The Day Kennedy Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Rowland stood close together on the grass. They were a very young couple; Arnold was eighteen, a high school student. To them, it was an enormous thrill to see the President, to be able to say that they had seen him. The young husband was busy glancing everywhere. He studied the Hertz clock on the roof of the Depository, watched the last freight train inch across the trestle, and saw a man in the Depository with a gun.

  “Want to see a Secret Service agent?” he said. Mrs. Rowland, turning, said, “Where?” He pointed. She looked. She was nearsighted. She saw no one. Arnold said he must have stepped back, because he saw a man with a rifle. He said the man appeared to be thirtyish. Arnold knew that there was protection all over the city for the President. It didn’t surprise him that there was a Secret Service man up in a window. He even noticed that the man had the rifle sloping across the front of his body, pointing downward toward the left foot. It was bigger than a .22 rifle, Mr. Rowland said. He knew.

  Some saw the man in the window. Some did not. Some looked up. Some held transistor radios to their ears. A group stood in front of the statue of Mr. Dealey, looking up Main Street. The motorcade was plainly in view now, because it was coming down a slight grade. The stomachs of some tickled with the approaching vision of the President and the First Lady of the land.

  The President was close to the new County Courts Building, a steel skeleton reaching for the sky. Lamar Street, then Austin. Two clerks from the county auditor’s office, Ronald Fischer and Robert Edwards, had been given permission to remain out—“at lunch”—until the motorcade passed. They were excited and could hear the approaching phalanx of motorcycles. Edwards elbowed his friend. “Look at that guy there in that window,” he said pointing. “He’s looks like he’s uncomfortable.” Fischer looked. The only thing he found interesting about the man in the window was that he appeared to be a statue. He never moved his head or his body.

  Fischer thought the man was lying down, facing the window. The man had light, close-cropped hair. He wore an open-neck shirt. As the motorcade came closer, Mr. Brennan glanced up again. He had done this several times, and sometimes he saw the man with the rifle, at other times he wasn’t there. This time he looked up and wondered why the man seemed to be crouching in the bottom part of the window. Suddenly, the crowd’s attention was diverted to Deputy Chief Lumpkin. His pilot car had paused in front of the Depository, and he warned the policemen working traffic that the motorcade was only two minutes behind him.

  Someone, anyone, might have approached the car and asked: “Say, who’s the man up there with the gun?” Someone, anyone, could have asked the question—no matter how ridiculous it seemed—of any policeman. The deputy chief left the scene and headed swiftly for the underpass, then up onto Stemmons Freeway for the Trade Mart. He warned Captain Lawrence’s men that the President was right behind him and to clear traffic from the freeway.

  A few minutes earlier, Mrs. Carolyn Walther, who worked as a cutter in a dress factory, walked to a point opposite the School Book Depository with Mrs. Pearl Springer to watch the parade. Mrs. Walther saw a man at the end window of the fourth or fifth floor. Both his hands were on the ledge and in his right hand he held a rifle, pointed downward. The stranger was staring across Houston, toward the edge of Main, where the parade was expected momentarily. Mrs. Walther was sure that she saw another man “standing” in the same window. Because the window was dirty, she could not see the head of the second man.

  Traffic was stopped in the area, and the streets were clear. Commerce Street, with inbound traffic, was still open. A few cars and trucks began to slow down, the drivers hoping to catch a glimpse of the President. The police did nothing about it, so some additional cars stopped in the left lane. James T. Tague’s car, half under, half out of the underpass, stopped. He put on his parking brake and cut the switch. He got out. He would spend a few minutes watching, even though he was standing next to the Commerce Street abutment, farthest across Dealey Plaza from the turn at the Depository. A couple of deputy sheriffs and a policeman stood near Mr. Tague. They, too, were watching.

  The lead car popped out of the foot of Main Street onto Dealey Plaza as a cork might leave a bottle. Suddenly, there were no dense crowds, no tall buildings, no diffused roar of throats. Chief Curry edged the car well out into the open and turned slowly to his right. He saw a panorama of fountains and green lawn, clusters of friendly faces, and some buildings, old and new, forming a square horseshoe.

