That date is seared into my brain tonight. I just got back from The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which is in the Texas Book Depository, the building from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy.
It's hard for me to put into words what I felt as I took the audio tour through the museum. (But you know I'm going to try.) I was eleven years from being born when JFK was killed. I have no personal context for the happening. Truly though, I felt like I had been right there.
You pick up an audio tour headset and start it as you get off the elevator on the sixth floor. You are guided through photographs and artifacts of JFK and Jackie's marriage, the family, and the issues that he dealt with in the thousand days (approximately) of his presidency--the Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs, man's first steps on the moon, his conservation efforts, and the civil rights struggle. And then you turn a corner and you start to see photos of he and the First Lady arriving in Texas. That's when my mind started saying, "Turn around. Don't let this happen to you."
You continue to walk and listen to the tour as they get in the open limousine and start to drive through Dallas. You see news reels of happy people waving to him with pride in their eyes. You see this beautiful couple who represent the hope of a nation. Then the corridor narrows, and you walk past photos taken from video footage. Frame by frame, you see him smiling and waving, you see his body move forward, you see Jackie moving toward him, and you see his head touch his chest as her face changes from confusion to terror and agony as she realizes something horrible has just happened to her husband. A large photo shows a Secret Service man running to the limousine with his arms stretched out to pull her from the car and to shield her.
And then you walk around that photo, and there is the window. Boxes are piled up around it to create the stand that Oswald balanced his rifle on. And you think, "I'm so close. If I'd just been in this spot, I could have run at him and tackled him before he could shoot." I literally stood there thinking that I could have stopped the assasination of a President. But for forty-six odd years or so.
The rest of the museum shows you the grief of the nation and the world. I purely broke down as I watched the video that showed John Jr. saluting his father's casket. He's just a tiny little guy, and his father has been taken from him. No child should ever have to face that.
One quote from a speech I heard in the museum really resonated with me. JFK said, "Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind."
I wish peace for us all. Please, go forth and wage it. We must.
The Book Depository. The second window down from the top on the far right is the one at which Oswald stood to shoot.
The Grassy Knoll, from which some believe another shooter fired. I can't for the life of me see how this could bear out forensically, but an hour at a museum doesn't exactly make me an expert.
Comments
You're making me so home sick with your pictures of my town!
Posted by: donna at June 24, 2009 8:39 PM
We went there many moons ago when we were in Texas for my sister's getting married. It's interesting and sad and tragic and all that other stuff all at once.
However, Kennedy was not president when we first walked on the moon. That was Nixon. Kennedy gave the 'we can do this before the end of the decade' speech, but he didn't live to see it done.
Posted by: kathy at June 25, 2009 10:26 AM
This is a wonderful post, Casey. Having spent an entire summer doing research at Dealey Plaza (both at the Sixth Floor Museum and at the Dallas Morning News archive) and having gone back to Dealy numerous times, I had some of the same impressions as you did.
Walking through the museum the first time, with the audio tour, it was as if I could stop time for a moment and hold history back before turning that corner to the place where the window is, followed by the large reenactment exhibit. For a moment there is simply a smiling man, his wife, the goveror and his wife, and an amount of home nearly unparalleled. I remember sitting in the little video viewing room watching the black-and-white video of the funeral and two women sitting next to me shedding tears, not the first time in their mature lives they had shed tears for this man and probably not the last.
I hope you signed the guest book and looked at a few of the other notes left there. On my second visit to the museum, a man who had come before me was actually in uniform at Arlington when Kennedy was buried. And of all the things he must have remembered, he simply wrote a thank you to Bobby Kennedy who had graciously nodded his head at the young police officer, silently acknowledging him that day. Still gives me chills...
Thank you for sharing this.
Posted by: thepoliticalgame at June 26, 2009 9:39 AM
Yeah, I had a hard time with that museum as well. It was really trippy.
Reading your account makes me think of the obvious potential Obama parallel. Ugh.
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