The year was
1961 and I was in the 6th grade. Mr. Ball, our teacher, was
apparently more civic-minded than most, with the emphasis on the plural,
(civics) as he had brought in a b&w television from home and set it on his
desk. At the time there was no such thing as cable, and the only channels
available were 8 (NBC), 10 (ABC) and 13 (CBS).
Having set
the television down, Mr. Ball proceeded to spread the ‘rabbit ears’ antenna,
and clicked the knob. After a few seconds of black and white fuzz a live feed
from Washington D.C. lit up the screen. Thousands of people filled up the
parade route, and a long, black limousine drove slowly past the site of the
film camera. A middle-aged man and younger woman who looked surprisingly like
the sitcom characters, Rob and Laura Petrie (Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler
Moore) sat in the back seat. Of course, this nation had just elected a new
president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and he and Jacqueline were passing by on
their way to assuming the proverbial seats of the outgoing President Dwight
Eisenhower, and his wife, Mamie Eisenhower.
The
twenty-five or thirty students in our 6th grade class sat at rapt
attention, as the Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren swore in the 35th
President of the United States. Either just before or just after the swearing
in ceremony, the time element escapes me now, Robert Frost, the aging,
white-haired poet, stepped to the podium to read one of his well-known poems.
As
Frost stood to recite “The Gift Outright” the wind and the bright reflection of
sunlight off the new fallen snow made reading impossible. He was able, however,
to recite the poem from memory. For whatever reason, I recall the old man’s
valiant rendition of his poem more clearly than the highlight of that momentous
occasion; JFK’s inaugural address, and its two most memorable lines,
“Ask
not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
Fast
forward 2 ½ years, and I found myself just short of half way through the 9th
grade.
November
22nd, 1963
‘a day,’ as my 6th cousin, Pres.
Franklin Roosevelt might have said,
…“which
will live in infamy.”
I
‘laid out’ sick that day; the only sick day I would take during my entire 9th
year of school. I cannot account for it. As I reflect on it now, it seems
almost personally prophetic on my part that I’d chosen this day of all days to
remain home.
As
I lay in our television room watching “As the World Turns,” just prior to the 2
PM (EST) hour, an alert icon of some sort came up on the screen. In those days,
those bulky old television cameras had to be warmed up for several minutes;
prior to being used. And thus, I heard him before I saw him. Walter Cronkite,
the mainstay of the CBS Evening News broadcast.
“News
Bulletin. President Kennedy has been shot.”
Eight
minutes later, Mr. Cronkite’s image joined his disembodied voice. During those
eight minutes, (the amount of time required for a beam of light to travel from
the sun to the earth) live television was little more than a radio broadcast.
However, CBS had beaten NBC ‘to the punch’ by about 40 seconds, and was
credited with the ‘news scoop’ of the century. From that time forward the major
networks learned their lesson, and had learned it well. They would always have
a couple of live television cameras warmed up and ready to broadcast.
Pt. 2
Clint Hill,
Jackie Kennedy’s personal Secret Service agent, was riding in a staff car that
day; immediately behind the Presidential Limousine. The president had not only
instructed Jackie to remove her sunglasses, but that no Secret Service agents
run alongside, or sit on the fender jump seat of ‘White House One.’ Jack was
all too aware of the 1964 national election, and he was determined to present
an air of openness and availability to the potential voters which surrounded
him.
As with his
first inauguration, thousands of Texas citizens had turned out in Dallas that
day. And in spite of President Kennedy’s instructions, Secret Service Agent
Hill ran back and forth between the two cars; at times trotting next to the
long, black limo, at times sitting on the back fender; but mostly riding in the
follow up vehicle. Strangely enough, (and much to his relief) JFK never
objected to the obvious breach of his earlier instructions, but continued to
smile and wave at the crowd.
And then
that fatal shot.
Clint Hill
has always regretted not having been closer to the presidential couple during
the course of the three (some say two) shots. Having witnessed Jack Kennedy’s
response to the first shot, as his hands shot to his throat, Jackie’s agent
hopped to the street, and dashed towards the truck of the limousine. During
those fatal few seconds, JFK was struck again.
A fatal head
wound. In his book, “Mrs. Kennedy and me” (which I have read cover to cover)
and in subsequent interviews, Mr. Hill speaks to the absolute horror of that
day. He displays little, if any sensitivity when he relates how that when the
subsequent bullet slammed into the president’s head, the sound which echoed
throughout Dealey Plaza was much like that of a machete against the surface of
a ripe watermelon.
By the time
the courageous agent reached the fender of the limo, Mrs. Kennedy had crawled
onto the truck; in a misguided effort to retrieve a piece of her husband’s
skull. The Zapruder film records the entire sequence of events in all its gory
glory. Ultimately, Agent Hill managed to push or drag Jackie Kennedy into the
back seat, and covered the president and his wife with his body.
The first
(and thus far, the only) president who has been assassinated during the watch
of the Secret Service, (and the most profound, and enduring regret of Agent
Clint Hill’s life).
Pt. 3
Jackie’s
Secret Service agent was all too aware that it was all for naught, for as he
jumped up onto the fender of the limo, he noted the right hemisphere of JFK’s
cranium, and the empty space which had only seconds before encapsulated a pound
and a half of gray matter.
Having only
just managed to mount the trunk of the automobile, without falling to the
pavement, and possibly being run over by the limousine, Agent Hill covered the
couple as best he could. The Lincoln reached speeds upwards of 80 mph in its
eight minute quest of Parkland Hospital. The closest our republic ever came to
royalty lay dying in the back seat of car named after the first American
president taken by an assassin’s bullet.
Dr. Robert
McClelland, (a man whose autograph I have in my collection) recounts the scene
in the trauma room:
"I was horrified to
see him like that. With his head covered in blood, with that light shining down
on it."
NBC asked McClelland how
large the hole was in the back of Kennedy's head, he made a circle with his
hands about the size of an orange.
"It was a hole
about like this size. As I said, the whole back half, the right side of his
brain was gone.”
Even today's medical
advances couldn't have saved the president. Within 10 minutes, a priest came to
deliver the last rites.
Most of the doctors
cleared the room. But McClelland found himself trapped behind a gurney pressed
against the wall and couldn't get out before the priest arrived.
"It was a private
moment, and I'm a bit embarrassed that I was there. But I didn't want to have
to walk across the room past the priest," McClelland said.
NBC asked McClelland to
remember what the priest, Father Oscar L. Huber, said during the ritual.
"Before he said
anything he made the sign of the cross on the president's forehead, anointed
his forehead. And then he leaned over and said, 'if thou livest,' in a loud,
audible voice. Then he completed the rest of the ceremony in a softer voice and
I couldn't hear him."
Jackie Kennedy then
walked into Trauma Room One, her pink suit covered in her husband's blood. The
first lady spent a few, final moments with her husband.
"She stood there
for a minute over him. And then she exchanged a ring from her finger to the
president's finger," McClelland remembers.
"And she stood
there another moment or two, and then walked slowly to the end of the gurney,
where the president's right bare foot was protruding out from underneath the
sheet that was covering him. She stood by his foot for a moment, leaned over
and kissed his foot, and walked out of the room. And that was the last I saw of
the first lady."
(Jeff Smith,
NBCdfw.com)
I admit it.
I am rather ‘taken up’ with the events of that era; especially the Kennedy
Assassination and mankind’s first lunar landing; outside of the two World Wars,
the premier events of the 20th century. And, without doubt, I could
continue to elaborate on the murder of our 35th president, and its
aftermath.
But it is in
the following account we pursue the purpose of this story, and reveal the logic
of its title.
After
President Kennedy’s body was laid in the casket, and literally taken by force
by his security team, (as Texas authorities had demanded an autopsy be
performed in Dallas) his remains were manhandled up the stairs to Air Force
One, and loaded into the cargo hold; prior to the presidential swearing in of
Vice President Johnson.
And as
Jackie sat next to her husband’s casket, still covered in JFK’s blood, Agent
Hill stepped up to her, and took a nearby seat.
“Mrs.
Kennedy, my profound regrets. I hardly know what to say. Is there anything I
can do for you?”
Jackie was
the pampered daughter of socialites, and as America’s First Lady spent untold
amounts of money on custom-made French creations. Jack grew up in a wealthy
Catholic family, and his father was America’s Ambassador to Great Britain; a
father who set the standard for the sort of philandering John Kennedy later
emulated. In spite of their excesses,
America’s ‘royal couple’ were loved and respected, and the unfulfilled
potential of JFK’s administration is still debated.
As Agent
Hill and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy sat alone together in the cargo hold of Air
Force One, she seemed almost oblivious to her body guard’s earlier question,
and answered his question with a question.
“Oh, Mr.
Hill. Whatever is to become of you?”
As I type
these words, tears spring to my eyes.
Sheer Empathy
Absolute
nobility
In the midst
of her abject despair, and when Mrs. Kennedy might have deservedly exercised
the ‘quality’ of selfishness, she expressed concern for a person whom any
reasonable person would have branded her inferior.
Agent Clint
Hill went on to serve Mrs. Kennedy for another year, and faithfully performed
his duty in five presidential administrations.
Reflecting
on a previous phrase and resulting occurrence in this story, I find it
‘personally prophetic’ that Jacqueline Kennedy (Onassis) passed away on May 19,
1994; my own 45th birthday.
But I think
for all the myriad details of all the myriad accounts of the Kennedy
Assassination, and it’s aftermath to which I have been exposed, for all of
their fascination and innuendo, my favorite, the most poignant detail of them
all can be none other than the conversation to which I just alluded.
by William McDonald, PhD. Copyright Pending
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