DALLAS — The mementoes are everywhere, preserved from a day five decades ago by people who wish they could forget:
Letters of grief and thanks, in a widow’s hand. Yellowing news reports. An unwanted wedding band. A rose stained with blood.
A quick way to catch up on the week’s news through our favorite photos.
Those who were closest to events on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated still talk about what they witnessed as if it happened yesterday. And they frequently mention a keepsake, some small but often heavy burden they’ve carried since Nov. 22, 1963. For some, this tangible thing helps make real what remains hard to believe. For others, it may be a touchstone to happier memories or just an artifact proving history brushed their lives.
Some can’t even explain the items they keep from those awful, convulsing, world-changing 24 hours.
___
Dawn was approaching — it was past 6 a.m. on that Friday.
In a bungalow in the Dallas suburb of Irving, the only one up was Lee Harvey Oswald. He made coffee, dressed for work, then paused before leaving his wife, Marina, and two young daughters. He drew most of the cash from his pocket, removed his wedding ring and left both behind. Gathering up a parcel he’d retrieved from the garage, he crept out.
“Lee left a coffee cup in the sink,” recalls Ruth Paine, whose house Marina and the girls were staying in. Oswald had come the previous evening to try — unsuccessfully — to reconcile with his estranged wife.
When he departed, leaving the ring, Paine says, “My guess is that he did not expect to live.”
She would later retrieve the ring for investigators, and it would find its way into a lawyer’s file for decades. Only recently was it returned to Oswald’s widow, who put the bitter memento up for auction. In a letter, she explained that “symbolically I want to let go of my past” and what she has called “the worst day of my life.” The ring sold last month for $108,000.
Walking from Paine’s house, Oswald reached the home where Buell Frazier, his co-worker, lived with his sister. He put his parcel in Frazier’s black Chevrolet for the ride to work.
“I’m just about through eating my breakfast,” Frazier said from the back door.
They’d be driving to the Texas School Book Depository, where both had $1.25 an hour jobs filling orders. Oswald had just started working there — and not by coincidence. Frazier’s sister had mentioned to her neighbor, Ruth Paine, that there might be an opening for the out-of-work Oswald.
Much was unusual about that morning. Normally, Oswald would wait to be picked up; normally, he would have carried a sack lunch. Unlike most Fridays, he told Frazier he would not need a ride home that night. And then there was the long, paper-wrapped package in the backseat. When Frazier asked, Oswald said it contained curtain rods.
As they drove off, a misting rain had Frazier flicking the windshield wipers on and off. “I wish it would just rain or something,” he complained, but nothing of substance was said before they arrived at work.
By then, it was about 7:55 a.m.
At that same time, 25 miles away, at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, Secret Service agent Clint Hill was walking down a hallway toward Room 850, where Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline were staying in a suite that locals had specially decorated. They had lent art treasures — 16 originals by Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet and others — and hung them on the walls in welcome. Today, these artworks themselves have become mementoes of that day, reassembled in an anniversary museum exhibit.
Letters of grief and thanks, in a widow’s hand. Yellowing news reports. An unwanted wedding band. A rose stained with blood.
A quick way to catch up on the week’s news through our favorite photos.
Those who were closest to events on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated still talk about what they witnessed as if it happened yesterday. And they frequently mention a keepsake, some small but often heavy burden they’ve carried since Nov. 22, 1963. For some, this tangible thing helps make real what remains hard to believe. For others, it may be a touchstone to happier memories or just an artifact proving history brushed their lives.
Some can’t even explain the items they keep from those awful, convulsing, world-changing 24 hours.
___
Dawn was approaching — it was past 6 a.m. on that Friday.
In a bungalow in the Dallas suburb of Irving, the only one up was Lee Harvey Oswald. He made coffee, dressed for work, then paused before leaving his wife, Marina, and two young daughters. He drew most of the cash from his pocket, removed his wedding ring and left both behind. Gathering up a parcel he’d retrieved from the garage, he crept out.
“Lee left a coffee cup in the sink,” recalls Ruth Paine, whose house Marina and the girls were staying in. Oswald had come the previous evening to try — unsuccessfully — to reconcile with his estranged wife.
When he departed, leaving the ring, Paine says, “My guess is that he did not expect to live.”
She would later retrieve the ring for investigators, and it would find its way into a lawyer’s file for decades. Only recently was it returned to Oswald’s widow, who put the bitter memento up for auction. In a letter, she explained that “symbolically I want to let go of my past” and what she has called “the worst day of my life.” The ring sold last month for $108,000.
Walking from Paine’s house, Oswald reached the home where Buell Frazier, his co-worker, lived with his sister. He put his parcel in Frazier’s black Chevrolet for the ride to work.
“I’m just about through eating my breakfast,” Frazier said from the back door.
They’d be driving to the Texas School Book Depository, where both had $1.25 an hour jobs filling orders. Oswald had just started working there — and not by coincidence. Frazier’s sister had mentioned to her neighbor, Ruth Paine, that there might be an opening for the out-of-work Oswald.
Much was unusual about that morning. Normally, Oswald would wait to be picked up; normally, he would have carried a sack lunch. Unlike most Fridays, he told Frazier he would not need a ride home that night. And then there was the long, paper-wrapped package in the backseat. When Frazier asked, Oswald said it contained curtain rods.
As they drove off, a misting rain had Frazier flicking the windshield wipers on and off. “I wish it would just rain or something,” he complained, but nothing of substance was said before they arrived at work.
By then, it was about 7:55 a.m.
At that same time, 25 miles away, at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, Secret Service agent Clint Hill was walking down a hallway toward Room 850, where Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline were staying in a suite that locals had specially decorated. They had lent art treasures — 16 originals by Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet and others — and hung them on the walls in welcome. Today, these artworks themselves have become mementoes of that day, reassembled in an anniversary museum exhibit.