The Day Kennedy Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  The editor decided to take a more difficult course. He phoned the board member and suggested that he call a few other ranking members and that they meet in the Plaza Hotel lobby at once. There would be a conference about Lee Harvey Oswald. The men sat on a couch and discussed the case. The guilt or innocence of Oswald did not come to the surface; it seemed incredible that, considering the trouble he was in, he didn’t want a lawyer. Someone suggested: “Call the mayor.”

  If there is one thing to which Gregory Lee Olds was accustomed, it was disappointment. Chiefs of police, mayors, and prosecutors regarded an assortment of questions from the ACLU as a personal challenge. Olds got on the phone again and asked for Mayor Earle Cabell. Who was calling? He gave his name and rank and was told that the mayor was busy. The editor wondered what could keep a mayor busy after 11 P.M.

  The best thing, he told his confreres, would be for the body of men to walk across the street to police headquarters and ask the questions directly. They might even meet Lee Harvey Oswald himself. Surely, if the police department was justified in its position, it would have no objection to a group of men saying: “We’re from the American Civil Liberties Union. Do you need a lawyer?” If he said no, the case was closed and they would go home. Curry and Fritz would probably be happy to be rid of them.

  They were directed to the third floor and the elevator lifted them up and spewed them into the madness of the corridor. Men and cameras curled around them in a stream flowing in the opposite direction. Olds saw a man he knew: Chuck Webster, a professor of law. They explained the problem. Mr. Webster said that he had been around headquarters practically all evening and he thought he knew the man who might reassure the ACLU. Webster escorted them to the other end of the hall and introduced them to Captain Glen King. The captain was a gracious man. He said that Oswald had been charged with the murder of Officer Tippit and was, at this moment, being formally charged in the assassination of the President.

  Olds said that this was not their concern. All they wanted to know, in words of one syllable, was whether the prisoner had been advised of his right to counsel. That’s all. Glen King said that, so far as he knew, Oswald had not made a request for counsel. That’s an edge of an answer, but it lacks body. Had the police department advised Lee Harvey Oswald—never mind what he asked for or hadn’t asked for—had they told him that he was entitled to a lawyer, that he could have one right now or at any time throughout this interminable day?

  The captain thought that the man best equipped to answer the question, to put all minds at rest, would be the J.P. Mr. Johnston was down in the basement at this moment. Why not run down there and ask him? Mr. Olds remained upstairs. The ACLU men went back down the elevator. It seemed awkward that such a simple question required the affirmation of so many officials. Each in turn was certain that Oswald was protected, but no one was certain just how. The best source, they thought, would be the justice of the peace.

  The fact was that, consciously or unconsciously, Oswald’s legal rights were in jeopardy. Shortly after 2 P.M. the police department of Dallas had told him that he didn’t have to answer questions, that anything he said could be used against him in court, that he did not have to pose for press photos or answer questions from the newspapermen or television people. Up to that point the law had blinded him with the brilliance of justice. Beyond that point legal darkness had descended on the scene. He had asked again and again for a lawyer. He had requested the services of John Abt of New York and, when Oswald had reminded the police inoffensively that they had taken his thirteen dollars away from him, he was told to make the phone call collect. This gave him an unnecessary hurdle to clear, and he had failed it.

  On at least one other occasion, Oswald had told the officers that, if he could not locate Abt, he would consult the American Civil Liberties Union. He had also declared that he was a member of the ACLU. Will Fritz, surprised, asked how much Oswald had paid in dues, and the prisoner told him five dollars. If the department had a desire to protect the rights of the prisoner, it would have been a small gesture to have phoned the Dallas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and said: ”We have a fellow over here who says you’re his second choice to help him. Would you like to send someone over to have a talk with Oswald?”

  Instead, almost the entire day and evening had been spent inundating the prisoner in a bowl of hostile faces. He faced their combined cunning, analyzing the innocent questions before responding to them, glorying in the attention he drew from the world, perhaps even exultant at the opportunity to hold them off in the swordplay of the tongue.

