Kennedy's Last Days: The Assassination That Defined a Generation
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Robert Kennedy contacted leaders at home and heads of state from around the world with details of his brother’s funeral arrangements.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1963
Dallas Police Department
LEE HARVEY OSWALD ARRIVES at the Dallas Police Station at 2:00 P.M. on Friday. In the next 45 hours he will be interrogated for 12 hours, be placed in four lineups, receive visits from his wife, mother, and brother Robert, and sleep in a maximum-security cell.
At a press conference just after midnight on Sunday, Lee Harvey Oswald tells reporters that the police are after him because he has lived in the Soviet Union. He denies shooting the president and denies that he is part of a larger conspiracy.
The Dallas police do little to shield Oswald at that press conference. Reporters are allowed to physically crowd the handcuffed suspect.
Later on Sunday, Oswald is to be transferred to the county jail. He is led through the basement of the Dallas Police Department, apparently to a waiting armored car. Actually, the armored car is a decoy—for security reasons, the plan is to take Oswald to a police car instead.
Oswald gestures to the crowd surrounding him. [© Associated Press]
A crowd of journalists watch the smiling Oswald as he makes his way down the corridor, his right arm handcuffed to the left arm of Detective J. R. Leavelle. Three television cameras roll.
“Here he comes!” someone shouts as Oswald emerges from the jail office.
One of those crowding around is Jack Ruby. He made his way into the police station with a Colt Cobra .38 in his coat pocket.
Jack Ruby is five foot nine inches tall and 175 pounds, and is fond of carrying a big roll of cash. He’s a quick-tempered nightclub owner with friends in the Mafia and on the police force. Ruby considers himself a Democrat and a patriot. Like many Americans, he is infuriated by JFK’s death and he wants revenge. He can’t believe that Oswald is smiling. The crowd presses forward. Microphones are thrust at Oswald and questions shouted. Flashbulbs pop as photographers capture the moment for posterity. Oswald walks 10 feet outside the jail office, on his way to the ramp where the police car is waiting.
[© Corbis]
Suddenly, Jack Ruby emerges from the crowd. He moves fast, aiming his gun at Oswald’s stomach, and fires one shot. The time is 11:21 A.M.
Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald in the stomach. [Bob Jackson, AP/Dallas-Times Herald]
Jack Ruby is set upon by police. Lee Harvey Oswald slumps and is immediately transported to Parkland Hospital. After arriving, he is placed in Trauma Room Two, right across the hall from the emergency room where John Kennedy spent the final minutes of his life. At 1:07 P.M., 48 hours and seven minutes after JFK’s death, Lee Harvey Oswald also dies.
Jack Ruby talks to the press during his lawyer’s effort to move his trial away from Dallas. [© Bettmann/Corbis]
November 24, 1963: A horse-drawn caisson carrying John Kennedy’s casket leaves the White House en route to the Capitol Building, where the casket will lie in state. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
NOVEMBER 24–25, 1963
Washington, D.C.
JOHN F. KENNEDY’S CASKET IS LOADED onto a caisson, a two-wheeled military cart, drawn by seven white horses, and carried down Pennsylvania Avenue to the U.S. Capitol to lie in state. A single black horse follows the casket. It has no rider, just a sword strapped to the saddle and boots placed backwards in the stirrups. All over the world, this riderless horse is a symbol of a fallen soldier.
At the Capitol, John Jr. is led away by an aide. Jackie Kennedy and her daughter, Caroline, stand beside the casket. Jackie’s dignity touches everyone who sees her.
November 25, 1963: Mrs. Kennedy and Caroline kneel at the president’s casket in the Capitol Building. [© Bettmann/Corbis]
After a brief ceremony, the family leaves and the public begins filing past. They have waited in line, some for as long as 10 hours, to pay their respects to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Television will show the slow procession all through the night until 9:00 the next morning.
Robert Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, and Edward Kennedy lead the funeral procession from the White House to St. Matthew’s Cathedral. Among the people behind them are the president of France, the emperor of Ethiopia, the queen of Greece, the vice-chancellor of Germany, and the king of Belgium. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]
Heads of state from around the world begin arriving at the airports.
Monday, November 25
The funeral on Monday at St. Matthew’s Cathedral is televised, watched by an estimated 180 million people around the world. Nineteen heads of state and three reigning monarchs attend. After the service, the casket is once again carried to the caisson. Jackie Kennedy and Caroline and John stand as it passes. Mrs. Kennedy reaches down and whispers to young John. The three-year-old then salutes as the casket passes by.
The final procession to Arlington National Cemetery is miles long. At the grave site, bagpipes play and 49 jet planes zoom overhead, one for each state with one missing, followed by Air Force One, which dips a wing over the grave in salute to the fallen president.
