by Allen Childs
Earl Rose was, and I think still is, recognized as one of the really outstanding forensic pathologists in the country. But the reason we’re given, and it makes sense . . . is that new President Johnson was not willing to leave Dallas on Air Force One, President Kennedy’s plane, without President Kennedy’s body.
What I’ve heard is that President Johnson would not leave without President Kennedy’s body, and I don’t know any facts. But it makes sense. I mean, he was a pretty shrewd politician, and you can imagine the impact of people saying, “Well, not only did he take the president’s job, but he took his plane and left town and left the president in this mess.”
. . . the law is, as I understand it, that if you’re murdered here, the examination has to be done here. But, gosh, it was the president. There are no laws about shot presidents. And there’s no big . . . if I had been a Secret Service man, I think I’d have done the same thing and had gotten that body out of here and gotten President Johnson out of here because they didn’t know if it was a Russian plot . . . they didn’t know what was going on. So, their job was to get Johnson to safety.
Earl Rose, MD
(excerpted from the Journal of the American Medical Association, May 1992)
“I was in their way,” Rose recalls. “I was face to face with Secret Service Agent Roy H. Kellerman, and I was trying to explain to him that Texas law applied in the instant case of the death of the president and that the law required an autopsy to be performed in Texas.
“Agent Kellerman tried three tactics to have his way—he asserted his identity as representing the Secret Service; he appealed for sympathy to Mrs. Kennedy; and he used body language to attempt to bully, or, should I say, intimidate. I don’t recall the exact words, but he and I exchanged firm and emotionally charged words. At no time did I feel I was in physical danger because he and the others were armed. I was not looking at Agent Kellerman’s gun, I was looking at his eyes, and they were very intense. His eyes said that he meant to get the president’s body back to Washington.”
Chapter 10
THE GRIEF
My classmate and friend, Cervando Martinez, didn’t realize he had been filmed by CBS that day. I spotted his distinctive jaw line at fifty-three seconds into a Dan Rather narrated segment videotaped at the Parkland emergency room loading dock. In it, my friend is clinging to a KEEP RIGHT sign in the driveway of the ER, as though the weight of the moment made it hard to stand.
Most of us stood nearby in an agitated silence of shock and disbelief. This focal point of history unfolding is vividly recalled in nine of the reports that follow. Common threads are the bouquet of bloody roses left in the limousine, the new President Johnson wedged between five Secret Service agents who seemed to carry him to a commandeered car, and a blood-stained Jackie leaving with the bronze casket.
Parkland Hospital Chaplain Kenneth Pepper delivered the sermon at the memorial service held in the staff library at 4:00 p.m., Monday, November 25, 1963. Chaplain Pepper said, “In shocked dismay, we cried out to God at the insult dealt to human dignity by this event.”
Jed Rosenthal wrote his mom, “. . . now all the people of these United States are united . . . in a common grief.” Stephen Barnett felt, “at a loss to respond, confused between sorrow and rage.” This captures very well what gripped our nation, perhaps even more deeply for those who were there when it happened. As Robert Duchouquette begins his narrative poem of those hours, “The whole nation cried the day I met JFK.”
Those of us standing around outside the ER saw this wretched sight: The yellow roses of Texas given to Nellie Connally, thrown asunder like our world in those unforgettable hours.
Rex Cole, MD
I was told that a classmate, Don Senter, was walking near the entrance to the emergency room when the limousine arrived. He helped get the president on a stretcher.
William R. Weaver, MD
Before entering Southwestern in 1963, I had worked in Washington, D.C. for a California senator in the 87th Congress in 1961. I began work the first week of January 1961 and two weeks later, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated president. Our senator’s office had several tickets to the inauguration and the staff drew straws to see who would attend. I was one of the lucky recipients and attended the inauguration on a snowy day, on the east steps of the Capitol, January 20, 1961. Not long after that I sat in the gallery of the House Chamber and witnessed President Kennedy’s State of the Union address.
Now, less than three years later, I was a first-year medical student standing in a parking area next to an unoccupied police motorcycle with a hundred or more other people outside the Parkland emergency room awaiting word on the president who had been shot. I had a difficult time putting the memory of the inauguration next to standing outside the Parkland emergency room thinking that the president of the United States was in there and that he had been shot in Dallas and was probably mortally wounded.
We waited a long time and in hindsight, I now know that some of the wait was for the priest to arrive to administer the Last Rites. While waiting, I was hearing the police dispatcher on the motorcycle radio next to me saying they had a suspect in a theater in Oak Cliff.
After the hearse left with the president’s body, the crowd dispersed. I made my way back to the medical school via the hospital. Someone alarmingly said while I was walking in the hospital halls that LBJ had been shot, too. I picked up my pace
Mrs. Dearie Cabell, wife of Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell, riding in a limousine a few cars behind the president, said, “The motorcade stopped dead still when the noise of the shot was heard.” Here she sits alone facing the Parkland emergency room loading dock, the last visible member of the presidential entourage.
and made it to the Registrar’s office in the school where they were listening to the radio about the assassination. I asked if LBJ had been shot. They said no, there had been no reports of that. The situation was ripe for rumors.
