vehicle. He and his wife, Nellie, were waiting to accompany the Kennedys on their second motorcade of the day. Dave Powers reappeared with a couple of reminders for “Mr. and Mrs. America.” “Lunchtime,” he said to the
president, “we’re going to hit that captive audience again.” Then he turned to Jackie, “Be sure to look to your left, away from the president, wave to the Throughout the Texas trip presidential protocol was eschewed as Jackie,
to the delight of the gathered throngs, was always the first one to deplane.
Here she leads Jack down the ramp to the tarmac of Love Field in Dallas.
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people on your side. If you both wave to the same voter, it’s a waste.” 297 It was 11:55 a.m., Texas time, when the motorcade departed Love Field for
the scheduled 12:30 p.m. luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart. The sky was
brilliant, the weather was brilliant, and Jackie Kennedy was radiant.
Snaking through the outskirts of Love Field towards downtown, the
crowds were thin. On Lemmon Avenue a group of children stood behind a
sign that read, “MR PRESIDENT, PLEASE STOP AND SHAKE OUR
HANDS.” “Let’s stop here, Bill,” the president said to driver William Greer, Jackie shaking hands with some of the very happy crowd along the fence at Dallas’s Love Field. Close behind, in sunglasses, is Secret Service agent Clint Hill.
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and they were nearly overrun by the horde of youngsters squealing with
excitement. Their sign had worked.
The crowds grew commensurate with the motorcade’s proximity to
downtown, and they grew louder, screaming, “Jack, Jackie!” Nellie Connally recalled, “They seemed to want her as much as they wanted him.” 298 Every wave of Jackie’s hand brought a collective voice moving like a wave across the crowd. “Jackiiee, Jackiiee, Jackiee!” they shrieked with unabated joy.
Across the street, on the president’s side of the car, they, too, pleaded with the first lady: “Jackie, Jackie, over here, Jackiiee, over here.” 299 They clamored for a look, a wave, a smile. Outside the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Father Oscar Huber stood with a group of teens from his parish. “Don’t kid me,”
he said to the boys. “You don’t care about him, it’s Jackie you want to see.” 300t Jack and Jackie get situated in the back seat of the presidential limousine as they prepare to depart for the motorcade through downtown Dallas and their scheduled luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart. Just before they departed aide Dave Powers reminded them not to wave to the same voter.
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On Main Street the crowds were ten, fifteen and twenty deep. Bill Greer
repeatedly moved the vehicle to the left side of the road, keeping the crowd as far away from the president as possible. Four or five times, Clint Hill jumped on the left rear running board, protecting Mrs. Kennedy from the
surge. It was a rapturous crowd. Connally remembered it as “huge, warm
and enthusiastic…tremendous in size and warmth for the president and
first lady. 301 Congressman Jim Wright of Fort Worth was “overjoyed by the marvelously hospitable turnout of the people all the way from Love Field, all the way in through the city, through the city streets.” Dallas was “wonderful, gracious and warm,” he recalled forty-three years later, with a heartache still creeping into his voice. 302
The president’s car turned right onto Houston Street, leaving the jubilant throngs behind. The unbridled exhilaration and effusiveness of the people of Dallas had incredibly and unexpectedly surpassed the crowds in San Antonio, Houston, and Fort Worth. The acrimonious tone that had accompanied
the Dallas visit of Kennedy’s UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson one month
earlier was nowhere to be seen. “We could see no sign of hostility,” wrote Kenny O’Donnell, “not even cool unfriendliness, and the throngs of people jamming the streets and hanging out of windows were all smiling, waving, and shouting excitedly. The steady roar of their cheering was deafening. It was by far the greatest and most emotionally happy crowd we had ever seen in Texas.” 303 The frigid anticipated reception melted in November’s Texas sun, in the glow of the smiles of President and Mrs. Kennedy, and in the exuberant warmth and affection of the people of Dallas.
