Twenty-Six Seconds

by Alexandra Zapruder

  I don’t know how much Felix McKnight, the reporter, Sam, and my grandfather labored over this quote, but—surely by accident—it captures very well the ambivalence inherent in the taking and selling of the film. He never meant to create something important or great. It was just a home movie, like the dozens he had taken over thirty years. And it was just a hobby, like playing piano or fixing the sprinklers or playing pool. Suddenly, what was meant to be merely enjoyable turned out to be “significant” and, as a result, valuable. Using passive and slightly euphemistic language (“the revenue that has been offered”), the group no doubt hoped to deflect accusations of greed or profiteering. In contrast, the line that sounds the most true to me is this: “It is the saddest moment in my life.” Far from exulting in his financial windfall, Abe would always associate the moment with grief.

  Perhaps editors were especially in need of a piece of positive news to brighten the heartbreaking coverage of the president’s death; otherwise, it is hard to explain why this small tidbit was picked up and distributed as widely as it was, especially since the pictures had not been published yet and few people realized what they showed or how important they would turn out to be. But the article appeared not only in Dallas and throughout Texas but also in small and large newspapers all over the country and abroad, and then the story was broadcast to millions over the radio around the world. Among the many articles, the Chicago Sun-Times may have summed it up best: “Abraham Zapruder, the Dallas garment manufacturer, won the nation’s heart—and helped regain some of Dallas’ lost prestige—with his $25,000 donation to the widow of the slain Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit.”

  Within hours, telegrams began arriving addressed to Abe at his home in Dallas. The first were warm expressions of pride from friends and acquaintances. One reads, “Congratulations, Abe. LA is cheering you. We’re proud to know you,” and from another, “You have a heart of gold. We are proud of you.” A few strangers wrote messages of thanks for restoring the pride of Dallas: “Dear Abe, you made us proud of Dallas again, what a wonderful thing to do for Mrs. Tippit.”

  Republican Congressman Bruce Alger, who had orchestrated the Adolphus Hotel protest against the Johnsons in 1960 that turned ugly, was quick to add his voice to the chorus, writing, “Please accept my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation for your unselfish and magnificent action toward Mrs. Tippit the widow of our valiant Dallas Police officer… You are the kind of person most representative of our city, of the great people who have made our community what it is, a truly American community motivated by the God-given attitude of neighborliness and love for our fellow-man.” Little could Bruce Alger have imagined how much the Zapruder family despised him and everything he stood for.

  Over the next several weeks, the letters poured in from across the United States and around the world. They came in the form of handwritten letters, notes jotted on printed cards, and letters typed on business stationery and airmail paper. They came from nearly every state in the Union, from a Denver housewife and a Florida truck driver, from a private investigator in Chicago and a Boy Scout in Illinois, a chapter regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution, an El Paso turf farmer and a scholar from the Library of Living Philosophers in Chicago, from an entire fourth-grade class at a Catholic school, and a young boy who wrote simply, “Thank you for being nice to the police-widow.” There are letters from high-ranking members of the military, including a chief master sergeant in the air force and a brigadier general in the army, and from a navy officer stationed abroad. A few letters were anonymous. There are letters from mayors and congressmen, from bankers and businessmen, including prominent Dallas leaders like Stanley Marcus (of Neiman Marcus fame), and a great many from people in the garment industry in New York who knew Abe personally and who wrote very touching letters expressing pride that one of their own had done something so fine. “Dear Mr. Zapruder,” one began, “you are the nicest thing to happen to the garment industry since Adam and Eve grabbed their first fig leaves.” There are letters from Jewish organizations and individuals expressing hope that this action might counteract the embarrassment of Jack (Rubenstein) Ruby’s act of vigilante justice in the murder of Oswald. Letters came from Hawaii, Costa Rica, Germany, Austria, Australia, Canada, England, Japan, and the Philippines. They were mostly written in English, though there are a handful in German and at least two in Yiddish. Many were addressed simply to Abraham Zapruder, Garment Manufacturer, Dallas, TX, and were delivered with no street address and no zip code. One envelope reads, “Abraham Zapruder, Philanthropist,” and another one, “Mr. Zapruder, the hero of the Kennedy Film.” In one, a note is scrawled on the envelope, reading “Please to own hands!”

