Will Dallas ever shake the Kennedy stigma?

[gc]

Will Dallas ever shake the Kennedy stigma?
Family denies grudge; others say city will always bear burden of guilt
09:14 PM CST on Wednesday, November 19, 2003
By MICHAEL E. YOUNG / The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/localnews/stories/112003dnmetnevervisit.61c45.html

Dallas feared the worst that day, until six tragic seconds proved how unimaginably terrible the worst could be.

In the span of a single breath, a horrified world chiseled the city's epitaph. It became the place that killed John F. Kennedy. For 40 uneasy years since, Dallas and the Kennedy family have struggled with the city's notorious past, never forgotten and, some say, never fully forgiven.

"I think the Kennedy family felt it was Dallas and Texas that were somehow responsible for the assassination," said Glenn Linden, associate professor of history at Southern Methodist University and one of the founders of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.

Those close to the Kennedys say that sentiment just isn't true.

"The Kennedy family feels no particular animosity toward Dallas," said Melody Miller, a senior aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and longtime spokeswoman for the Kennedy family.

"The part that remains difficult is that this is where President Kennedy was murdered. Emotionally, they do not want to revisit that pain and grief."

Several members of the Kennedy family have come to Dallas, including two of the president's nephews, Anthony Shriver and U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy.

And on a quiet Sunday last summer, Eunice Shriver, the president's sister, paid an unannounced visit to the Sixth Floor Museum, said executive director Jeff West.

"She was the only immediate member of the family who has been in Dallas in the last 40 years," Mr. West said.

Ms. Miller visited Dallas and the museum when it opened in 1989 and told family members, as well as civic leaders in Dallas with whom she met, that they had done "a most honorable job of creating a museum that did not exploit or commercialize President Kennedy's death. The Kennedy family knows this."

But, she said, "the Kennedy family prefers to remember their loved ones and celebrate their lives, rather than dwell in the past or look backward at such a shattering loss."

Ted Kennedy, who was in Texas two weeks ago to receive an award for public service from former President George Bush, hasn't visited Dallas, though Dr. Linden said museum officials asked him "over and over to come."

No privacy


One reason he has declined, friends say, is there is no way he could go to the Sixth Floor Museum without being watched, and it would be traumatic for him to try to endure such memories in public.
But a letter from the senator read at the rededication of the Kennedy Memorial in Dallas in 2000 seems to bury any idea of animosity.

"On behalf of all members of the Kennedy family, please accept my gratitude for the care and concern you have shown in renovating your memorial to President Kennedy," he wrote. "It means a great deal to know that the citizens of Dallas County loved him too."

But the pain from the president's murder lingered for years, so much so that Special Olympics International, founded by Mrs. Shriver, abruptly abandoned plans to hold the 1995 event in Dallas for fear that the focus would shift from the games to the assassination.

The pain lingers for the city as well, and particularly for those who remember President Kennedy's triumphant ride through downtown and the horrific moments ending in his death.

"The city was shocked, and there were a lot of conflicting emotions in the first days," said Darwin Payne, then a young journalist in Dallas and now professor emeritus of communications at SMU.

"People thought something terrible could happen, and it did. But it came not from the far right, but from the left," he said.

"So people here said, 'You can't blame Dallas; Dallas gave the president a positive reception,' " he said. "But then you had the other side, the Kennedy loyalists, and they said, 'You created this environment of hatred.' "

As people across the country pointed accusing fingers, Dallas officials fumbled for the proper way to proceed.

"There was no good rule book for responding to something like this," Mr. West said. "It was something we didn't know how to handle in the '60s. It was a terrible event, and no one knew exactly what to do."

Mayor Earle Cabell offered sympathies on behalf of the city. So did federal Judge Sarah Hughes, who had given Lyndon B. Johnson the oath of office after Kennedy's death.

But to the watching world, Dallas officials seemed intent only on salvaging the city's reputation, as tattered as it was.

"It has been very clear that the city of Dallas is not so much interested in its own intrinsic fault in the murder of the president as it is in leading others to believe that it was not at fault at all," an Episcopal priest wrote to the mayor.

The problem confronting Dallas was that even though America and the world were shocked at a presidential assassination, few seemed surprised that if something like that happened, it would happen in Dallas.

It only confirmed what so many already believed.

"People thought that's the way Texas is," Dr. Linden said. "Bobby Kennedy died in Los Angeles, but people don't blame L.A. Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis, but we don't blame Memphis for that."

Dallas, though, had acquired a national reputation as a hard and intolerant place, a rabid corner of a conservative state where right-wing extremism prospered and Texas' lone Republican congressman, the ultra-conservative Bruce Alger, was elected to five consecutive terms, Mr. Payne said.

'Unseemly ways'


"You saw a lot of bumper stickers here in those days – 'Get the U.S. Out of the U.N.' The John Birch Society was quite popular and groups like the National Indignation Committee," Mr. Payne said. "There was considerable right-wing sentiment issued in very unseemly ways."
But two specific incidents cemented Dallas' reputation in the national consciousness.

The first came in November 1960, just a few days before the presidential election, when Johnson, the Democratic vice presidential candidate and a towering figure in Texas politics, tried to cross Commerce Street for a luncheon at the Adolphus Hotel with his wife, Lady Bird, at his side.

Several hundred jeering protesters blocked their path. One carried a Johnson campaign poster with the scribbled message, "Smiling Judas." Mr. Alger stood at the front of the crowd, shouting at Johnson and waving a sign that read, "LBJ Sold Out to the Yankee Socialists."

Security officers urged Johnson to use side doors to avoid the crowd, but he refused.

"No, I only hope the day never comes when a man cannot walk his lady across the street in Dallas," he said.

It took 45 minutes to make the crossing.

"Lady Bird said she'd never been so frightened as she was at that time," Mr. Payne said.

Three years later, before the president's scheduled appearance, U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson came to Dallas to speak at a U.N. Day program.

"There were some people who tried to downplay it later, even Adlai Stevenson himself," Mr. Payne said. "He said it was just a few people, but it wasn't just a few. I'd say it was half the auditorium, and that auditorium was packed."

During Mr. Stevenson's speech, protesters coughed in unison. They walked the aisles with upside-down American flags. Frank McGehee, leader of the National Indignation Committee, stood up and began shouting until police removed him.

With the speech over, Mr. Stevenson began to leave when an Oak Cliff housewife swung her anti-U.N. placard and bopped him on the head, an incident caught by TV and newspaper photographers. And as he neared a waiting car, an Irving college student spit at him.

"After I shoved him in the car ... [the protesters] started rocking the car, and the driver had to gun the car and almost kill a person to get out," the late Dallas retailer Stanley Marcus said years later. "There was a mob scene that night."

Walter Cronkite showed the television footage the next evening on the CBS news, and newspapers across the country ran the photo on the front page.

