Parkland (Movie Tie-In Edition)

by Vincent Bugliosi

  As the cortege starts across the bridge, the cameras catch stunning shots from the heights on the Virginia side, the Lincoln Memorial perched majestically in the background. Waiting at attention at the bridgehead, facing the memorial in the far distance, are members of the army’s ceremonial Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps in their blazing red tunics and tricorn hats, a colorful reminder of the country’s revolutionary origins.1534

  The matched gray horses begin to labor as they pull the caisson up the winding roadway that leads to the 420-acre, one-hundred-year-old cemetery situated on land once owned by Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Last spring President Kennedy stopped here to relax and enjoy the view of the sparkling city across the river. “I could stay up here forever,” he remarked.1535 Just fourteen days ago, November 11, the president, himself a decorated navy veteran of World War II, had driven here with his son John Jr. to lay a Veterans’ Day wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is close to his grave site.1536

  As the procession nears the site of the open grave on a sloping hillside, the Irish Guard, a crack drill unit President Kennedy admired on his recent trip to Ireland, stands at parade rest. The casket advances slowly to the wail of bagpipes. As it reaches the grave site, a flight of fifty jet fighters, one for each state, thunders overhead at a speed so fast they precede their own sound. One position, in the otherwise perfect V-formation, is left empty, in accordance with air force tradition. The last plane to fly over, at a terrifying altitude of just five hundred feet, is the president’s personal jet, Air Force One, dramatically dipping its wings in tribute.1537

  The roar of the jet engines soon gives way to the silence of a hillside of somber faces. Cardinal Cushing intones the final prayer: “Oh God, through Whose mercy [the] souls of the faithful find rest, be pleased to bless this grave and…the body we bury herein, that of our beloved Jack Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, that his soul may rejoice in Thee with all the saints, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”1538

  The network pool camera sweeps over the line of military graves to the Custis-Lee Mansion on the hill above the ceremony, then cuts to Mrs. Kennedy. As each fusillade of the twenty-one-gun salute from three 76-millimeter canons is fired over the grave by the riflemen of the Old Guard, she shudders.

  Cardinal Cushing asks the Holy Father to grant John Fitzgerald Kennedy eternal rest, and bugler Sergeant Keith Clark steps forward to play taps. His lips are chilled blue—he has been waiting in the cold wind on the exposed hillside for three hours—and one note cracks, adding an unexpected poignancy to the mournful air.1539

  The flag folding begins. The camera moves in for close-ups of the white-gloved hands rapidly creating the traditional triangular bundle of the great flag, which has until now draped the casket. The flag is rapidly passed through the honor guards from hand to hand until it reaches John C. Metzler, superintendent of the cemetery, who turns and places it in the hands of the young widow, whose lips, for the first time in public, visibly tremble. The Cardinal sprinkles holy water on the coffin, and Mrs. Kennedy, touching a torch to a jet of gas, lights the eternal flame.* Their hands locked in embrace, Bobby Kennedy then leads Jackie from the grave.1540

  Although the rites are concluded at 3:15 p.m. EST,1541* television lingers at the scene, giving the commentators a chance to recall special moments from the four-day ordeal. Somehow television itself, improvising blindly to cover a unique event in the history of the medium, has become a major component of the larger historical event, and those who constructed that effort are already beginning to realize that some of them are inextricably woven into the texture of the experience—the sad eyes of Walter Cronkite, the poetic irony of Edward P. Morgan, the righteous anger of Chet Huntley. The television images have also conveyed the feelings of a nation, something that was impossible to adequately express in words.

  Jacqueline Kennedy has one further official duty to attend to, and despite her mental state, it is of her own choosing. She will receive the foreign dignitaries who had come to the funeral from more than one hundred countries at the White House. “It would be most ungracious of me not to have all those people in our house,” she says, and manages a smile and thank you for each of them. JFK had once said of Jacqueline, “My wife is a shy, quiet girl, but when things get rough, she can handle herself pretty well.”1542

  Approaching midnight, Bobby Kennedy, alone with Jacqueline on the second floor of the White House, says quietly, “Should we go visit our friend?” After gathering up lilies of the valley she had kept in a gold cup on a table in the hall, they arrive at the cemetery at 11:53 p.m. in their black Mercury, followed by a car with two Secret Service agents. In the presence of only Secret Service agent Clint Hill, two military policemen, and the cemetery superintendent standing at a distance, and the only light being that from the flickering eternal flame, blue in the night, the attorney general and former First Lady drop to their knees and pray silently. Rising, Jackie places the spray of lilies on the grave. Together, they turn and walk down into darkness and into lives that would never be the same.1543

  1:30 p.m.