  Nearly all expressed their deep sense of loss and grief for President Kennedy, their sorrow for Mrs. Kennedy, and their compassion for Mrs. Tippit and her children. And nearly all expressed admiration and good wishes to Abe and his family. A man from St. Petersburg, Florida, wrote: “Thank God there are Americans like you… In the eyes of the millions who have read and heard about your kindness to the Tippit family, you stand taller than the tallest Texan; your heart is larger than all Texas. May you and your children and children’s children to the end of time enjoy God’s blessings.”

  But inasmuch as many wrote to thank him for his donation, a much deeper chord ran through them, too. President Kennedy’s assassination and its immediate aftermath had shattered something in America, leaving people vulnerable, insecure, and afraid. Many wrote to thank him not only for doing something kind for Mrs. Tippit but also for restoring their faith in the basic decency of people, for reminding them that there were still good people out there, for reassuring them that the world was not completely off its orbit.

  Inevitably, there were letters that didn’t fit the general mold. A few wrote to plead for money or to ask for a job or, in the case of a six-page handwritten letter from the psychiatric ward at Parkland Hospital, to unburden a troubled mind and to beg for help of an uncertain nature. One writer hoped that the film would finally restore 8mm to what he felt was its rightful place among filmmakers. And one anonymous woman wrote:

  I wonder what is the matter with people like you. Mrs. Tippit is receiving all kinds of help. My husband contributed to a fund for her at his company. But in your flashy show of generosity, did you stop to think of the other widow of two small children left by this terrible tragedy? Mr. Kennedy was a fine president and I judge a wonderful man. I’m sure Mr. Tippit was equally well thought of. But it wasn’t the saddest day of my life and I doubt if it was of yours… Again I say, your generosity was only for show. God help you.

  Signed, A Reader.

  Nearly a decade after my grandfather died, my grandmother hired a friend to organize the letters alphabetically by the state each came from and to carefully preserve them in albums. She also had three bound books put together of newspaper clippings related to the film, which barely scratch the surface of the media coverage of the film over the decades. Each album opens with a heading written in black calligraphy: “Compiled by Lillian Zapruder in loving memory of Abraham Zapruder for their children and grandchildren.” We are all listed by name—the small band of eleven who were the original heirs to the complicated legacy of the Zapruder film.

  Throughout my childhood, the albums sat in my grandmother’s living room. From time to time, when we were visiting Dallas, I would choose one to take in my lap so I could look through it. Each time, I remember being a little confused. I always expected the letters to be about the film—thanking my grandfather, perhaps, for capturing the moment on film, or expressing awe, amazement, or admiration that he did—but they weren’t. They weren’t really about the assassination at all. I suppose that, as a child, there were a few too many steps to follow from the death of the president to the taking of the film, the sale of the film to LIFE, the donation to Mrs. Tippit, and the letters themselves. So, in the perfect logic of my young mind, they seemed to totally miss the point.

  I forgot about the letters until
I started working on this book. For decades after my grandmother’s death, they sat in a closet in the guest room in my aunt’s home in Dallas, together with boxes of family papers and files, old photo albums, and an exact replica of the Bell and Howell Director Series Zoomatic camera Abe had used to shoot the film. For a few years, while the idea to write this book percolated in my mind, I would go into the closet in my aunt’s house whenever I visited her. I remember the feeling of standing there, with the albums glaring at me on the left, willing me to finally pay attention to them. The camera sat just above them. There were drawers with old photos and files and papers. There were also more benign closet inhabitants—suitcases, framed pictures, clothes—mingling with the neglected history of our family.

