Like a lot of folks, I’ve had this so-called “bucket list” for years. Just never called it that. Stuff you want to do some day. Stuff that is doable but never convenient and often impractical. But you check them off as best you can over the years.
Visit ancestral Ireland: check. Go for a hot-air balloon ride: check. See Niagara Falls: check. Experience Carnaval in Rio: check. Take in a game at the old Yankee Stadium: check.
But there was this one–eminently doable–list item that I kept deferring. Ironically, it concerned a subject that I’ve researched and written about. A subject that is embedded–no, seared–into the historic fabric of this country. A certain venue in Dallas. Yes, that one.
That infamous Texas School Book Depository and that notorious sixth floor corner window: check. Finally.
It’s now the Dallas County Administration Building at 411 Elm Street in downtown. But it houses the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. It was established in 1989 to chronicle the life, death and legacy of President John F. Kennedy and attracts more than 325,000 visitors annually. It’s owned and operated by the non-profit Dallas County Historical Foundation.
The Museum’s permanent collection includes historic films, photos and other artifacts. Not among them: the most graphic portions of the Abraham Zapruder film.
For those of us of a certain age the presentation of the life, strife and times of John F. Kennedy is an exercise in cascading memories and emotions. All that might have happened had Dallas not happened. And that includes Vietnam.
Window of Hindsight
Then you confront that window–actually the one next to it because the designated, cardboard box-laden “sniper’s nest” is encased in glass. First–and overwhelming–impression: This is a room-service venue for an assassin. You couldn’t order it up any better. Unobstructed view of the motorcade some 265 feet below. A hairpin turn that slowed a presidential convertible to less than 10 miles per hour.
Here it’s impossible not to play the hindsight card.
Although JFK’s motorcade was greeted in friendly and enthusiastic fashion by virtually all those along the route on Nov. 22, 1963, this was still Dallas, the “hate capital of Dixie.” Not exactly Peoria. Worse yet–and there’s no mention of it at the Museum–rumors had been rife earlier that month that President Kennedy was going to be an assassin’s target in Chicago and Tampa. That’s why the Chicago visit was canceled at the last minute and Tampa security was unprecedented.
And yet the Secret Service and Dallas Police Department failed to communicate with each other and plan accordingly.
No Oswald Context
One other point about the presentation. There is no biographical sketch of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of killing Kennedy from that sixth floor lair nearly a half century ago. His name is synonymous with the crime of the century. It begs for context.
I know enough about Oswald to know he doesn’t fit the stereotype of the loser-loner out to make horrific history.
For openers: While in the Marines, he was assigned to Atsugi (Japan), the U-2 spy base. As in Gary Powers flights. As in strict security clearance. He was sent to foreign language school where he learned Russian, which he would speak–and write–well. He would become a “defector” to–and then a “re-defector” from–the Soviet Union. Such scenarios were hardly without precedent during the height of the Cold War. He was known to be involved with both anti-Castro exiles in Louisiana as well as the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee. As for the latter, he was the one and only FPCC “member” in the New Orleans “branch.”
Suffice it to say, he was no John Hinckley, Squeaky Fromme or Arthur Bremer.
I broached the subject of Oswald with Pauline Martin, the Museum’s librarian/archivist. She acknowledged that the curators and “interpretation team” were aware that a pertinent Oswald inclusion was missing. But it wasn’t some blatant oversight, she reassured.
The original exhibit designers and curator omitted information about Oswald intentionally for the sake of “sensitivity” to the locals. A majority had lived through Dallas’ day of infamy and were “opposed to establishing a museum about the assassination of a beloved president,” Martin explained.
But that could change. “Now as we are approaching the 50th anniversary, more and more people view the tragic event as history, not a memory,” she pointedly noted.
Still Haunted
One postscript.
With its 1.2 million population, Dallas is the 9th largest U.S. city. It’s still known for the Cowboys, oil, the first prime time soap opera and barbecue, but its reputation increasingly is as a convention city and financial center that’s home to a number of corporate headquarters.
And yet.
A 50ish woman came to our aid and helped us determine which line of the DART light-rail system would get us closest to the (impressive) Dallas Museum of Art. “There’s a lot to do here,” she proudly pointed out. “But all people know is we killed Kennedy.”
Sobering.