Reclaiming History (74 page)

Gregory turns and glares at Marguerite sitting in the backseat.

“Mrs. Oswald, you are being so selfish,” he snaps. “You are endangering this girl’s life, and the life of these two children.”

Marguerite is appalled that he would speak to her, a mother who has just lost a son, in that tone. It also ruffles her feathers that he is thinking of Marina’s well-being, and not hers. She sees Mr. Gregory as another “Russian” sticking up for her Russian daughter-in-law, and it bothers her. “These Russian people are always considering this Russian girl,” she thinks. “What about me?”

“Mr. Gregory, I am not talking for my daughter-in-law,” she finally says. “She can do what she wants. I am saying, I want to see my son.”

“I, too, want to see Lee,” Marina says, somewhat diffusing the tension in the car.
¹⁴⁵⁸

I
nside the rotunda, cameras rove over the statue of Abraham Lincoln as television commentator Edward P. Morgan puts into words what millions of Americans are feeling as they watch Jack Kennedy’s family pay their last respects: “It is not the great solemn grandeur but the little human things that are almost too hard to bear…”

Suddenly, the network abruptly cuts into the flow of images with a bulletin: FLASH…LEE HARVEY OSWALD IS DEAD.

Morgan comments to his colleague, Howard K. Smith, “You keep thinking, Howard, that this is a dream from which you will awake—but you won’t.”
¹⁴⁵⁹

1:29 p.m.

The third-floor hallway at Dallas police headquarters has been packed with reporters for nearly two hours, awaiting a statement from Chief Curry. Unlike the previous two days, the corridor leading to the administrative offices is blocked by three uniformed police officers standing shoulder to shoulder.

When Chief Curry finally emerges from his office, he passes through the crowd without a word. The look on his face says everything. The press follows him down to the assembly room, where Curry takes a position at the front of the room. There is a scramble and a slight delay as cameramen and television crews get their equipment set up. Curry stands waiting, the very picture of dejection.

When the press is ready, Curry steps to the battery of microphones assembled before him.

“My statement will be very brief,” he says. “Oswald expired at 1:07 p.m.”

“He died?” one addled reporter in the back of the room asks.

“He died,” Curry repeats, “at 1:07 p.m. We have arrested the man. The man will be charged with murder.”

Curry then identifies the man as Jack Rubenstein and tells the media he goes by the name of Jack Ruby.

When the press start asking questions about Ruby, Curry responds firmly, “I have no other statements to make at this time,” and promptly leaves the room.
¹⁴⁶⁰

Seth Kantor, a Scripps-Howard reporter in the assembly room, later writes, from his tape-recorded impression of what has transpired, “The boner of the Dallas Police Department [in failing to protect Oswald] would rank now with the building of the Maginot Line by the French to keep the Germans from marching into their country during World War II, when the Germans merely went around the thing. Remember the picture of the Frenchmen crying in the streets of Paris then? Only the tears were missing from the tragedy on Curry’s face.”
¹⁴⁶¹

“Up until Oswald was shot,” Dallas police sergeant Gerald L. Hill said, “we were smelling like a rose. Within a short period of time, street cops, sergeants, detectives, patrolmen, and motorcycle officers had caught the man who had killed the President of the United States, had lost an officer in the process, and had managed to do so without the FBI, Secret Service, or any of the other glory boys. Nobody could have faulted us for anything at that point.”
¹⁴⁶²

1:58 p.m.

The metal door clangs open as a uniformed jail guard steps into the narrow corridor of the fifth-floor maximum-security block where FBI agent C. Ray Hall is interviewing Jack Ruby. “There’s an attorney downstairs who wants to talk with Mr. Ruby whenever he’s available,” the jailer says.

“He’s available right now,” Hall says, then turns back to face Ruby. “Jack, why don’t you go down and talk with him and we’ll continue this when you get back.”

The police give Ruby his clothes back and he gets dressed.

With Agent Hall and Detectives McMillon and Clardy in tow, Ruby is led down to the fourth-floor jail office and into a room where he confers privately with attorney Tom Howard, an old acquaintance who had represented him in the past. Their meeting lasts four minutes.
¹⁴⁶³

When Ruby comes out, Detective McMillon asks Dr. Fred Bieberdorf, who had returned from Parkland Hospital, to take a look at Ruby to see if he had any complaints or injuries as a result of the scuffle in the basement garage.

