I Heard JFK's Death Shots: A Reporter's Look Back At President John F. Kennedy's 1963 Assassination After 50 Years Page 4

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  While I was aware that Richard Milhous Nixon would depart Dallas at Love Field that morning of November 22, 1963, I for reasons I do not recall decided that breakfast was more important than attempting to intercept the former vice president who had lost the 1960 presidential election narrowly to Kennedy. At that time, I understood Nixon held a reputation of not being very talkative when confronted by newsmen. I told myself that his visit to Dallas was of little meaningful consequence. Was it? I still think he had no part in events that would unfold that day. Absolutely no knowledge. Nixon then was a lawyer working for fees.

  Vital for the day, at the restaurant I had exchanged my last two quarters for five dimes. Ten cents was the cost of using a pay phone in that pre-cellular era. Surely, I reasoned, there would be no possible reason to place more than five phone calls that day. Of course, I guessed wrong.

  That Friday afternoon, on the tarmac at Love Field with “inauguration” notes in my hands, I realized that I had flittered off all those dimes by the time that Air Force One soared toward Washington along with Air Force Two and the press plane.

  I rushed into the Love Field terminal. At a phone booth, a matronly black lady was poised to make a call. I intruded as politely as possible.

  “Ma’am,” I implored, “I need the phone. I need your dime.”

  Meekly, she surrendered phone then the precious coin. Or, perhaps more corrected, I simply purloined her 10-cent piece and grabbed the telephone.

  Empowered by my purloined dime, I dialed Fallon and relayed details about the Lyndon Baines Johnson inauguration event.

  My ten-cent benefactor listened as I read from scribbled notes. She appeared astonished, and only nodded after I hung up the phone. I muttered a meek “thank you.”

  The United Press International worldwide wires rang bells at 2:52 p.m. Central Standard Time and teletype machines sputtered out the words:

  “FLASH

  DALLAS—JOHNSON PRESIDENT.”

  The Nation and humanity were in safe hands. The transition was smooth and LBJ was ready to take-up causes of a more equitable America.

  American journalist, Marianne Means, who was on the press bus with me and had wept for Kennedy later wrote that LBJ was “one of the most underestimated of all modern presidents.”

  Means particularly was pleased that the 1964 Civil Rights Act had outlawed gender discrimination. The Nebraska-born reporter also noted that “during those first years as President, he signed all sorts of beneficial legislation, from Medicare to federal funding for education that had been blocked for decades by the Southern barons in control of Congress.”

  As for details about the swearing-in of President Johnson, mine were based on Sid Davis’ words and undoubtedly was the only UPI report available until hours later when Smith arrived on Air Force One at Washington D. C. Smith handed off his own typed account to noted newswoman Helen Thomas who telephoned the “rewrite-through” for UPI wires. Smith reported the same information Davis had amply disclosed on the tarmac.

  In a large sense, most morning newspapers had already “gone to press” with Fallon’s finely written version that I had telephoned with the purloined dime’s assistance. Not known then or now, Fallon may have gotten additional information from friendly newsmen who were generous or benevolent. In the tumult of November 22, 1963, there was little time for either. We didn’t have time to even save copies of our work products.

  My files of news stories, books, speeches and other drafts of missives include only a scattered number of items I wrote back in the 1960s and later. However, I know that thousands of my words have found print and drawn comment acknowledging that they had been read.

  All three television networks, relying on UPI, AP and other wire stories along with feeds from their “on ground” local news sources had carried the story that included my words dictated to Fallon and other writers at the news bureau. Today, I have no printed copies of any of my part in the report—only recollections. Just memories and some haunts.

  The assassination began an amazing marathon of wire service writing; newspaper reporting; editorials zinging and radio /TV news reporting uninterrupted even by commercials. But on that day, dusk was near and I was exhausted. Earlier that morning, I had parked my car at Love Field. The Plymouth sat virtually alone as I trudged from the terminal toward the parking lot. As I started driving toward home, I began fuming and was outraged. I was hungry. I had missed the steak lunch and any dinner. But my mind was clicking.

  Driving along Mockingbird Lane, I was staggered by a realization: before this day, I could not recall ever writing the words “assassination” or “inauguration.” The historic perspective of the day’s reporting had taken that long to fully register in my mind.