Ahead was the Texas School Book Depository, a reddish, sandy-colored
brick building. “We will soon be there,” said Nellie Connally, and Jackie looked across the plaza toward the triple underpass. “I remember thinking it would be so cool under that tunnel.” 304
Standing with her mother on the corner of Houston and Elm, across
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Glover. “I was fascinated with the Kennedys,” she remembered. As the
motorcade turned on to Houston, the crowd virtually disappeared, and for an ever-so-brief moment Jack and Jackie turned toward each other. “They
spoke to each other,” Glover recalled. “They had a couple moment…it made me smile.” As the motorcade rolled toward her, covering the two hundred
feet of Houston Street, she remembered thinking, “This is the greatest
moment of my life.” 305
“There were very few people in that area,” recalled Clint Hill, and seeing that, he jumped off the running board behind Mrs. Kennedy and returned to the Secret Service follow-up vehicle. Glancing up at the Book Depository, he noticed “some of the windows were open…but I didn’t see anything in those windows.” Windows were open along the entire parade route. “People were
on balconies, on rooftops, hanging out…of windows.” 306
Sitting in the jump seats of the Secret Service car were Powers and
O’Donnell. The president was visibly “thrilled” and “fascinated” by the
unexpected reception, and it was clear to both veteran political observers that
“the first lady was going to be increasingly valuable in the months ahead.” 307
“This is one state we’re going to carry easily,” 308 said Kenny O’Donnell.
“We turned there at the courthouse,” said Jim Wright. “We were in such
a good mood.”
Approaching the Book Depository, Nellie Connally, gleeful at the response of the citizens of Dallas, turned to President Kennedy. “You certainly can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you, Mr. President.”
The president smiled, “No, no you can’t.”
The car was now directly below the ominous building, nearly reaching a
complete stop to make the left-hand turn. The triple underpass and freeway entrance were thirty seconds away. “What do you have for time?” O’Donnell asked Powers.
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“Twelve-thirty,” came the reply. “Not bad…we’re only five minutes
late.” 309
“I was scanning the left side of the street,” said Clint Hill, “and I heard an explosive noise to my right rear. So I scanned from my left to my right going toward that noise…I scanned across the back of the car…I saw the
president grabbing his throat.” 310
Jim Wright recalled the irreconcilability of the moment. “I heard the first shot, it sounded like a rifle shot but I couldn’t imagine, it was so incongruous to me, the idea that there would be a rifle shot.” 311 Governor Connally was seated in front of the president. “I heard this shot...I immediately thought it was a rifle shot.” 312 Connally and Wright were hunters, but the sound of rifle shots was foreign to the first lady.
“There is always noise in a motorcade,” recalled Jackie Kennedy. “And
there are always motorcycles around us…backfiring.” The vehicle was
halfway down Elm Street, and the shade she had been longing for was less than two hundred feet away. “I was looking to the l
eft…there was a noise…
It didn’t seem like any different noise really. But then Governor Connally was yelling ‘Oh no, no, no.’”
Clint Hill jumped from the running board of the follow-up car and
sprinted toward the Lincoln. Jackie was wondering, “Why is he [Connally]
screaming?” and then she turned toward her husband. “He had this sort of quizzical look on his face…he never made a sound.” Clearly seeing he was in distress, she reached for him, raising her right arm and leaning toward him, when another loud reverberating explosion pierced the plaza. “I could see a piece of his skull, sort of wedge shaped…it was flesh colored with little ridges at the top…he just looked as if he had a slight headache. And I just remember seeing that. No blood or anything.” 313
“Just before I got to the car,” said Hill, “there was a third shot, and it hit the president in the head…causing an explosion…brain matter and blood, bone
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fragments splattered…they came all over the car, me and Mrs. Kennedy.” 314
Hill reached the car as Mrs. Kennedy was climbing on the back of the trunk in an attempt to retrieve portions of her husband’s shattered skull. Nearly felled by Greer’s quick acceleration, a final lunge enabled him to board the trunk and get Jackie back into the car. Just as he did, the president’s lifeless body fell onto her lap, and his blood poured from the cavernous head wound. What was not absorbed by her pink suit poured onto the seat, the roses, and the floor.
