Reclaiming History (14 page)

“Ervay Street is completely blocked with pedestrians and is completely out of control,” Sergeant Campbell informs Inspector J. H. Sawyer.

“I’ve got two reserves I’m bringing down now,” Sawyer says.

“I have two 3-wheels [a three-wheel police motorcycle] with me,” Campbell adds, “and we still can’t get the pedestrians off of Ervay, so Ervay is completely closed.”

“Ten-four [radio jargon for “acknowledged”]. I’m on my way.”

Captain J. M. Souter asks the dispatcher for a progress report. The dispatcher contacts the driver of the pilot car, Deputy Chief Lumpkin, who is assigned to drive over the motorcade route a quarter of a mile ahead of the main body of the procession in an effort to spot and avert any potential trouble.

“Are they moving yet?” the dispatcher asks him.

“No,” Lumpkin replies.

“Have not started yet,” the dispatcher relays to Captain Souter.
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*

B
ill Greer, the president’s Irish-born driver and, at age fifty-four, the oldest man in the Secret Service’s White House detail, will drive the waiting presidential limousine—a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible built at Ford Motor Company’s Wixom, Michigan, plant and customized to rigid Secret Service specifications for the president by the Hess & Eisenhardt Company in Cincinnati. The car was leased to the White House in June of 1961. To the Secret Service it is known as SS-100-X.
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Weighing about seventy-five hundred pounds with its special build and heavy armor, and being a full twenty-one feet eight inches long, it is a big chore to deliver it to every place the president intends to be—which is why they didn’t have it in Fort Worth. A government C-130 cargo plane—the kind they fly tanks around in—brought it from Washington, D.C., down to San Antonio. From San Antonio they flew it down to Dallas, skipping the president’s stop in Houston and overnight stay in Fort Worth.
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In addition to the armor, the car is fitted with jump seats behind the front seat, effectively making the car comfortable for seven passengers and allowing the president to accommodate guests without having them obscure the crowds’ view of him on the slightly higher backseat. There is also an electrical system, operable by the president himself provided the top is down, to raise that seat and its footrest by as much as eight inches from their normal positions.
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Over the back of the front seat, a sort of roll bar, fitted with handholds, allows the president to ride standing up for certain occasions. On the back bumper, on each side of the elegant spare-tire housing at the rear of the car’s trunk, are two steps, each large enough to permit a Secret Service agent to ride there while holding on to the special handgrip fitted to the trunk. Dashboard-controlled, retractable running boards run along each side of the limousine and can accommodate additional agents, but unlike prior presidents who had agents riding on the side running boards of their limousines, Kennedy does not want this, and these side running boards are never used. It is also possible to bolt a bubble top—six panels of clear plastic kept in the trunk—to the frame, with a black canvas-type cover that buttons over the top of the plastic. Neither plastic nor canvas are bulletproof, or even bullet resistant, just protection from the weather.
¹¹⁹

Today, the car is without the bubble top. Kennedy never wanted it when the weather was clear. This morning in Fort Worth, Ken O’Donnell told Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman that with the weather breaking, there would be no need for the bubble top. Kellerman passed the word on to the Secret Service’s advance man in Dallas, Winston G. Lawson.
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11:47 a.m.

Some of the stock boys in the Texas School Book Depository Building are laying new flooring up on the sixth floor. The schoolbook business is a little slow this late in the year, and rather than lay the boys off entirely, Bill Shelley, a Depository manager, put them to work resurfacing the upper floors, where most of the books are stored.
*
Half a dozen of them are at it—Bill Shelley himself, Bonnie Ray Williams, Charles Givens, Danny Arce, Billy Lovelady, and occasionally Harold Norman, when he has time to give them a hand.

