Fifty years ago today

[PurdueSTL]

I was just shy of 2 years old, but my Mother vividly tells the story of that afternoon; how I, my brother and sister, were all at the drugstore soda fountain in down town Alton having lunch when the awful news hit...

She and my Dad had carefully saved the Globe-Democrat issues from Saturday and Sunday, and I remember pouring over them in the 70s like they were ancient scripts--that did a lot to spur my interest in history.

in November 1983, I was in Dallas for a college buddy's wedding, and made it a point to visit Dealey Plaza on the 20th anniversary--- and I was amazed at how small and intimate that area was--for whatever reason,the pictures and TV footage had REALLY expanded the place in my mind's eye, making it appear much wider and larger than it actually is.

The shot from the 6th floor of the TSBD appeared to me to be a cinch for anyone at all proficient with a rifle, and as much as I'd have loved to attach something more ominous, more significant to the motivation behind JFK's murder, it's my opinion that this insignificant, wannabe double-naught spy with goofy delusions of grandeur (who had already tried and failed o assassinate a prominent public figure with that very same rifle), finally got EXTREMELY lucky, that fate passed right under his window.

His Marine sharpshooter training took care of the rest...

For anyone interested, steer clear of the college-sophomore term paper writing style of Bill O' Reilly--- a masterful historian and storyteller named Jim Bishop did the "killings" of Jesus/Kennedy/ Lincoln infinitely better over 40 years ago-- Bishop's books are The Day Kennedy Was Shot, The Day Lincoln Was Shot, and The Day Christ Died

Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale is riveting as well.

[PurdueSTL]

One more observation--I went to Arlington Cemetery yesterday on my lunch hour to pay my respects...the President's gravesite is a beautiful, introspective place, and the view back across the Potomac to DC from the Eternal Flame is unsurpassed.

The Custis-Lee mansion atop the hill from the JFK gravesite is a very cool, often-overlooked destination... what a spectacular plantation Arlington must have been in its day, and I can't imagine the inner anguish Robert E. Lee must have felt to surrender his Army commission (and ultimately that glorious property) to serve a flawed, doomed cause.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

One more observation--I went to Arlington Cemetery yesterday on my lunch hour to pay my respects...the President's gravesite is a beautiful, introspective place, and the view back across the Potomac to DC from the Eternal Flame is unsurpassed.

The Custis-Lee mansion atop the hill from the JFK gravesite is a very cool, often-overlooked destination... what a spectacular plantation Arlington must have been in its day, and I can't imagine the inner anguish Robert E. Lee must have felt to surrender his Army commission (and ultimately that glorious property) to serve a flawed, doomed cause.

There were other southerners who stayed with the Union. He should have done the same.

[Vidor]

Yeah, Robert E. Lee always could have decided to not commit treason. Then he could have kept his commission and his house.

Meanwhile, Capt. Fritz talked to the press a little bit ago and wasn't sure about whether or not they'd use extra security to transport Oswald to the county jail. He might want to think harder about that.

[Vidor]

Now the CBS Orchestra is performing a concert. I can't begin to imagine anything like this airing on American network television today.

[Vidor]

By the way, do you know who you should never listen to, ever, on any subject other than baseball statistical analysis?

Bill James, that's who.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/bml/the-godfat ... n-jfks-dea

[Vidor]

Now that worthless dirtbag piece of garbage Ross Barnett is speaking on a Washington airport tarmac. Screw that guy.

[lukethedrifter]

Dr Earl Rose is a fascinating character in the story of the assassination as well. I first heard about him from my ex brother-in-law. Dr Rose was Richard's best friend's father.

He was the first non political Medical Examiner for Dallas County, hired just months prior to the assassination.

Earl Rose, who as the Dallas County medical examiner when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated insisted that he should do the autopsy, only to be overruled in a confrontation with presidential aides, died on Tuesday in Iowa City. He was 85.

....

But it was the autopsy he did not do that has become the most historic. After demanding to conduct an autopsy on the president, as he was legally required to do in any murder, Dr. Rose reluctantly stepped aside to allow the president’s body to be returned to Washington, as the president’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, and his aides insisted.

The autopsy was later performed at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center in Maryland. The pathologists there did not know that a doctor at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, where the stricken president had been taken, had performed a tracheotomy on Kennedy that obscured a gunshot wound in his neck. Nor did they have access to the clothing the president was wearing.

A forensic panel commissioned by Congress determined in 1978 that the Bethesda doctors had failed to dissect a wound in Kennedy’s upper back and had only probed it with a finger. The same year, pathologists involved in the autopsy admitted that they had been in “hurry up” mode. Conspiracy theorists have questioned whether high-ranking civilian and military officials who were present during the autopsy may have influenced its results.

Dr. Rose said in 1992 that an autopsy performed in Dallas “would have been free of any perceptions of outside influence.”

His confrontation with the president’s party occurred outside Trauma Room 1 at Parkland. Dr. Rose, a physician and lawyer who had become county medical examiner less than six months earlier, informed the Secret Service and other aides traveling with Kennedy that state law required that an autopsy in a murder be performed in the county where the crime had taken place.

He said that it would take no more than 45 minutes, and that the doctors who had treated the president were there to advise. Critical evidence could be gathered at a time when the assassin or assassins were still at large. “You can’t break the chain of evidence,” Dr. Rose was quoted as telling them.

Dr. George Burkley, Kennedy’s physician, reminded Dr. Rose that the country was dealing with the president and said he must waive local laws. At the time, however, there was no federal law expressly addressing assassinations. Any suspect would have been tried in a Texas state court.

But historians have said that Mrs. Kennedy insisted on returning to Washington as soon as possible and that she would not leave without her husband’s body. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was to be shortly sworn in as the 36th president aboard Air Force One, supported the first lady’s decision.

As Mrs. Kennedy emerged from the trauma room beside a gurney carrying the casket, tension mounted. Roy Kellerman, head of the White House Secret Service detail, squared off against Dr. Rose. Obscenities were shouted. Unconfirmed accounts said Mr. Kellerman had pointed a gun at Dr. Rose. Years later, Dr. Rose said that might have happened but that he was not sure.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/us/ea ... .html?_r=0

[PurdueSTL]

In their joint memoir Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye, Ken O'Donnell and Dave Powers (the capos of JFK's Irish Mafia) spend a lot of time savaging Dr. Rose...

O'Donnell and Powers, along with an understandably distraught Secret Service detail, were dead-set on sparing Jackie any additional anguish that afternoon--she wanted out of Dallas with JFK ASAP and was in no mood/condition for the proper procedure, which was to wait there while the local medical examiner performed the post-mortem.

The tipping point came during the heat of the argument over whether the Dallas local laws could be waived in the case of the President of the United States; according to O'Donnell, an exasperated Dr. Rose told them: "...as far as I'm concerned, this is just another homicide case..."

That's when the Kennedy staff and the secret service literally shoved JFK's casket past Rose and the local cops out of the Parkland emergency room and into the ambulance to Love Field....

[Vidor]

Earl Rose. Apparently it was a pretty tense scene with Rose and a couple local cops trying to stop the gurney while Secret Servicemen waving submachine guns screamed at them. Finally Ken O'Donnell asked Rose directly if they couldn't step aside, and Rose again said no, and O'Donnell said:

"Go f**k yourself. We're leaving." And they did.

IIRC DA Henry Wade (who in completely unrelated trivia later supplied one of the two names in the 'Roe v. Wade' decision) had already said they could waive the autopsy requirement. Rose was operating on his own hook.

****

Marina Oswald sure was pretty. She and his horrible mother just left the police station.