Where Were You?: America Remembers the JFK Assassination (5 page)

So you have this plane carrying two presidents, one alive and one dead. It’s flying across the United States. In the rear compartment is the
president’s coffin. Sitting next to it is Jacqueline Kennedy. Her skirt is covered with blood. She has taken off the white gloves she was wearing. They’re caked with blood.

The Kennedy loyalists—Godfrey McHugh, O’Brien, O’Donnell—are standing with her sort of next to the president’s body. In the next room, the president’s stateroom and office, Lyndon Johnson is giving orders. The orders are taken up to the cockpit and radioed to Washington. In the front of the plane is where all the press and the passengers sit. One of the reporters was asked, “What was it like there?” He said, “You’ve heard of strong men weeping. Well, we had it there that day.” Kennedy’s secretaries are crying too.

At this point, no one knows if it’s a conspiracy. We are shortly going to be reading headlines: “Oswald visited the Cuban embassy.” “Oswald visited Soviet embassy in Mexico City.” No one knows, but the Cuban Missile Crisis is very fresh in everybody’s mind. During the flight, which is something like two hours and six minutes long, on every air base along the route, fighter planes are actually on the runways. The pilots are in the cockpits, strapped in; the engines are running. In the radar shacks at the bases, men are huddled over the radar screens. “Is any blip approaching Air Force One?”

That’s the atmosphere, and as the plane flies across the country, church bells are starting to ring in a thousand towns and cities. Flags are being lowered to half-mast as the body of Jack Kennedy is flown back to Washington. It’s one of the pivotal moments in American history; it’s also a moment that for sheer poignancy is almost unequaled in our history.

Johnson evokes Kennedy’s memory. He says, “Let us continue.” He says, “The first priority is to pass the bill the president fought for all this long year, the Civil Rights Bill.”

At the time President Kennedy is killed, that Civil Rights Bill is going nowhere. The Senate was always the great barrier to civil rights with its use of the filibuster. But the bill’s not even in the Senate. It’s not even on the House floor. The House Judiciary Committee has passed it, but they sent it to the Rules Committee, which is presided over by Judge Howard W. Smith
of Virginia, the archest of segregationists. He won’t even tell anybody when he will start a hearing. At approximately the same time as the Kennedy motorcade is going through Dallas, John McCormick, the Speaker of the House, is asking Judge Smith, “What’s the schedule? When are you going to start hearings?” Smith is saying, “I don’t know.”

The
Washington Post
interviews Smith and asks, “What are your plans for the Civil Rights Bill?” He says, “No plans.” That bill is not getting out of the Rules Committee; it’s completely stuck.

Three nights after Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson’s going to give his first speech to the joint houses of Congress. Johnson’s not even in the Oval Office yet; he’s still living at home. In the dining room, around his kitchen table, his advisors are drafting the speech. Johnson comes in, and they tell him, “Don’t emphasize civil rights. Don’t make that a priority. You’re going to alienate the Southern Democrats. It’s a lost cause, anyway. It’s a noble cause, but it’s a lost cause. Don’t waste your prestige immediately on it.” And Johnson says, “What the hell’s the presidency for, then?” He makes civil rights a centerpiece of his speech. He puts it in the context of Kennedy’s memory. “This is what he fought for. This is what he wanted.” Sympathy for Kennedy is not the whole story, but it’s a big part of the story of why that Civil Rights Bill gets passed.

Jack Kennedy had this great gift for appealing to the better side, “the better impulses in America’s nature.” He said, “Ask not what your country . . .” He stirred everybody.

One minute it was the Eisenhower era, where people were interested in materialism and making money. Then Jack Kennedy made these speeches at the beginning of his presidency, and all of a sudden, everyone wanted to go to Harvard Business School. The next minute, everyone
wanted to enroll in the Peace Corps or work for Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department. He appealed to America’s ideals, and he did so in words of genius. The words of his speeches are the words of a man who knew what ideals America should be striving for and knew what words to put them into. He’s unforgettable in that.

