We Were There

by Allen Childs

  Of course this was, and shall forever remain, wholly irrational and based entirely on the human mind’s unfortunate tendency to need—and even create—a bad guy. Pain and anger do strange things to the human psyche . . . but to blame a city of 700,000? Nobody seems to blame (or even credit!) Dallas for killing Oswald. And Jack Ruby blamed “temporal lobe epilepsy.”

  David Haymes, MD

  November 21 was a beautiful clear day in the low seventies and a waxing crescent moon appeared as darkness descended over the fledgling UTSMS campus and Parkland Hospital. Several sophomore medical students had gathered in the north-facing pathology room that evening to review microscope slides when our concentration was broken by the shrieking of tires on pavement. We raced to the window to see only receding tail lights and a shower of papers fluttering to the ground. We raced down stairs and discovered hundreds of leaflets on pink and green and orange paper all saying—Wanted for Treason—accompanied by a frontal and side mug shot of our President. We gathered up as many as we could and called the police. “No, we didn’t see who did it” and “Yes, this is all of them.” But of course it wasn’t. One is on display at the Sixth Floor Museum and I have had one of each color all these years.

  Cervando Martinez, MD

  On that fateful November day I was a sophomore in medical school back in my hometown for my medical education. Kennedy’s route was known because the evening before I went to my parent’s home at 2537 Cedar Springs to prepare a sign welcoming JFK. My parents liked him and of course Cedar Springs Road is the main avenue from Love Field to downtown Dallas. We were sure that the motorcade would pass by the house and so we took an old bed sheet and wrote, “VIVA KENNEDY” on it. Then we climbed out a second story window and tacked it on the wall of the second floor. My brother Rene, who was in high school then, helped me.

  Peter Wiles, MD

  Do not forget those were angry times in Dallas. Shortly before the assassination, a bullet was fired into the Turtle Creek home of Major General Walker and Adlai Stevenson’s talk (which I attended) was marred by picketing and a demonstration during which he was spat upon and struck with a picket sign! Based on his experience and evaluation, he advised JFK to cancel his Dallas trip, but Lyndon persuaded him to go.

  Raoul Berke, MD

  In November 1963, I was doing my Junior Medicine rotation at the VA. At breakfast, one of my classmates said, “You know, somebody ought to shoot that sumbitch, Kennedy.” There was general agreement among his buddies, all members of the same fraternity. At lunch, sitting with the same group, the same classmate said, “Well, they shouldn’t have shot him—he’s a father.” That evening, I sought tearful solace with one of the few other liberal, pro-Kennedy students in our class, and her college-professor husband. I remember this vividly, word-for-word. I left Dallas after graduation; I have never returned.

  H. Wayne Smith, MD

  I recall one TV anchor representing Washington, DC commenting on the hatred everyone in Texas had for President Kennedy and in particular anyone residing in Dallas.

  It was a sad day indeed—even the next year when I was a Fellow in Infectious Disease at University of Colorado in Denver, I was treated with distaste for several weeks because I was at Parkland that day.

  Leslie Moore, MD

  In the weeks following the assassination, I was in the Northeast and Midwest, interviewing for internships and everywhere, and I mean everywhere I went, people cursed Dallas.

  Al Lindsey, MD

  The other really memorable occurrence was the sermon that Reverend Bill Holmes preached at Northaven Methodist Church that Sunday morning. He described the full-page black-bordered announcement in the Dallas Morning News that said of JFK “this man is a traitor!” Then he told us of the fifth (I think) grade classroom in Dallas in which the teacher rushed in tears sobbing “the President’s been shot,” and the children cheered. His sermon title was “One Thing Worse Than This,” and his point was that the one thing worse than the assassination would be for Dallas not to acknowledge that it was a city full of hatred, a perfect environment for such an event to take place. My sense of Dallas has never been less than very ambivalent since that day.