  The chief squinted through his glasses and caught sight of the President’s car coming down Main directly behind him. The motorcade was over. One more block along the foot of the horseshoe to the right on Houston, then a slow left onto Elm, and a downhill run to the underpass. Curry could afford to breathe easily. There had been no incidents of disrespect to the President. To the contrary, staid old Dallas with its ironclad politics had taken the Kennedys to its heart. The chief could not recall any political event in Big D which matched the hospitality of this one.

  Forrest V. Sorrels sat in the back seat on the right-hand side. His job was to study crowds and buildings. The Secret Service agent needed a convertible to do his work correctly. From Love Field onward, he had been straining, swinging, gawking, sticking his head out of the open window in an effort to look up at windows. He sat on the edge of the back seat, and he saw the knot of people to the left, around the statue of Mr. Dealey, then the head swung to the right, along the sidewalk of Houston. No unusual activity anyplace.

  He glanced up and down the sides of buildings, moving farther and farther ahead until he spotted the last edifice on this trip. His eyes fanned the old red brick façade of the Texas School Book Depository. Sorrels saw some Negroes leaning out of an upper window. No unusual activity there. The eyes moved up to the roof. A Hertz Rent-a-Car sign indicated 12:29 P.M. in electric lights which could barely fight the sun. Then quickly down to the people ahead who lined Elm Street, and Sorrels saw nothing untoward.

  Not many, even in the plaza, noticed the group of girls squealing with anticipation on the fourth floor of the School Book Depository. They clasped and unclasped their hands with delight as the lead car approached. The office belonged to Vickie Adams. She had invited her friends, Sandra Styles, Elsie Dorman, and Dorothy May Garner to watch with her. The girls were thrilled because of the exceptional view, looking downward into the car, and the possibility of seeing the youthful, attractive First Lady and what she was wearing. The girls were prepared to discuss Mrs. Kennedy’s shoes, gloves, hat, coiffure, even the roses.

  The big Lincoln swept out into the top of the plaza, sunbeams spangling off the fenders and sides. From Elm to Commerce, from the old courthouse to the overpass, attention was on that automobile. Greer was down to eleven miles an hour and he made the turn wide, into the center of Houston. Kellerman, at his side, glanced from side to side, noticing the sudden thinness of numbers, and looked ahead to the Depository. The car could have gone straight down Main, which would have kept it in the middle of the plaza, but it could not have made the turn up onto Stemmons Freeway without inching over an eight-inch concrete curb that separated Main from Elm. It was easier to turn right to Elm, and go under the trestle and up onto Stemmons Freeway.

  In the jump seats, the Connallys maintained the crystal smiles to left and right. Mrs. Kennedy, looking left and finding few people, was waving to the right side. So was her husband. He did not know where he was in Dallas, but he knew that the motorcade was at an end, that this was a small thread on the edge of an impressive piece of fabric. He maintained the shiny smile and ran his left hand back across the thick brown hair. The eyes were sailor’s eyes, cracked in Vs along the edges. He must have seen the old gray turreted courthouse on his left as Greer made the turn, and he could not have avoided seeing the faded old Depository above the windshield.

  Somewhere on the retina of disinterested eyes the images of the four girls jumping with excitement, the “colored boys” leaning and watching, and the crouching figure of the stranger and
the rifle may have appeared between blinks. They were present and visible. The blue eyes, which had seen so much that was flattering in the past forty minutes, would hardly have paused on one building, one assortment of faces. Like an infant in a perambulator, John F. Kennedy had been the center of attraction of all the faces which leaned over the sides to look, to approve, to adore. The moment of approval is important to infant and President. For Mr. Kennedy, it was a smashing triumph because, if he could earn the plaudits and the endorsement of the people in the camp of the political enemy, then the fight for other states next year was bound to be easier than he thought.

  The car glided noiselessly across Houston. In the sixth floor window, the mediocre marksman could have had Mr. Kennedy in his sights and probably did. From Oswald’s perch, the President of the United States was coming directly toward him. He could fix Kennedy in the crosshairs so that, at four hundred feet, the victim appeared to be one hundred feet away. There was one shell in the chamber; there were three more in the clip below, ready to jump to duty.

