The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  The back of the Lincoln was equipped with metal grips on the trunk for agents and a step on each side of the spare tire. Clint had his fingers in the left grip and his toe in the left step 2.6 seconds after the last shot; he had just begun to surge up when Greer rammed the accelerator to the floor. The Lincoln’s 8,000 pounds of steel sprang forward, dislodging Clint’s foot. He was dead weight and dragging. Desperately he tightened his fist on the grip. His other arm flailed at nothing. Mrs. Kennedy pivoted toward the rear and reached for him; their hands touched, clenched, and locked. It is impossible to say who saved whom. Neither remembers,2 and the Zapruder film is inconclusive. She drew him up, and he, vaulting ahead, pushed her down until she tumbled back into the car. The window beside her had been raised a few inches. Clint anchored his left hand there, hooked his right foot on the opposite side of the car, 3 and spread-eagled his body across the back of the Lincoln. With his powerful muscles he could hold on now, whatever the speed. It was small consolation to him; from the street he had seen Kennedy’s head wound. He knew it was mortal, knew the Secret Service had failed; and in anguish and frustration he hammered the trunk with his free hand.

  Chief Curry’s Ford was equipped with a souped-up engine, but it couldn’t match the powerful machines of SS 100 X and Halfback. Kinney was plunging after Greer, and in the darkness of the underpass the three cars nearly collided. Curry careened to the left, Kinney slewed to the right. They were nearly abreast, with the white-faced motorcycle policeman frantically competing for the little space left. The police chief hadn’t heard Kellerman’s mayday to Lawson, and he shouted to a motorcyclist, “Anybody hurt?” “Yes,” the man shouted back. Curry radioed his headquarters dispatcher, “Go to the hospital—Parkland Hospital. Have them stand by.”

  The motorcade was disintegrating. Curry, Greer, and Kinney had scarcely untangled their jam when Hurchel Jacks came hurtling into the underpass with Lyndon Johnson. The Vice Presidential backup car had momentarily dropped behind; as the echoes of the final shot reverberated in the plaza Lem Johns had shouldered his door open and pounced into Elm Street. Pumping his legs to keep from falling, he drew up by the long crack in the gray asphalt which marked the place of Kennedy’s sacrifice. He looked ahead and saw the procession was speeding up. “Go ahead!” he yelled, waving Varsity on. The pool car raced past him. He flagged the first photographers’ convertible. “How about a ride?” he called. Most of them were Texans. He was a stranger to them. They were veering by when a Washington photographer shouted, “Hey, stop—it’s Johns.” The driver braked, Johns hurdled the door. The wheels hardly stopped rolling, but the pause was enough to break up the procession. The first five cars, bound for Parkland, had skidded right in racing turns and vanished up the ramp to Stemmons Freeway. The rest of the drivers were left on their own. Except for the Signals car, which was at the tail of the parade, they lacked White House radios. Unaware that the party’s destination had changed, they headed for the Trade Mart.

  Parkland Memorial Hospital, four miles away on Harry Hines Boulevard, was as pedestrian as its name. From a distance it was easily mistaken for a drab apartment complex. Dun-colored, rambling, thirteen stories tall, it was situated on a low rise overlooking the plain that stretched westward toward Fort Worth. Outside on Harry Hines Boulevard the traffic rushed by feverishly day and night, and now and then a driver miscalculated, bringing the ambulance service a high profit for a short haul. Inside were 607 beds. Parkland specialized in mass production. The emergency area of any major hospital is its slum—a warren of offensive odors and numb-faced men and women whose work has hardened them—and Parkland’s was especially unattractive. Nevertheless it was efficient. It did its work, and there was a lot to be done. Each day the emergency area treated an average of 272 cases—one every five minutes. At the instant of John Kennedy’s murder twenty-three people were receiving attention for automobile injuries, animal bites, delirium tremens, infections, and suspicious discharges. The twenty-fourth, a woman, was admitted at 12:31. Now the two most famous patients in the hospital’s history were approaching at top speed, sirens squalling, from the underpass four miles away. Accompanying them were their stricken wives, the thirty-sixth Chief Executive of the United States, the Secret Service, and the White House press. Presently the distinguished passengers in the rest of the motorcade would be searching for them, and in an astonishingly short period of time the switchboard would be the helpless victim of inquiries from all over the world. Until today any Dallas police sergeant had carried enough rank to clear the board. In a few minutes an incoming call from a Cabinet member would be swept aside as insignificant.

