follow Mrs. Pozen in a black Ford linked by radio to the White House network. The Ford was ready to go, Wells was ready, and so was Betsy Boyd, the school’s kindergarten teacher. Miss Boyd had to catch a train, but she wanted to see Caroline off first. Alice Grimes, the head of the school, and Agent Bob Foster urged her to go ahead. “Mrs. Pozen’s always late,” Foster said. “Why don’t you just take off?”

  A few minutes later Liz Pozen’s Country Squire station wagon swung through the White House Southwest Gate. A guard in the sentry box called a friendly greeting, but she couldn’t hear him; she was listening to station WGMS on her car radio.

  In Texas 12:21 crept toward 12:22 as Dean Gorham, director of the state’s Municipal Retirement System, raced westward along Route 71 in his blue Buick. Gorham was fighting the clock. Last evening he had attended the Albert Thomas testimonial and registered at a Houston motel. He had intended to sleep late. This morning, however, he had been awakened by a frantic call from a fellow Democrat. Through an oversight the programs for tonight’s dinner in Austin had been left in the shop of the Houston printer. People paying $100 a plate were entitled to souvenir menus. Could Gorham pick them up and deliver them to Austin’s Municipal Auditorium in time?

  He was doing his best, but the rain hadn’t slacked until he reached the junction of Routes 90 and 71 at Columbus. He was still east of Smithville, and he knew the expected arrival of Air Force One at 3:15 P.M. would snarl traffic for miles around the state capital. To keep posted on the progress of the Presidential party, he was listening attentively to his car radio. He wished something would delay it for a few minutes, just enough to take the pressure off him. So far it was moving along smoothly on schedule. Gorham had stopped for a vanilla malted and was sipping it as he drove, substituting it for lunch. On the seat beside him lay the bundled programs, each with a welcoming message from Governor Connally to the Kennedys which ended, “This is a day to be remembered in Texas.”

  The President’s advance man for Austin, Bill Moyers, Kennedy’s brightest young Texan and Sargent Shriver’s Deputy Director of the Peace Corps, was lunching after having double-checked preparations there. The programs excepted, Moyers had found everything ready for tonight. Places had been set, a ton and a half of tossed salad had been mixed, and fires were being banked for eight thousand steaks. (Steak is not what Catholics usually eat on Friday, but it was too late to do anything about that.) Ticket sales had brought $350,000 into the Kennedy-Johnson war chest, and since midmorning the ticket holders had been converging on Austin from all over the state. Most were still on the road. A few hadn’t left home, among them National Committeeman Byron Skelton, who had just slipped into his tuxedo in his Temple home and was peering into his mirror, adjusting his black tie.

  The tempo at Volcano, as the Secret Service called the LBJ Ranch, was also beginning to quicken. Agents from the White House Detail had set up their advance post in a Johnson City motel. At 8 P.M. they planned to seal off Volcano; after that no one would be allowed to enter without a pass. On the banks of the river Bess Abell was now supervising a final dress rehearsal of the whip-cracking and sheep-herding entertainers. Hundreds of freshly baked pies were cooling on a long wooden table outside the kitchen. Inside, Helen Williams, a maid, followed the progress of the Dallas motorcade over the radio as she worked.

  In Fort Worth Marguerite Oswald was watching her sixth straight hour of television; during commercials she had bathed and changed into her white practical nurse’s uniform. Marguerite had forgotten the President’s visit. She was wholly engrossed in her favorite programs. Marina Oswald was similarly intent upon the Zenith television screen in Irving; Ruth Paine was in the kitchen preparing lunch. Kennedy’s visit was very much on the mind of Ruth’s husband Michael, however. Michael Paine was eating with a student named Dave Noel in a restaurant between Fort Worth and Dallas. It seemed to Paine that he had heard nothing except malicious assassination jokes for the past two days. They oppressed him, and over sandwiches he and Noel—afterward he couldn’t remember which of them had introduced the subject—talked about the emotional makeup of assassins. After a few false starts they dropped the topic, agreeing that neither knew enough history to discuss it sensibly.

  Friday is payday in Dallas, which, to Parkland Hospital, meant an exceptionally large number of patients injured in drunken brawls. But the tide of casualties wouldn’t hit the emergency room until late evening, and the noon-hour atmosphere was relaxed. The chief surgeon was in Houston; the chief nurse had driven to a nursing conference fifteen miles away. Jack Price, Parkland’s administrator, was standing at the window of his office, admiring the golden weather on Harry Hines Boulevard. He was trying to decide whether or not he should allow som
e of his employees to step out and watch the passing motorcade. In an adjoining room an assistant had been working all morning on Parkland’s budget for the coming year. He stepped in and tossed it on Price’s desk. “It’s in balance, Jack,” he said.