  Two men of the Olds group met Justice of the Peace David Johnston. The judge appreciated the nobility of their cause at once. The ACLU men returned to Olds and said that the judge had assured them that Oswald’s legal rights had already been explained to him and he had “declined counsel.” The law had done its duty. The American Civil Liberties Union had done its duty. It was time for good men to go to bed.

  Around Times Square, the taxicabs waited with dimmed lights on the side streets. The theater crowds had gone home. The pancake restaurants were bright with young faces, happy to be out of the chill wind at seventy-five cents per face. A ribbon of news walked in yellow lights around the old Times Tower, telling the story over and over. On the corners, men in stockinged hats sold the morning papers.

  The hands of the clock met at twelve, and the big one moved a minute past to inauguarate another day in New York. The New York Times spread the assassination headline across the top of page one as though somewhere it might electrify someone who had not heard. Ten miles outside of Norwalk, Ohio, eighty-four inmates of the Golden Age Nursing Home fretted over the loss of one so young. In twelve more hours sixty-three of them would burn to death. In Los Angeles, Aldous Huxley, a littérateur, was dead of cancer. The paid obituary notices in The New York Times were drenched with the tears of the maudlin. There were twenty-two notifications that John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, had passed away. The American Booksellers Association, Igor Kropotkin, president, mourned his death and “while honoring all his great accomplishments, single out with gratitude his long devotion to the world of books.” Panic and remorse were still dominant and many people sat the long vigil before the television set to subject themselves to the redundant hammer blows. The flagellants and the oratorical sadists were betrothed. The parade was begun over and over and over. Mr. Kennedy smiled and waved his hand, and Mrs. Kennedy flicked the dark lock of hair from her eye and smiled vaguely in an ocean of strange and curious faces.

  Everybody knew that a scene would come when people would fall on grass, scrambling to safety; when the President would begin to topple; when the young lady in pink would begin to climb out on the trunk; when a motorcycle policeman would ram his vehicle into the curb, draw his gun, and glance helplessly at windows and railroad tracks. Everybody knew this. The lacerated mentalities had to witness it once more, as though this time the story would end happily.

  In time, David Brinkley of the National Broadcasting Company tired of the blows. “We are about to wind up,” he said slowly, “as about all that could happen has happened. It is one of the ugliest days in American history. There is seldom any time to think anymore, and today there was none. In about four hours we had gone from President Kennedy in Dallas, alive, to back in Washington, dead, and a new President in his place. There is really no more to say except that what happened has been just too much, too ugly, and too fast.”

  Too fast to some, too slow to others. In Washington, Muggsy O’Leary drove down Wisconsin Avenue and turned into the big parking lot at Harrison. He and the tough, sentimental Gaels—O’Donnell, O’Brien, and Powers—felt that this was the longest, slowest, saddest day of any year. It was a day of so many scores of individually remembered sorrows that no one of them could recall them all. O’Leary, a Kennedy idolator, was a member of the Secret Service because John F. Kennedy endorsed the appointment. The blackbeard, O’Donnell, sat watching the lights of his world fl
ash by the car to explode into the blackness behind. O’Brien, the conciliatory redhead, the onetime bartender, the political mathematician, was doing something that had to be done. He did not relish the task, but he may have been affronted if someone else drew the assignment. Powers, the bald ward leader of Boston, the man who first looked politically upon the tall stuttering son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., the man who first said: “Okay. I’ll try to make a Congressman of you”—this is the one who knew the aspirations to be said for the repose of the soul, the spiritual phrases which begged clemency for the sinner.

  These went to buy a casket. A saint does not comprehend the finality of death; a sinner does. The four men knew the mystery of death as they knew the zest and joy of political battle. Death was an unlocked front door; the musty odor of flowers; a red vigil light; camp chairs; the ferns; stiff blue knuckles clutching the black rosary; the sonorous voice of the priest, kneeling before the casket, intoning: “Blessed be God! Blessed be His Holy Name . . .”; it was the sobs of the women; the cautious handshake of old enemies; ham and whiskey in the kitchen; old men puffing pipes and remembering him that was in the box and his father before him and that one’s father before him.