Hill now covered the first lady, who was cradling her husband’s
splintered, broken head. “Get to a hospital!” he screamed, and Bill Greer slammed his foot on the gas towards the Stemmons Freeway. Jackie was now shouting, “Oh my God, they’ve killed my husband! Jack, Jack, I love you
Jack.” The car reached speeds of eighty miles per hour, with Jackie holding on to her husband, “trying to hold his hair on and his skull on,” all the while repeating, “They’ve killed my husband. I have his brains in my hands.” 315
The one blow she could not bear was now hers to endure. Jack was lost.
And through tears, fifty years later, Toni Glover recalled, “For me it was the death of hope.” 316
It took four minutes to reach Parkland Memorial Hospital, but it felt
like an eternity to Jackie Kennedy. Winston Lawson and another man
dashed into the hospital and retrieved two gurneys for the leaders who lay bleeding in the car. The governor had to be removed first to gain access to the president. Jackie hovered over Jack, cradling his mutilated head and holding it to her breast.
Dave Powers, ignoring shouts from Emory Roberts to stop, bounded
out of the vehicle and rushed toward his wounded friend, his mind rejecting what his eyes had already seen. “It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be,” he thought to himself. Jerking open the right rear door, he found the fixed eyes of his dead friend, and his mind could no longer deny the grisly truth. “Oh my God, Mr.
President, what have they done to you?” he uttered and burst into tears. 317
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Vehicles streamed into the emergency area, coming to an abrupt halt
and unloading. Each arrival added growing numbers of spectators to the
ghastly nightmare. Connally was extricated from the middle seat and
bound for trauma room two. It was time to move the president. Jackie
was not budging. She was clutching him now, and men from the emptying
vehicles were gathering around her. The adoring throngs of only minutes
before were replaced by panic-stricken, horrified men of power, rendered powerless by what was now her personal horror. She was softly weeping
and hugging her husband, unwilling to relinquish her grasp on the last
time she would hold him.
Clint Hill leaned over her. “Mrs. Kennedy,” he said, “please let us help the president.” She didn’t move. “Please, we must get the president to a doctor.”
“I’m not going to let him go, Mr. Hill,” she said without looking up.
“We’ve got to take him in, Mrs. Kennedy.” 318 He placed a hand on her
shoulder, unleashing a torrent of anguish, and her shoulders now shook with the heaves of a broken heart. Inaudibly she mumbled, “No, Mr. Hill, you
know he’s dead. Let me alone.” 319
She lifted her head and looked at him through eyes that reflected her
wretched torment, and then he understood. He peeled off his sport jacket and handed it to her. She delicately wrapped her husband’s head in Hill’s coat. And then she let him go.
Powers, Kellerman, Hill, Lawson, and Greer struggled with the
president’s 173-pound frame just as Ralph Yarborough came upon the
scene. He watched aghast at the disturbing sight of five men trying to get the president’s limp body under control. Finally placing him on the gurney, they raced through Parkland’s double doors. Jackie raced with them, holding Clint Hill’s jacket in place, protecting her husband’s privacy and his dignity, an unknown first step in protecting and preserving his legacy. Eight minutes had passed since rifle shots echoed across Dealey Plaza, and John F. Kennedy, case 24740 white male, gunshot wound, was wheeled into Parkland Hospital’s 131
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trauma room one. Dave Powers scrawled out three lines on his notepad: “I carried my president on stretcher, ran to emergency room #1, Jackie ran
beside stretcher holding on.” 320
Outside in Parkland’s parking lot, Congressman Jim Wright wandered
around, stupefied. He had seen the remnants of carnage in the presidential limousine, roses smattered with fragments of brain tissue, blood pooled on the seat and floor. And he wondered how the morning could begin with
such “ebullient joy” and end with “unutterable pathos” and “unspeakable
sadness.” 321
Back in Fort Worth, a pounding on the door of his room aroused
advance man John Byrne from a nap. Startled, he heard a voice hollering,
“Turn on your radio, your boss is dead.” Flipping on the radio, the nightmare was confirmed. “This shattering news just ended everything…Everything
was so bright one minute and so dark the next.” 322
The gurney burst into the emergency room, bringing with it the dying chief executive, the mayhem of the streets, and the chaos of the parking lot. They entered trauma room one, which was rapidly filling with bodies. Banging
noises echoed throughout the halls and were accompanied by uncharacteristic yelling and screaming through the intercom.