  At the Trade Mart, within walking distance of the hospital, an organist was warming up with several choruses of “Hail to the Chief.” Agent Stewart Stout’s four-to-twelve shift—so called because those were their working hours at the executive mansion; when traveling they were on call around the clock—had taken up their stations there, preparing to relieve Emory Roberts’ eight-to-four shift when the motorcade arrived. Two hundred Texas law enforcement officers had ringed the building. They were in a no-nonsense mood; Sergeant Robert E. Dugger of the Dallas Police Department watched plainclothes men carry away three of the men with anti-Kennedy placards. Chief Curry’s decision to concentrate his heaviest force in and around the luncheon sheds some light on the Dallas leadership’s self-distrust. The invitation list consisted largely of powerful civic leaders. The President should have been entirely safe with them. But many belonged to extremist organizations—the editor of the Dallas Times Herald was standing with an avowed member of the John Birch Society—and the Trade Mart had been made one of the two strongest links of the local security chain, second only to the airport.

  The weakest link in downtown Dallas was Dealey Plaza. East of there, on Main Street, the police had anticipated a crowd; every block was under the surveillance of an inspector. To the west of the plaza, beyond the triple underpass, the speed of the motorcade on Stemmons Freeway would assure safety until the President reached the embattled Trade Mart. There had been 365 Dallas policemen at Love Field, there were 60 at the Mart. In the two blocks from the Main-to-Houston turn to the underpass there were scattered patrolmen, but both organization and speed would be absent. The gap had been justified because there would be few spectators along the Main-Houston-Elm zigzag.

  Certainly the lines of onlookers were thinner around the Book Depository than in the shopping district. Nevertheless it was a large gathering for the neighborhood. Abraham Zapruder’s secretary, looking down from the Dal-Tex Building, was impressed by the number of people crowding the curbs and shouldering their way to the edge of the plaza grass. Some had brought children. Charles Brend, a young Dallas father, kept repeating to his five-year-old son, “Be sure and wave at the President, and maybe he’ll wave back.” In front of the Depository Roy Truly and his boys were listening for the growl of approaching motorcycles. To their right a tall live oak spread its branches up to the fourth floor, and thirty feet to the right of the tree, above a cluster of route signs, stubby Abe Zapruder crouched on a low concrete abutment between the Depository and the underpass. He had snapped a telephoto lens on his camera and was explaining jovially to a stenographer behind him, “Hey, Marion, if I feel around, I’m not trying to play with you. I’m just trying to get my balance, understand? This Zoomar distorts things, it’s hard to see.”

  At that moment an alert policeman, scanning windows, could have altered the course of history. For Lee Oswald was in position now, clearly visible to those below. A youth named Arnold Rowland, who knew guns, had been watching from below with his wife since 12:14 P.M. (The Hertz sign, so conspicuous, made possible the establishment of exact times.) He saw Oswald silhouetted in the window, holding what appeared to be a high-powered rifle mounted with a telescopic sight. One of Oswald’s hands was on the stock and the other was on the barrel; he held the weapon diagonally across his body at port arms, like a Marine on a rifle range. A police officer stood twelve feet from the Rowlands, but it never occurred to Arnold to speak to him. Assuming that Oswald must be protecting the President, he said to his wife, “Do you want to see a Secret Service agent?” “Where?” she asked. “In that building there,” he said.

  On the west side of Houston Street Robert Edwards and Ronald Fischer of the county auditor’s office had been waiting since 12:20 P.M. They had been told they needn’t return to their desks until the President had passed, and they were enjoying the warm weather. Suddenly Edwards pointed and said, “Look at that guy.” Fischer followed his finger. The weapon was below their line of sight; what had attracted Edwards’ attention was Oswald’s stance. Fischer agreed that it was peculiar. He was transfixed, staring to his right, away from Main. To Fischer it seemed that “he never moved, he didn’t even blink his eyes, he was just gazing, like a statue.”

  The closest known eyewitness, Howard L. Brennan, the frail pipefitter, had headed for the plaza at 12:18 P.M.—again the Hertz sign on the Depository roof pinpointed the moment—and settled down on a three-and-a-half-foot-high white cement wall on the edge of the plaza, directly across from Roy Truly’s group at the warehouse entrance. There, at the intersection of Houston and Elm, Brennan was forty yards beneath Oswald. Waiting in the sun, he dried his forehead on the sleeve of his khaki work shirt and then peered up, hoping Hertz would tell him the temperature. But that part of the sign was obscure from here. His eyes dropped to the warehouse’s sixth floor, to the pinched face of Lee Oswald, now in profile. He, too, wondered why the young man was standing stock-still.