  Oswald could have fired all four into the face of the President at this moment. The target moved neither right nor left as Greer came down the middle. It just grew larger in the sights, the tan, smiling face growing bigger in the telescopic lens with each fifth of a second. Why not fire now? No one knows. No one will ever know. Is it possible that he feared that a missed shot would cause Greer to slam the car into high speed, running out of sight straight on Houston behind the Texas School Book Depository? It is possible. Then, too, if he fired now, from in front and above, all heads in Dealey Plaza could easily turn back up the trajectory of the shell to the window and see the assassin. Those Secret Service men in sunglasses faced him; he was facing marksmen. If he missed, would he have time for a second shot before Greer could make the heavy car leap out of sight? This, too, is possible.

  But suppose a patient man could afford to decline the head-on shot in favor of the cul-de-sac? Suppose, just suppose, the President could be placed in a position from which he could not back up in time to save his life and, if he moved ahead, would become a more exposed target? This would be an improvement for a man who permitted himself four shots. He had at least thirty minutes to crouch in this window and study the aspects of murder. As a result of his military training, Lee Harvey Oswald understood the components of ambush. Surprise is a necessity, and the victim must be caught in a position from which it is impossible to escape. In this instance, the car could not back up into the Secret Service car behind it. There was insufficient room on Elm to make a U-turn; the forced move was to continue ahead toward the underpass, exposed to the rifle with the telescopic sight.

  Greer watched the pilot car make the left turn onto Elm, but he misjudged it. The Secret Service driver thought of it as a left turn, but it was more than left, curving more than ninety degrees. Instead of getting in the middle of the three lanes, the big car was now edging into the righthand lane, close to the people on the curb. The driver, swinging the heavy car toward the middle, saw the overpass ahead and people on it. Kellerman saw it, too, and so did Lawson and Sorrels in the pilot car. There was a policeman on the trestle in the middle of the group of people. Some of the Secret Service men waved to him to get the people away, out of a position where they would have the President directly below them as the car went into the underpass. The policeman didn’t see the arm-waving.

  In the back, there had been a long silence. Mrs. Connally flashed a smile over her shoulder and said: “Mr. Kennedy, you can’t say that Dallas doesn’t love you.” The President glanced at her, wearing his crowd smile, but said nothing. In the lead car, Sorrels said to Curry: “Five more minutes and we’ll have him there.” Someone said: “We have almost got it made.” Lawson called the Trade Mart and gave the Secret Service the five-minute warning. Mrs. Kennedy, sweltering in the sun, kept waving and smiling to the thin knots of people, but, looking ahead to the dark of the underpass, she thought: “It will be so cool in that tunnel.”

  The clock on the roof clicked to 12:30. Cameras were clicking, too. A schoolboy, Amos Lee Euins, sixteen, was impressed by the friendliness of the President, so he waved. The President waved back and Amos Euins, standing opposite the Depository, rolled his eyes upward with pleasure and was surprised to see a piece of pipe hanging out of an upper window. From where the schoolboy stood, it seemed to be hanging in midair, pointed toward the car. He looked back at the automobile. A ninth grader rarely gets an opportunity to look at a President. The pipe was unimportant.

  Diagonally down from the sixth floor window, the gleaming car moved toward an open V in the branches of a piney oak on the sidewalk. The curved windshield and the metal trim picked up flashes of sunlight and cast it to the sky. The man in the window followed the man in the car and perhaps led him a little. Then the crosshairs of the telescope sight and the smiling face met, for an instant, in the space between the big branches.

  The pigeons on the roof lifted in fright to swing in an aerial covey. Tiny chips of concrete sprayed upward from the right rear of the car. On the sidewalk, Mrs. Donald S. Baker saw the spray and pulled back. A jacketed bullet, striking the pavement at 1,904 feet per second—almost three times the speed of sound—was deflected slightly upward, headed diagonally across Dealey Plaza, hit a curb and broke the shell into fragments, and the spent grains peppered James Tague on the cheek. Then the sound spread across the plaza. It was like dropping a board; like snapping a bullwhip; a sharp intrusive sound; a sound to make every being within range pause in its pursuits, every mind to ask the same question: “What was that?”