The funeral procession crosses the Lincoln Memorial Bridge to Arlington National Cemetery. Black Jack, the riderless horse, follows the caisson. [© Wally McNamee/Corbis]
As a final gesture, Jackie Kennedy bends to light an eternal flame that will mark the grave site. The funeral is over.
* * *
For the next days, months, and years, people will discuss and debate the contributions, accomplishments, and failures of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s 1,036 days in office. His legacy will thrive in institutions such as the Peace Corps, in scientific efforts such as landing a man on the moon, in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And he will be forever credited with stopping a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. But most of all, Kennedy will be remembered as an inspiration to a generation of young people, urging them to reach for ideals and use their talents wisely in service to their fellow men.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
THE KENNEDY LEGACY
AFTER THE ASSASSINATION, people mythologized John Kennedy. The slain leader grew larger than life in people’s memories. Decades after his assassination, we still see evidence of his influence and inspiration around us.
A Man on the Moon: The Space Program
On May 25, 1961, in an address to Congress, President Kennedy said, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.” He went on to allocate millions of dollars to the space program. Kennedy’s dream was fulfilled on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon. Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. and Michael Collins were the other astronauts on that historic journey.
The Rocket Garden at the Kennedy Space Center. [© Edwin Verin/Shutterstock.com]
A few days after the assassination, President Johnson proposed that NASA’s Cape Canaveral be renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Center. The Center remains central to the nation’s space program.
A sculpture of the head of the fallen president inside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. [LOC, DIG-highsm-12385]
A Showcase for the Arts: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts recognizes the role the president and his wife played in supporting the arts by offering artists a showcase in their televised concerts from the East Room, among many other efforts. Plans for a National Cultural Center began in 1958 when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. During Kennedy’s term, he raised funds for the project and named his wife, Jackie, and Mrs. Eisenhower as honorary co-chairs of the institution. Since the Kennedy Center’s opening in 1971, it has been one of the most important cultural institutions in the country, presenting dance, ballet, chamber, jazz, folk, and multimedia concerts, theater, art exhibitio
ns, and lectures for people of all ages. Kennedy Center honorees are named each year in a grand celebration that is shown on television a day or two after Christmas.
The John F. Kennedy Center is the busiest performing arts facility in the United States. [Maisna/Shutterstock.com]
The dramatic building stands next to the Potomac River near the Lincoln Memorial.
A Ban on Nuclear Testing: Nuclear Test Ban Treaties
When John Kennedy took office, both the United States and Russia had enough nuclear weapons stockpiled to destroy the planet. As more powerful bombs were invented, they were tested by detonating them underground, in the ocean, or in space. Each explosion released radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which then fell to Earth as radioactive fallout. Radiation can permanently damage human cells and cause a wide range of illnesses, as well as contaminate the environment.
After the Cuban missile crisis brought the world very close to nuclear war, Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev began to talk about setting limits on testing. On August 5, 1963, the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed. It banned testing in space and underwater but allowed it underground. Kennedy struggled to get the Senate to approve the treaty. It was finally ratified and signed into law on October 7.
Efforts to pass a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty that would prohibit testing in all environments, including underground, continue to this day. The United Nations General Assembly adopted a treaty in 1996, although not enough countries have signed it.
American Ambassadors to the World: The Peace Corps
On October 14, 1960, then Senator Kennedy gave a speech at the University of Michigan. He said:
How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete.
The Peace Corps traces its roots and its mission to this speech. It thrives today as a government agency devoted to world peace and friendship. Volunteers spend two years in developing countries providing education, environmental preservation, and communication infrastructure and responding to many other areas of need. Americans have served as Peace Corps volunteers in 139 countries since the program was founded.
President Kennedy greets 600 Peace Corps volunteers on the South Lawn of the White House, August 1962. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]
An Elite Fighting Team: U.S. Navy SEALs
In 1962, President Kennedy established the Navy SEALs to train for “unconventional warfare.” These specialists conduct hazardous missions that large, highly visible units could not. It was a team of SEALs who found and killed Osama bin Laden.
Kennedy talks with U.S. Navy SEALs, April 1962. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]
A Distinctive Hat: U.S. Army Green Berets
The Green Berets are U.S. Army Special Forces. They are also trained in unconventional warfare. Named after the soft green hats that Kennedy authorized, they specialize in foreign internal defense, hostage rescue, and counterterrorism.
EPILOGUE
AFTER JOHN F. KENNEDY WAS BURIED and Lyndon Johnson took over as president, I began hearing a lot about Vietnam. Some of what I heard came from TV reports about the war and the demonstrations against it. By senior year in high school, older boys I knew from the neighborhood began coming back from Vietnam. Some came home injured. Some came home with altered personalities. I talked to some of them, and they each said the same thing: Vietnam was chaos; there was nothing good about it. I was about to graduate and maybe get drafted. Their stories scared me.