The work is pretty straightforward. They have to move the heavy cartons of books from one side of the floor to the other, then back, as they lay new flooring over the old planks. It took them about three weeks to do the fifth floor, and they’re just starting in on the sixth, moving as many cartons as they can from the west side of the open floor over to the east. Given the number of books they have to move, they aren’t very far along. They’re still working on the first section, on the westernmost portion of the sixth floor.
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At one point, Bonnie Ray Williams thought he saw Lee Oswald, though he is not sure, messing around with some cartons near the easternmost freight elevator on the sixth floor, during the half hour before noon. He didn’t pay much attention though. Oswald is always messing around, kicking and shoving cartons around.
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The warehouse crew usually knocks off about five minutes before noon to give themselves time to wash up for lunch, but today, anxious to see the president, they quit a little earlier. In high spirits, the young men commandeer both of the big freight elevators for a mock race to the bottom. Bonnie Ray, Billy, Danny, and Charlie all pile into the east elevator and head for the bottom. The rest of them take the west elevator. It isn’t really much of a race. The east elevator is faster, and they all know it.
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Charlie Givens notices Lee Oswald in front of the elevator shaft on the fifth floor as they flash past on their way to the ground floor.
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“Guys!” Oswald calls after them. “How about an elevator?”

Givens tosses his head back as the freight elevator plunges down.

“Come on, boy!” Givens calls out, suggesting Oswald come down to the bottom floor too, though apparently not on their moving elevator.

“Close the gate on the elevator,” Oswald shouts down the shaft, “and send the elevator back up.”
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Oswald means the west elevator. The east elevator has to be manned, but the west one can be summoned from any floor if its gate is closed.
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When they get to the first floor, however, no one bothers with Oswald’s request.

O
ut at Ruth Paine’s house in Irving, Marina Oswald, who still hasn’t dressed for the day, watches television alone. Ruth has left to run some errands. Marina doesn’t understand much of what the announcers are saying, but the live images speak for themselves.
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She sits on the edge of the couch and watches as Air Force One taxies up close to the reception line at Dallas Love Field. Crewmen run under the wings and throw down the chock-blocks as the jet comes to a halt and the engines wind down. A ramp is pushed up to the back entrance of the jet as the door is propped open. The excited crowd watches the back door, giggling with anticipation. Suddenly, Jackie’s pink suit comes into view.

“There is Mrs. Kennedy and the crowd yells,” the TV announcer says, a smile in his voice, “and the President of the United States. And I can see his suntan all the way from here!” The President and First Lady descend the ramp and shake hands with the official welcoming party, one of whom, the Dallas mayor’s wife, Mrs. Earle Cabell, presents Mrs. Kennedy with a brilliant bouquet of red roses.
*
The sunshine is blinding, the weather absolutely beautiful. They look like Mr. and Mrs. America.
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Robert Donovan, Washington bureau chief of the
Los Angeles Times
, thinks to himself that if Hollywood had tried to cast a president and his wife, it could never have dreamed up John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy. They were just two beautiful, glamorous people, and were receiving a screaming reception. (He would later add that “there was never a point in the public life of the Kennedys, in a way, that was as high as that moment in Dallas.”)
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Marina can see the presidential party making its way toward the cars. Suddenly, the President and First Lady turn toward the cheering crowds hugging the fence line.

“The press is standing up high, getting a lot of shots of this!” the television announcer says excitedly. “This is great for the people and makes the eggshells even thinner for the Secret Service whose job it is to guard the man.”

Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, the assistant special agent in charge of the White House detail for this trip to Texas, slips up close to the fence, scrutinizing every hand that reaches over toward the president. The happy and loudly exuberant crowd, perhaps two thousand strong,
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is tightly packed behind the fence at gate 28. The president can’t seem to soak up enough of their warmth. He moves along the fence line, his image growing larger on local television screens as he nears the pool camera setups. The eager, outstretched hands reach for him. Jackie follows closely behind, radiant and gay, her beauty enhanced by the bouquet of red roses.
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“And here they come, right down toward us!” the TV announcer gushes. “I can see Mrs. Kennedy, and they’re going to come right on down and shake hands with
everybody
. Mrs. Kennedy gave a lovely wave and a smile that time. There’s the president shaking hands with the people. He’s waving at a lot of people. Smiling. Secret Service men all around. Boy, this is
something
!”
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But there is palpable tension at Love Field too. Those on the scene are all too aware of the discordant placards among the signs of welcome. “IN 1964, GOLDWATER AND FREEDOM”; “YANKEE GO HOME”; “YOU’RE A TRAITOR.” Liz Carpenter, Jackie’s assistant, thought some of them were the ugliest she had ever seen.
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Roy Kellerman follows the president by inches, ready, like the other nearby agents, to use his body as a human shield. Any contact with the public is a nightmare for the Secret Service, but the agents also know that it is the lifeblood of electioneering. So far, they have been unable to persuade Jack Kennedy to be more cautious on these occasions.
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†

