Dallas, November 22, 1963
Forty-six years ago today I was a month shy of my fifth birthday playing under the dining room table on our friend's rug. Suddenly her son, Peter, an elementary-school kid, came running through the door mid-day and announced that President Kennedy had been shot.
About twenty years ago my husband and I went skiing in Colorado with about six couples from our church in Dallas, one of whom were "the Kennedys." The husband told us how he was the last person to shake JFK's hand. A child at the time, our Kennedy friend apparently stuck out his hand and said, "My name's Kennedy, too." And after greeting that boy, the president got into his convertible.
Small world, Dallas. People here still talk about that fateful day so deeply embedded in the city's psyche. And when such conversations came up, for years I thought the conspiracy theorists were too cynical. The kind who are suspicious about everything. But then this and that piece of evidence would trickle in. More and more deathbed confessions started rolling in to the point that six years ago CBS news reported that seventy-four percent of Americans believe there's been a cover-up of the JFK assassination, and only 10 percent think the gunman acted alone.
Something happened a few years back that convinced me all the more to question the Warren Commission's report. I attended the visitation for Dick, a friend from church who died. And his widow sat down with me right there in the middle of the crowd at Dick's visitation and unfolded for me how he witnessed JFK's assassination. For years Dick worked for the U. S. Postal Service, and the P.O. was across from the Book Depository in downtown Dallas. So when Dick heard the president was coming, he watched from an upper window as the president's motorcade made its way down the street. Then Dick heard shots and saw the president's slumped form. But Dick's testimony about the shots fired didn't fit the evidence in the official report. Still, when Dick saw what happened to some of the people whose stories he knew to be true, he decided to keep quiet.
Then last year I was doing a women's retreat for a church in a Dallas suburb, and I met a woman, Beverly, who told me she was married to a mob boss before she came to Christ. (He was later shot to death.) She was a nightclub singer for Jack Ruby, and she said Jack introduced her to Lee Harvey Oswald. She also told me she filmed the president's motorcade, but some guys who identified themselves as government agents confiscated her camera two days later. (Remember, back then stuff had to be sent off to be developed before viewing.) She never saw it again. If you look at the woman under the arrow in the picture above, which she says is her, she looks, indeed, like she could be filming. And in the years since, no one else has claimed to be this woman in the photo. (You can read more here.)
I find it quite interesting that her testimony and Dick's don't contradict each other's...