Super Bowl Journey Ignites Memories of JFK Assassination

DALLAS -- Since the Cowboys are noted for everything from players to cheerleaders, they've been America's Team. You've also had an iconic television drama named after these city limits. And, with the Packers in town, this comes to mind: Courtesy of a $1.2 billion stadium large enough to house everybody in Green Bay, Wis. (100,000), the locals have spent this week hosting a glitzy Super Bowl.

Still, despite the slew of captivating people, places and things they've had around Dallas for nearly the past half century to divert attention away from November 22, 1963, it's always there -- especially for those of us who remember that date and relive the shock.

The Grassy Knoll.

The Picket Fence.

The Triple Underpass.

The Texas School Book Depository.

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The Drama and The Controversy surrounding the violent murder of President John F. Kennedy.

It's always there.

More specifically, it's always there on the city's west side called Dealey Plaza, where a series of shots rang out 47 years ago during a presidential motorcade to change Dallas forever. While Texas governor John Connally survived his wounds, President Kennedy didn't.

I've been a JFK assassination buff since my early teenage years, and it happened after a riveting moment. In April of 1968, while growing up in South Bend, Ind., Bobby Kennedy passed through town during his own motorcade while running for president. As he leaned over the edge of his car with his wife, Ethel, holding tightly on the other side to keep him from falling over, Bobby reached out and touched my finger tips.

Right then, I was Kennedy obsessed.

Two months later, Bobby was assassinated like his brother, and I was hooked for life on the deaths of both Kennedys.

But particularly the JFK one.

I've been to Dealey Plaza tens of times. Except for taller trees and the removal in 1973 of the Hertz Rental Car sign from the top of the old depository that is now the Dallas County Administration Building, Dealey Plaza is frozen in time, with the clock eternally at 12:30 p.m. (CST) when the crowd went from cheering to screaming.

It's the definitive place for triangular gunfire, an ambush and the shooting of a president and a governor riding in an open car.

Not only is it always there, it never gets old, because there never is a time I come to Dallas that I don't experience something new surrounding the events of November 22, 1963.

There is this time, for instance, starting with The Ride.

Along the way to the media sessions this week involving the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Packers, the police-led buses carrying reporters from around the universe went down Elm Street -- yes, that one, the same one that featured a presidential motorcade.

And just like back then, we turned left near the most infamous seven-story building of red brick in the world (the old Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired three shots from a sixth-floor window). Then we slowly rolled down the winding slope and over two white X marks in the middle of the street.

The marks are several feet apart. The first one is where a bullet struck President Kennedy in the throat, and the second one is where he was slammed in the head by a bullet that exploded his brain across the limousine and onto the street.

Sirens were blaring back then in 1963, and they were doing the same when those media buses continued their deliberate path on Elm Street toward The Triple Underpass that was a few yards ahead and that once took a bleeding and dying president to the Stemmons Freeway along the way to his official death at Parkland Hospital.


You could see The Grassy Knoll to the right, where Abraham Zapruder was the only person to record the horrific scene with his 8 mm Bell & Howell camera. You could see The Picket Fence near The Grassy Knoll, where a second gunman took the fatal head shot at the president. That is, if you join me in ranking the Warren Commission (as in Oswald did it alone) with the likes of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Later that day, I returned for one of my lengthy stays in Dealey Plaza -- complete with another trip to the chilling Sixth Floor Museum that includes Oswald's alleged sniper's nest -- and I encountered The Witness, somebody who only would go by Big Mike.

He was a 60-year-old, heavily bearded black man who said he was at the corner of Houston and Elm streets as a 13-year-old when the presidential motorcade made its turn by the depository. Said Big Mike, sighing, with a James Earl Jones voice, "We took the bus from Oak Cliff (a Dallas suburb) to see the president. It was my grandmother, my aunt and some neighbors, and we were there since 11 a.m. Waiting. Excited. And contrary to what others may tell you, there was so much confusion that you couldn't tell what was going on at the time."

Then Big Mike paused, while glancing toward The Picket Fence, before adding, "But one thing that everybody can tell you who was here. I only heard that last shot. I wasn't close enough to see what it hit or where it hit, but like a bunch of folks, I saw a puff of smoke coming from (The Picket Fence). Everybody who was here saw that."

According to Big Mike, he comes to Dealey Plaza often, just to share his thoughts with visitors.

What does Big Mike do for a living?

"Not important," Big Mike said, before moving away. "Sorry. I wish I could talk more, but I've got to go."

Then, while I headed back to my downtown hotel, I encountered The Policeman, a Dallas native who has worked on the force for the last 16 years. He agreed to discuss November 22, 1963, but only through anonymity. He said he was born the year after the assassination.

Said The Policeman, "You have a lot of folks who don't like to talk about what happened back then, because they feel it brought shame to the city and somewhat to the police force. Some of us talk about it in private, but the last officer who was left from that period retired last year."

I asked The Policeman a lot of things, but mostly about Oswald, who was murdered by Jack Ruby two days after the assassination in the basement of police headquarters -- despite 70 to 80 officers present. "It was just the way it was back then, when you had reporters and people like Jack Ruby mingling with officers, but that would never happen now, because the guy would be more protected," The Policeman said.

Here was my biggest question to The Policeman: Even though Oswald was interrogated for 12 hours before his death, the Dallas detectives involved never recorded the sessions or took notes.

Or so the official story goes.

The Policeman eased into a smile, glanced around and said, "Oh, you know. Somebody had to take notes."

See why I love this stuff?