Reclaiming History (79 page)

1:30 p.m.

Earlier in the day Robert Oswald had gotten a call from Miller Funeral Home director Paul Groody and learned, to his horror, that Laurel Land Cemetery was refusing to accept his brother’s remains for burial. Groody had also called other area cemeteries, but everyone had refused, staying away from Oswald’s body the way the devil stays away from holy water.

“What do they say?” Robert asked.

“The one in Fort Worth is associated with Laurel Land Memorial in Dallas,” Groody explained, “which is where Officer Tippit will be buried.”

That, Robert can understand.

“The rest offer vague reasons,” Groody continued.

Robert and the funeral director agreed that the rest of the cemeteries are acting out of nothing short of prejudice. Christian charity, it seems, doesn’t extend to the presumed assassin of President Kennedy. Groody promised to make arrangements elsewhere as soon as possible.
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Groody now finally calls back and tells Robert, to his great relief, that arrangements for Lee’s burial have been secured with Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth, and he is continuing in his search for a minister. The burial will take place at four o’clock and Robert knows he has just three and half hours to find a minister. He thanks Groody for his help and hangs up.

Shortly thereafter, two Lutheran ministers show up at the Inn of the Six Flags. While one waits in the lobby, the other, Reverend French, is escorted to meet with Robert and his family. The minister takes a seat on the sofa, with Robert and Marguerite on each side of him. It is obvious from the start that Reverend French is not eager to officiate at any services for Lee Oswald, and refuses, despite Robert’s request, to hold any kind of service in a church. Robert begins crying, trying to get the minister to agree to his wishes, but the reverend only quotes scriptures, referring to Lee as a “lost sheep.”

“If Lee is a lost sheep,” Marguerite snaps, “then he is the one who should go to church! The good people do not need to go to church. If he is a murderer, then it is he we should be concerned with.”

A Secret Service agent steps over to them.

“Mrs. Oswald, please be quiet. You are making matters worse,” he says, rankling Marguerite.

Reverend French reluctantly gives in, agreeing to officiate at the services as long as they are held in a cemetery chapel, not a church. Two Secret Service men who are in the room confirm with the minister the time for the service—4:00 p.m.—and make sure he knows how to get to Rose Hill.
¹⁵⁴⁵

1:50 p.m.

At the Dallas county jail, Jack Ruby is interrogated once again, this time by FBI agents C. Ray Hall and Manning C. Clements. In the presence of his lawyers, Melvin Belli, Joe Tonahill, Sam Brody, and William Choulous, he talks about seeing Oswald coming out of the jail office just as he got to the bottom of the Main Street ramp. “To me,” he says, “he had this smirky, smug, vindictive attitude. I can’t explain what impression he gave me, but that is all I can…well, I just lost my senses. The next I know I was on the ground and five or six people were on top of me.” He said that when Oswald killed Kennedy, “something in my insides tore out.”
¹⁵⁴⁶

2:00 p.m.

In Dallas seven hundred uniformed policemen from throughout the state of Texas congregate at the Beckley Hills Baptist Church to honor the other victim of Friday, Officer J.D. Tippit, gunned down by Lee Oswald on a quiet back street of Oak Cliff. Largely overlooked by the millions absorbed in the grand spectacle in Washington, the funeral of Tippit nonetheless attracts around fifteen hundred citizens of Dallas, over a thousand of whom, unable to find room inside the 450-seat red-brick church, mill around outside, while many others watch the ceremony on local and closed-circuit television. An organist, nearly hidden by a bank of flowers five feet high, plays “The Old Rugged Cross,” and the choir, perhaps overly conscious of the cameras trained on them, sing with unusual stiffness.

