Again, the country was horrified, though some found yet another reason to smile in less than two days. The man who killed the beloved president was dead. He has been executed in the same way he executed the president. What goes around comes around.
Or does it? Again, five sets of eyes wink at each other knowingly. The plan was working out better than they had hoped. The country would endure and LBJ’s troubles were lessening by the minute. The industries that had made them rich, had given them power and kept them there was now secure until the next political threat came along. They weren’t at the Lamar Hotel in Suite 8F,118 in Houston but they were close enough. Many of these men were also members of the Dallas Citizen’s Council, including the wounded governor, John Connally and Abraham Zapruder.
There would be no trial for Henry Wade to preside over now. Almost forty-seven hours after President John F. Kennedy was killed, Lee Harvey Oswald had died a similar death.
CHAPTER
TEN
OF FUNERALS, FILMS AND FOOTBALL
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
John F. Kennedy119
November 25th, 1963 was the culmination of the four saddest days of November. It was the day of President John F. Kennedy‘s funeral. Orville had to work that day, but he and his co-workers spent many a moment in the break room watching the funeral. The boss didn’t mind, the whole country was mourning.
When the funeral procession began, Orville was amazed at the regalia and respect that had been planned in only three days. But, as he thought, there were many new developments in the three short years during which John F. Kennedy was the most powerful man in the free world. Kennedy had begun the Peace Corps. Kennedy had pushed for NASA and the space program. Kennedy had started the Navy Seals. Kennedy had taken the country to the brink of World War III and brought it back during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The man had done so much in such a short time. Orville wondered how much more he could have done had he lived.
As he looked around the breakroom at his coworkers, he noticed that some of them were smirking, others were somber and others ignored the funeral processional all together.
“Say Orville,” one of the younger GSA employees said, “weren’t you down there when the President got shot?” Orville nodded his head in affirmation.
“Did you see it all? Did you see that lunatic Oswald?” his young friend asked.
“Well, I didn’t rightly look up at the Depository I thought the shots came from the fence,” Orville replied.
Another man interjected, “Hey, that’s where I thought they came from too. I was on the roof of the building here and I didn’t see any shots come from where they caught that commie pinko. You know, Orville, our boss Mr. Price was up there too with binoculars I think.”
Shortly after, Orville saw his friend Forrest Sorrels walking through the building. He seemed to be in a hurry.
“I’ll be back in a minute, fellas, hold my spot,” Orville said as he hurried after his friend from the Secret Service.
“Say, Forrest, hey!” he yelled. Forrest turned around and smiled as he recognized his friend.
“Orville, how are you buddy? What do you think of all this craziness? My God, the president shot in Dallas, what is the damned world coming to?” he said to Orville.
“I keep dreaming of it, Forrest. I keep seeing his head blow up.”
“Wait, Orville, did you take a film of it? Pictures?” Forrest asked.
“Naw, I don’t think so. I know I got a shot of him as the motorcade turned onto Elm, but after that, I just don’t know. Where do you think the shots came from, Forrest?”
“I think they came from that little hill area up by the railroad yard,”120 Forrest replied. “I thought I saw something.”
“I thought they came from that area too, but hell, this Oswald kid wasn’t anywhere near there, and now he’s dead too. Oswald must have been the shooter or why would he have been shot by that strip club guy?” Orville asked his friend then stopped.
“What do you think you saw, Forrest?” Orville tentatively asked his friend. He knew Forrest didn’t like to talk about work.
“Maybe nothing, you never know, Orville, you never know. There was so much happening that day but I’ll check it out. I gotta go. Washington is calling at all hours still and there’s way too much paperwork to do. Come see me next week after everything is calmed down and we’ll have lunch,” Forrest said as he slapped Orville’s back and left.
Orville made his way back to the break room. An older guy, one Orville didn’t think highly of, grabbed him by the arm, pulling him to a complete stop.
“Hey, Orville, have you heard the latest joke about the assassination?” the guy asked.
