The Day Kennedy Was Shot (19 page)

He saw the new high wall of cartons near the Elm Street windows and he walked beyond them to another set of windows. He laid the bagged lunch on the dusty windowsill and took the top from the bottle of soda. The sandwich wasn't much. It was a piece of chicken with the bones still in it, imprisoned by two pieces of spongy bread. “Just plain old chicken on the bone,” Bonnie Ray called it. He looked out and down and saw the warm, friendly sun and the green of the plaza, and the police herding people this way and that, and the whistles blowing for cars to get moving before all traffic was closed, and couples on the grass adjusting cameras and looking up at the Depository
building, and a final diesel locomotive yanking a small string of freight cars across the overpass as a policeman trudged to the top to keep unauthorized personnel off the property.

It was a good view, but Williams didn't want to see the parade alone. Directly below him, a few order clerks watched from the fifth floor. Bonnie Ray finished the soda, and left the remains of his sandwich on the windowsill. If anyone else was in that big room with him for those ten minutes, Williams did not hear him.

All along the tawny concrete, men were running to and from vehicles in controlled panic. The President had told Kellerman that each person should have the same seat in the same numbered car as in Fort Worth, but now there were twenty-four vehicles and some occupants did not bother to count; some, finding an empty seat, tried to squeeze in with friends; others, consigned to the buses in the rear, tried to use empty cars closer to the President's position. Lawson and his men were urging one and all to please be seated. Mr. Kennedy had broken away from the crowd at the fence, saying, “Thank you. Thank you. I'm happy to be in your city today. Thank you. Thank you. This is a real Texas welcome. . . .”

Few heard him because the crowd shouted its individual exhortations and imprecations. The congressmen were elbowing each other for preferred positions, and the Dallas mayor and council felt its lack of sympathy for Kennedy congeal when the Secret Service pointed to the seventh car in the line. The President helped Mrs. Kennedy into the big Lincoln. She sat hard on the left side of the rear seat and dropped the bouquet of roses between them. This was a hot day. The hypocrisy of politics was that the young lady had to smile while sweltering in a merciless sun.

The President, grinning at one and all from the right side of the car, assisted Mrs. Connally to the jump seat in front of
his wife, and watched John Connally, still dour, unfold the seat in front of the President. Senator Yarborough was spotted, over the Kennedy shoulder, walking past the Vice-President's car and the President caught Larry O'Brien's eye and pointed. At once, the President's special assistant ran along the line of cars and came abreast of the senator at the time that Special Agent-in-Charge Kellerman flagged the motorcycles in front to start. Yarborough was brought back, protesting a little, and was shoved by the back of the trousers into the Johnson car. The door slammed behind him and Yarborough dropped into the left side, next to Mrs. Johnson. O'Brien, watching the cars start out, studied the faces and seats and hopped into the first one which had space for him.

Two motorcycle policemen swung their vehicles through a hole in the fence and motioned to patrolmen to keep the people back. The two cops moved slowly at first, glancing back over their shoulders toward the pilot car. The motorcycles and that car should open a lead of at least a quarter of a mile in front of the procession. Deputy Chief G. L. Lumpkin, in the pilot car, had policemen Jack Puterbaugh, F. M. Turner, and Billy Sinkle with him. If there was going to be trouble of any kind, this was the car to raise the alarm.

None was expected, but four pairs of trained eyes would be watching the curbside crowds and the overhead windows all the way. If trouble did come, the policemen expected that it might be in the form of a crowd at a particular intersection which would break through police lines and engulf the President's car. At worst, some fanatic might carry an insulting sign or shout a curse at the Chief Executive of the nation. Lumpkin was in touch with Chief Curry all the way, and he kept reporting monotonously everything he and his men saw.