"After the Stevenson incident, the city was terrified," Mr. Payne said. "The leaders did not want to have an embarrassing incident when the president came.

"We had an ordinance passed banning protest groups from gathering. We had speeches from the mayor and the police chief, bombarding the people with the need to give the president a good reception.

"And they did – except for Lee Harvey Oswald."

That sealed the city's reputation. But it also led to significant changes.

Mr. Cabell gave up his mayoral seat to run for Congress against Mr. Alger "because he was seen to be an extremist, and that was seen as a bad thing," Mr. Payne said.

And the far-right groups that had been so popular and enjoyed at least official tolerance if not endorsement soon disappeared.

"I think there's no doubt that this pushed the city to a more moderate position," Mr. Payne said.

But it couldn't fully wash away the guilt, which helps explain the city's decisions to distance itself from assassination events and controversies.

"I think Dallas probably satisfies itself that it steered out of the image that prevailed at the time of the assassination and that it's probably more tasteful to low-key it now," said Dr. Dennis Simon, an associate professor of politics at SMU.

Over the decades, Dallas emerged as a modern, moderate American city, and time eased the perceptions and healed the wounds.

"As the country has gotten over it, the [Kennedy] family has gotten over it," Mr. West said. "Now the community has to get over it, too."

Staff writer Carl Leubsdorf contributed to this report.

E-mail myoung@dallasnews.com

[Gen5Dallas]

I guess The News' editors didn't have space to include a couple more "specific incidents":
______________

"However ill-suited for the job he might be, however uninterested he was, Ted Dealey was the only remaining son of the founder. The burden was his. In 1940 his father gave Ted the title of president. Six years later G. B. Dealey died of a heart attack, and Ted had the reins all to himself.

Coarse and Ugly

The new publisher of the Dallas Morning News was unlike any other Dealey. And he was remarkably unlike his father. George Bannerman Dealey had been a serious, industrious child. Ted was expelled from the sixth grade and later sent to a private school for delinquents. G.B. was a cultured man with a fine-tuned sense of propriety. Ted once wrote a Belo executive who had moved into new quarters. "Some day when you're sitting in that fancy new office of yours, keep in mind that at one time in that exact location stood the finest whorehouse in the entire city of Dallas." In a collection of essays about his childhood, titled Diaper Days of Dallas, Ted offered anecdotes about his "masturbation period" and urinating in his pants. G. B. Dealey was a progressive man who ordered the staff to stop referring to "Jew girls" and was sensitive about the treatment of black people. Ted laced his speech with remarks about "niggers." G. B. Dealey never drank, but Ted, like his late brother, drank too much, and the booze turned his mood coarse and ugly.

Ted cared little for the civic meetings and causes, the fundraising drives and betterment groups that had been his father's lifework. He became a charter member of the Dallas Citizens Council, the group of Dallas executives that would chart the city's political course from 1937 to the mid-seventies, but he rarely went to its meetings. He preferred to hunt and fish, often at a private lodge near Athens called Koon Kreek Klub, frequented by other members of the Dallas power structure. His great civic passion was the Dallas zoo.

But the most critical difference between father and son was reflected on the editorial page. Gone was the sense of moderation. The editorials began to take on Ted's personality — strident and shrill, outspoken and mean. Ted Dealey was a red-baiter, a supporter of Joe McCarthy, an unforgiving opponent of the United Nations, an enemy of social welfare and unions and federal aid, and so was his newspaper. In the News' editorial columns, the Supreme Court was a "judicial Kremlin." Liberals were fools, dupes, or fellow travelers. U.S. recognition of Russia, an action that G. B. Dealey had applauded, was a "Queer Deal." Ted Dealey's News never strayed far from its free-enterprise gospel, not even when it was speaking to the high rate of traffic deaths in Texas. The accidents, it observed, resulted from "the same human qualities that made America great—willingness to risk, driving energy, rugged individualism."

Just as G. B. Dealey's editorial page had changed the Dallas of an earlier era, Ted Dealey's shaped his. The public life of the city turned ugly in the fifties and sixties. The art museum took down a Picasso after a barrage of calls protested that the artist was a communist. When the museum board resisted attempts to close a photography exhibit that included Russian photographers, the News headlined its story MUSEUM SAYS REDS CAN STAY. Police pressure forced all local bookstores to take Tropic of Cancer off their shelves. In 1960 Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson were spat on during a campaign visit to the Adolphus Hotel. Four days later John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States, an event that led to Ted Dealey's most notorious public acts.

In October 1961 Ted joined a group of nineteen Texas publishers for a Friday lunch at the White House. It was a typical presidential courting ritual: an elegant bite to eat, an off-the-record briefing, and a bit of pleasant conversation, all harmless enough. But this time was to be different.

After lunch Kennedy spoke to the publishers about foreign affairs and then asked if any of his guests had anything to say. One publisher got up and delivered the best wishes of his local citizenry. Then Ted Dealey rose, pulling out a prepared statement. Since Kennedy's election, the News' editorial page had leveled an unrelenting attack on the president: he was a buffoon, a thief, thirty times a fool. Now, face to face, Dealey continued the assault. "The general opinion of the grassroots thinking in this country is that you and your administration are weak sisters," Dealey read to the president. "If we stand firm, there will be no war. The Russians will back down. We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline's tricycle."

The other publishers were aghast. "Mr. President," said Jim Chambers, publisher of the Times Herald (Dallas' afternoon paper) and a man who knew Ted Dealey well, "I think you should know that Mr. Dealey does not express the sentiments of all the publishers around this table." The incident produced a national media fire storm, and the News relished every moment. Around the state and the country, Ted Dealey was condemned as a reactionary and a boor. But in Dallas, the News received more than 2,000 letters, and 1700 of them voiced approval of his actions. In Dallas it was Jim Chambers who fielded the stacks of hate mail.

Two years later a News advertising salesman took the copy for an unusual ad up to the executive suite. He was worried about the ad's strong language and uncertain origin. Normally such questions would have been routed through Joe Dealey, Ted's son, but Joe was away at a newspaper convention and wouldn't be back until President Kennedy's visit the next day. Instead, the decision was left to Ted.

Even today Joe Dealey shakes his head at the memory of the ad. "Damn, we ought not to have done it," he says. "If I'd been sitting there, I'd have killed it." But Ted was sitting there, and so, on November 22, 1963, John Kennedy was greeted with the ad that would forever link the Dallas Morning News with the tragic events of that day. "Welcome, Mr. Kennedy, to Dallas," it began, and it went on to ask a series of rhetorical questions, such as "Why have you scrapped the Monroe Doctrine in favor of the Spirit of Moscow?" The entire ad was enclosed in a thick black border. That morning Kennedy read the ad and handed it to his wife. "Oh, you know, we're heading into nut country," he said. Three hours later he was struck dead by an assassin's bullet — as his limousine passed through a plaza named for G. B. Dealey."