  Ron Jones, MD

  (oral history courtesy of the Sixth Floor Museum)

  I thought Dallas was a progressive community. I think that was about the era when Erik Jonsson was mayor, and he had set out to establish some goals for Dallas, some long-range goals. So, it was a progressive city. There were a lot of major sport activities available in Dallas and the symphony and the opera and all the things that you would like to have available to you whether you’d utilize them or not [smiling] when you live in a large city. But I think that what I noticed most was that it was a progressive city. We thought that the schools were good [nodding] in Dallas at that time.

  As I recall, it was fairly quick. There was reaction to this. I . . . you sensed that even President Kennedy’s family may have had some resentment toward Dallas because, you know, this was a tragedy that had occurred. It could’ve occurred anywhere, but unfortunately, it occurred in Dallas. And so, I think Dallas caught the brunt of that. Here was a city that thought like that when, in fact, probably no one from Dallas even had anything to do with this.”

  James Carrico, MD

  (oral history courtesy of the Sixth Floor Museum)

  Some of my colleagues have some stories. Some of them were somewhat cynical. One of our residents, Bill Stone, who’s now in practice in Hobbs, New Mexico, was, I believe, in Korea shortly after that. . . . Apparently, the story goes, Bill was in Korea and there was still a lot of ugly talk and giving people a bad time about the president dying, etc. And Bill was really kind of a character, either quieted things down or made it worse by saying, “Well, you know, we could have saved him if we wanted to.” But that was maybe . . . not obviously appropriate and obviously not true, but it was hard to just keep your cool. I think one of the things I learned from that whole business is how important it is to keep your cool and be moderate and careful in your statements. I mean, if you’re . . . I think it’s fair to say that all the stuff in the paper, all the real extremism that existed in Dallas right then, did two things. Well, it may have made a guy like Oswald think that doing something like assassinating the president would have been accepted. I mean, if you’re kind of a nut and you’re reading in the paper, “Go home. We don’t want you.” Or hearing people say, “This guy ought to be shot.” A nut could do that. The other thing it did clearly is once the president was shot here, all that was remembered and clearly we bought some of our own negative representation by what we had said ahead of time. So, I guess a take-home which I believe, I guess I’ve always believed it, but I believe even more is that extreme statements are liable to get you in trouble.

  The only difficulty at all . . . the Warren Commission gave none. The only criticisms of how Kennedy was treated came from two very different sources. In one of those letters I talked about they said, you know, “You guys let the president die.” And that was obviously nuts. And then the press made a big deal about not turning the president over and looking at his back. As a matter of fact, I was called one night at home a couple of days after the assassination by a reporter, trying to ask me why . . . why we hadn’t seen those wounds in the back. And I kind of explained it . . . or tried to explain it like I did to you guys. The headlines the next day were “Dallas doctors fail to look at president’s back.” That’s when I learned the value of “no comment.” My respect for reporters didn’t go up dramatically during those couple of years.

  Robert McClelland, MD

  (oral history courtesy of the Sixth Floor Museum)

  And you sort of got the idea that probably the great majority of people in Dallas didn’t care much one way or the other. They were traditional Southern Democrats if you happened to ask them about it, but that wasn’t really anybody’s interest. They were just mostly making their way, and that was it. And I think as more and more . . . as the Cold War got colder or hot
ter, however you want to look at it, and people got worried about it. I can remember when we were storing things in the basement of Parkland. We had a, you know, a person at the medical school, Dr. Sanford, who’s now dead, who was charged with setting up shelters, you know, for when the bomb hit us, and that there was water and food and things like that stored in Parkland where we would . . . was one of the places that we would go. So, there was a rising awareness of this and an increasing suspicion.

  Right after I got here in ’57, and I remember walking around in the basement, the sub-basement of Parkland and seeing those large canisters of water and whatnot stored there. And I remember particularly after, you know, the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis things that there were a lot them in. . . . Especially the missile crisis. I was living over in East Dallas in that time. I was a resident, and we were all talking about digging holes in the ground at that time, so there was an increasing paranoia and fearfulness here in the early ’60s.