  There was a sound of distant shouting from Main Street. Brennan, Rowland, Edwards, and Fischer forgot the strange figure in the open window and pivoted. Edwards said excitedly, “Here it comes.”

  To Jacqueline Kennedy it was Mexico all over again—hot, wild, loud, with the blazing sun strong in your face and the cheers washing over you like a brighter light, the waves of affection engulfing you until you forgot this rather ordinary street and the faded red, white, and blue convention bunting strung overhead and the advertisements for Thom McAn Shoes, Hallmark Cards, Hart Schaffner & Marx Clothes, Walgreen Drugs—giving yourself to the spectators as they gave themselves to you: beaming, laughing, greeting strangers who at the moment of greeting were strangers no longer, who in their ardor became close friends for a fraction of time as the glittering blue convertible, its fender flags fluttering, breasted the breakers of noise and moved steadily ahead past the police barriers marking each intersection.

  12:22. Main and Ervay.

  A dozen young people surged into the street; from his curbside command post Dallas’ husky Inspector Herbert Sawyer gave a signal and a clutch of patrolmen closed in, pressing them back. The Secret Service showed signs of activity. Clint Hill jogged alongside the First Lady, and Jack Ready had leaped off Halfback’s right fender to block an enthusiastic amateur photographer. In Varsity Lem Johns cracked his door, holding it open a few inches so he could break out quickly if anyone rushed Lyndon Johnson.

  On the left loomed the Mercantile Building and the Neiman-Marcus department store. Lady Bird, wedged between Lyndon and Ralph Yarborough, looked up at a Neiman-Marcus window and recognized Mary Griffith, a dressmaker who had fitted her in that store twenty-five years before. The two women exchanged frantic feminine wigwags.

  The seventh floor of the Mercantile Building was the headquarters of H. L. Hunt, Dallas’ billionaire. Flanked by two secretaries, Hunt stared down as the President gaily saluted the mob in front of Walgreen’s.

  12:23. Main and Akard.

  Forrest Sorrels, in the lead car, heard shouts of “The President’s coming!” He craned his neck and muttered to Lawson, “My God, look at the people hanging out the windows!”

  Clint Hill was watching the windows. So was Yarborough, and he didn’t like them. The Senator was delighted by the throngs on the sidewalks. Next to the President, he was the most exuberant campaigner in the motorcade. Ignoring the raucous radio and the Vice President, who continued to appear saturnine, Yarborough kept bellowing lustily, “Howdy, thar!” He searched for familiar faces and spotted a surprising number of friends from rural east Texas. But there were no friends in the office windows. The men there, he noticed, weren’t cheering at all. He squinted up, trying to read their thoughts. To him it seemed that their expressions were hard and disapproving; he had the impression that they were outraged by the disp
lay of Kennedy support on the sidewalks.

  The spectators at Akard were ten deep, and among them, in the rear row, stood Managing Editor Jack Krueger of the Dallas News. Krueger wasn’t working. For the first time in his life he was on federal jury duty. He could have offered a professional excuse, but he considered jury service a civic responsibility and had been absent from his desk for six weeks. If a big story broke, the paper would have to cover it without him; he couldn’t leave the courtroom unless the elderly judge dismissed him. Now, during the noon break, he had slipped over to his bank. Unlike Ted Dealey, Krueger was tall and physically impressive, yet in this jam he could catch a glimpse of the President only by standing on tiptoe.

  12:24. Main and Field.

  Jim Hosty, the local FBI agent in charge of Lee Oswald’s file, had his wish. He saw Kennedy from the curb and then stepped into the Alamo Grill for lunch. His day, he felt, was made.

  12:26. Main and Poydras.

  Marie Fehmer saw her mother standing on the left, semaphored to her from the VIP bus, and wondered whether she had been seen. Liz Carpenter, listening to the echoing roars, crowed, “Well, this pulls the rug out from under the Dallas News and Barry Goldwater!”

  Not everyone was so sure. Henry Gonzalez, like Yarborough, continued to be skeptical of the city. But the Congressman and the Senator were exceptions. Mac Kilduff decided that his fears had been unfounded. This was turning out to be one of the best receptions Kennedy had had all week, including Florida. The street had begun to remind Larry O’Brien of New York’s Broadway. The canyon of buildings was the same, and so was the feverish tumult. Ken O’Donnell was on his feet, taking a professional reading. Maybe these were the only Kennedy backers in Dallas, but their fire was real enough, and as people on the President’s side called pleadingly, “Jackie, over here! Over here, Jackiiieee!” O’Donnell’s instinct told him that the First Lady was going to become increasingly valuable in the months ahead.