  On the press bus, a traveling White House reporter had haughtily quizzed me about the earlier Dallas incident where Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for president who had been defeated by President Dwight Eisenhower, had been ignobly hit by a right wing lady’s placard and spat upon. And, in the same time frame, the Vice President and Mrs. Johnson had suffered indignities in downtown Dallas. These wretched events had been parts of earlier UPI and other news reports that had driven fear into the prospects of Kennedy’s campaign swing across Texas. Worse among immediate events was an ugly, full-page right-wing ad in The Dallas Morning News viciously faulting the President and Kennedy Administration.

  With this forethought, when Kennedy had roamed the fence line at Love Field, I had pushed to be close in the event of an untoward incident. The crowd, however, was cheering and swallowed their spit.

  Aboard the press bus, I recall being very relieved but then the motorcade abruptly halted. All reporters on the bus seemed to gasp. Quickly, an aide with a walkie-talkie told us that President Kennedy had ordered the open-top limousine to stop to allow him to greet and shake hands with a group of Roman Catholic school children who had lined the street.

  “No problem,” the aide said as the caravan moved again.

  It was only minutes later that the shots rang out and grisly history unfolded.

  “Who did it?” I asked myself as I drove toward home. I was not, at the moment, privileged with information about Oswald’s shooting of policeman J. D. Tippet or about Oswald’s arrest as the suspected assassin. I knew only that JFK was shot dead.

  Oswald’s arrest had unfolded during the course of the afternoon when I had been busy doing my own reporting. Then a thought struck me.

  Rightwing Lieutenant General Edwin A. Walker, retired commander of Allied forces in Europe and a nasty, vocal Kennedy critic, had flown the American flag upside down at his home near my apartment. What about Walker? Altering my route, I skidded to a halt before Walker’s house and bounced out in a trot. I rapped on the door. A matronly lady answered.

  “Carter of United Press,” I said. “I want to see General Walker.”

  “The general is not here,” she retorted and slammed the door.

  So much for that, I thought, as I walked to my car and drove home, ate food that awaited my return and listened to my wife, Beverly tell me what she had witnessed beyond television reports.

  Mrs. Carter relayed a grim local episode. A neighborhood four-year old boy on the playground that was shared by my own son, Joe Jr., jeered:

  “Ha,ha,ha, Kennedy is dead.”

  Kids in Dallas and across Texas, no doubt, had heard such remarks from their parents. I was not surprised. Hatred by the right wing was vocal, widespread and growing in 1963.

  Like the poll tax I was forced to pay for the right to vote in Texas in 1963, elements to curb democracy such as other laws to hamper voter participation by minorities and the poor, and a general mood of racism and anti-federal government feelings were rank. The same were problems in 2013.

  In recent times, following retirement as a Miami Herald editor, Jim Kukar recalled 1963 when he was night state editor of the San Angelo, Texas Standard Times. He routinely would walk three blocks toward his downtown desk during early afternoons t
o start work on the morning newspaper. That day news about the assassination and reactions were abuzz, Kukar recalls.

  “I heard people say ‘good riddance’,” Kukar said. “Months before the Oswald shot Kennedy the mood was palatable; you could taste the hatred the John Birch Society fueled in west Texas.”

  Years later, while in retirement, Kukar and I reflected on those unreported events and the nasty mood during 1963. “Across West Texas,” he said “for a while Oswald almost emerged as a hero in talks I heard.”

  After hearing about my neighborhood boy’s untoward remarks just hours after Kennedy died, I simply fell exhausted into bed and slept. Friday and I were spent.

  I returned to the UPI bureau Saturday evening to begin another shift as overnight editor. The pace still was hectic. All hands had written stories for Sunday editions.

  Fallon, despite long hours and a superb performance, seemed fresh and energetic. A transplanted New Yorker and veteran of the international news desk, Fallon enjoyed a martini in a city that sold mostly beer at the bars. Fallon congratulated my work and said, as a special reward, I would be given an extra day’s leave with pay! I was even paid overtime for the extra hours of work during the frightful Friday.

  Into the Sunday morning hours, elements of the story flowed from Dallas, from Washington and with reaction worldwide. I manned the seven-state Southwest