It was a sad day. It seemed that for several days if you went to a restaurant or public place that people were either whispering or talking in low tones in their conversation. I think everyone was in shock.
John Bell, MD
Although some of the memories of the day President Kennedy was killed have faded, others remain keen. . . .
A group of us had completed lunch at the Parkland hospital cafeteria. Because of construction, we had to exit through the emergency room to return to our classroom in the clinical science building where our lectures were held. In retrospect I think I passed through the emergency room as Kennedy was being brought into the emergency room. We had not arrived to the classroom before we heard that Kennedy had been shot and brought to Parkland. We returned through the back side of the clinical science building to watch the emergency room from a distance. Mostly we watched in reverent silence with an occasional soft voice. Rumors abounded, including that both Johnson and Kennedy had been killed. However, the fact that President Kennedy had suffered a probable fatal gunshot wound never changed. Soon news reached us that it had been announced that Kennedy was dead.
Jim Atkins noticed the flag in front of Parkland had not been lowered to half-mast. There was a security guard in front of Parkland. He said his orders were to keep people from entering the front of Parkland. He did not attempt to prevent us from lowering the flag but he wasn’t absolutely sure that President Kennedy was dead. It appeared to me it would have been relatively easy to enter Parkland in the front entrance if one was determined to do so. I went to the classroom and it said on the blackboard something to the effect that classes were cancelled the rest of the day. A number of students and many other people watched the outside of the emergency room in stunned silence for what seemed like hours.
Eventually I and others returned to the fraternity house, Phi Beta Pi. Of course the news was on TV and it provided more accuracy to the events than we had known previously. Details were still unclear, however. This was the only weeknight in the preclinical years that no one made an attempt to study. There was
nothing to do but watch TV and it only had the tragic events of the day.
A carload of us decided to go downtown. All businesses including movie theaters and restaurants were closed. The only activity was a man selling a special edition of the newspaper. He was yelling, “Extra, extra, read all about it! Kennedy slain on Dallas streets!”
Charles G. Briseno, MD, and Maria
Elena Briseno
On November 22, 1963, my wife and I had been married less than four months. She was working at a title company in downtown Dallas.
My classmates and I were waiting for a professor to start a class. He was late. We were expecting to be let out of class in a moment’s notice, so that we could walk over to the Harry Hines Blvd to watch the John F. Kennedy motorcade drive by the Medical School.
My wife was on her lunch hour and walked a couple of blocks to join a large crowd of people lining the downtown Dallas street and watched President Kennedy and Jackie drive by. She did not hear the shots that rang out a few minutes later but when she returned to her job her coworkers informed her that the president had been shot. Nobody worked at her office after that. She rode the bus home.
At the Medical School, we were suddenly told that the president had been shot. I was shocked. Some students walked over to Parkland. I decided to go home which was at the Projects on Hampton Road at Singleton.
We felt like we had lost a family member. Both of us were sad, anxious, and depressed.
Lewis Raney, MD
The day President John Kennedy was assassinated was perhaps the most exciting day and week of my entire career.
There was definitely an atmosphere of concern in Dallas about this new president. Democrats vs. Conservatives.
I was in the E.N.T. Clinic just a few steps away from the emergency room entrance. A door from the waiting room led to the outside sidewalk. I was placing a feeding tube in an elderly lady who had undergone a laryngectomy-cervical pharyngectomy. She was undergoing reconstruction.
We had a small radio in the clinic monitoring the parade event. It was around noon and the announcement was made that the president and governor had been shot. I knew they would be brought to Parkland and I ran out of the above-mentioned door to find the limousine already parked just outside the ER. It wasn’t a good sight. I will never forget seeing the flowers in the back seat.
Surrounding the emergency room entrance there was mass chaos. Busses were arriving with the staff and press. I went back to my patient and completed the feeding tube procedure. As I entered the clinic, I heard reporters asking folks to hold this and that telephone and giving them money. We had a bank of public phones just outside the E.N.T. clinic door.
While all of this was happening, I received a phone call from my wife. She was a speech pathologist working in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Schools. Her principal had rushed to her with the news and asked her to call me. I think that was the last phone call that came in the clinic. Switchboards were taken over by the authorities.
The clinics emptied fast and everyone went home to be glued to their TVs for the next several days. I never did know what happened to so many patients who left without being seen. As well as I remember, I went home also. I do remember going around to an inside entrance to the emergency room and seeing a person guarding that entrance with a gun.
I remember coming back to the hospital to make rounds and the entire hospital grounds (small at the time) were surrounded by police cars—Dallas City, County and State Troopers.