  Stevenson was here, and he had been hit in the head with a sign [chuckling]. Whether it was purposeful or accidental, I expect it may have been a little bit of purpose behind it . . . by some lady, I think, who lived in Highland Park, and quite a bit was made of that both at the time and then particularly shortly after that when the assassination occurred . . . that this was brought up again that this was the city of hate and all of these terrible right-wing people here and so on. And they set up sort of . . . set Dallas up as the ideal place for this to . . . where you’d expect something like this to happen, you know. Of course, many Dallasites, I think, you’d have to agree that there was an element of that here, but to take that brush and tar the whole city with it always struck me as being rather unfair. Understandable perhaps that some people might want to do that and would tend to do that, but still, you know, not saying that the whole city is a city of hate and everybody in it is bad, particularly a large city like that . . . not too good.

  Chapter 12

  OSWALD AND RUBY

  The Dallas City Jail employed Southwestern’s medical students, interested in the hands-on experience but mostly eager for the money, to see to the medical needs of the prisoners. Even freshmen were “jail doctors.” Now, this was not only practicing medicine without benefit of licensure, but also practicing medicine without benefit of knowing anything!

  My friend, Bill Hall (oh, so missed) worked at the jail the evening of the assassination and showed me a copy of the police report, the title of which read, “Name: John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Occupation: President of the United States.”

  Another classmate, David Haymes, had traded his shift that Sunday morning to senior medical student, Fred Bieberdorf, so missed being responsible for Oswald’s care. The story I was told is that when Oswald was shot, nobody could find the keys for the jail’s emergency medical supply cabinets. Considering the nature of his injuries, it is unlikely that anything done at the jail would have altered the outcome.

  The sheriff in the white suit who was walking next to Oswald when Ruby shot him, bent over close to the prostrate prisoner and said, “You’re hurt pretty bad, son. Is there anything you want to say?” Oswald slowly shook his head, closed his eyes and said nothing.

  On duty in the Psychiatry ER was senior Harry Eastman who saw the Secret Service, machine guns drawn, seal the ER and “a person was whisked by on a gurney, through the ER to the elevators to the surgery floor.” Kenneth Farrimond was told there was, “an FBI agent with a badge and a gun in the room ready to take a deathbed confession if Oswald were to survive.”

  Wayne Delaney had just finished a pediatric surgery case when Oswald was brought to the operating room. Remarkably, he saw surgery begin less than ten minutes after Oswald arrived at the ER. He watched the chief of surgery, Tom Shires, and Doctors McClelland, Perry and Jones control the bleeding from the aorta, renal artery, and vena cava, while pumping sixteen pints of blood into Oswald.

  Then his heart arrested, and even open chest cardiac massage could not save him. His death left us with a question we shall never hear answered: Who killed our JFK?

  Harry Eastman, MD

  Sunday I was on duty in the psych ER and suddenly all the doors were sealed with some men in suits with machine guns drawn. A person was whisked on a gurney through the ER to the elevators to the surgery floor. It was stated that it was Lee Harvey Oswald. The ER was sealed for a period of time and I remember looking at the people lined up who otherwise would have been patients.

  Later, perhaps after a couple of years, I was a medicine resident on infectious disease when Jack Ruby was hospitalized

  Twenty million viewers recoiled at the first televised assassination. It didn’t seem to matter that Oswald was the most hated man in the world at that moment. Photographer Bob Jackson caught this historic moment for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. For many, this was the most shocking image of those tragic forty-eight hours.

  with pneumonia. I remember his sister sitting outside his room daily, asking me for information as we made rounds; a very plain appearing woman, opposite the image of a flamboyant Jack Ruby in his heyday.

  Ronald O. Wyatt, MD

  I had a job at night at the Dallas County jail. Saturday night before Oswald was to be transferred from the city jail to the county jail, I was told I would have to stay at the jail until the transfer had been completed. About mid-Sunday a.m., a number of sirens went by the county jail. It wasn’t too long the warden called me and said I could go home. Oswald had been shot and was taken to Parkland Hospital.