  It was a brand-new building, a Georgian structure with lights in the hedges splashing a glow on the pale brick. This was Joseph Gawler’s Sons. In one hundred thirteen years, it had buried three generations of its own, and the fourth waited inside the white doorway. There is no trade, no profession, which stands in such permanent delicate balance as a funeral home. It must be solemn but not doleful; helpful but not cheerful; competent but not morbid; spiritual but not hyper-religious; cordial but not intimate; ready to assist but not overbearing. Joseph H. Gawler understood his function. He stepped forward as the four men came in, and introduced himself and his operations manager, Joseph E. Hagan. The four looked around. The lobby floor was white marble relieved by small black diamonds. There was a circular staircase to the right with ember-red carpet and balustrade; a crystal chandelier hung down from another floor.

  O’Donnell began to explain their presence. Mr. Gawler interrupted. He understood. The phone call from the White House had explained everything. The visitors felt relieved. Mr. Hagan, a short man with the air of one who is accustomed to becoming confidential within a short span of time, said that he understood that embalming of the President would also be required. Powers nodded. Hagan just wanted the strangers to know that Gawler’s was prepared. He had an enbalming team waiting in an office to the left; John Van Haesen, Edwin B. Stroble, and Thomas Robinson. Gawler, a brown-eyed man with a ruddy complexion, said that they wanted the Kennedys to know that, in spite of the hour, everything could be accomplished to the satisfaction of the family.

  The gold-lined elevator moved in silence. The four were in a world of sedate whispers. They passed the second floor, with its array of large rooms furnished in French provincial. At the third floor, the party turned left and Mr. Hagan opened the double doors leading to the selection room. The men stepped into a cool place on heavy beige broadloom. Recessed squares in the ceiling bathed the place in warm light. In an alcove and a main room there were two dozen caskets. The men hesitated, eyes darting. There were gray metallic boxes, grayish suede; there were gleaming metal caskets, some in mahogany, some burled in a blackish wood. A few were open, disclosing the white shirred satin. All stood on carriages hidden by pleated skirts.

  The men seemed embarrassed to be in the room. They wanted “something in good taste.” Hagan didn’t care to remind them that everything in the room was in taste. It required a little coaxing to get them inside the big room, where they could examine the array of merchandise. Mr. Gawler said that his original impression had been that President Kennedy would rest in the funeral home, but that . . . No, they said, he would repose in the White House, where he belonged. They walked slowly around the boxes, none with any knowledge of what Mrs. Kennedy would appreciate.

  Someone said that price was not a factor. The Gawler group understood that, but they wanted it understood that there was a standard price on each of these items, that a casket would cost no more for the President’s family than for anyone else. This also applied to their services at the hospital. Above all, Gawler’s exuded an aura of quiet confidence, and this pleased the four men. Two of them stood beside a polished mahogany casket with ornate silver handles. They thought perhaps that something along these lines . . .

  The others joined them. They walked around the box. The half-lid was lifted. It looked rich and solemn. There wasn’t a hint of garishness. Walking around it, the men noticed that it picked up arrows of light from the ceiling. “This one,” they said. Mr. Gawler said that it would be delivered at Bethesda Hospital within the hour. Yes, O’Donnell said. Please do whatever must be done as quickly as possible.

  Hagan had heard on television that the President had sustained a massive head wound. The embalming team might find it necessary to process part of the skull, matching it identically with the real color and texture of the hair. It could have saved time if Hagan or Gawler had asked about these things before leaving for the hospital. Some things are left unsaid. It would require a little more time, but it would be worth it to assess the cosmetic damage themselves and plan the repair work.