-- excerpt from "The Legacy of Citizen Robert," by Peter Elkind. Published in the July, 1985 issue of Texas Monthly.
________

Even 40 years after Kennedy's murder, apparently, it's hard to to acknowledge fact -- much less "wash away the guilt."

[Gen5Dallas]

Text of the infamous, full-page "black-bordered ad," published Nov. 22, 1963, in the Dallas Morning News:
___


WELCOME, MR. KENNEDY, TO DALLAS. . .

. . .A CITY so disgraced by a recent Liberal smear attempt that its citizens have just elected two more Conservative Americans to public office.

. . .A CITY that is an economic "boom town," not because of Federal handouts, but through conservative economic and business practices.

. . .A CITY that will continue to grow and prosper despite efforts by you and your administration to penalize it for its non-conformity to New Frontierism.

. . .A CITY that rejected your philosophy and policies in 1960 and will do so again in 1964--even more emphatically than before.

MR. KENNEDY, despite contentions on the part of your administration, the State Department, the Mayor of Dallas, the Dallas City Council, and members of your party, we free-thinking and America-thinking citizens of Dallas still have, through a Constitution largely ignored by you, the right to address our grievances, to question you, to disagree with you, and to criticize you.

In asserting this constitutional right, we wish to ask you publicly the following questions--indeed, questions of paramount importance and interest to all free peoples everywhere--which we trust you will answer. . .in public, without sophistry.

These questions are:

WHY is Latin America turning either anti-American or Communistic, or both, despite increased U. S. foreign aid, State Department policy, and your own Ivy-Tower pronouncements?

WHY do you say we have built a "wall of freedom" around Cuba when there is no freedom in Cuba today? Because of your policy, thousands of Cubans have been imprisoned, are starving and being persecuted--with thousands already murdered and thousands more awaiting execution and, in addition, the entire population of almost 7,000,000 Cubans are living in slavery.

WHY have you approved the sale of wheat and corn to our enemies when you know the Communist soldiers "travel on their stomachs" just as ours do? Communist soldiers are daily wounding and or killing American soldiers in South Viet Nam.

WHY did you host and entertain Tito--Moscow's Trojan Horse--just a short time after our sworn enemy, Khrushchev, embraced the Yugoslav dictator as a great hero and leader of Communism?

WHY have you urged greater aid, comfort, recognition, and understanding for Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, and other Communists countries, while turning your back on the pleas of Hungarian, East German, Cuban and other anti-Communists freedom fighters?

WHY did Cambodia kick the U.S. out of its country after we poured nearly 400 Million Dollars of aid into its ultra-leftist government?

WHY has Gus Hall, head of the U.S. Communist Party praised almost every one of your policies and announced that the party will endorse and support your re-election in 1964?

WHY have you banned the showing at U.S. military bases of the film "Operation Abolition"--the movie by the House Committee on Un-American Activities exposing Communism in America?

WHY have you ordered or permitted your brother Bobby, the Attorney General, to go soft on Communists, fellow-travelers, and ultra-leftists in America, while permitting him to persecute loyal Americans who criticize you, your administration, and your leadership?

WHY are you in favor of the U.S. continuing to give economic aid to Argentina, in spite of the fact that Argentina has just seized almost 400 Million Dollars of American private property?

WHY has the Foreign Policy of the United States degenerated to the point that the C.I.A. is arranging coups and having staunch Anti-Communists Allies of the U.S. bloodily exterminated.

WHY have you scrapped the Monroe Doctrine in favor of the "Spirit of Moscow"?

MR. KENNEDY, as citizens of the United States of America, we DEMAND answers to these questions, and we want them NOW.

THE AMERICAN FACT-FINDING COMMITTEE
"An unaffillated and non-partisan group of citizens who wish truth"

BERNARD WEISSMAN,
Chairman

P.O. Box 1792 --- Dallas 21, Texas

[dallastophoenix]

Dallas will never be able to lose the fact that such a horrible act happened here 40yrs ago. I'm actually proud that we've embraced it and moved on... the museums and plazas dedicated to what happened just serve as a reminder - not a hindrance of what dallas experienced. After all, as bad a thing that happened so long ago, it has actually catapulted dallas' into the world's view. love us or hate us, they still come from far away to take pictures, tour sites, and remember that fateful day. the ability for dallas to leave other, more uplifting, impressions to these visitors is always the key.

[aceplace]

I've always thought the Dallas locals were delusional about the Kennedy assassination.

Do you think that Memphis is still quivering with guilt over MLKs assassination?

Do you think that LA is on a short fuse about Robert Kennedy being shot there?

Grow up, people...

[BIMS 01]

As influential as MLK and Bobby Kennedy were, the weren't THE PRESIDENT of the US. That's the difference.

[aceplace]

No, if Memphis was not responsible for MLK's assassination, and if Los Angeles was not responsible for Robert Kennedy, then Dallas was not responsible for the death of his brother.

The stature, or occupation of the victim, has nothing to do with culpability.

If people in Dallas feel insecure about the historic event, it is because they are insecure...

[F4shionablecHa0s]

Does anyone from Dallas really feel insecure about this event? I, for one, am not "quivering with guilt". Most people I know simply see it as something that happened here. Nothing more.

[tamtagon]

This murder stays popular because so many people believe guilty parties continue to evade the long arm of the law. It will remain a popular topic until everyone has been convinced the murderer and the sponsors of the murderer have been revealed. Intrigue and curiosity keep the murder in our short term memory. Would it be appropriate for the Book Depository to house an organization managing an ongoing chronicle thoroughly documenting the many theories circling this murder?

[tamtagon]

To say Dallas and Texas is reposnsible for this murder is not too outrageous; most people still have the impression (stereotype) that it very possible to walk around town with a rifle and not attract too much attention.

[honestruerealman]

Although there was quite a bit of hatred towards John Kennedy in Dallas during his assassination, the epicenter for hatred in general was in New Orleans -- because of the mafia and the bay of pigs as depicted in the movie by Oliver Stone. I don't think anything will ever change in how civilized New York City editors view their world beyond their boundaries. Just a short distance away from their civilization and the state of New Jersey becomes a big drop off in sophistication in their view. From there you have the hillbillys, the heartland, the deep south and the wild western frontier and so on. The further they read about a place from New York City, and the more they become naive about it. Fortunately, since the time of Kennedy's attack, I think the average American has become more sophisticated in how the legal system works in the United States. Was Oswald guilty of shooting the President? Was O.J. Simpson not guilty in slashing the throat of his wife? Was Michael Jackson not guilty in sexually abusing young boys at underwear parties?

[VectorWega]

Was Oswald guilty of shooting the President?

Yes.


Was O.J. Simpson not guilty in slashing the throat of his wife?

