Brian Price
My father, Bobby Price, took a group of his government/history/civics students at Lake Worth High School to see Kennedy speak that day. He told me it was an experience he would always remember.
Jesus Escobedo-Perez
I wasn’t able to be there but I have heard stories from my grand parents. He’s voice is so inspiring and thrilling. I don’t know what it is but it just gives you a sense of relief. It was because of a copy of JFK’s speech at Rice university that I became so captivated by the space race a year before. He is definitely one of the people who most influenced me in my life through engineering and public service!!
Linda Burnham-Warriner
I was attending the Brantley-Draughon Business School that was located across the Street from Texas Hotel. The week before the President and Mrs Kennedy was to arrive, the hair stylist who was going to style Jackie Kennedy’s hair came to our school and chose 5 girls ( I was 18) to practice on the evening before her arrival. I was the 5th girl he practiced on the evening before so I had the same hairstyle as Jackie had that morning. I was so proud and I was proud to be an American Citizen and living in Fort Worth, Texas. Our school let out early so we could go to the speech that was just across the street from us and the President and Mrs Kennedy were coming to our great city. The speech was great and he shook hands just a few feet away from my friend and myself. We could only smile at each other. Afterwards, we went to the Lonestar Drive-In for a coke and that’s where we heard the news that the President had been shot in Dallas, Texas. We both couldn’t believe what we heard so we drove to her house to watch television and get the real story. We were very saddened that day and I have had those same memories on November 22nd of each year since.
Recalling Camelot
The following account was originally published in the monthly series, “Back in My Day,” in the Friday, August 25, 2006, Burleson, Crowley, Cleburne edition of the Fort Worth Star Telegram.
RECALLING CAMELOT
I had not yet started school. I was still too young. I remember we had tile on our living room floor and a big round rug covering its center in our home in south Fort Worth, Texas, that fateful November day. I was on the rug pushing my little toy cars along its circular rings, using them as miniature highways. Mom was to the side of the room near the kitchen ironing clothes. We were alone that mid-day. Dad was at work. My older brother and sister were at school.
The television was on. I believe one of Mom’s soap operas had been playing. Suddenly there was an interruption in the program. The usually calm, soft, black and white images were replaced by grainy, violent ones that jerkily danced across the screen. Firm, yet shrill, excited, new voices spoke over it. I don’t recall paying it a great deal of attention at first until I realized that mother had stopped ironing and was gazing intently at the television. I was aware that the room had grown still. After a few moments, I looked up at mother and was surprised to see that her eyes were full of tears. A single one had tumbled over her eyelid and was rolling down her cheek. Her hand was drawn up to her open mouth. Later I would learn that the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated just moments earlier nearby in Dallas.
For the next several days, our family, like countless others across America, sat transfixed to the television watching the continuing coverage of the shocking events of the weekend. Then, the funeral came.
For such a young boy as I was, it surprises me even now all that I remember. I wonder yet why it so captivated me then, why it captivates me still. Of all that happened on the day the President was buried, I will never forget the rider-less horse, with the empty boots turned backwards in its stirrups, and its single attendant that marched in the center of the streets of Washington. While everyone else marched calmly, orderly down the lanes, that horse alone refused to stay in step. Relentlessly he fidgeted and snorted about as though frightened by the expectation of a ghostly hand’s touch.
Without being able to adequately explain why, the assassination became a watershed event, a subliminal moment for my generation and those just a little older. Too young at the time to understand all it meant, I have inexplicably developed over the intervening years an obsessive, personal interest in it and the young, vibrant President whose life was so horribly ended.
Now more than forty years later, at least a couple of dozen books and several videos on the assassination or President Kennedy’s life sit on my bookshelf like gothic specters with a haunting gaze. I often find myself feeling just a little ill at ease, rummaging through them with a quiet desperation as though searching for answers to unspoken, unknown questions.
Like a flood of others, I have been drawn to Dealey Plaza in Dallas where it occurred. I’ve viewed it from many angles. I’ve touched the splintering wood of its grassy knoll’s picket fence, heard the clatter of slow moving railroad cars in the nearby switching yard and, standing on the sidewalk near the point where the young prince fell, strained to listen for the faded echoes of the rifle shots.
I’ve toured the Sixth Floor Museum of the Texas School Book Depository that now occupies the sniper’s roost overlooking the plaza. I’ve peered down through the dusty glass of the sixth floor windows into the streets and intersection below and tried to imagine what that day looked like through the killer’s eyes.
Why does that day hold such fascination? There’s no easy or certain answer. Perhaps the bullets shattered more than Governor Connally’s body or the President’s life that day. Perhaps they ripped away and disquieted a whole generation’s child-like sense of innocence and security. One day, our lives were fraught with astonishing wonders and delights. In a flashing, searing moment, all that was changed. Like hearing a loud trumpet blast too near the ears, which deadens our hearing, rattles our eyesight so that we see a kaleidoscope of quaking, distorted, indistinct images and which frightens us into bolting upright, we flung off, all too soon, a veil that day to awaken to the harsh and terrifying realities of the world. And, like that rider-less horse, we are restless, anxious and afraid of ghostly hands that may yet caress us if we, too, stand still.
Mary Catherine Monroe
I was eighteen years old and a sophomore at TCU during the fall of 1963. My parents were Republicans who had supported Nixon in the 1960 campaign, but by the time I arrived at TCU in the fall of 1962, I was, like many my age, a Kennedy Democrat. I have proudly remained one all of my life.
The day before the President’s scheduled breakfast in Fort Worth, my U.S. History Professor, Dr. Ben Proctor, said in class, “Mrs. Proctor and I are going downtown tomorrow morning to see the President. The first five people up here at my desk when class is over can go with us.” I was one of the lucky ones; and therefore, was in the crowd outside the Texas Hotel on the morning of November 22. It was cloudy and rainy. We were fairly far back in the crowd on the parking lot, but when the President and his group appeared at the door of the hotel, the crowd surged forward and I moved up about five rows. He spoke briefly, of course, but it was an incredibly exciting time for me. We went on back to campus and I went to class. When I returned to Jarvis Hall where I lived, the news had just come over the wires that the President had been shot in Dallas. I ran and called my mother in Corpus Christi and then remained glued to the television at my friend’s house or in the public areas of the dorm all weekend long. TCU homecoming was cancelled and everyone on campus was incredibly upset. On Monday, we attended a city memorial service which was held at Farrington Field.
One of my friends from the dorm had also been downtown to hear the President speak. She was lucky enough to be on the front row of the crowd and stuck out her camera to get a great candid shot of him shaking hands. Unfortunately, he turned and went up on the flat bed trailer “stage” before she was able to shake his hand. But, the picture which she generously made copies of for all of us who wanted it, remains one of my prized possessions. I usually take the 8×10 copy every year on or near November 22 to show to my history students and they are always excited to see it. I also tell them that, from that time on, whenever I have had a chance to see an important public figure, I have done so. There is no substitute for being present when you can.
For quite a long time, I felt that everyone bore the blame for the assassination. I feel, and still do, that the culture and the climate of the times (see the Wanted poster published in the Dallas Morning News) were contributing factors. But, I, like so many others, also eventually studied the whole story and the many assassination theories. Today, I know that it is a very complicated series of events for which there is no single simple explanation. I think we are incredibly lucky that the site in Dallas is virtually untouched so that it is possible to stand on the grassy knoll or in the Sixth Floor Museum and put oneself in that place and time. I am proud that Fort Worth is planning to acknowledge the site where the President spoke, Even though it is no longer just an asphalt parking lot, the Texas Hotel is still there with a new name and the site is important and should be remembered.