  One year, for reasons that I don’t recall, I finally took out one of the albums and sat down with it on the bed. I let my eyes run over the pages, not trying too hard to absorb anything but just taking in the overall feeling of the letters. And almost immediately, I noticed something that triggered a vague memory, an old but familiar sense of confusion and discomfort. I read a little more closely. In a good many of the letters, though not all of them, I could see that the writers were under the impression that my grandfather had donated all the money he received from LIFE magazine to the Tippit family. For this act of selfless generosity, the letter writers praised him as a hero and thanked him for redeeming humanity for the evil that took President Kennedy’s life. On and on the letters went, one after the other. I remember turning the pages and feeling a little flutter of unrest, a feeling that something wasn’t right. He hadn’t given away all the money. I knew that. He had sold the film for $150,000. He gave away the first $25,000 and kept the rest.

  This was confusing. Why did they think he gave away all the money? Would they have been equally moved to write if they had known that he had given away only a part of it? I had always thought of my grandfather’s gesture toward Mrs. Tippit as a truly generous one—it never occurred to me that he had fallen short in any way. And, in absolute terms, he hadn’t. But somehow, the letters seemed to define what the gesture should have been, setting the bar higher than it was and making anything less seem, well, less. If it felt that way to me, did it feel that way to him? I imagine him opening the letters and reading them, so many of them expressing admiration for something he hadn’t quite done. If the donation was meant, in part, to ease his discomfort and shame about making money from the sale of the film, did this confusion just add a different kind of sting to the whole episode? I closed the album and sat for a long time on the bed. Here I was, reading these letters, thinking these thoughts, and my grandfather wasn’t here to explain how it happened or answer my questions himself. I remember thinking that this was exactly the kind of conversation I was not sure I wanted to have with myself, let alone with anyone else.

  Years later, when I interviewed my aunt, I asked her about this. She was characteristically frank. “It was always rather uncomfortable,” she said. “We received [letters] from all over the world commending my dad for giving the money to Mrs. Tippit, and it was obvious that people thought that was all he received.” It wasn’t until I was going through Sam Passman’s legal files and I came upon the full statement written by Texas journalist Felix McKnight for distribution via the Associated Press that I was able to trace the confusion to its origins. The statement is both scrupulously honest and ambiguous at the same time. It reads: “Mr. Abraham Zapruder, Dallas garment manufacturer, gave the Times Herald a $25,000 commitment to the surging Dallas Policemen’s and Firemen’s Welfare Fund. It represented payment he had received for publication rights to the historic film.” Looking back at the original AP article about the donation, I found the subtle but significant change. It read: “A man who received $25,000 for his color movie films of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination gave that entire sum Wednesday to the widow and children of Police Patrolman J. D. Tippit, slain by the man accused as the assassin of the President.” But where had “that entire sum” come from? It didn’t say that anywhere in the original statement. Then again, it did say that the $25,000 “represented payment” for the film, and since the statement didn’t address the overall purchase price, it was an easy enough mistake to make. In fact, Abe had specifically asked LIFE not to disclose the purchase price of the film, a request they honored for the entire time they owned it. As a result, there was much speculation—ranging from $40,000 to $500,000—regarding its cost.

  What Abe soon found was that, best intentions notwithstanding, no one can control how the media communicates a story and what the public eventually understands. Articles reporting that he had donated all the money from LIFE appeared in newspapers across the country, including the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the Kansas City Star, the Denver Post, and the Rocky Mountain News, to name just a few. The Baton Rouge Morning Advocate published a laudatory editorial titled “Abraham Zapruder’s Fine Gesture.” Clearly, Abe, Sam, and Felix wanted to publicize the donation in hopes of deflecting negative attention from the uncomfortable details of his deal with LIFE magazine. That had worked. But if the media mercifully did not characterize him as a profiteering Jew, they turned him instead into a selfless hero who redeemed humanity for the evil of President Kennedy’s murder by giving away the money he earned from the sale of the film to the bereaved young widow.