I went to college and so was deferred from the draft. It seemed like a good thing to do, and I studied and played sports, determined to stay in school. There was time for a few extra activities, so I started writing for the college newspaper, The Circle. That made me pay attention to politics more closely. But my heroes continued to be men who played sports: Willie Mays, the legendary Giants center fielder, and Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns.
In 1969, my junior year in college, I joined a year-abroad program and went to London, England. Every day of that trip opened my eyes more. I was no longer just a suburban boy. I saw places I had only read about in textbooks. As a history major, that trip was like a candy store.
But one part of that year in Europe really made me who I am today. At the time, people all over the world were upset and angry with Americans, some because of Vietnam and others simply because they did not like our political system or the way we act: big, bold, and vocal. Kids made fun of my accent (New York), of American television shows (American Bandstand), and of my preoccupation with following that strange American game (football).
To this day, I can recall the feelings I had that year when people made fun of the U.S.A. All that anti-Americanism made me think a lot about pride and loyalty. I realized that I love my country fiercely even though it’s not perfect, and believe strongly in our system of government.
The author heads to England and beyond.
After college, I had to find a way to use my history major in a way that I hoped might help people. Warm, sunny Miami, Florida, was the location of a high school teaching job. It was tough, but I lasted two years, and think I did an okay job presenting kids with both sides of lots of issues in history. Then I started on the journey that has led to my television success today. Like most career paths, mine started small in places like Scranton, Pennsylvania; Denver, Colorado; and Dallas, Texas.
In 1977, I was an investigative reporter for WFAA-TV in Dallas. The Kennedy assassination was in the news again. The House of Representatives was investigating both the Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations again to see if there was evidence of conspiracy in either tragedy. When I looked at the story, I saw some loose ends. One was George de Mohrenschildt, the Russian-American businessman who had befriended the Oswalds.
* * *
I tracked him down at his daughter’s home in Florida. By some awful coincidence, the day I went to see him there, he had also gotten a request to be interviewed by the House Committee on Assassinations. As I knocked on the door, I heard a shotgun blast. He had killed himself. Later, the chairman of the House committee said de Mohrenschildt was a “crucial witness.” I often wonder what I might have been able to find out. To this day, his relationship to Lee Harvey Oswald is not fully understood.
George de Mohrenschildt in 1964. [© Bettmann/Corbis]
Over the years, my list of personal heroes has developed. I have looked at our country’s history and paid close attention to people who tried to protect the United States and change it for the good and to people who took on huge world problems alone or with little help: Abraham Lincoln, who ended the Civil War and forced the country to stay united; Franklin Roosevelt, who led the country through the Great Depression and World War II; Mother Teresa, who devoted her life to tackling the dire poverty in the slums of Calcutta, India; Bono, who champions the civil rights and social causes of Africans; and Bobby Kennedy, who used the power of his office as U.S. attorney general to further the cause of civil rights.
In 1966, Bobby Kennedy said,
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.… It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
He was echoing the meaning of one of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s favorite quotes. It’s f
rom a poem by Dante, who lived in Italy in the Middle Ages: “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.”
Today, I take those words to heart. If I see injustice, I say something. As you think about John Fitzgerald Kennedy, I hope that you will appreciate the ways in which he tried to bend history. He was president for only 1,036 days. Who knows what he might have accomplished if he had lived? His death filled the country with sorrow because he represented a grand American vision of pride, fairness, and service to one’s country.
The author as a first-year teacher in Miami.
AFTERWORD
JOHN KENNEDY’S BURIAL SITE at Arlington Cemetery is lit by an eternal flame, suggested by Jackie Kennedy. It burns at the center of a five-foot circular slab of Cape Cod granite. Jackie rests next to him, as do their two deceased infants, Arabella and Patrick. Television coverage of John Kennedy’s funeral transformed Arlington from the burial place of soldiers and sailors into a popular tourist destination. To this day, no place in Arlington has more visitors than the grave of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Generations after his assassination, more than four million people a year arrive to pay their respects to the fallen president.
Jackie Kennedy’s enormous grief, and the grace with which she handled herself after the assassination, only enhanced the public admiration she earned during her husband’s presidency. In 1968, she married Aristotle Onassis, a Greek businessman. Sadly, the 69-year-old Onassis died of respiratory failure just seven years after their marriage, making Jackie a widow for the second time at the young age of 46. After Onassis’s death, Jackie retreated from the public eye, eventually becoming a book editor in New York City and editing the books of people as diverse as singers Michael Jackson and Carly Simon, and Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel laureate. She died on May 19, 1994, from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 64. She is buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to John Kennedy.