  But Parkland didn’t know that the blow was imminent. According to the Dallas police log, Curry’s first alert—“Go to the hospital, Parkland Hospital; have them stand by”—was received at 12:30. Actually dispatcher No. l’s microphone button was stuck, his transmissions were garbled, and three minutes elapsed before Parkland was notified. The first word there was received by Mrs. Anne Ferguson, the operator on Parkland’s switchboard position No. 2. She heard the dispatcher say, “601 coming in on Code 3, stand by.” This was an alarm of the very highest priority. “601” was the call number of the President’s motorcycle escort. “Code 3,” rarely used, meant extreme emergency. The time was 12:33 P.M. Mrs. Ferguson requested details and was told, “The President has been shot.” The Lincoln reached Parkland at 12:36, three minutes later. The hospital wasn’t ready.

  The van of the motorcade was approaching Harry Hines Boulevard at frightening speed. Bill Greer’s palms were clammy, he took a fresh grip on the wheel. But he had been a professional chauffeur for thirty-five years. There wasn’t a road trick he didn’t know. As they passed the Trade Mart the way seemed to be blocked by two slowly moving six-wheel trucks. The trucks were nearly abreast. Bill watched Chief Curry thread his way around them; then, as the trucks moved closer to one another, he swiftly measured the distance. He spun the wheel left, spun it right, and passed between them.

  Greer at least had something to do. Roy Kellerman wasn’t so lucky, and his inactivity was a torment. Kellerman was a physical giant. Ordinarily he moved and spoke slowly—he was so soft-spoken that other agents had sardonically christened him “Gabby”—but he was an active man. He was aroused now, yet he couldn’t act. In the back Jackie and Nellie were holding their wounded husbands. There was no way he could help them. If he leaped into the rear, he would be worse than useless. The best he could do was to make certain, in his words, that “they were comfortable, if there was comfort in this. Mr. Hill was taking care of Mrs. Kennedy. Mrs. Connally was over the Governor; there was no action.”

  There was a little motion, though Kellerman couldn’t see it, because each individual’s range of vision was extremely limited. The Connallys didn’t know that Clint was on the trunk, and Clint was unaware that the Governor had been shot until, halfway to Parkland, he saw blood on John Connally’s abdomen. Till then he had thought that all the blood spilled had been Kennedy’s. The splotch on John’s shirt was too large for that, however. In fact, it was huge. The Governor had lapsed into unconsciousness, and as his eyes closed he had believed he was dying. So had his wife. Putting her mouth to his ear, Nellie whispered, “It’s going to be all right, be still.” Yet she didn’t believe it. She doubted that anything would ever be right again. For a while she thought he was already dead. Then one of his hands trembled slightly. Quickly she put her own over it.

  Nellie heard a muted sobbing from the backseat. In a strangled voice Jacqueline Kennedy was saying, “He’s dead—they’ve killed him—oh Jack, oh Jack, I love you.” There was a pause. Then she began again. Nellie and Clint could hear her, but Mrs. Kennedy could not hear herself. In shock she was nearly as comatose as the Governor. Reality came to her in dim flashes. She had heard Kellerman on the radio and had wondered why it had taken the car so long to leave. Next, in her red daze, she had become preoccupied with the President’s head. Huddled on the ruined cushion, cradling her husband’s shoul
ders in her arms and his head in her gloves, she crouched over him. Trying to heal the unhealable seemed to be all that mattered; she couldn’t bear the thought that others should see what she had seen. The Lincoln flew down the boulevard’s central lane; her pillbox hat, caught in an eddy of whipping wind, slid down over her forehead, and with a violent movement she yanked it off and flung it down. The hatpin tore out a hank of her own hair. She didn’t even feel the pain.