  One other event occurred to me related to the Kennedy shooting. One evening the warden called and said Jack Ruby was injured and needed a doctor. A group of guards came and took me to the floor Ruby was being held. After going through four to five sliding doors plus multiple guards, I finally arrived at Ruby’s cell. He was a very pleasant person. I asked what type of medical symptoms he was having; he told me he had slipped out of his bed and scraped his head. I examined the scrape and gave him a tube of antibiotic ointment. Interestingly his cell was filled with cards and letters. He told me people were sending him money and gifts. They were glad he had killed Oswald.

  David Haymes, MD

  Two days later on Sunday I was to have worked as the “jail doctor” at the Dallas city jail. But for reasons long forgotten I switched with Fred Bieberdorf. The “jail doctor” was a medical student who stayed in the parking basement. So Fred was there when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. There but for the grace of God. . . .

  On January 3, 1967 as an intern I was on the sixth floor of Parkland when Jack Ruby died, just down the hall from where I was making rounds. He had been defended by Melvin Belli but also by a local attorney, Phil Burleson. I went to high school with Phil’s sister-in-law, and Phil was my patient until he died in 1995.

  Lewis Raney, MD

  On Sunday, November 24, we were driving from Irving, Texas on the Stemmons Freeway and there was an announcement that Lee Harvey Oswald had been shot and was being taken to Parkland. I only remember the excitement of people running, grouping, talking, etc. I made hospital rounds on my patients and left. The operating room doors were guarded. I didn’t even consider going on the floor where Governor Connally was located.

  Kenneth Farrimond, MD

  That Sunday morning we were in the anatomy lab studying for Monday’s practical when someone came to tell us that Oswald had been shot. He was in the OR at Parkland with an FBI agent with a badge and a gun in the room, ready to take a deathbed statement if Oswald were to survive.

  Ken Wallace, MD

  He (Carrico) also told about the Sunday when Oswald was taken to surgery. They opened him up and he had an abdomen full of blood. He had a tear in the vena cava, renal vein and hepatic vein, as I recall. They controlled the bleeding, replaced fluids and thought they could close and he would make it, when he fibrillated. After forty-five minutes of trying to defib, they quit. Carrico said that Oswald almost survived that gunshot wound. Think what a historical difference that would have made.
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  Wayne Delaney, MD

  I had just finished doing a case on a pediatric patient when Oswald was brought to the ER. It was my understanding that only ten minutes elapsed from the time he was brought in until he was in the operating room on the second floor.

  I watched his operation performed by Dr. Tom Shires, the chief of surgery. I could be wrong, but it seems like he was assisted by Dr. Kemp Clark, who was chief of neurosurgery. There were at least two other people scrubbed in, but I don’t remember who they were. I just remember that single bullet hitting the vena cava, aorta and renal artery among a host of other things. They were doing cardiac massage and sewing leads to the heart before it was all over.

  Ron Jones, MD

  (oral history courtesy of the Sixth Floor Museum)

  But Sunday morning, I had . . . we didn’t have much time off, and it happened early Sunday morning. There was a barbershop at the bowling alley at Inwood and Lemmon [smiling], and you could . . . they were open on Sunday morning.

  And you needed a haircut once in a while [smiling], and so I thought I would run over and get a haircut quickly on Sunday morning. It’s a quiet time. And we didn’t have beepers, and so everybody . . . you had to let everybody know where you were. And I got a call that there had been a stab wound to the neck come into the emergency room, and I was on-call with the residents that day. And so, I left the barbershop to go over to be present for that surgery. And I was waiting outside in the operating room lounge while the residents were finishing up with this relatively minor stab wound to the neck, and the telephone rang. And the nurse answered, and after a short time, turned to me and she said, “They’ve shot Oswald, and they’re bringing him to the emergency room.”