In foreign policy, when you listen to the tapes of the Cuban Missile Crisis, you hear over and over again moments you can hardly believe. The Russians shoot down the airplane, and you hear the voices of George Bundy, McNamara, and the others saying, “Now we promised we’d retaliate. We have to attack now. We have to bomb now.” Kennedy basically says, “Gentlemen, let’s take a little break. Let’s be calm. Let’s come back in a few minutes and talk about so-and-so.” Over and over again, he pulls the hawks back from war. If he hadn’t been president, would we have had a nuclear war over the Cuban Missile Crisis?

In those respects, Kennedy was among our greatest presidents. You also have to say that in domestic affairs, Kennedy was not effective. His legislative program and the ideals he articulated for Medicare, for tax reform, for civil rights weren’t going anywhere. Would they ever have gone anywhere? If he had a second term, would they have gotten passed? Perhaps, but there’s no sign of that. Both of his two big bills, the tax cut bill and the Civil Rights Bill, were absolutely stalled in Congress.

When you look at the Kennedy assassination and Lyndon Johnson’s ascension to power, you say, “This is one of the pivotal moments of the twentieth century.” It’s a watershed moment, and what do I mean by “watershed”? I use it in the exact meaning of the term. A watershed is the top of a mountain divide. On one side, the waters run one way; on the other side, the waters run another way. On November 21, 1963, America was not the same country as it would be five years later—five years after Jack Kennedy’s death—when Lyndon Johnson’s presidency ended. America changed. When you look at the whole landscape of America in the twentieth century, John F. Kennedy’s presidency was a pivotal moment when everything started to change. There are many reasons for that. Part of it is the unique place Jack Kennedy holds in American political history—because of the unique, unforgettable way he made America remember what ideals it stood for.

Buell Frazier

Nineteen years old at the time, Buell Frazier worked at the Texas School Book Depository and lived a few blocks from Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife, Marina, in Irving. He considered Oswald a friend and drove him to work on that fateful day.

T
he first day I met Lee Harvey Oswald was his first day at work. Mr. Shelley, my supervisor, called me over to his office. I met Lee Oswald outside of his office. He explained to me that Lee was a new hire and that he wanted me to teach him how to fill orders there at the Texas School Book Depository. I got to know Lee through working with him. I was teaching him how to pull orders for different publishers. “Sometimes,” I said, “you will have to read the line all the way across, because it will tell you which textbook you want.”

We filled orders for five states out of there. We did New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas; the public schools in Arkansas might use one version of an algebra book, and maybe Texas would use another. Even though the covers looked the same, you had to know where to look on the case or look inside the book to know which textbook to send. Lee was very smart. He learned very quickly.

One time, when we were riding home, Lee asked me, “Do you follow politics?” and I said, “No, not really.” I explained to him that I just didn’t have much faith in politicians. He didn’t tell me a lot about living in Russia. I did find out later, however, that he did live in Russia. But as far as what type of work he did there or anything like that, it was never talked about. I’ve since learned a lot about Lee, where he was, and things he did before he met me. They’re just things I found out on my own through reading or watching programs and so forth.

Frazier in police custody
(photograph by Lawrence Schiller)

At work, he didn’t really fit in. He tried, but he just didn’t fit in. He wasn’t a slacker; he was a good worker. I told him many times after he’d worked there for several days, “Now, you’re coming along pretty good.” When you’re teaching somebody, you feed something to them as fast as they can absorb and retain it, and Lee was remarkable in that. He learned so quickly. He was very dedicated in what he was doing. He was a no-nonsense person when he was working.

Lee rode out to Irving, where he spent the weekends with his wife at Miss Ruth Paine’s house. He rode out every weekend except one.

November 22 was on a Friday. I was running a bit late that morning. I don’t know what I was doing, or I overslept a little bit. I got to the breakfast table there in the den area at my sister’s home, where I was living, and I was eating my breakfast.