  During the frantic six-minute race to the hospital—up the ramp from the underpass, north on Stemmons Freeway, and northwest on Harry Hines—certain patterns of behavior began to emerge which were to endure throughout the coming weekend and beyond. Most were vivid forerunners of the patterns which were about to appear all over the country. Some are obvious: incredulity, outrage, grief, distraction. Others are more subtle. Like Abe Zapruder and Jacqueline Kennedy, no one could credit the tragedy to a single assassin. The President was always described as the victim of “them,” never of “him.” The crime seemed too vast to be attributed to a single criminal. Ford’s Theatre was remembered as the building in which one man shot Lincoln, but Dallas became the city where “they” killed Kennedy.4

  There were also the beginnings of irrationalism. Mrs. Kennedy’s tragic attempt to heal the wounds and Zapruder’s astonishing performance in continuing to photograph the Lincoln until it passed out of sight—even as he was screaming, “They killed him”—were instinctive. The widow and the garment manufacturer were responding to the law of inertia. Life, one felt, must continue, even though life had clearly ended. Chief Curry’s shout to the motorcycle policeman is less comprehensible. The underpass at that moment was no place for conversation. The chief had forgotten the uses of radio, and when he did remember, his headquarters didn’t relay his message for five minutes. The normal processes of thought had been severely ruptured. Certain people had literally taken leave of their senses. Later that afternoon there was to be much more of this sort of thing, at Parkland, aboard Aircraft 26000, and in Washington.

  The most stable mind can absorb just so much. The fate of the President, of his constitutional successor—who was riding a few feet away—and of a gravely wounded Governor kept everyone fully occupied. Furthermore, no one in the Presidential party had heard the name of Lee Oswald. It was impossible for them to define the dimensions of the plot against the government. Where were the plotters? Who were “they”? The reputation of Dallas as the center of American fascism led men to assume that the shots in Dealey Plaza had been the signal for a rightist uprising, or, at the very least, an outburst of immeasurable segregationist violence. Yarborough, Gonzalez, and Teague believed themselves confirmed. Those who had deprecated them became instantaneous converts. Lyndon Johnson, almost alone, blamed international Communism. But it didn’t really matter. Whoever “they” were, they could be lurking anywhere. No precautionary measure could be too great. Later the smog of ignorance would clear and perspective would return, but in those first hours visibility was zero. Every concern not directly related to Kennedy, Johnson, and Connally became superfluous. Even wives were expendable. Nothing could be done to remove Jackie, Lady Bird, and Nellie during the headlong dash to Parkland. The moment brakes were applied and tires stopped whining, however, they would be treated as women who were in the way and left to fend for themselves.

  One of the earliest consequences of the catastrophe was to become one of the most searing: a schism among those who were close to the Presidency. Later in the capital Arthur Schlesinger would note the deep division between those whom he thought of as “loyalists” and “realists.” The loyalists, mourning John Kennedy, could not adjust to the death of the President. Realists accepted the succession. Schlesinger, a loyalist who admired the flexibility of realists, had the Chief Executive’s official family in mind. But the split was evident everywhere. It affected the military—General Clifton became an advocate of realism, while General McHugh forfeited his career to his loyalism—and it tore the Secret Service asunder. Indeed, the first realist was Agent Emory Roberts, a graying, round-shouldered former Baltimore County policeman who made a tough but necessary switch in allegiance while Kennedy’s heart was still beating.

  From his seat beside Kinney, Roberts had seen the last shot strike Kennedy’s skull. He was certain the wound was mortal, and he had assessed the implications at once. Like every other agent, he carried in his pocket a commission book directing him “to protect the President of the United States.” Since a dead man could not serve as President, the Vice President, Roberts had reasoned, was already the new Chief Executive. Further guarding of the Lincoln would be wasted effort. Roberts’ decision had come too late to stop Clint Hill, but when Jack Ready had poised to leap after him Roberts had shouted, “Don’t go, Jack!” Ready had hesitated, then he drew back. As the car picked up momentum Roberts had said to Agent Bill McIntyre, who had been standing behind Hill, “They got him. You and Bennett take over Johnson as soon as we stop.” In the light of duty, Roberts felt, his responsibility was clear. He had to think of Johnson, and of him alone; the Service’s professional obligations toward the body in the Lincoln had ended.