Most likely it was his son, but at best, he tried to cover it up. At worst, he committed the act himself.


Was Michael Jackson not guilty in sexually abusing young boys at underwear parties?

Personally, I believe he should be locked up for life given his sad mental condition (believing he is a little kid, and because of such, participating in behavior that a grown man should not be participating in). Is he guilty of sexually abusing young boys though? Possibly. Did he abuse the kid that brought the case against him? Very doubtful.

[Boredkid]

While I do like the fact that some thing written in the history books can be seen from my window, I just wish people at the grassy knoll would remeber that people live and work in dallas. They will stand in traffic to take a pic of themselves on one of the "X"s. Countless times I have had to weave or slam on my breaks to keep from hitting a tourist who steps out into the road.

[honestruerealman]

Yes.



Most likely it was his son, but at best, he tried to cover it up. At worst, he committed the act himself.



Personally, I believe he should be locked up for life given his sad mental condition (believing he is a little kid, and because of such, participating in behavior that a grown man should not be participating in). Is he guilty of sexually abusing young boys though? Possibly. Did he abuse the kid that brought the case against him? Very doubtful.

O.J. simpson was not found 'not guilty.' He was only found not guilty in the criminal case. In the civil case, where evidence is actually allowed to where the jury can find out what really happened, O.J. clearly killed his wife. In regards to Michael Jackson and his case, he did settle at one time what would have been a civil case. Doing so kept that case from going to criminal court. Oswald was never tried in either civil or criminal court. He was assassinated. The judgement that Oswald killed President Kennedy was determined by a process of official looking officials and not a jury of his peers. This process is used in numerous third world nations. This is what I was referring to in regards to Americans becoming more sophisticated in regards to their legal system. Perhaps I am wrong.

[honestruerealman]

While I do like the fact that some thing written in the history books can be seen from my window, I just wish people at the grassy knoll would remeber that people live and work in dallas. They will stand in traffic to take a pic of themselves on one of the "X"s. Countless times I have had to weave or slam on my breaks to keep from hitting a tourist who steps out into the road.

It might surprise many in here that the Kennedy assassination sight is actually a tourist attraction that attracts people from all over the world. It brings in airline passengers who use hotel rooms. It is a special area to many people and they tend to treat it with reverence. So citizens should respect this and be patient with them when they happen to step out into the streets.

[sterling]

Ford's Theater in Washington has never been forgotten as the place where Lincoln was shot. To launch a PR campaign to try and "cheer the image up" would be ludicrous. History is history. And Dallas can not reverse it, rewrite it or blame it on Fort Worth. To try and do so, just makes Dallas seem pitifully wracked with guilt. It happened. Get over it and stop blaming Dallas problems on some notion that people are somehow punishing Dallas for it. Talk about conspiracy theories.

[honestruerealman]

Ford's Theater in Washington has never been forgotten as the place where Lincoln was shot. To launch a PR campaign to try and "cheer the image up" would be ludicrous. History is history. And Dallas can not reverse it, rewrite it or blame it on Fort Worth. To try and do so, just makes Dallas seem pitifully wracked with guilt. It happened. Get over it and stop blaming Dallas problems on some notion that people are somehow punishing Dallas for it. Talk about conspiracy theories.


We all like to think of ourselves as sophisticated and pretend to know in real time about all the deep things in life. Yet people living back during the time of the Kennedy assassination, did not know a lot about the happenings in the world. We didn't know that John Kennedy was having an affair with Marilyn Monroe. We didn't know that his brother Robert was harrassing the mafia. We didn't know about the Bay of Pigs failure. We didn't know that John Kennedy agreed to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey. We didn't know that John Kennedy was making plans for the eventual withdrawel from Vietnam. Not even Walter Cronkite and all those incredibly intelligent looking people he worked amongst, knew much about what was really going on. We didn't even begin to know these things until years or decades afterwards. What was immediately known by naive New York City editors, was that the city of Dallas was populated by right winged extremists who hated Kennedy. Then somehow within this bastion of extemists, Oswald, a left winged extremist, decided to make a point by shooting a liberal president. Now if this isn't a work of fiction, it is at least a wild theory. In other words, the best truth to be found within the literature of history itself, is a theory.

[kenc]

To pick this up again more than a year since the last posting, (why doesn't someone delete these old threads?), I think Dallas has already shaken the stigma. Most Dallasites were not born in 1963. Most of those who were alive in 1963 lived somewhere else. If you travel to another city in the US and mention you live in Dallas, they think " oh...that's where Bush is from". If you travel abroad and mention you are from Dallas, they think "JR Ewing" the TV show.

[tamtagon]

To pick this up again more than a year since the last posting, (why doesn't someone delete these old threads?), I think Dallas has already shaken the stigma. Most Dallasites were not born in 1963. Most of those who were alive in 1963 lived somewhere else. If you travel to another city in the US and mention you live in Dallas, they think " oh...that's where Bush is from". If you travel abroad and mention you are from Dallas, they think "JR Ewing" the TV show.

There was a six month lull between posts, not more than a year.

Old threads are not deleted for the same reason the library doesnt throw away old books - the topic is interesting to someone.

When I talk casually to people in Atlanta about Dallas, the most frequent reaction is either love it or hate it, but the Kennedy assassination almost never comes up.

[aceplace]

There was a six month lull between posts, not more than a year.

Old threads are not deleted for the same reason the library doesnt throw away old books - the topic is interesting to someone.

When I talk casually to people in Atlanta about Dallas, the most frequent reaction is either love it or hate it, but the Kennedy assassination almost never comes up.That's been my experience, Tamtagon. There is no "Kennedy Stigma".

[dfwcre8tive]

JFK hearse to be sold
Car that took coffin to Love Field to be auctioned in May
05:44 AM CST on Tuesday, January 30, 2007
By MICHAEL E. YOUNG / The Dallas Morning News
myoung@dallasnews.com

The white Cadillac hearse earned its place in American history for a somber three-mile drive from Parkland Memorial Hospital to Dallas Love Field the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963.

Inside, a bronze coffin carried the body of President John F. Kennedy, his widow within arm's reach, his personal physician and a Secret Service agent nearby. Another Secret Service agent took the wheel.

The trip took 10 minutes, 10 minutes of an extraordinary and tragic afternoon.

The hearse, the first to roll off the assembly line for Cadillac's 1964 model year, remained in use for a few more years before being sold to a private owner in 1968.

But in May, it will be back in the public view, up for auction at a sale of rare and classic cars in suburban Houston.

"We think it will end up in a museum," said John Lyons, vice president of sales and marketing for the Worldwide Group, the auction company handling the May 5 sale. "Whether it will be bought by a museum or bought and donated, we don't know."

With a body built by the Miller-Meteor factory in Piqua, Ohio, the hearse arrived in Dallas in October 1963 for display at a national funeral directors convention, Mr. Lyons said. When the convention ended, the car was purchased by the O'Neal funeral home of Dallas, which provided hearse and ambulance services for the city.