  Earlier in the day Robert Oswald had gotten a call from Miller Funeral Home director Paul Groody and learned, to his horror, that Laurel Land Cemetery was refusing to accept his brother’s remains for burial. Groody had also called other area cemeteries, but everyone had refused, staying away from Oswald’s body the way the devil stays away from holy water.

  “What do they say?” Robert asked.

  “The one in Fort Worth is associated with Laurel Land Memorial in Dallas,” Groody explained, “which is where Officer Tippit will be buried.”

  That, Robert can understand.

  “The rest offer vague reasons,” Groody continued.

  Robert and the funeral director agreed that the rest of the cemeteries are acting out of nothing short of prejudice. Christian charity, it seems, doesn’t extend to the presumed assassin of President Kennedy. Groody promised to make arrangements elsewhere as soon as possible.1544

  Groody now finally calls back and tells Robert, to his great relief, that arrangements for Lee’s burial have been secured with Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth, and he is continuing in his search for a minister. The burial will take place at four o’clock and Robert knows he has just three and a half hours to find a minister. He thanks Groody for his help and hangs up.

  Shortly thereafter, two Lutheran ministers show up at the Inn of the Six Flags. While one waits in the lobby, the other, Reverend French, is escorted to meet with Robert and his family. The minister takes a seat on the sofa, with Robert and Marguerite on each side of him. It is obvious from the start that Reverend French is not eager to officiate at any services for Lee Oswald, and refuses, despite Robert’s request, to hold any kind of service in a church. Robert begins crying, trying to get the minister to agree to his wishes, but the reverend only quotes scriptures, referring to Lee as a “lost sheep.”

  “If Lee is a lost sheep,” Marguerite snaps, “then he is the one who should go to church! The good people do not need to go to church. If he is a murderer, then it is he we should be concerned with.”

  A Secret Service agent steps over to them.

  “Mrs. Oswald, please be quiet. You are making matters worse,” he says, rankling Marguerite.

  Reverend French reluctantly gives in, agreeing to officiate at the services as long as they are held in a cemetery chapel, not a church. Two Secret Service men who are in the room confirm with the minister the time for the service—4:00 p.m.—and make sure he knows how to get to Rose Hill.1545

  1:50 p.m.

  At the Dallas county jail, Jack Ruby is interrogated once again, this time by FBI agents C. Ray Hall and Manning C. Clements. In the presence of his lawyers, Melvin Belli, Joe Tonahill, Sam Brody, and William Choulous, he talks about seeing Oswald coming out of the jail office just as he got to the bottom of the Main Street ramp. “To me,” he says, “he had this smirky, smug, vindictive attitude. I can’t explain what impressi
on he gave me, but that is all I can…well, I just lost my senses. The next I know I was on the ground and five or six people were on top of me.” He said that when Oswald killed Kennedy, “something in my insides tore out.”1546

  2:00 p.m.

  In Dallas seven hundred uniformed policemen from throughout the state of Texas congregate at the Beckley Hills Baptist Church to honor the other victim of Friday, Officer J. D. Tippit, gunned down by Lee Oswald on a quiet back street of Oak Cliff. Largely overlooked by the millions absorbed in the grand spectacle in Washington, the funeral of Tippit nonetheless attracts around fifteen hundred citizens of Dallas, over a thousand of whom, unable to find room inside the 450-seat red-brick church, mill around outside, while many others watch the ceremony on local and closed-circuit television. An organist, nearly hidden by a bank of flowers five feet high, plays “The Old Rugged Cross,” and the choir, perhaps overly conscious of the cameras trained on them, sing with unusual stiffness.