In the front row, Tippit’s widow, Marie, is flanked by her brother Dwight and J. D.’s neighbor and fellow officer, Bill Anglin, while Marie’s other brother, Norvell, looks after two of the thirty-nine-year-old fallen officer’s three children, Brenda, ten, and Curtis, four. His oldest son, Allen, thirteen, sits next to them. The pews behind them are filled with J. D.’s mother and father, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, and close friends; their faces stained with tears as they bid farewell to the man that they, and many others, considered “a lovable guy.”
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Others, some from far beyond the southern suburbs of Dallas where J. D. was a familiar and reassuring figure, have not forgotten the fallen hero. Contributions to the bereft family’s welfare have been flowing into the police department ever since the nation learned that the policeman’s $7,500 life insurance policy wouldn’t take his family very far. Donations have been arriving from all over the country—Boy Scout troops, police departments, church groups, mothers, fathers, and even children have been reaching out from every state. In a child’s handwriting, one letter contained the simple words, “This money is yours because your daddy was brave.” Enclosed was a dollar bill. Each member of the Detroit Lions football team contributed $50 for a total of $2,000, two brokers colleccted $5,000 on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and Walter H. Annenberg, the publisher of the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, paid off the $12,217 mortgage on the Tippit home. Newspapers even report that two prisoners serving life terms raised $200 for the Tippit fund from the inmates of a Texas prison.
¹⁵⁴⁸

Within months, forty thousand pieces of mail containing close to $650,000 in donations are given to the Tippit family, the largeness of the amount perhaps being partially attributable to ABC commentators Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, each telling a national television audience that calls were coming in to the network urging that in lieu of flowers for the late president, money should be sent to J. D. Tippit’s family, care of the Dallas Police Department.
*
Marie Tippit is grateful for the nation’s kindness, and treasures forever a gold-framed photograph of the president’s family inscribed by his widow: “There is another bond we share. We must remind our children all the time what brave men their fathers were.” And the president’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and President Johnson personally call the thirty-nine-year-old widow to express their sympathies.
¹⁵⁴⁹
President Johnson wanted her to know, Marie Tippit said, that her husband “gave his life for a good cause”—that Oswald may not have been caught “had he not given his life.”
¹⁵⁵⁰

“Today we are mourning the passing of a devoted public servant,” the Reverend C. D. Tipps Jr. says. “He was doing his duty when he was taken by the lethal bullet of a poor, confused, misguided, ungodly assassin—as was our President.”
¹⁵⁵¹

After the eulogy, Mrs. Tippit is helped forward. She weeps softly as she takes a long, last look at her husband in the open casket. Then, she turns away, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, and is helped from the church. Six police pallbearers carry Tippit’s gray casket to the waiting hearse.
¹⁵⁵²

A fifteen-man motorcycle escort then leads the cortege to the rolling hills of Laurel Land Memorial Park where J. D. Tippit will be laid to rest in a special plot set aside for Dallas’s honored dead.

At the grave site, three-dozen red roses are laid across the casket as family and friends gather under the green awning that brings a bit of relief from the hot Texas sun. Tippit’s slender, blue-eyed widow is unconsolable as the minister says a final prayer. Tears can be seen on many of the faces of the stiff-backed policemen standing at attention nearby.
¹⁵⁵³

Marie Tippit and her three children turn away at last.

“Oh God, oh God,” she sobs.
¹⁵⁵⁴

4:00 p.m.

Just outside Fort Worth, two unmarked cars hurry along a back road toward Rose Hill Cemetery. Secret Service agents Mike Howard and Charley Kunkel are riding with Marguerite, Marina, and the children in one of them; Secret Service agent Roger Warner, Arlington police officer Bob Parsons, and a Tarrant County sheriff’s deputy accompany Robert in another. Robert Oswald finds the long ride unusually depressing, largely because of the attitudes of the people he has encountered while making the arrangements for his brother’s funeral. As they near the cemetery, the driver breaks the gloomy silence.

“What about that car behind us?”

Bob Parsons, cradling an M-1 carbine in the backseat next to Robert, turns around.

“It’s just two old ladies,” Parsons says, “but one of them has a burp gun.”

Everyone laughs, even Robert, who hasn’t laughed in three days. He knows that Parsons is trying to shake him from his depression, and he’s grateful.

The Secret Service and the Fort Worth police have set up a heavy guard at Rose Hill, with uniformed officers posted every few yards along the fence surrounding the cemetery.

All cars are stopped and thoroughly searched at the main gate.

They drive to the chapel perched on a low hill. A number of people are standing quietly at the fence line, staring at the grave at the bottom of the hill. They enter the chapel and find it completely empty. There is no sign of any preparation for a funeral service.

“I don’t understand,” Robert says to Mike Howard and Charley Kunkel. The two agents are equally puzzled. Two or three minutes later one of them comes back with the story.

“We were a few minutes late,” he says. “There’s been some misunderstanding and they’ve already carried the casket down to the grave site. We’ll have a graveside service down there.”

It is the final emotional straw. Robert hits the wall with his fist. “Damn it!” he says loudly.

The agent decides that it’s probably better not to tell Robert the rest of the story just now. In the absence of pallbearers—the accused assassin has no close friends—Lee’s coffin, an inexpensive, cloth-covered wooden box, had to be carried down to the grave from the chapel by six of the reporters assigned to the story, three from the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
.

On the way out of the chapel, as Robert hurries back to the car, a photographer walks backward in front of him, snapping off pictures. Robert wants to punch him, but manages to control himself, and climb into the car. Bob Parsons, ordered to stay in the car with the carbine, is waiting for him.

“You’re doing all right now,” Bob says soothingly. “Just hold on.”

They drive down a curving road to the grave site. One of the Secret Service men turns to Parsons and says, “All right now, you stay in the car with the carbine. If anything happens, come out shooting.”

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to mow down fifteen or twenty reporters,” Parsons quips.

The funeral director, Paul Groody, introduces the caretaker of Rose Hill to Robert, explaining that the man agreed without hesitation, though at some risk to his own job, to sell the plot to the family. Groody tactfully suggests that the man’s risk might be lessened if Robert, in speaking of the plot, were to create the impression that the plot has been in the family for some time—as though the cemetery itself had no choice in the matter. Robert, moved by the caretaker’s warmth and compassion, readily agrees.

The Lutheran minister who had promised to officiate over the services is not there. The Secret Service learn that he won’t be coming out at all. Fortunately, Reverend Louis Saunders, executive secretary of the Fort Worth Council of Churches, is willing to step in. Hastily summoned by Fort Worth police chief Cato Hightower, Saunders drove out to Rose Hill to do what he can. He hasn’t presided at a burial in over eight years, but felt that “someone had to help this family.”

The Oswalds take their seats on several of the five battered aluminum chairs placed at the grave site under a faded green canopy. Marina, dressed in a simple black dress and beige coat, holds June while Marguerite cradles the baby, Rachel, in her arms. Inexplicably, there are two floral arrangements, a white blanket of carnations and a spray of red carnations, from someone named Virginia Leach.

Marguerite is annoyed at the crowd of police, Secret Service men, reporters, and Rose Hill employees gathered there. “Privacy at the grave,” she pleads, “privacy at the grave.”
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When a French reporter whispers something to Marina in Russian, Robert tries to shoo him away. When the reporter persists, Robert stands up and starts to move on him, but Marina quickly turns to her brother-in-law and says in broken English, “He says sorrow.”

Robert turns to Secret Service agent Mike Howard and tells him he plans to have the coffin opened and would like to have all reporters and spectators moved back. The agent nods and in the late-autumn afternoon a dozen plainclothes officers move the seventy-five or so newsmen back from the grave, forming a protective, semicircular barrier. Beyond the cemetery fence there is a scattering of onlookers, who have guessed what is going on at the grave.
¹⁵⁵⁶

The undertaker opens the coffin to give the family one final look at Lee Oswald. Marina kisses her husband, dressed for burial in a dark brown suit, white shirt, brown tie, and brown socks. She slips two rings on his finger. Her stoic, almost distant composure dissolves into bitter sobs. The two infants, hearing Marina, cry loudly as Robert and Marguerite take a long, last look at Lee’s face. As they return to their chairs, the gaunt Reverend Saunders steps up to conclude the stark service.

“God of the open sky and of the infinite universe, we pray and petition for this family who are heartbroken. Those who suffer and who have tears in their hearts will pray for them…Their need is great.”

For Lee Harvey Oswald he reserves the final words: “May God have mercy on his soul.”

It’s over in twenty minutes. After the service, Marguerite, Marina, and the children are escorted back to the car to return to the Inn of the Six Flags. Robert lingers for a moment to watch his brother’s coffin lowered into the steel-reinforced concrete vault. He finally returns to his waiting family and the two-car caravan drives off.