“I’m okay,” Ruby says, taking off his suit coat. He shows Dr. Bieberdorf a few bruises on his right arm and wrist and assures him that they aren’t bothering him.

“I have a great deal of admiration for the Dallas police,” Ruby says. “They only did what they had to do. They didn’t hurt me more than was necessary, no more than what I would expect. They were just doing their job and doing it very well.”

In a few minutes, the doctor finishes the examination and Ruby is returned to his fifth-floor cell, where he is again stripped to his shorts, and FBI agent Hall resumes his questioning.
¹⁴⁶⁴

2:11 p.m. (3:11 p.m. EST)

Less than an hour after the eulogies ended in the rotunda of the Capitol on Sunday afternoon, the District of Columbia police reported that a serious problem was developing as people surged toward the Capitol building. The original plan called for closing the rotunda to the public at nine Sunday evening, but no one dreamed there would be such an incredible multitude of people who would show up for the opportunity to pay their final respects to the president, each allowed a maximum of thirty seconds of meditation at the president’s casket. The decision is ultimately made to keep the rotunda open all night to accommodate the crowds.
¹⁴⁶⁵
*

For the millions watching television at home, both in America and around the world via satellite, there is little relief from the images of people streaming into the rotunda. As has been the situation with all three networks since the assassination, there are no breaks for commercials or indeed for any of television’s routine news, weather, or sports reports. To relieve the monotony there is little but endless replays of earlier events, although by now many viewers have seen the clips several times. With the constant regressions and recyclings of black-and-white footage, time seems to loop back on itself, becoming both fluid and petrified. Saturday afternoon exists in the same frame with Friday morning and Sunday evening. When time does advance, it does so in tiny, almost imperceptible increments. Early this morning the cameras caught a glimpse of the president’s mother, Rose Kennedy, emerging from a church in Hyannis Port. At half past three in the afternoon she was briefly seen again, this time with her daughter Eunice Shriver and son Ted as they left Hyannis Port for Washington and tomorrow’s funeral. An hour later the cameras’ view shifted to Dulles International Airport to cover the arrival of France’s head of state, General Charles de Gaulle, where he was met by Secretary of State Dean Rusk and a crew of State Department officers who will be on hand all evening to receive an unprecedented inflow of dignitaries—King Baudouin of Belgium, Chancellor Erhard of West Germany, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, President Eamon De Valera of Ireland, and an English delegation including Prince Philip, Sir Alec and Lady Douglas-Home, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, and Harold Wilson and Jo Grimond, heads of the British Labour and Liberal parties.
¹⁴⁶⁶

Nearly a hundred nations have sent representatives—usually several—to form the largest assembly of ruling statesmen ever gathered in the United States, probably anywhere, for any event. Even the Soviet Union, which plans to broadcast the funeral in its entirety on state-run television, sends its first deputy premier, Anastas I. Mikoyan. The UN contingent includes Secretary-General U Thant, Dr. Ralph Bunche, and seven others. The European Coal and Steel Community sends two, the European Economic Community and Euratom one each, while the Vatican is represented by the Most Reverend Egidio Vagnozzi, archbishop of Myra and an apostolic delegate. Thirty state governors, twenty Harvard professors, and three Roman Catholic prelates arrive and scatter to their various destinations without any notice from television at all.
¹⁴⁶⁷

Among the televised arrivals there are a sprinkling of special programs. A memorial concert by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, quickly organized and conducted by Leonard Bernstein, is broadcast, as well as “Largo” and “Requiem” performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.
¹⁴⁶⁸

No one really knows how much the television coverage is costing the networks and local radio and television stations. The three networks normally earn a total of about fourteen million dollars each night alone from the sale of advertising during prime time, but when the revenues lost to hundreds of local stations is added in, the cost to the industry altogether could run to one hundred million dollars.
¹⁴⁶⁹