My sister was over to my left at the kitchen sink, washing some dishes, and she observed Lee carrying a package. He put the package in the backseat of my car, and then he came around and looked in the window. My mother was there, and she looks up and says, “Who’s that man looking in the window?” I said, “Oh, that’s just Lee.”

Then I looked at my watch and said, “Oh, I’m running late,” so I went to the door. Lee came to the carport, and I told him, “I’m just finishing up breakfast; I’ll be out in just a minute.” I went back, finished whatever I was eating, and went and brushed my teeth. Then I went out to meet him. Lee was outside there on the carport. We walked around and got in the car.

As I was sitting down, I glanced over, looking at him, and I saw a package in the backseat. I said, “What’s the package?” and he said, “You remember I told you yesterday I was going home to get some curtain rods?” I said, “Oh, okay.” That’s the last I thought about it. But much later, I was asked a lot of questions about the package.

We got in the car and went on to work. The weather was overcast and cloudy, and it was misting rain—real fine, little specks, much like a straight pin, about that size, real small. While we were going to work, I said, “I wish this rain would stop,” but we didn’t talk a lot about a lot of things that morning. The rain didn’t seem to bother him. He just observed what I said and said, “Okay,” or something like that. Then we got to work, and a few minutes before work I sat there and charged the engine on my car a little bit because I’d been having trouble sometimes with it starting. While I was doing that, he got outside the car, and he got the package and stood there for a minute. Then he decided to go on, and he walked on ahead of me.

The area where I parked was down in the employees’ parking lot, which was a good two hundred yards or more from the building where we worked. We had to walk through a rail yard, where they switched and put a lot of trains together. I was always fascinated with trains, even when I was a little boy, so I’d watch the guys doing that. When Lee first started out, he was probably fifty feet ahead of me, and as we walked along, he got a little further and a little further ahead. When I was getting close to the building, I noticed something: He was going up the steps on the dock, and he went inside. I didn’t see him for some time, so what he did once he got inside, I don’t know.

I did see Lee that day. I could go to any floor we had. We had seven floors and a basement. The first floor is where we put a lot of the orders together and shipped them out, by parcel post or freight. The basement had certain publishers in it. A man by the name of Jack Dougherty mainly
worked the basement floor. Jack was a great guy, and sometimes I would go down and help him. We got along wonderfully. It was nice and cool down there, even in the summertime.

Jack didn’t talk about President Kennedy coming by that day, and Lee didn’t say anything about it. But one of the workers there, a man by the name of Junior Jarman, always bought a paper every morning before he’d come to work. He was looking at me and said, “Look at this! The presidential parade’s going to come right by, out in front of the building.” He said, “Do you think we’ll get to go out there and watch that?”

I said, “I don’t know.” I had a good rapport with the supervisor. So when one of the workers looked at me, I said, “You all have been talking about that for a couple hours. Why don’t we just find out?”

They said, “Well, who’s going to go find out?”

I said, “I’ll go find out,” so I went and asked Mr. Shelley, and he said, “Let me check with Mr. Truly,” which was his boss, Mr. Roy Truly. He checked, and then he went up and talked to a man by the name of Mr. Casin, and they realized what a great opportunity that was. When you stop and think about it, how many times do you get a chance to see the president of the United States in a motorcade in your lifetime? Unless you’re in a business where you travel with him and do a filming, that doesn’t happen very often—or at least it didn’t back in that time.

That’s something I think somebody should understand, because the country back in 1963 was a lot different than it is today. We didn’t have the technology we have today. There’s just a lot of things we didn’t have. But we did fine.

When the presidential motorcade came by the Texas School Book Depository, I was standing on the top step, on the first floor when you go out the front of the building. I think there were seven steps there. I was standing on the top step, but I was in the shadows. If you were out taking a picture, you wouldn’t have seen me because there were people down in front of me. While we were out watching the parade, I didn’t see Lee.