"The owner happened to be at the hospital on other business when JFK was brought in," Mr. Lyons said, "and he called an office accountant and told them to put the nicest coffin they had in the brand-new Cadillac and bring it right over.

"He understood the gravity of what had happened."

Aubrey Rike, then a 25-year-old driver for O'Neal, witnessed some of the most touching moments that day.

In a Nov. 23, 1963, story in The Dallas Morning News, he described how first lady Jacqueline Kennedy sobbed as she removed her gold wedding band, gently placed it on her husband's ring finger, then bent and kissed his hand.

He helped put the president's body in the bronze coffin and carry it to a quiet room while officials made arrangements to release the body. Mrs. Kennedy went into the room, alone, sat in a chair and leaned on the coffin.

Later, Mr. Rike helped put the coffin in the white Cadillac hearse and helped Mrs. Kennedy into the back.

"When I helped her into the coach," he said, "she smiled and thanked me."

At the end of the flight back to Washington, D.C., a Navy ambulance picked up the president's coffin and carried it to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Md.

"At the request of Bobby Kennedy [the president's brother and attorney general], that car and the casket were destroyed," Mr. Lyons said.

Ardeen Vaughan of Alvarado eventually purchased the Cadillac and has owned it since, Mr. Lyons said.

"It was painted brown at one point and was later restored to the original color of white," he said. "The interior hasn't been touched."

In the 1 to 6 scale used in the high-end auto auction business – with 1 being a car suitable for parts with some missing and 6 being better than new – the presidential hearse rates a 4, Mr. Lyons said.

"It's a nice drive-quality car, what people call 'a 10-footer,' meaning it looks great from 10 feet away."

But condition alone doesn't set the price for something like this, he said.

"We know the question of price is going to come up," Mr. Lyons said, "but I really can't put an estimate on it yet.

"Basically, the talking point on that is this is the first time the hearse has been available."

[TexasStar]

Considering how much Dallas has grown, both physically and economically, since Nov 1963, it's hard to imagine that the assassination has hurt the city in any real way.

[dfwcre8tive]

Window touted as sniper perch hits eBay
Authenticity defended after years on display at Sixth Floor Museum
08:52 PM CST on Wednesday, February 7, 2007
By MICHAEL E. YOUNG / The Dallas Morning News
myoung@dallasnews.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/020807dnmetsixthfloorwindow.13fef2a.html

A window prominently displayed for a dozen years at The Sixth Floor Museum as Lee Harvey Oswald's sniper's perch in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is up for auction on eBay.

The starting price: $100,000.

It could be, as the eBay ad describes it, "perhaps the most famous window ever offered up for sale in the world."

Or it could be the wrong window, mistakenly removed from the Texas School Book Depository at 411 Elm St. by a confused worker in the weeks after the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination.

That's the argument of several conspiracy theorists and museum critics and the claim of a Nashville man who bought the building in 1970 and said he took the real sniper's perch when he lost the property to foreclosure.
Also Online

Link: See the auction listing on eBay

02/21/95: 'Sniper's Perch' returned to exhibit on Sixth Floor

Caruth Byrd doesn't buy any of that.

Mr. Byrd, son of the man who owned the property in 1963, said his father, Col. D. Harold Byrd, told a worker to remove the window several weeks after JFK's death because people were trying to steal chunks of it.

It was displayed for years at Col. Byrd's University Park home and passed on to his son when the colonel died in 1986.

"I had it here in my bedroom, and finally I decided to loan it to the museum," Mr. Byrd said.

He originally agreed to loan it to the museum for three years. But three became 12 before he took the window back several months ago, he said.

Museum officials "kept saying I ought to give it to them," he said. "They didn't doubt that it was real. They knew it was authentic. They just wanted me to give it to them.

"I said I'll just take it out, sell it and give the money to charity. It's just a piece of wood."

Mr. Byrd said he was annoyed by articles that questioned the authenticity of the window and by museum staff members who seemed dubious as well. Mostly, he seems eager to be rid of the window and all that goes with it.

"There was some negative stuff about it. There were articles that said it wasn't the right window because it didn't look like the window that was up there that day," Mr. Byrd said. "When it was taken out, my dad had it cleaned up. I don't know what they did to the darn thing.

"I'm just tired of it. We can go out and build a fire with it. It's just a window. Heck, I have no emotional involvement with it."

Deborah Marine, public relations manager for The Sixth Floor Museum, couldn't say whether the museum ever offered to buy the window from Mr. Byrd or would be interested in acquiring it.

"We really can't comment on that," she said.

And she said no one has produced any evidence that the window is other than what Mr. Byrd says it is.

"We were just really grateful to have had it," Ms. Marine said.

Mr. Byrd lives on an exotic game preserve in Van, Texas, near Canton, where he has 2,000 animals – "lions, birds, tigers, but no hunting."

If he sells the window, he said, he might roll the proceeds back into his preserve.

"What it goes for it goes for," he said.

Mr. Byrd's mother was Martha Caruth, whose family owned much of the land between downtown Dallas and Park Lane and donated the property for Southern Methodist University.

His father, a millionaire oilman, bankrolled the Antarctic expeditions of his cousin, Adm. Richard E. Byrd.

But Caruth Byrd is happiest in Van.

"I know everyone and everyone knows me," he said. "Here, you see millionaires in the cafe, and they can wear what they want and no one cares.

"You can't do that in Dallas."

[dfwcre8tive]

Dallas hospital room where JFK died now stored in Kansas
Odd move closes artifacts to public, may add to mystery
09:25 AM CST on Thursday, February 7, 2008
By DAVID FLICK / The Dallas Morning News
dflick@dallasnews.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/020708dnmettraumaroom.37afff4.html

A piece of JFK assassination history now lies buried in the most unlikely of places: a former limestone quarry in Kansas.

It is the end – at least for now – in the long and sometimes strange journey of Parkland Memorial Hospital Trauma Room No. 1, where President John F. Kennedy died on Nov. 22, 1963.

The entire room was purchased by the federal government 35 years ago, when Parkland officials decided to modernize their emergency facilities.

It was dismantled and the contents – all of them, the examination table, clocks, floor tiling, lockers, trash cans, surgical instruments, gloves, cotton balls, even a towel dispenser – were placed in a locked vault in a Fort Worth warehouse run by the National Archives and Records Administration.

The artifacts lay undisturbed there until September, when they were moved to an archives facility in Lenexa, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, Mo.

"It's in a secure location," Reed Whitaker, the agency's Central Plains Region administrator, confirmed last week.

And in a comment guaranteed to get the conspiracy theorists going, he added:

"Basically, it's not to be examined, not to be shown to the press, not to be photographed, not to be exhibited to the public."