Although the waning day had been almost cloudless, it was cold and windy, the temperature dipping to thirty-nine degrees at midnight, but neither the cold nor the prospect of the long ordeal ahead daunt very many. As late as eleven o’clock, the line of people, several abreast, is still nine miles long.
¹⁴⁷⁰
Everyone is there, toddlers as well as the elderly and infirm. Men and women on crutches and in wheelchairs wait as long as fourteen hours in the bitter cold. People accustomed to being driven to the Capitol entrance in limousines rub shoulders with those who have come by city bus, but they seem united in a single outpouring of grief. However controversial the young president had been to some just two days before, everyone is equally grieved at his passing and draws sustenance from being so tangibly a part of the vast multitude sharing their feelings. Here and there guitarists keep spirits up with folk songs, including the president’s favorite, “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?” There are spirituals like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and songs from the burgeoning civil rights movement like “We Shall Not Be Moved.” Some weep, some pray, almost all ask themselves and others, “Why?” The sheer senselessness of it all remains incomprehensible, indigestible, unbearable.
¹⁴⁷¹
In a way, not really believable.

As the evening wears on, the ropes around the coffin are moved inward to allow more people to circle it at the same time. The flow of humanity widens into a river, seemingly endless. Edward P. Morgan describes the atmosphere as a “mood of mutinous, somber sadness.”
¹⁴⁷²

2:25 p.m.

Secret Service agent Mike Howard delivers the two Oswald women to a rear entrance at Parkland Hospital. All his attempts to dissuade them from going there have been stubbornly rejected by the voluble Marguerite. The agents escort the Oswald women and children into the freight entrance, where they are met by Nurse Doris Nelson and taken to the Minor Medicine and Surgery room near the emergency entrance.

“I’ll have the doctor come in and talk to you,” she tells them, and leaves to inform the medical examiner, Dr. Earl F. Rose, that they are there.

The hospital staff has already cleared and prepped the X-ray Department down the hall so that the family can view the body there. Under Dr. Rose’s supervision, Oswald’s body is placed on a hospital gurney and wheeled down from the second-floor operating room to the X-ray Department under heavy police guard. Nurse Nelson and several police officers help drape the body with sheets for viewing, while Dr. Rose heads down the hall to talk with the family.
¹⁴⁷³

Two nurse’s aides attend to the babies while Marina and Marguerite, and their Secret Service escorts, follow Dr. Rose into the room near emergency.
¹⁴⁷⁴
For some reason, no one thinks to go to the volunteer office and get Robert Oswald, or even inform him that his mother and sister-in-law are in the hospital.

“Now, you know,” Dr. Rose warns them, “that Texas law says that we have to have an autopsy on the body.”

“Yes, I understand,” Marguerite says. She is sure that Marina, who was a pharmacist in the Soviet Union, understands as well.

“I understand that you wish to see the body,” Rose continues. “Now, I will do whatever you ladies wish. However, I will say this. It will not be pleasant. All the blood has drained from him, and it would be much better if you would see him after he is fixed up.”

“I am a nurse,” Marguerite says. “I have seen death before. I want to see my son now.”

“I want to see Lee too,” Marina cries.

With that, Dr. Rose leads them down the hall into the X-ray Department and closes the door. Lee Oswald’s body is lying under a sheet, his face visible. Several Dallas police officers are standing nearby.

Marina approaches the body and, to Marguerite’s astonishment, pulls open his eyelids.

“He cry,” Marina whimpers in broken English. “He eye wet.”

“Yes,” Dr. Rose replies softly.
¹⁴⁷⁵

Marina wants to see the wound that had killed him. She
has
to see it. She reaches out to lift the sheet away and someone grabs her arm and stops her. She leans down and kisses her husband. His flesh is cold. “In Russia,” she thinks to herself, “it wouldn’t have happened. They would have taken better care of him.”
¹⁴⁷⁶

Marguerite doesn’t touch the body, but sees enough to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is her son. She leaves the room with a parting shot for the police officers.

“I think some day you’ll hang your heads in shame,” she says. “I happen to know, and know some facts, that maybe my son is the unsung hero of this episode. And I, as his mother, intend to prove this if I can.”
¹⁴⁷⁷

Down the hall, Robert Oswald waits in the purchasing agents’ office, where the Secret Service has moved him in anticipation of seeing Lee’s body.
¹⁴⁷⁸
Soon, Marguerite, who is quite upset, and Marina, who has a look of shock about her, are brought down to join Robert.
¹⁴⁷⁹
Marguerite, who believes Lee was an agent of the U.S. government, suggests to Robert that he should be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington.