‘It’s Nov. 22, 1963, every single day here in Dealey Plaza,” our tour guide announced, as he drove a packed trolley bus through the intersection of Houston and Elm streets on Saturday afternoon last weekend – Nov. 23.
I’d gone to Dallas from Los Angeles to attend the Official JFK 50th Memorial Tribute Ceremonies, having applied for a lottery ticket back in July. Once it was confirmed that I would be one of only 5,000 people in the United States so invited, I booked my flights and scored a room at the Hotel Lawrence, located just two blocks south of the School Book Depository building.
A longtime “student” of the John F. Kennedy assassination, I simply had to be where the action was – in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 2013, marking the once-in-a-lifetime 50th anniversary of that truly awful event. I’ve been devouring everything I could get my hands on about the murder for nearly 40 years now, but reading countless books and watching dozens of documentaries will give an assassination fanatic only so much of the story.
One simply has to stand on the grassy knoll, behind the picket fence, and next to the sixth-floor window of the School Book Depository building to “experience” what it must have looked, heard and even smelled like at 12:30 p.m., Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, when three shots were fired from on high into JFK’s motorcade.
I arrived in Dallas on Nov. 21 to a balmy, sticky 72 degrees and hurriedly made my way to the grassy knoll. There, hundreds of spectators were gathered, taking photos from every conceivable angle, and huddled in small groups debating whether it was the CIA, Lyndon Johnson or mobsters that really shot JFK.
Cold front
I had to wake up extra early on the 22nd as everyone who’d “won” a lottery ticket to attend the memorial event had to first obtain a precious gold wristband from several miles away. I’d planned to walk, went outside, and froze. Literally. Overnight, Dallas had been hit with a major cold front. Fortunately, I hooked up with a family that drove me in their car.
Rumors swirled through the bitter cold crowd that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or maybe even Caroline Kennedy was going to make a special guest appearance. (That would have explained the extraordinary and overwhelming presence of the Dallas police, the FBI, Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency vehicles on neighboring streets.) If you watched the ceremonies on TV, I heard they were quite touching. If you were on site, however, your only crying would have been from the complete loss of feeling in your lower extremities.
Jim Schutze, in an article titled “JFK’s Long Wake” from last week’s Dallas Observer, wrote, “What we will really see in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 2013, will be the last gathering of the true grievers.”
Nov. 23 was still bitter cold. I took the JFK Trolley Tour of Downtown Dallas, a private bus ride that is simply a must for anyone serious about JFK trivia. As the tour guide-driver played old audio recordings of famous JFK speeches, gunshot blasts and historic newscasts, he also pointed out highlights such as Lee Harvey Oswald’s boardinghouse, the Texas Theater and the ramp where Jack Ruby shot Oswald. I was in JFK Heaven.
Later, I spent three hours at the Sixth Floor Museum. Under glass, the museum houses photographic cameras used by eyewitnesses to the event, replicas of Abraham Zapruder’s movie camera and Oswald’s rifle, and even a miniature model re-creation of Dealey Plaza itself.
But nothing can touch the emotions that I felt standing next to the “killer’s perch” – the glass encased area in front of the infamous sixth-floor window itself. I stood mesmerized by the sight — just imagining Oswald frantically squeezing off three trigger pulls. The window summed up everything for me: Six seconds in the life of a lunatic who would change the course of world history, and the lives of every single one of the brave 5,000 who simply had to attend the memorial event, despite the frigid weather.
With tears in my eyes and chills down my spine, I realized, while staring through that sixth-floor window, that this was the moment I’d really come to Dallas for. I, too, was one of the “True Grievers.”
Dan Harary is president and founder of the Asbury PR Agency of Beverly Hills. He has been fascinated by the Kennedy assassination since conspiracy theorist Robert Groden
presented the Zapruder film at the college Harary attended, Boston University, in 1975.