Orville grimaced and said nothing, waiting for the guy to tell his joke.
“What was LBJ doing right before the shots?” he said, obviously waiting for Orville to say ‘What?’
Orville shook his head, still not saying a word.
“He was ducking!” the man guffawed as he slapped Orville’s back. The idiot was laughing so hard he fell into a coughing attack.
Orville walked away thinking he wished the guy would choke, the sounds of coughs and laughter filling the silent hallway.
* * * * *
The week was another short one. Thanksgiving Day fell three days after JFK’s funeral, and Ella and Orville spent it alone. His son, Orville Jr., went to his mother-in-law’s house for Thanksgiving; they would spend Christmas at Orville and Ella’s house. It was the saddest Thanksgiving Orville could remember, and when it came time to give Grace for the Thanksgiving meal he had a hard time finding the words to say. Out of nowhere, he remembered a bit of a prayer he had heard at John F. Kennedy‘s funeral, and used some of the words in his Thanksgiving prayer:
*****
DEAR LORD, KEEP OUR HEARTS STRONG AND OUR MINDS PURE. SAVE US FROM THE EVIL THAT SEEMS TO BE ALL AROUND US. THANK YOU FOR THE BLESSINGS YOU HAVE GIVEN OUR FAMILY AND OUR COUNTRY. PLEASE HELP THE KENNEDY FAMILY IN THEIR TIME OF GRIEF AND ALLOW THEIR CHILDREN TO GROW UP WITH LOVE INSTEAD OF HATE.
“Dear Lord, keep our hearts strong and our minds pure. Save us from the evil that seems to be all around us. Thank you for the blessings you have given our family and our country. Please help the Kennedy family in their time of grief and allow their children to grow up with love instead of hate. We ask your blessing and your help, knowing here on Earth, God’s work must truly be our own. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”121
Ella looked across the table at her husband and smiled. She recognized the words from the Kennedy speech she and Orville had spoken of often. Orville was a good man.
Two days later, Orville Jr. called and asked his dad if he would go to the South Oak Cliff High School game and take pictures of Elaine‘s brother’s girlfriend. She was a majorette.
“Junior, you know I watch midget wrestling on Saturday night,” Orville admonished.122
“It’ll only take a minute, Dad, and you said you still had film you had to use. Please? I promised my brother-in-law at Thanksgiving I would do it, but I can’t take the three kids. Well, just this one time, Dad?”
“Which brother-in-law? It can’t be Tommy, he’s too young. You mean the curly-headed brother?” Orville didn’t know Elaine‘s brothers well.
“No Dad, not Tommy, Sonny, Elaine‘s older younger brother. Wait, does that make sense?” his son asked.
“Okay, son, I’ll take pictures, but I’m leaving after halftime to get home to my wrestling.”
He hung up the phone and grabbed his hat and camera. He looked down at the camera’s film counter. There was still fifteen feet left to use, even after filming on the Saturday before Oswald was killed.
“Ella, I’m going to the football field, I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Junior wants me to take some film of that girl Elaine‘s brother is dating. Lock the door.”123
He didn’t give Ella time to say a word; he
knew she’d be mad. He started the shiny, red Plymouth Fury and drove the short drive to South Oak Cliff High School, the school from which his son and daughter-in-law had graduated. The sound of the marching band put energy in his step and he realized he hadn’t felt that way in over a week. He sat down in the stands and filmed the halftime entertainment. As it ended, he looked down at the camera counter and it was at zero.
Good, he thought to himself. I’ll just take it to Dynacolor while I’m out and maybe I’ll have it back by Tuesday. He drove to the lab and dropped off his film then made his way back home.124
As he turned the corner onto Denley, he thought he saw a figure standing near the side of his house. It was becoming foggy, like most late November evenings, and he put his bright lights on. The lights glared back into his eyes and the dark figure he saw was no longer there. You must be seeing things, Orville, he said to himself. He turned the car off and went into the house looking at his watch. It was a little after 10 P.M. He hadn’t missed midget wrestling.
Orville fell asleep watching his favorite show; it wasn’t even funny tonight, or possibly it was just his mood.
He woke with a start to the ringing of the telephone. He quickly answered it, worried that something had happened to Junior or one of the grandkids.
“Hello Mr. Nix? This is Dynacolor film lab. You need to get down here right away. We’ve developed your film and you must see it before we turn it over to the FBI.”
Orville rubbed his eyes trying to shake the sleep away.
“What? Why the FBI?” he asked.
“Well Mr. Nix, you have the assassination on your film and the FBI has sent a message out to all film labs that any assassination footage must be immediately turned over to the FBI. We thought we might have overlooked your film with all the developing we have done the last week, but it looks like you just dropped this off earlier in the evening. It seems everyone thinks they have film of the assassination and we’re way behind. Can you come down now?” the technician asked.
They overlooked my film? What? He was still waking up from the phone call and didn’t understand what they meant. He looked down at the watch he was still wearing. It was now after 2 A.M.
He rubbed his eyes again. “Yes, I’ll be down there. Which way do I come in?” he asked.
“Just knock on the front door where you drop off film. We’ll be waiting.” The technician hung up. Orville dialed his son’s number. The phone rang three or four times before Junior answered.
“Hello?”
“Junior?” Orville said, “I need you to get dressed and go down to Dynacolor with me. You may have to miss church tomorrow. They say I have film of the assassination.”
“What?” His son asked incredulously. “Okay Dad, let me get dressed. Don’t ring the doorbell, I’ll wait for you on the porch so the kids don’t wake up. See you in a few minutes.” Orville Junior lived at 1203 Savoy near Kiest Park, about five or ten minutes from Orville’s house on Denley Drive in Oak Cliff. Orville checked on Ella and found her sleeping. He silently dressed and left quietly so as not to wake her. She had to work the next day.
As he drove to his son’s house his mind was filled with thoughts. He had read of Abraham Zapruder selling his film to Life magazine for a lot of money. Could his film be better? Could it be worth as much? Would this be the break he had waited his whole life for? Would it show as much as the Zapruder film? Would he become famous? Could he tell Ella she could finally quit working? He wondered what he had actually taken. It couldn’t be very long, unless he had misread his film counter. Wait. Could the processing lab be wrong? Surely they knew that the footage he had taken on the Saturday after the assassination wasn’t real. Maybe they were talking about the filming he had done while standing at Main and Houston. Yes, that was probably it. They had developed the part of the film he had taken showing the president smiling at his wife.
As his mind settled on that thought, he had turned onto Savoy Street. His tall, lanky son was sitting on the porch steps waiting for him. He ran to the car blowing his hands. It was cold that night. As he opened the door, Orville’s heart swelled. He loved his son and was very proud of him.
“Gosh Dad, so you did take assassination pictures! This is exciting! I wonder what it shows. I wonder if it’s like the Zapruder film in the magazine? You think your film will be in a magazine? I can’t wait to see it!” Orville Junior‘s words came out in a staccato pace.
*****
THEY FOLLOWED THE MAN INTO THE BACK OF THE BUILDING. THERE THEY ENTERED A LARGE ROOM THAT WAS VERY DARK, FILLED WITH TABLES, METAL CANISTERS OF FILM, AND ANOTHER MAN.
“I don’t know, son, I was thinking on the way over here that it just may be the part I took when the motorcade was turning from Main onto Houston Street. Remember when I told you I had taken film of the president smiling just before the car turned onto Elm?” Orville said.
“Yeah, that’s probably right. But still, you have history, Dad. History! How long will it take us to get there?”
Orville drove a little faster than normal to get to the Dynacolor Lab on Halifax Street. It was on the other side of downtown Dallas. As they pulled up, both quickly walked to the door and knocked. The door opened immediately.
“Mr. Nix?” the young technician asked.
“Yes, I’m Orville Nix, and this is my son Orville Junior,” Orville replied. He didn’t recognize these men and he had been to Dynacolor more times than he could remember.
“Come with me, sirs.”
They followed the man into the back of the building. There they entered a large room that was very dark, filled with tables, metal canisters of film, and another man.
The other man spoke. “Mr. Nix? I apologize for bringing you down here in the middle of the night, but as I do want to follow governmental rules, I also want to keep our customers happy. In my opinion, this is your film even if the FBI does say give it to them.125 I thought it only right for you to see it before we give it to them. We don’t have a projection screen here, but I think this white wall will do.”
With that, he loaded the 8mm film into the Keystone projector carefully by the sprockets and turned the projector on. Orville and his son still stood in the places they stopped as they entered the room, excited and anticipatory.
The film was a bit grainy, Orville thought he may have used the wrong filter as he watched it, and the first image was overexposed, as most films were during that time from the feeder film collecting more light when loaded. Still, Orville could see the President’s limousine passing in front of the Dallas County Courthouse at the corner of Houston and Main where he had waited for his family to meet him.
The president seemed to be sharing a joke with the First Lady whose pink suit and hat were vibrantly attractive that sunny day. Orville remembered thinking her beautiful; the vibrant pink of her suit set off her black hair and alabaster skin perfectly and the president’s teeth seemed whiter than the motorcycle helmet of the policeman riding on the left side of the limousine. The next few frames showed the Secret Service car and one of the occupants who was standing and wearing a dark suit; he seemed to be looking up at the buildings. The spectators he captured on film were all clapping and excited. He noticed a couple wearing black clothes: the woman in black sunglasses, scarf and coat, the man in a white shirt and black suit. Behind them was a Negro man who looked like a milkman or delivery man. He was wearing a light-colored uniform and a hat and his hands were filled with a coat or bags - Orville couldn’t tell. The next few frames showed the car Senator Ralph Yarbrough was in and at one point, the Senator seemed to be waving towards him. After seeing the Senator, he realized he hadn’t gotten to see the president that well, and started walking quickly towards Elm Street across the Main Street swath of grass. He had his zoom lens activated. He saw the motorcade pass under the Hertz sign and then pandemonium. Something happened! He heard a shot. The limousine seemed to slow down and the president’s hands went to his neck as if loosening his tie. The film he was watching was at a
strange angle. The limousine had definitely slowed down. The First Lady looked like she was putting her white gloved hands around his shoulders. It was at this time he thought he heard more shots ‘bam-bam and then bam’ and he looked towards the stockade fence area. The president’s head exploded into what he remembered as a red glitter spray forward into the air and towards Governor and Mrs. Connally, whose heads were the only things Orville could see. The First Lady reacted along with the bystanders lining the parade route as the president fell to his left into her arms. His film caught people running, falling down, scared. There was a man across the street shielding his children. There were people on the Elm Street side of the grass running. Some men were on the steps, two of them wearing reddish-colored shirts. One ran up the stairs into the shadows, probably in fear he would be shot. The beautiful First Lady was jumping over the car, seemingly trying to get out and a dark-suited man jumped on the back of the car, pulling her back in. Three of the four motorcycle cops seemed to be looking at the fence or grassy knoll area. Suddenly, the limousine started moving faster and sped away towards the Triple Underpass, leaving the other cars behind. He panned around the fence area again then the next frames showed the ground. He must have been running and quit squeezing the camera. A few frames later, a blue Chevrolet and a white one with men with cameras slowing down to take pictures were seen. Some of the motorcycle officers sped up and others stopped to run up to the Stockade fence area where Orville had heard the shots. It was surreal reality. Then it was over. The whole assassination sequence couldn’t have lasted more than six or seven seconds, but it seemed like hours.126 Orville looked down at the shiny linoleum floor of the film processing plant and shook his head. His son Orville put his arm around his father in empathy.
The Missing JFK Assassination Film Page 10