  In the front row, Tippit’s widow, Marie, is flanked by her brother Dwight and J. D.’s neighbor and fellow officer, Bill Anglin, while Marie’s other brother, Norvell, looks after two of the thirty-nine-year-old fallen officer’s three children, Brenda, ten, and Curtis, four. His oldest son, Allen, thirteen, sits next to them. The pews behind them are filled with J. D.’s mother and father, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, and close friends; their faces stained with tears as they bid farewell to the man that they, and many others, considered “a lovable guy.”1547

  Others, some from far beyond the southern suburbs of Dallas where J. D. was a familiar and reassuring figure, have not forgotten the fallen hero. Contributions to the bereft family’s welfare have been flowing into the police department ever since the nation learned that the policeman’s $7,500 life insurance policy wouldn’t take his family very far. Donations have been arriving from all over the country—Boy Scout troops, police departments, church groups, mothers, fathers, and even children have been reaching out from every state. In a child’s handwriting, one letter contained the simple words, “This money is yours because your daddy was brave.” Enclosed was a dollar bill. Each member of the Detroit Lions football team contributed $50 for a total of $2,000, two brokers collected $5,000 on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and Walter H. Annenberg, the publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer, paid off the $12,217 mortgage on the Tippit home. Newspapers even report that two prisoners serving life terms raised $200 for the Tippit fund from the inmates of a Texas prison.1548

  Within months, forty thousand pieces of mail containing close to $650,000 in donations are given to the Tippit family, the largeness of the amount perhaps being partially attributable to NBC commentators Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, each telling a national television audience that calls were coming in to the network urging that in lieu of flowers for the late president, money should be sent to J. D. Tippit’s family, care of the Dallas Police Department.* Marie Tippit is grateful for the nation’s kindness, and treasures forever a gold-framed photograph of the president’s family inscribed by his widow: “There is another bond we share. We must remind our children all the time what brave men their fathers were.” And the president’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and President Johnson personally call the thirty-nine-year-old widow to express their sympathies.1549 President Johnson wanted her to know, Marie Tippit said, that her husband “gave his life for a good cause”—that Oswald may not have been caught “had he not given his life.”1550

  “Today we are mourning the passing of a devoted public servant,” the Reverend C. D. Tipps Jr. says. “He was doing his duty when he was taken by the lethal bullet of a poor, confused, misguided, ungodly assassin—as was our President.”1551

  After the eulogy, Mrs. Tippit is helped forward. She weeps softly as she takes a long, last look at her husband in the open casket. Then, she turns away, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, and is helped from the church. Six police pallbearers carry Tippit’s gray casket to the waiting hearse.1552

  A fifteen-man motorcycle escort then leads the cortege to the rolling hills of Laurel Land Memorial Park where J. D. Tippit will be laid to rest in a special plot set aside for Dallas’s honored dead.

  At the grave site, three-dozen red roses are laid across the casket as family and friends gather under the green awning that brings a bit of relief from the hot Texas sun. Tippit’s slender, blue-eyed widow is unconsolable as the minister says a final prayer. Tears can be seen on many of the faces of the stiff-backed policemen standing at attention nearby.1553

  Marie Tippit and her three children turn away at last.

  “Oh God, oh God,” she sobs.1554

  4:00 p.m.

  Just outside Fort Worth, two unmarked cars hurry along a back road toward Rose Hill Cemetery. Secret Service agents Mike Howard and Charley Kunkel are riding with Marguerite, Marina, and the children in one of them; Secret Service agent Roger Warner, Arlington police officer Bob Parsons, and a Tarrant County sheriff’s deputy accompany Robert in another. Robert Oswald finds the long ride unusually depressing, largely because of the attitudes of the people he has encountered while making the arrangements for his brother’s funeral. As they near the cemetery, the driver breaks the gloomy silence.

  “What about that car behind us?”

  Bob Parsons, cradling an M-1 carbine in the backseat next to Robert, turns around.

  “It’s just two old ladies,” Parsons says, “but one of them has a burp gun.”

  Everyone laughs, even Robert, who hasn’t laughed in three days. He knows that Parsons is trying to shake him from his depression, and he’s grateful.