The artifacts were moved after archives officials in Fort Worth began last year to relocate their records to a new facility south of the city.

It was not a question of having space for the trauma room materials. The problem was that their odd shape wouldn't fit into the standardized spaces of the new facility, said Preston Huff, Fort Worth regional administrator.

"We're just not set up for artifacts like that," Mr. Huff said.

In September, Mr. Huff rented a truck and, accompanied by other archive employees for security, drove the artifacts to Lenexa.

"I was going up there anyway to be on a panel," he said. "I'm an administrator. I usually don't drive a truck, but I know how to drive one, so I did."

In Lenexa, the materials were placed in a 600,000-square-foot underground storage facility, one of two used there by the agency's regional office, where they are universally known as "The Caves."

The dismantled Trauma Room No. 1 will be stored there indefinitely – if not out of mind, then certainly out of sight.

Under the sale agreement between Parkland and the federal government, archives officials agreed to close the trauma room and its contents to the public, saying that they wanted to shield the pieces from exploitation. A formal request in 2000 from The Dallas Morning News to view and photograph the artifacts was summarily rejected.

At the time, officials said photographs of the materials could prove painful to the Kennedy family.

Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman at the archives' national offices in Washington, D.C., acknowledged that the treatment of the trauma room materials is highly unusual.

For one thing, nearly all other presidential artifacts are stored in the nation's 12 presidential libraries, which are operated by the National Archives and are typically intended for public display.

For another, the regional centers, such as those in Fort Worth and Lenexa, exclusively store government documents. Except for those deemed classified, all such documents are open to the public.

"We pride ourselves on not just being a place for storage, but a resource for research," Ms. Cooper said. "This really is a unique situation."

Although the ban was instituted to preserve the dignity of articles associated with a national tragedy, Ms. Cooper said even academic historians are forbidden access.

"There's no reason to show it to researchers," she said. "There's nothing there to see. It's just things like ceiling tiles and floor tiles. It's just not very interesting."

The policy calls to mind the final scene in the 1981 movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, when a crate containing the biblical ark of the covenant, which supposedly bestowed military invincibility on whoever possessed it, was unceremoniously stowed away in an anonymous government warehouse.

The difference is that the exact significance of Trauma Room No. 1 is unclear.

"Basically, this stuff has little, if any, historical value," Mr. Whitaker said. "Besides, who really wants to see an operating room? I wouldn't."

Gary Mack, curator of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, disagrees that the trauma room lacks historical value. He said future historians might benefit from having access to the artifacts.

"One of the questions is, 'What kind of treatment did the president receive? Was there anything more that could have been done?' This would be a hands-on way of seeing what treatment was available in 1963," he said.

Still, Mr. Mack declined to criticize archives officials.

"I think that anytime someone treats something dealing with the Kennedy assassination with dignity and respect, it's a good thing," he said. "And I think that is what's happening here."

[dfwcre8tive]

Exclusive: Dallas County DA's office finds cache of JFK memorabilia
01:32 AM CST on Sunday, February 17, 2008
By JENNIFER EMILY / The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/021708dnmetjackruby.3bde49f.html
jemily@dallasnews.com

The Dallas County district attorney's office has unearthed a treasure trove of memorabilia from the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in an old safe on the 10th floor of the courthouse.

It includes personal letters to and from former District Attorney Henry Wade, a gun holster, official records from the Jack Ruby trial, letters to Ruby and clothing that probably belonged to him and Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, said Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins.

And conspiracy theorists will rejoice over one find: a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between Ruby and Oswald plotting to kill the president because the mafia wanted to "get rid of" his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

"It will open up the debate again about whether there was a conspiracy," said Mr. Watkins, who at 40 was born four Novembers after Kennedy was killed in 1963.

But the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza said the conversation could not have happened.

Terri Moore, Mr. Watkins' top assistant, said she believes the transcript is part of a movie that Mr. Wade was working on with producers.

"It's not real. Crooks don't talk like that," she said.

"If that transcript is true, then history is changed because Oswald and Ruby were talking about assassinating the president."

Mr. Wade wrote about the movie, Countdown in Dallas, in letters found in the safe. Mr. Wade prosecuted Ruby in Oswald's death, although the verdict was overturned and Ruby died of cancer in 1967 before his second trial could begin.

"I believe it important for the film to be factually correct, that it come from official files, that the witnesses who in any way were participants should appear in person in the film, and in my opinion, will result in an excellent film not only of interest at present but the record of events for history," Mr. Wade wrote.

It is unclear if any further work was ever done on the film.

Mr. Watkins is expected to formally announce the finding of about a dozen boxes of materials on Monday at a news conference. The vast majority of the documents are authentic records from the 1960s.

The purported Oswald-Ruby conversation took place on Oct. 4, 1963, at Ruby's Carousel Club on Commerce Street. It reads like every conspiracy theorist's dream of a smoking gun that ties the men to a plot to kill Kennedy.

Part of the two-page transcript reads:

Lee: You said the boys in Chicago want to get rid of the Attorney General.

Ruby: Yes, but it can't be done ... it would get the Feds into everything.

Lee: There is a way to get rid of him without killing him.

Ruby: How's that?

Lee: I can shoot his brother.

...

Ruby: But that wouldn't be patriotic.

Lee: What's the difference between shooting the Governor and in shooting the President?

Ruby: It would get the FBI into it.

Lee: I can still do it, all I need is my rifle and a tall building; but it will take time, maybe six months to find the right place; but I'll have to have some money to live on while I do the planning."

Later, Ruby warns Oswald that the mafia will ask Ruby to kill him if he's caught.

Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, laughed when told of the transcript. He has not seen it or any of the other documents found in the safe.

The transcript resembles one published in a report by the Warren Commission, which investigated Kennedy's assassination and determined that Oswald was the lone gunman. The FBI determined that conversation – again between Oswald and Ruby, but this time about killing the governor – was definitely fake.

Mr. Mack said that it's well documented that Oswald was in Irving the evening of Oct. 4, at a home where his wife was staying. He could not have been at Ruby's club.

Mr. Mack suggested that the transcript in the Warren Commission report was probably used as a model for the one found in the district attorney's safe.

The conversation published in the commission report was a fake account of a conversation between Ruby and Oswald on the same night at the Carousel Club. A now-deceased Dallas attorney "re-created" the conversation after Kennedy's assassination for authorities after he claimed he recognized Oswald in a newspaper photo as the man he saw talking to Ruby that night.

"The fact that it's sitting in Henry Wade's file, and he didn't do anything, indicates he thought it wasn't worth anything," Mr. Mack said of the newly found transcript. "He probably kept it because it was funny. It's hilarious. It's like a bad B movie."

William J. Alexander, the only surviving prosecutor from Ruby's trial for killing Oswald in the days after Kennedy's assassination, told the district attorney's office he'd never seen the Ruby-Oswald transcript. But it's labeled with a sticker that says, "Plaintiff's Exhibit 27." Typically, exhibits for criminal trials are marked as state's exhibits or defense exhibits.

The DA's office said Mr. Alexander, who rarely talks about the Ruby trial, declined to be interviewed.

While the two-page transcript is most likely fake, Mr. Watkins says he's never believed Oswald acted alone.

"You know me: I'm always a conspiracy theorist," Mr. Watkins said. "It was too simple of an explanation. I don't see that."

Mr. Watkins, Ms. Moore and several investigators from the DA's office found the boxes of materials about a year ago because they had heard that the gun used to kill Oswald was somewhere in the courthouse. They didn't find the gun, which Mr. Mack said is privately owned, but instead found the records and other items.

For the past year, they've been trying to determine what they discovered and began scanning some of the documents. The process is not complete.

The boxes probably sat in the safe since being moved when the courthouse opened in 1989. Mr. Watkins said he plans to donate the files to an entity that will authenticate and preserve them, as well as make them available to the public.

"It's interesting, and it's not ours," Mr. Watkins said. "It's the public's."

No one has yet thoroughly read all of the documents, so it's not known whether they contain information previously unknown to the public or the Warren Commission.

Mr. Mack, the museum curator, said many of the court files and even personal letters to Mr. Wade and Ruby have been widely circulated. The museum already has a transcript of Ruby's trial, as well as his medical records.

Still, he said, he would be eager to obtain the documents and authenticate them to see "anything and everything that can help answer lingering questions."

"These records may not have any particular value," he said. "But 100 years from now, who knows what's going to be important?"


WHAT WAS FOUND

The district attorney's office discovered about a dozen boxes of materials in a courthouse safe that included items and documents from the Jack Ruby trial. Ruby was convicted of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, but the verdict was overturned. He died before a second trial occurred.

Many of the records, including interrogations with Ruby, his family and witnesses, are undated, and it's unclear which agency or people conducted the interviews. Other documents are signed and dated. A sampling of what was found:

• Transcripts of interviews with prospective jurors.

• Notes to District Attorney Henry Wade about prospective jurors from people, possibly in the DA's office, who knew them. One note mentioned that someone was Catholic. Others said a person had mental problems or was likely not to consider harsh punishment.

• Letters that show Mr. Wade was working on a movie deal for a documentary-type film to be titled Countdown in Dallas.

• A typed, undated, unsigned memo from the DA's office with Mr. Wade's name on the letterhead that says Ruby said he planned to kill Oswald because he did not want President Kennedy's widow to have to testify at his trial. Mr. Ruby also said, according to the memo, that there were no conspirators in his plan. The memo says in an interview that appears to have taken place after the trial that Ruby "said there was absolutely no blackout, that he had premeditation with the intent to kill Oswald if he was there."

• Typed notes from an interview with Ruby before the trial where Ruby said he did not recall anything after walking down the ramp into the area where he shot Oswald.

• A document that says that during an interview Nov. 24, 1963, in Dallas police Capt. Will Fritz's office, Mr. Ruby said he "felt Oswald was a Red" and he "felt Oswald was alone in the assassination."

• The files also contain hundreds of pages of copied letters and cards sent to Ruby before and during his trial. Some letters and cards sympathize with Ruby. At least two women – one from Philadelphia and another from Plainfield, Ind. – sent Ruby checks for $2. Others sent Valentine's Day cards, and at least one sent a St. Patrick's Day card.

• Other letters lash out at Ruby. One handwritten, unsigned note apparently sent to him says: "You expect a fair trial. So did Mr. Oswald. It would not be a happy situation if the assassin of the assassin were himself assassinated." Others are addressed "Dear Killer" and called Ruby a "Commie Jew." One man typed a letter using red ink because he said the black ribbon was out.


NEWS CONFERENCE

The Dallas County district attorney's office will hold a news conference at 10 a.m. Monday to discuss documents related to the Jack Ruby trial found in the safe at the Crowley Courts Building. The news conference will be held in the lobby on the 11th floor.

[mikedsjr]

Considering how much Dallas has grown, both physically and economically, since Nov 1963, it's hard to imagine that the assassination has hurt the city in any real way.


Personally, dallas doesn't even enter the equation for me. So I don't know what stigma there is, except for locals to continue to foster to keep tourism up for viewing of the X.

[mjblazin]

Closest thread that I could find:

Why do we still have that ugly rickety wooden fence at the top of the supposed infamous "grassy knoll"? Is that the actual fence from Nov '63? I hope we are not preserving it for that reason. Though those tourists might generate revenue, has the city ever considered some serious landscaping there? We could start with bulldozing the grassy knoll, essentially make it unrecognizable.

Though I have lived here 12 years, I've never gone there. It seems macabre to me.

[Lakewooder]

The original fence was 'sold' -- can't remember the details..

[dfwcre8tive]

Replica 1963 Dallas police squad car to honor officer slain by Lee Harvey Oswald
11:19 AM CST on Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Dallas Morning News | Steve Blow
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/sblow/stories/111909dnmetblow.2cb72ac4a.html

As another Nov. 22 approaches, a fresh round of attention is sure to focus on Kennedy, Oswald and Ruby.

And once again, scant attention will be paid to another name – Tippit.

While fallen Dallas police Officer J.D. Tippit hasn't exactly been overlooked in assassination history, he has certainly been overshadowed.

But from this year forward, a shiny black memorial will see to it that Officer Tippit is more widely remembered.

It's a memorial in the form of a '63 Ford Galaxie police squad car.

On Friday, the gleaming exact replica of Tippit's car will be escorted to the spot on Patton Avenue in Oak Cliff where the officer confronted Oswald and was killed 46 years ago.

The car and honor escorts will stop there for a time of photos and remembrance. Then the car will be taken on to the grounds of the Dallas Police Association headquarters, where it will become the centerpiece of a permanent memorial to Tippit and all other Dallas officers killed in the line of duty.

...

[Lakewooder]

The original where the officer left it...

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/3813/tippet.jpg

[dfwcre8tive]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/112109dnmettippit.2d5f9e9d8.html

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/img/11-09/1119galaxierestored700.jpg

[warlock55]

That car is a strange combination of ominous and goofy.

[Lakewooder]

Speaking of goofy, I think you can see the same car on a lot of Andy Griffith episodes...

I watched "The Lost JFK Tapes" last night on National Geographic Channel. I was only in kindergarten but it brought a lot of sad memories back..also it was a bit freaky seeing how really small Dallas was back then...a lot of aerial shots.

[mjblazin]

As I noted in earlier post, I wish we'd get rid of some of the landmarks so these conspiracy zipperheads would find somewhere else to ply their trade. Get a bulldozer and get rid of the grassy knoll and that awful fence. We should not have a sixth floor museum. If possible reconfigure Elm Street, maybe right through Dealey Plaza. The Kennedy monument marking that the event occurred should be the only indicator. It's solemn and respectful. How that weird car honors that fallen officer is beyond me. It'll be something sitting in a garage rusting in a few years.

[dfwcre8tive]

Buy This: Closing the Door on Lee Harvey and Marina Oswald's Former Oak Cliff Apartment
By Robert Wilonsky, Wed., Oct. 20 2010 @ 5:35PM
Categories: City Hall, Today's History Lesson
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2010/10/buy_this_closing_the_door_on_l.php#more

​Initially I thought this would be just an oddball novelty item: Heritage Auction Galleries is selling the door to Lee Harvey and Marina Oswald's old Oak Cliff apartment -- the one on Elsbeth and Davis Streets, more or less across the street from the Bishop Arts District. It doesn't officially go on the auction block till next week, and it'll be sold off during a Signature Music & Entertainment Auction in Beverly Hills next month. The opening bid hasn't even been set yet. From the description:


This is the original back door to the Elsbeth St. apartment rented by Oswald and his wife Maria when they first moved to Dallas. The original glass panel was punched out by Oswald during an argument with Maria, an incident recounted by members of the Tobias family, who managed the property and lived across the courtyard from the Oswalds, during testimony to the Warren Commission. The door is in Fine condition and is accompanied by the three hinges that held it in the frame.

...

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/leeharveysfrontdoor.jpg

[dfwcre8tive]

47 years after JFK assassination, Sixth Floor Museum adapts to new era
11:01 PM CST on Sunday, November 21, 2010
By DAVID FLICK / The Dallas Morning News
dflick@dallasnews.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/112210dnmetsixthfloor.3d64dc3.html

Today, exactly 47 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the museum that has chronicled that fateful day finds itself in a delicate balancing act.

On the one hand, The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza wants to keep jogging the emotions of those old enough to recall the tragedy. On the other, it needs to find ways to explain the killing – using updated technology – to those who were yet to be born.

"We're at a pivotal moment right now," said Nicola Longford, the museum's executive director. "We're changing from memory to history."

...

The museum, located at the second-most visited historic site in the state (the Alamo in San Antonio is first), has had more than 7 million visitors since it opened in 1989.

But as the day it commemorates recedes ever further into the past, museum officials are being challenged to interest an audience that has no personal memories of the shooting and expects more of a museum than artifacts in glass cases.

...

In recent years, the museum has begun to lighten up –at least around the edges. It opened up a gallery on the seventh floor that has featured, among other exhibits, Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe-like image of Jacqueline Kennedy. And this summer, museum officials opened a bookstore and cafe.

Besides replenishing its exhibits, museum officials – mindful that the landmark 50th anniversary is looming – have begun to rethink one of their longest standing and most controversial policies: a ban on official commemorations on the day of the assassination.

The city and the museum have long declined to organize such programs, citing the Kennedy family's wishes that the president's life – not his death – be remembered.

As a result, with the exception of 1993, when Dealey Plaza was officially designated a National Historic Landmark, the plaza has been commandeered each Nov. 22 by conspiracy organizations, and the assemblage has sometimes taken on a carnival atmosphere.

"It is something we are talking about; there is no formal proposal," Longford said. "But we have to realize that on the 50th anniversary, we will be micro-analyzed by people around the world, and there's nothing we can do about that.

"We might as well figure out how we are going to deal with it."

Officials are also taking the occasion to rethink the museum's exhibits, planning focus groups to help them figure out how to make displays more appealing to a younger audience.

"The exhibit was initially designed for the rememberers – those who were alive when it happened. But in the last five years, a majority of our visitors are not old enough to remember," said museum curator Gary Mack.

"Some things that were important to our visitors when we first opened are not as important right now."

Displays about the Kennedy family and the political atmosphere in Dallas at the time of the assassination are proving less interesting to younger people, he said. And some things need interpretation.

"Younger people who are used to greater security measures since 9/11 look at photographs of Kennedy riding in an open car and say, 'That was crazy. Why would he do that?' " Mack said. "Well, it wasn't considered crazy at the time, and that's something we have to explain."

Unlike other Dallas-area attractions, the museum's visitors come from outside the region. Only 6 percent come from Dallas, and no more than 40 percent from within the state, Longford said.

...

Even now, museum officials must deal with the mixed feelings of local residents.

"Dallas doesn't want to be remembered for this. Dallas wants to be a city of the arts. But we're a part of that," Longford said. "We've struggled with the image that we are a tourist attraction, but we are a museum."

Attendance has held steady in the past few years – at about 325,000 a year – dipping only slightly in 2010, a drop museum officials believe is caused by the recession.

Longford would like to make the institution less dependent on turnstile receipts by instituting a development fund to raise money for innovations in the coming years.

"We are here," she said. "We're not going away."

[mjblazin]

I vote for the county having bulldozers restructure the so-called grassy knoll into some kind of garden, walkway, parking lot, anything so it's no longer recognizable. No knoll, no grass. And get rid of that ratty fence that looks too much like the 1963 one. People can either go to the Museum or the cenotaph. That's how you respect someone important that died. Those chowderheads hanging around their chalk X on Elm Street do nothing for this city. It's time to remove a few frames of reference and maybe they'll get real jobs.

[Rowlett-baby]

lol I completely forgot that time was upon us already!

I agree about changing the look of that area, especially the garden idea. Maybe even put up vintage photos with a history of dealey plaza (pre-kennedy) and a small billboard coaxing people to go to the museum...

[AeroD]

Chowderheads?

[mjblazin]

Wiktionary: From chowder + head. One might be a chowder-head if one doesn't use one's brains effectively, which would give others the opinion that one has clam-chowder for brains

[dfwcre8tive]

From a Cemetery in Fort Worth to an Auction House in L.A.: Lee Harvey Oswald's Coffin
By Robert Wilonsky, Wed., Dec. 1 2010 @ 12:14PM
Categories: Uh, Happy Holidays, Suckers?
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2010/12/from_a_cemetery_in_fort_worth.php

​Via Gawker, this ghoulish gift suggestion (?): Lee Harvey Oswald's Original Pine Coffin, currently up for grabs courtesy the Los Angeles auction house Nate D. Sanders, Inc. This is the pine box in which Oswald was buried on November 25, 1963, at the Shannon Rose Hill Funeral Chapel & Cemetery in Fort Worth. Alas, as you no doubt recall: On October 4, 1981, Oswald was exhumed, with widow Marina's okee-doke, to put to rest writer Michael Eddowes's theory that Lee had long before the assassination of John Kennedy been replaced by a Soviet double. (Nope.)

...

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/oswaldcoffin.jpg

[mjblazin]

Have Wikileaks collect and publish the bidders on this gem. I need more protection from people of that ilk than someone that thinks a head of state is overweight.