  Under these circumstances, this round of media attention—focused not on the assassination but on his donation—exacerbated the conflicted feelings he already had. His ambivalence comes through in a few articles that survive from the time. One from the Houston Chronicle is titled “Generosity Forces Gentle Abe Into Hiding.” In another widely syndicated Associated Press article from November 30, picked up by the Reading Eagle: “Garment manufacturer Abraham Zapruder doesn’t want to talk any more about the $25,000 he gave to the family of slain policeman J. D. Tippit. He donated the money from the sale of his motion pictures of President Kennedy’s assassination. Zapruder, an amateur photographer, is taking no telephone calls and giving no information about the sale of the film or the gift, his wife said yesterday.”

  In late December 1963, when my grandparents tried to escape Dallas for a few days in Miami, a reporter even found him there. The headline reads, “He’s Sorry He Filmed Assassination.” It’s clear from the article that Abe resisted every aspect of the interview. “He doesn’t like to talk about it,” the reporter wrote, pressing on. “His conversation is hesitant, halting. He spoke reluctantly Friday in Room 704, at the Americana Hotel, his bare feet stuck under the bedspread.” According to the article, he refused to discuss the gift to Mrs. Tippit, and the reporter repeats the claim that his $25,000 donation was the full amount of his payment from LIFE. I can imagine that at this point, after those news clippings and broadcasts and the hundreds of letters, it was difficult, if not emotionally impossible, to correct the record. When asked about shooting the film, Abe said, “There was no reason, no logic, no plan. I was just there. An amateur. I wish I wasn’t.”

  For the rest of his life, Lil respected Abe’s wish to avoid talking about the assassination, the donation, and everything connected to it. After he died, however, it would be another story. She was fiercely proud of him—as she was of everyone in her family—and she made sure to attend to his memory and legacy for the benefit of posterity.

  Nana from Texas—as my brothers and I called her—was a force of nature. To this day, I cannot arrive in Dallas without looking for her as I get off the plane. She would hover at the gate, peering down the ramp, impatient for the first sight of us. She had short, thick, bright-white hair and a wide smile with a gap between her front teeth. If it was winter, she would be wrapped in a black cape and fur hat; if it was summer, her face would be framed by giant white-rimmed glasses; in any season, she wore huge gold earrings and bracelets clattering on her wrists. She smelled like powder and her jubilant, joyful laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her, her boundless love for us spilling out all over the place. As we rounded the c
orridor, she would start waving and calling to us—as if she could possibly be missed. When we finally made contact, she would smother us in hugs, wonder over how we’d grown, rejoicing at being with us and lamenting that we didn’t live in Dallas all in the same breath. If possible, she would immediately begin feeding us homemade rugelach or strudel or chocolate turtles or whatever she had packed in her bag to bring to the airport.

  She hadn’t finished high school and she wasn’t cerebral like Abe, but she was practical and street smart. I vividly remember playing Trivial Pursuit on vacation with my cousins and brothers, and there she was, yelling out all the right answers from the kitchen to our great exasperation. She was shamelessly proud of her family and utterly devoted to her husband, children, and grandchildren. Once, when my older brother, Matthew, told her that he had bantered with a college friend about whose grandmother made the best chopped liver, she convinced her sweet, gentle younger brother, Morris, to drive her from New York to Amherst College in Massachusetts for the sole purpose of bringing Matthew a batch. She stayed just long enough to drop off the plastic container and to tell everyone in his dorm how lucky they were to live with him.

  She was brazenly confident, almost fearless, in many areas of her life. No sooner did she move with my grandfather to Dallas, knowing no one, than she taught herself mah-jongg and bridge and proceeded to beat everyone who played with her. One summer, when she was visiting us in Martha’s Vineyard, she decided to make her homemade challah for Friday night. Then, on a whim, she decided to enter it in the bread-baking competition at the State Fair. Who even heard of challah in the Protestant bastion of Martha’s Vineyard? Naturally, she brought home the blue ribbon.