  Time froze, as though an eternity of things could occur between this and the next second. Faces, still smiling, turned apprehensive eyes on the President. Some hands fell on breasts while the minds murmured: “A motorcycle backfire.” “A salute.” “A firecracker.” “A railroad torpedo.” Some cameras kept whirring. Some stopped. The sharp sound slammed around the awkward billiard railings of the buildings on Houston, Elm, Commerce and the railroad trestle and, to some who listened, it came from here, from there, from behind, in front. There was one sound. There were two. Royce Skelton, on the trestle, saw grains of concrete arc upward from the right rear of the big automobile. Tague felt a burst of sand hit his cheek. The President of the United States, feeling the tiny grains hit his face, began to lift both hands upward in fright. He, perhaps better than anyone in the Plaza, understood the import: he had felt the sandy grains on his skin and he had heard the sound he feared. In slow motion, a stunned expression replaced the boyish grin. The hands kept coming up, up, and the face began to turn slowly, an eternity of time, toward his wife.

  Governor Connally, a Texas hunter, felt no grains of road concrete, but he knew the sound. His head, his body, began a slow-motion swing to the right. The stern expression under the pale cowboy hat began to change to openmouthed disbelief. His mouth was forming words not yet on his tongue: “Oh, no, no, no.” Howard Brennan’s mind tripped; it said: “Backfire. No, firecrackers.” On the fifth floor of the Depository, Hank Norman had an instantaneous reaction, almost as swift as the pigeons: “Someone is firing from upstairs right over my head.”

  S. M. Holland, a signal supervisor, standing on the overpass, heard what he thought was a firecracker and saw a puff of smoke come from the grassy knoll parking lot at his left. James R. Worrell, 20, heard the crack of sound and looked straight up at the Depository. He saw part of a barrel of a rifle sticking out of a sixth-floor window. In the Vice-President’s car, just turning at the top of Elm, Agent Rufus Youngblood heard the loud pop, sat up in the front seat, saw the uncertainty of the crowd, and yelled, “Get down!”

  Roy Kellerman, in the front seat of the President’s car, thought he heard Kennedy speak and turned to see both hands coming up toward the face. He said to Greer: “Let’s get out of here. . . .” Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the Lincoln continued on past the piney oak and out the other side. Perhaps three seconds had elapsed. Mrs. Kennedy, not sure whether to be disturbed by the s
udden sound, turned slowly toward her husband as he held his hands up, pulling the jacket up a little with them and turned his eyes toward her with a dazed, uncomprehending expression. The Governor in the jump seat began to turn the other way, left, to see the President, whose right hand began to come up in front of his body.

  The young man in the window had the car in plain sight now. The tree was behind his quarry. The bolt action was turned, the spent shell was ejected onto the floor, and a new one was in the chamber. The crosshairs held the back of the President of the United States in fair focus. In the telescopic sight, Kennedy was about eighty-five feet away. This time the trigger was squeezed with more care. The car was moving away at eleven miles per hour and the bullet overtook it at 1,300 miles per hour. It was aimed diagonally downward and it went through the clothing between the bottom of the neck and the right shoulder, separating the strap muscles, cutting through the trachea, nicking the bottom of the knot in the tie, moving out into sunlight, drilling through Governor Connally’s back, coming out the front of the rib cage just in time to shatter itself against his raised right wrist and deflect downward to furrow the left thigh and die against his leg.

  “We are hit!” Kellerman said. Greer, bewildered, slammed on the footbrake and the car slewed slightly to the right and almost stopped. The Governor, fearful of that explosive sound, had a sensation of being punched in the back. President Kennedy, with hands no farther than his chin, reacted by trying to clutch his throat. He was conscious and he heard both shots. Slowly, almost sedately, he began to collapse toward the roses and his wife. With the hole in his throat breathing as he breathed, it is doubtful that he could have uttered an articulate sound.