The two motorcyclists were ordered by radio to increase their speed coming out of the airport, and Lumpkin and his men lengthened the distance between them and the rest of the mo
torcade. In police headquarters, it was announced that, at 11:55
A.M.
the President was leaving Love Field. The word was passed by walkie-talkie radio among Secret Service men. It reached the White House switchboard at the Sheraton Hotel and was passed to Washington, D.C. Jack Jove in the tower heard it on short wave and returned to his office. Colonel Swindal heard it. The word was hammered into newspaper offices on the police radio band; it went to the radio stations, and the local television directors heard it and placed camera crews at strategic areas to pick up the glistening cars as they turned off the airport road at Mockingbird Lane. The President, for the first time, could see the huge cluster of modern buildings which comprised rich, conceited Dallas.

The main section of the motorcade was led by Chief Jesse Curry in a white car. He drove it. The radio speaker was open and the volume was turned up. The chief was never a shirker. He was a hardworking, eye-blinking martyr to his job. He wanted to stay on as chief, and he knew that he could stay just as long as he executed the will of the Dallas Citizens Council. The city fathers wanted no incidents today, and there would be none because Curry and his men had researched, planned, and rehearsed this assignment so deeply that today it seemed anticlimactic.

The chief sat with Sheriff Bill Decker, an old political fighter, Special Agent Forrest Sorrels, and Agent Winston Lawson. This was called the “lead car,” and Curry had four motorcycles in front of him to trim the curbside crowds. Three car lengths behind was the big Lincoln. Agent William Greer had the presidential standard and the American flag snapping from the foreward fenders. Beside him sat Roy Kellerman, and they listened to Lumpkin and Curry on the police channel. The Kennedys and the Connallys nodded and smiled passing the filling stations and the big Coca-Cola plant and the restaurants where lunchers poured out, wiping their mouths and waving.

Behind the Lincoln were four motorcycles, one on each side of the rear bumper. They were ordered not to pull up on the President unless he was endangered. Next was the big Secret Service car, full of men in sunglasses. Sam Kinney drove; Emory Roberts manned the communications set, which called this particular automobile
Halfback.
Mrs. Kennedy's guardian, Clint Hill, stood in the forward position of the left running board, directly behind her. John Ready had the opposite position on the right. Behind them stood Bill McIntyre and Paul Landis. Glen Bennett and George Hickey occupied two-thirds of the back seat. The seat also cradled a powerful automatic rifle. It was in a better position than Kenneth O'Donnell and Dave Powers, who occupied two jump seats. In front of their knees was a compartment holding a shotgun.

Next came a rented Lincoln convertible, occupied by the Johnsons and Yarborough. In the front seat Rufus Youngblood, the Vice-President's agent, sat beside Hurchel Jacks of the Texas Highway Patrol, who drove. The Lincoln was followed by another Secret Service car called
Varsity.
Next, a Mercury with Mayor and Mrs. Earle Cabell. Behind it was the press pool car. The majority of reporters were in a bus farther back in the procession, but this one consisted of four men who, if a news story broke, would get it on the wires as a “flash.”

The President's press representative on the trip to Texas, Malcolm Kilduff, rode in front on the right. A driver furnished by the telephone company manned the radio transmission set. Merriman Smith of United Press International sat between the driver and Kilduff, his knees hunched under his chin. In the rear seat were Robert Clark of the American Broadcasting Company, a Dallas reporter, and Jack Bell of the Associated Press. The ninth car was a Chevrolet convertible for White House motion picture photographers. It was impossible to take pictures in a position so remote from the President. Behind it were two more automobiles with photographers.

Three cars were assigned to congressmen. Number fifteen, a Mercury station wagon, was for “unplanned guests.” Behind this was a huge Continental bus for the White House staff; then a second one containing the White House press. The nineteenth car was most important: this was White House communications, the traveling radio car through which the President, in his automobile, could address himself to anyone in the world. This one was the link between Kennedy and the Sheraton military board. There was a Western Union car, with operators who could take stories from reporters and get them on the wire quickly. In addition, toward the back of the procession, there were two Chevrolets for “unexpected developments,” a local press car for newspapermen and television, and, closing the ranks, Captain Lawrence's specially assigned police car and motorcycles.

The motorcade was spread over a half mile. Leading it was Deputy Chief Lumpkin with his “pilot car.” All drivers had been instructed to remain tuned to police Channel Two, which would be manned by the chief himself. All other police matters would be handled by Channel One. The press was displeased with its place in the parade. Some felt they could have reported a better story watching the motorcade from any of the buildings downtown. Even their wire representatives—AP, UPI, and American Broadcasting—sitting forward in a special car, were six hundred feet behind the Kennedys and could see little except the mayor of Dallas directly ahead.

The Secret Service men were not pleased because they were in a “hot” city and would have preferred to have two men ride the bumper of the President's car with two motorcycle policemen between him and the crowds on the sidewalks. Kennedy was “wide open,” but the SS recognized him as “the boss” and he dictated his protection. Had they been able to exercise power over his decisions, the Secret Service would have forbidden the parking lot speech in Fort Worth and the fraternizing at the
Love Field fence. These were explosive situations, but Kennedy had survived many of them with a happy smile and, as always, the Secret Service was made to appear overly protective, overbearing in insulating the President of the United States from his people, and unduly alarmed.

Dr. Burkley was unhappy. O'Donnell had relegated the President's physician to the sixteenth car. It had happened before, and this time the admiral had protested. He could be of no assistance to the President if a doctor was needed quickly. He was reminded that this was a sunny day encompassing a friendly crowd. Mr. Kennedy was in reasonably good health, and no doctor would be required. In that case, Burkley felt, there was no need for a doctor to be present. Mr. O'Donnell sent Burkley back, and ordered Mrs. Lincoln back with him.

No one was pleased, Kennedy was unhappy with the Dallas newspapers; Mrs. Kennedy, dressed for cool weather, was sweltering in a pink suit; the man who sat closest to Kennedy, Governor Connally, might have exchanged places easily with Dr. Burkley and felt better for it; Chief Curry was tired of the security burden placed on him and his city; Kellerman counted the minutes until they would all start the trip to the privacy of the LBJ Ranch; even the cop on the motorcycle behind the President's left ear, B. W. Hargis, had been on duty since 7
A.M.
and didn't look forward to an additional hour of strain. This could also be said for B. J. Martin, the cop on the other side of the rear bumper, who watched Mrs. Kennedy wave. He squinted into the sun ahead of his bike.

On that day, one man assumed an assignment without an order. This was Captain Perdue W. Lawrence, who got in his car and left Love Field before Chief Lumpkin. To Lawrence, the event suddenly appeared to be bigger, greater, more important than he had thought, and he wanted to precede the pilot car by a half mile to make certain that his sergeants and their patrolmen were holding the crowds back and blocking the cross-
street traffic. The captain was a cautious and thorough policeman. He listened to Chief Curry on Channel Two. En route alone, Lawrence displayed himself to his men at the crossings so that they would be alert to their work.

Lawrence became more and more surprised the farther he proceeded toward the Trade Mart. This was no average Dallas crowd. It was a metropolitan mob. The people were numerous even in the outlying area off the airport. At Lemmon and Atwell, the captain could not believe the number of people who waited. He recalled that, at some of these remote streets, he had not assigned a policeman to shut traffic off. Now the captain saw that it was not necessary: the pedestrians were stretched solid athwart all side streets.

At the first turn off Mockingbird, Governor Connally grabbed the metal bar in front of him and raised himself up and then sat back again. He looked incredulous. Unless all the early signs were wrong, about a quarter of a million people had turned out to see Kennedy in Dallas.

It was late in the season for a cookout. The sun was radiant over the lush hills of Virginia, and the men sat in the back of the big house, around the swimming pool. The beeches had shucked all but a few leaves from their branches, the red maples hung onto an assortment of shiny copper leaves, stiff russets, and some apple yellows. A mist hung over the hills, and yet it was not a mist. It was as though blue wood smoke had gathered in the low places to hang quietly, like old nets drying in a cove. The Attorney General was in a buoyant mood. He had broken up his Organized Crime meeting and had taken two of the visitors to his home in McLean for lunch. The thin, attentive face of Robert Morgenthau, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was at his side. At Morgenthau's side was his deputy, Silvio Mollo. The lunch, according to Mrs. Kennedy, would be creamy New England clam chowder,
some crackers, and coffee. This was a Catholic Friday—even for Morgenthau.