Bill Greer, noticing how far down the fence the president is getting, drives the armored Lincoln at a crawl alongside him. Other Secret Service men are trying to get everyone to take his or her place in the long line of vehicles strung out along the fence behind the president’s car. The radio networks are alive with reports, queries, and advisories. Security men strung out for miles along the route all the way to the Trade Mart know from their radios that the president is on the ground, that the next forty-five minutes, as the motorcade threads its way across the city, will require their utmost alertness and preparedness.

The president and Mrs. Kennedy finally step toward the presidential limousine, where Governor Connally and his wife wait, standing just in front of the jump seats.
Newsweek
White House correspondent Charles Roberts manages to get in a quick question to Jackie: “How do you like campaigning?” “It’s wonderful, it’s wonderful,” she says, sounding as if she almost means it.
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The president places his hand in the small of Mrs. Kennedy’s back and helps her into the backseat first. She moves to the left side as the president steps in and takes his seat on the right. Mrs. Kennedy places the bouquet of red roses on the seat between her and the president. The governor and his wife fold the jump seats back and sit down, the governor in front of the president, and Nellie in front of Mrs. Kennedy. Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman takes his position in the front passenger seat next to the driver, Special Agent Bill Greer.

Television cameras zoom in on the limousine as the president and Mrs. Kennedy continue waving to the cheering crowds.

“The party is now leaving Love Field,” the announcer tells television viewers. “And of course thousands will be on hand for that motorcade now, which will be [through] downtown Dallas, down Cedar Springs to Harwood, and on Harwood it will turn on Main, from which point it will go all the way down to the courthouse area, which is the end of Main, it’ll turn on Houston Street to Elm, under the Triple Underpass, out to the Mart, where the president talks at approximately one o’clock, which will also be carried live right here on most of these channels. And then we’ll be back here, as we told you, at about two-fifteen for the president’s departure.”
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11:55 a.m.

The motorcade finally gets underway on its scheduled nine-and-one-half-mile journey to the Trade Mart, driving right through an opening in a section of the Love Field fence that Special Agent Forrest Sorrels has had removed. Sorrels has been working on the presidential visit since November 4, when Special Agent-in-Charge Gerry Behn of the White House detail alerted him to the likelihood of the visit, and he is reasonably sure that the arrangements they’ve made are satisfactory under the circumstances.
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An advance car, driven by Dallas police captain Perdue D. Lawrence, head of the Traffic Division, is already a half mile out in front of the motorcade watching for any potential problems.

First through the opening in the fence is the so-called pilot car, a white Ford sedan driven by Deputy Chief Lumpkin, who scouts the route a quarter of a mile ahead, on the lookout for motor vehicle accidents, fires, obstructions, or any other problem necessitating a last-instant change of route or procedure. Along for the ride are two Dallas homicide detectives, B. L. Senkel and F. M. Turner, and Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander of the local Army Intelligence reserve unit.
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Three two-wheel Dallas police motorcycle officers under the command of Sergeant S. Q. Bellah are next, followed by five two-wheel motorcycle officers under the command of Sergeant Stavis Ellis. The “lead car,” an unmarked white Ford police sedan driven by Dallas police chief Jesse Curry, follows a short distance behind. Accompanying Curry are Secret Service agents Lawson and Sorrels, and Dallas sheriff Bill Decker.