  The safety of Lyndon Johnson was, of course, the immediate concern in the Vice Presidential car. The sequence of events there is unclear, however. According to Johnson, Rufus Youngblood hurled him to the floor before the fatal shot. Youngblood himself doubts that he moved that quickly. Ralph Yarborough goes further: he insists that Youngblood never left the front seat. It is the Senator’s recollection that the agent merely leaned over the seat and talked to Johnson in an undertone. He contends that there was insufficient space in the rear for Youngblood. Dave Powers, who glanced back, confirms the Senator. But Powers was in another car, and Yarborough, by his own account, was agitated. The reason he was watching the Vice President was that he didn’t want Johnson to appear to be braver than himself. He kept reminding himself that he was a Senator from Texas, that he mustn’t seem cowardly in an election year, and that it would be bad form to duck out of sight. Lady Bird and Hurchel Jacks—Jacks could see the back seat in his rearview mirror—agree that Youngblood’s head and shoulders were in the rear, with Johnson beneath him.

  “Get down!” the agent kept shouting in his Georgia drawl. Lady Bird leaned to the left, against Yarborough. She was thinking, There isn’t much down to get.

  Clutching the shoulder strap of his portable radio, Youngblood wriggled his hips, forcing himself farther back. He was grateful that Johnson, long-legged, had told him to slide the front seat to its forward position. They were going to be cramped enough in the rear as it was. Swiveling around, he saw Halfback swinging after the Lincoln. He called to Jacks, “Follow that car.” Then he signaled Varsity over his set: “Dagger to Daylight”—Daylight was Agent Kivett’s code name—“I’m shifting to Charlie. Do the same.”

  Tuning in the Presidential wavelength, Youngblood heard Emory Roberts’ voice: “Dusty to Daylight. Have Dagger cover Volunteer.”

  “He’s already covered,” said Kivett, who could see the commotion in the back of the Vice Presidential car.

  Youngblood listened to the staccato exchanges between Dusty, Digest, and Daylight. He heard that Lancer had been critically wounded, that they were going to a hospital, that Dandy (Lem Johns) had been left stranded, and that Halfback and Varsity were each assigning two agents—with Johns gone, Varsity had only two—to the Vice President. Adding Youngblood himself, that would make five bodyguards. Breaking in, he requested a sixth agent for Victoria when things settled down.

  Lady Bird was bewildered. Wedged between burly men she wondered, What on earth are they saying on that talking machine? Yarborough, equally curious, shouted at Youngblood and Johnson, “What is it?” There was no reply. In reality the Vice President knew as little as the Senator. The code was gibberish to him, and Youngblood had decided that it was pointless to spread panic. To Johnson he merely whispered, “An emergency exists. When we get to where we’re going, you and me are going to move right off and no
t tie in with the other people.”

  “O.K., partner,” Johnson said in a muffled voice.

  “What is it?” Yarborough shouted again. Everyone ignored him. Frustrated, he yelled once more, “They’ve shot the President!”

  Lady Bird still refused to believe it. This is America, she was thinking. There are no assassins here. She peered over the front seat. A grassy traffic island lay ahead. In the middle of it stood a metal sign, white letters on a green background: PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL NEXT LEFT. She couldn’t make it all out. Had it said Southland or Parkland? She had seen the word “hospital,” though. It was, she thought, “one more nail pinning down the lid”; something dreadful had happened, or could have happened. Hoping against hope, refusing to think the unthinkable, she consoled herself with the argument that this was merely a precautionary measure. There had been some sort of accident. They were going to this hospital—Southland or Lakeland or Parkland or whatever. Well, what could be more natural? she asked herself. They were just going to stop and see whether or not anyone had been hurt.

  Dagger, Dusty, Daylight, and Digest continued to mutter over the Charlie circuit in their strange tongue. Elsewhere they might have maintained their conspiracy of silence successfully. But Lady Bird’s wishful dreams were ill-starred. Here—even here—there could be no sanctuary from mass media. As the car drew up the dominant sound in the car continued to be the squawky commercial radio on Hurchel Jacks’s dashboard. After an interval of utter pandemonium, with studio furniture toppling in the background and technicians calling to one another in hysterical stage whispers, a breathless announcer had pulled himself together. He was beginning to fit together bits of information. It was still piecemeal. But there was no mention of backfires, firecrackers, cherry bombs, or railroad torpedoes. He was talking about gunfire.