I was just thinking to myself as they were coming down Houston Street and getting ready to turn, and as they turned, I said to a lady, “Look how realistic, how normal they look!” I said it because at that time we had
Life
magazine, and the photography in the
Life
magazines were just really
something special. I remember seeing pictures of the Kennedys in different places throughout the world, and I remarked on how beautiful Jackie was and how real. I just couldn’t believe that I was that close to the first lady and the president of the United States.

It was exciting. Here was a little country boy from a rural town in East Texas, and I had a chance to come to the big city. I was excited about that, and I was working. When I was a child, I thought everybody was my friend. I know different now; that’s not true.

When the motorcade was turning the corner, they were being led by a group of motorcycle policemen, and they were cutting the motorcycles on and off, making them backfire. At the first shot, I thought it was someone still doing the backfiring. But when the second and third shots came, I realized it was no longer backfire, and the acoustics down in the Dealey Plaza—how sounds bounce off one building onto another—has given the impression to some people there were more shots than three.

A lady came running up the sidewalk to right where Elm goes down to the underpass. She was coming right up by where we were standing, at the steps, and she said, “Somebody has shot the president.” It was real bad. People were running and hollering and falling down. No one knew what was really going on. I just couldn’t believe it, because back in that time, and even today, that’s such a tragedy. I hope it never happens in this country again. It was just hard to believe that somebody would do that. I never thought of anybody doing that, in the wildest imaginations that you could come up with. I never thought anybody would do that.

I stayed right there in the step area. Billy and Mr. Shelley said they were going down to see if they could learn more about what had just happened. The whole time when we were watching the parade and everything, I never thought about anybody except just being so close and being able to witness that live. I look back on that now—that really meant a lot to me, and I didn’t realize that at the time.

I stayed there outside, the steps there for a while with some people. After some time, we decided to go back into the building. I’d gone back in with some other people, and then, I know this may be strange, but I was hungry. I always kept my lunch down in the basement, where it was
nice and cool, so I told somebody, “If Mr. Shelley or Mr. Truly’s looking for me, I’m going down to the basement to eat my lunch.”

I’d gone down, and I was sitting there, eating my lunch, and I heard a door open. I looked up, and there was a policeman; he asked me, “You been down here very long?”

I said, “Not too long.”

He noticed I was eating my lunch and said, “Have you seen anybody walking around down here?”

I said, “No, sir.” He asked me several questions. When he got through, I said, “Anything else?”

He said, “No, you’ve told me everything I need to know.”

So I finished eating my lunch, and then I went back upstairs. Then we had a roll call, and everybody was there but Lee. I remember them calling out his name and Lee not responding. Lee hadn’t taken his lunch that day. I asked him that on the way to work. I noticed he didn’t have his lunch, and I said, “You didn’t bring your lunch today?” He said, “No, I’m going to buy my lunch today.” We had a catering truck, which used to come at break time around ten o’clock, and some of the guys would buy their lunch off the catering truck. There were also places that you could go and sit down, like a lunch counter. I thought,
Maybe Lee might’ve wandered off to one of those places where you could get a sandwich and he just hadn’t gotten back
.

Mr. Truly announced that because of what had occurred, the School Book Depository was closing early that day, and that we would resume our normal work schedule on Monday morning. So I walked down to my car.

Lee had told me the night before that he wouldn’t be going home with me on Friday. That morning, I checked: “Now, you told me that you didn’t want to be going home with me this afternoon.”

He said, “That’s correct; I won’t be going with you.”

So I asked him, “You got something planned?”

He said, “Yes,” something about a driving test or something like that.

I used to listen to the radio. One of my favorite stations was KBLX 1480; it would tell you about traffic, where the accidents were, so I was listening to that, and then they broke into the normal radio station. They said that the president had been severely injured, that he’d been taken to Parkland Hospital, and that he had been pronounced dead. I said, “Oh, my gosh.” I just couldn’t believe all this happened—things happened so fast—and I just couldn’t believe anything like it would happen, but it did.