Upstairs in the dining room, Dr. Marion Jenkins, Parkland’s chief
anesthesiologist, was sitting with colleagues when the loudspeaker pleaded for Dr. Tom Shire, who was out of town. Dr. Robert Jones went to the phone to answer for Shire, returning with the news that “the president’s been shot and they’re bringing him here.” Running across the dining room and down a flight of stairs, Jenkins entered the room to find Dr. James Carrico removing a breathing tube from the president’s mouth. Taking his position behind the president’s head, he assessed his condition. “He was cyanotic, his face was blue…his pupils were wildly dilated…he had a gasping type respiration…
giving a chin jerk. He wasn’t dead. His EKG had a dying heart pattern.” Dr.
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Malcolm Perry entered and immediately began a tracheostomy procedure,
providing a breathing apparatus through a surgical opening in the throat.
Perry asked for a stool to stand on and gain leverage to apply external heart massage. Application of oxygen improved his EKG. Yet with each chest
compression, blood gushed from the head wound, spilling all over Jenkins’s pants and into his shoes. It had been approximately fifteen minutes since Jackie heard Governor Connally yelling, “Oh, no, no, no.”
The intensity of the maniacal freneticism that marked that infinitesimal block of time left Jackie numb and dazed. In the midst of the pandemonium surrounding her, she stood alone. Lady Bird Johnson wrote in her diary,
“She was quite alone. I don’t think I ever saw anyone so much alone in my life.” The wheels of government descended upon a tiny county hospital, and as hysteria, panic, and discord swirled about her, Jackie stood, an island of solitude born of a shattered soul.
Jackie was circling through the trauma room to be guided back out by a
variety of individuals. Jenkins recalled, “She was wide eyed, looked at a fifty yard stare, she didn’t see anything it appeared. [She was] white, drawn in the face, looking very remote, shocked.” The first two or three times she came through the room, Jackie was holding her hands in a cupped position, her left hand over her right. “She came and nudged me with her elbow…and she handed me what was in her right hand…a big chunk of the president’s brain.” 323
Father Oscar Huber who, ninety minutes before, had cheered the first
couple on the motorcade route, was now standing in the room. Jenkins,
knowing Huber’s purpose but not fully understanding the Roman Catholic
concept of Extreme Unction, approached the priest. “What’s the proper time to declare one dead?” he asked, ascertaining how the declaration of death would impact Huber’s liturgical function.
Satisfied, he returned to his position behind the president’s head.
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injury. We cannot resuscitate him.” Neurosurgeon Kemp Clark stepped in to examine the gaping hole in the president’s skull. A piece of bone, the size of the palm of an adult male, had been blasted out. “There’s no possible way. It’s too late, Mac,” Clark concluded, leaving the neurosurgeon the historical task of declaring the thirty-fifth president dead. 324
Jackie was standing close by with Dr. George Burkley, the president’s
personal physician, who had finally gained her access to Jack. She had already wrestled a nurse attempting to get into the room, which had caught Burkley’s eye. He went to the fracas in an attempt to persuade Jackie to take some sedation. She would have none of it. “I want to be in there when he dies,” 325
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