My wife and I, like all others, stayed glued to the TV between calls from all our families wanting more details. My parents called to let me know that Police Officer N.M. “Nick” McDonald had arrested Oswald in the Texas Theater. When we were kids, “Nick”—we called him Maurice—frequently visited his aunt, uncle, and cousins in Paris, Arkansas and we played together.
Cervando Martinez, MD
We piled back into the car and drove to Southwestern, parked and rushed to the Parkland ER. We couldn’t get in. I spent the next eternity of time outside the ER in the ambulance arrival driveway waiting. Finally a hearse/ambulance arrived and the bronze/gold coffin was wheeled in. We knew what that meant. I don’t remember if I waited to see it leave.
Sloan Leonard, MD
I was Class of 1965 and was having lunch with my wife—Mary Lois—in the Parkland cafeteria around 11:30 on November 22, seated at a table with a number of classmates. Over the scratchy intercom, there was a page for Shires, Jenkins, Clark, Sanford, etc. to come to the ER. We thought it was unusual but finished our meals. I was on a rotation in the ER as a junior and had my fresh white coat and Littmann stethoscope—and little black book—and went to the elevator to go down to the ER. I got on—it was empty—and when the ground floor door opened, a man in a dark suit with a fedora on stuck a machine gun in my belly and told me to not get off. I assured him I was “Dr. Leonard” and was assigned to the ER. He had no interest in this and forcefully told me to leave. When I got to the first floor (being a twenty-four-year-old ingénue), I raced around Parkland to the ER and saw the doors of the limo hanging open with flowers strewn about. There were a few people around who told me JFK had been shot. A bit later, press started gathering largely black people to stand together and sob so they could capture the “emotion” they felt. At 3:20 p.m., I bought on the front steps of Parkland a Times Herald special edition I have in front of me now.
“President John F. Kennedy died at 1:00 CST today here in Dallas. He died of a gunshot wound to the brain. I have no details regarding the assassination of the President.” This 1:33 p.m. announcement in a Parkland Hospital nurse’s classroom by Malcolm Kilduff, the assistant White House Press Secretary, had been delayed by order of the new president, Lyndon Johnson.
Larry Dossey, MD
Classes were dismissed. We students were collectively paralyzed with grief. Four of us drifted aimlessly to a nearby tavern and drank beer in numbed silence. No one could find words to describe adequately what we felt. I still can’t.
William Zedlitz, MD
I met several other residents and nurses coming down the aisles and they asked about the president’s status. I told them that it looked like a lethal injury, and the crew was doing all it could to save him but the head injury was so severe that I felt that he had very little chance of survival. At this point, the enormity of the situation began to impress itself upon me. I had been busy up until this time but now I realized the president of the United States was lying in that trauma room with very little chance to make it out alive, and of the momentous consequences of that fact. As I walked back to the elevator I suddenly felt very tired and depressed about the situation, wondering what chain of events would now follow. I remember little else about the rest of the day except sometime later I found myself sitting with my head in my hands with tears running down my cheeks.
Cervando Martinez, MD
That evening, several of us Democrats in the class, Byron Howard, David Haymes, Wayne Mathews and our spouses had planned a little party for an old friend of mine from college, John Duncan. John was of course also a Democrat and I think by then Executive Director of the ACLU. He was in town and my friends were eager to meet him. We got together anyhow, but the event turned into a wake. We sat around and cursed the right wing nuts that Dallas was famous for and mourned.
Stephen Barnett, MD
I remember feeling stunned—at a loss to respond, confused between sorrow and rage, but left in an empty hole the rest of the afternoon.
Robert Duchouquette, MD
As the country mourned, I too was caught up in the grief of the nation and the appalling historic sight I had witnessed.
This was the last scene we would see that terrible day: the white hearse nearly under the wing of Air Force One.
Chapter 11
DALLAS
The night before the assassination, my classmate David Haymes and others gathered in the north-facing pathology room to review microscopic slides before the next day’s exam. A screech of tires
drew them to the windows where they saw a shower of papers flutter to the ground and the fast receding taillights of the car from which they had been thrown. When they saw the hundreds of variously colored leaflets, all with front and side views of President Kennedy, and boldly proclaiming WANTED FOR TREASON, they called the police.
Also on this day before, Raoul Berke has never forgotten a classmate saying, “You know, somebody ought to shoot that sumbitch.” And Al Lindsey recalls his minister’s sermon the Sunday after the president died calling on Dallas to acknowledge it was a “city full of hatred, a perfect environment for such an event to take place.” Yet, there was not a single hostile demonstration from the people of Dallas. Cervando Martinez saw to it that the second story of his parents’ house on the motorcade’s route from the airport was prominently draped in a sheet painted with an exuberant red: “VIVA KENNEDY!”
Leslie Moore recalls during his later internship interviews, “. . . everywhere, and I mean everywhere, I went, people cursed Dallas.” Wayne Smith remembers a TV anchor from a Washington DC station commenting on the hatred “everyone in Texas had for President Kennedy and particularly anyone residing in Dallas.”