  The four men were outside in the crisp night air within twenty minutes. They were glad to be out again. It is a triumph to be alive in the presence of death. It is deadlier to be able to walk away from it. The poetry of the sentimentalist is dolorous. As he treads the edge of eternity to do a service for a friend, he too dies.

  Lee Harvey Oswald stood. It stirred a turning of heads. He was tired of sitting, he said. The handcuffs hung on his thighs. He arched his back a few times and sat. The prisoner was not told that he was about to star in a press conference. He would be taken downstairs, as though for another lineup, and he would not know, until he saw the cameras and heard the questions, that for a brief time he was being tossed to the press as a sop.

  In the outer office, Captain Fritz bent over a desk and told detectives Sims and Barratt to make out an arrest sheet on Lee Harvey Oswald in the murder of one John F. Kennedy. It was to be done at once, before the prisoner left the office. Fritz wanted to sign it. Everything he had pointed to Oswald. There was no other suspect. The captain didn’t have a piece of evidence which would lead him to believe that another person might be involved. For the sake of Dallas it would be a good thing to present the assassination as solved to the press of the world. The day could be closed on a note of triumph.

  The man with the rumpled suit and face introduced himself to a young policeman in the hall. “I’m looking for Joe DeLong of KLIF,” he said, holding a pencil and note pad in view. “Can you page him over the loudspeaker?” “Who?” the cop said. “Joe DeLong,” Jack Ruby said. The policeman walked to a corner where a microphone stood. A booming voice echoed through the long hall. “Joe DeLong. Joe DeLong of KLIF. Please report to press information.”

  The hall was nearly empty. A dozen men lounged in groups. Two men unplugged a thick black cable and followed it to an office window and dropped it to the sidewalk. The cop said: “He isn’t here.” Ruby said: “I’ll wait a minute.” A reporter, passing, said he was glad that Curry was putting Oswald on display downstairs. It would serve two purposes, he thought. One would be to give the world a solid look at the man. The other would be to permit the press to ask a few questions. Even if Oswald denied everything, they would have a statement from him.

  Ruby said: “Thanks” and started down to the assembly room. He felt a tingle of excitement. Tremendous things were happening and Ruby was there to witness them. He did not want to draw attention to himself, and he would seek a position in the back of the room. Sometimes a young punk cop who did not know Jack Ruby might challenge him—might order him off the premises. The older men, friends of Ruby, might not want to bail him out of a situation like that. So he kept the pencil and pad in view and the gun hidden.

  It was a nickel-plated .38. It was in
side his trouser belt, between the pants and the shirt. Jack Ruby never used it. Sometimes friendly cops asked: “Why the hell do you carry that thing?” Mr. Ruby said that he carried two, sometimes three thousand dollars hidden in the trunk of his car. The gun was a form of insurance. It was carried, as so many were in Texas, like a 14-carat toothpick, the badge of the male. Sometimes, when Ruby was out socializing, he tossed the gun into the trunk of the car. On other occasions, it was to the left of the zipper on his trousers, with the handle up.

  Lewis removed his coat and nodded politely to Wesley Frazier. Sometimes a polygraph operator wonders if his brother officers understand the procedure. They thought that all he had to do was to take a subject like Frazier, ask him questions, and watch a needle jump. Officer R. D. Lewis was a qualified operator. He called Adamcik into the other room to ask a few questions about the frightened boy. The more he knew about Wesley, the better the setup for the test. The office lights were turned up, an armchair was turned so that it faced a blank wall. Lewis arranged the blood pressure cuff for a human arm and looked at the needle tracings on a paper on his desk. Who was this kid? What was his name and what kind of material was Fritz interested in?

  The kid’s name was Wesley Frazier. He lived less than a block away from Oswald’s wife. Frazier worked at the School Book Depository with Oswald and drove him home on weekends. Homicide was pretty sure that Oswald was the man they were looking for, but this Frazier kid was something else. A rifle was found in his house. He could possibly be a party to the assassination. Hours ago he had been questioned in Robbery, but he seemed scared. The kid was halfway home when Fritz got this idea for a polygraph test.