  The Secret Service and the Fort Worth police have set up a heavy guard at Rose Hill, with uniformed officers posted every few yards along the fence surrounding the cemetery.

  All cars are stopped and thoroughly searched at the main gate.

  They drive to the chapel perched on a low hill. A number of people are standing quietly at the fence line, staring at the grave at the bottom of the hill. They enter the chapel and find it completely empty. There is no sign of any preparation for a funeral service.

  “I don’t understand,” Robert says to Mike Howard and Charley Kunkel. The two agents are equally puzzled. Two or three minutes later one of them comes back with the story.

  “We were a few minutes late,” he says. “There’s been some misunderstanding and they’ve already carried the casket down to the grave site. We’ll have a graveside service down there.”

  It is the final emotional straw. Robert hits the wall with his fist. “Damn it!” he says loudly.

  The agent decides that it’s probably better not to tell Robert the rest of the story just now. In the absence of pallbearers—the accused assassin has no close friends—Lee’s coffin, an inexpensive, cloth-covered wooden box, had to be carried down to the grave from the chapel by six of the reporters assigned to the story, three from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

  On the way out of the chapel, as Robert hurries back to the car, a photographer walks backward in front of him, snapping off pictures. Robert wants to punch him, but manages to control himself, and climb into the car. Bob Parsons, ordered to stay in the car with the carbine, is waiting for him.

  “You’re doing all right now,” Bob says soothingly. “Just hold on.”

  They drive down a curving road to the grave site. One of the Secret Service men turns to Parsons and says, “All right now, you stay in the car with the carbine. If anything happens, come out shooting.”

  “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to mow down fifteen or twenty reporters,” Parsons quips.

  The funeral director, Paul Groody, introduces the caretaker of Rose Hill to Robert, explaining that the man agreed without hesitation, though at some risk to his own job, to sell the plot to the family. Groody tactfully suggests that the man’s risk might be lessened if Robert, in speaking of the plot, were to create the impression that the plot has been in the family for some time—as though the cemetery
itself had no choice in the matter. Robert, moved by the caretaker’s warmth and compassion, readily agrees.

  The Lutheran minister who had promised to officiate over the services is not there. The Secret Service learn that he won’t be coming out at all. Fortunately, Reverend Louis Saunders, executive secretary of the Fort Worth Council of Churches, is willing to step in. Hastily summoned by Fort Worth police chief Cato Hightower, Saunders drove out to Rose Hill to do what he can. He hasn’t presided at a burial in over eight years, but felt that “someone had to help this family.”

  The Oswalds take their seats on several of the five battered aluminum chairs placed at the grave site under a faded green canopy. Marina, dressed in a simple black dress and beige coat, holds June while Marguerite cradles the baby, Rachel, in her arms. Inexplicably, there are two floral arrangements, a white blanket of carnations and a spray of red carnations, from someone named Virginia Leach.

  Marguerite is annoyed at the crowd of police, Secret Service men, reporters, and Rose Hill employees gathered there. “Privacy at the grave,” she pleads, “privacy at the grave.”1555

  When a French reporter whispers something to Marina in Russian, Robert tries to shoo him away. When the reporter persists, Robert stands up and starts to move on him, but Marina quickly turns to her brother-in-law and says in broken English, “He says sorrow.”

  Robert turns to Secret Service agent Mike Howard and tells him he plans to have the coffin opened and would like to have all reporters and spectators moved back. The agent nods and in the late-autumn afternoon a dozen plainclothes officers move the seventy-five or so newsmen back from the grave, forming a protective, semicircular barrier. Beyond the cemetery fence there is a scattering of onlookers, who have guessed what is going on at the grave.1556

  The undertaker opens the coffin to give the family one final look at Lee Oswald. Marina kisses her husband, dressed for burial in a dark brown suit, white shirt, brown tie, and brown socks. She slips two rings on his finger. Her stoic, almost distant composure dissolves into bitter sobs. The two infants, hearing Marina, cry loudly as Robert and Marguerite take a long, last look at Lee’s face. As they return to their chairs, the gaunt Reverend Saunders steps up to conclude the stark service.