DALLAS, Texas—Nearly 54 years after the assassination of John Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, thousands of locals and others from different states and countries still continue to visit the JFK Museum: beyond doubt a window through history.
The youngest man ever elected Chief Executive of the US and the first Roman Catholic to win the office, Kennedy, heir to a legend, would have been 100 on May 29, which coincided with Memorial Day in this North American nation.
The Kennedy Museum—also described as just JFK for his initials—is on the 6th floor of the Dallas County Administration Building in downtown Dallas overlooking Dealey Plaza at the intersection of Elm and Houston Streets.
Dealey Plaza has been dubbed since 1963 as the “front door of Dallas” – given that it was in the area where the popular and loved Kennedy, then a year into a possible re-election for the highest post was assassinated by 23-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, a resident of Irving, Texas.
The six-foot-tall Kennedy, who played enthusiastically as a 170-pounder touch- football before his back trouble, gained national attention as an author and was celebrated as a war hero before entering politics in 1946.
Jack, his nickname, failed physical exams for the officer candidate schools of both the Army and Navy before asking for his father’s help, after the program which saw 1,024 volunteers reduced the number to only 50 spots but where family connections made the difference.
But he eventually showed real courage as the commander of PT (patrol torpedo) 109 in the South Pacific, where he and his crew were assigned to the largest PT operation to the Blackett Strait.
Fast forward to Nov 22, 1963, a Friday, the President was scheduled to address the Dallas Citizens Council and was on his way to Dallas Trade Mart – where hundreds of influential local citizens were eating Kansas strip steaks and baked potatoes while they awaited his arrival.
The motorcade started from Love Field shortly before noon and wound through the city’s suburbs and downtown section for about eight miles (almost 13 kms) before the shooting occurred.
Kennedy, who stood up to Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis, was greeted by enthusiastic crowds despite predictions that the city, a center of right-wing Republicans, would receive coldly the popular President.
School children waving flags, partisan Democrats with signs and thousands of people just plain curious lined the streets every foot of the route.
Jacqueline Kennedy, who was sitting to the left of her husband at the time, was not injured.
The Kennedys were with Texas Gov. John Connally Jr., riding immediately in front of JFK in the blue official Lincoln limousine, who was wounded in the right chest and the right hand.
Kennedy was in Dallas with Vice President and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson, the Connallys and Sen. Ralph Yarborough on a scheduled stop as part of a two-day political tour he was taking in Texas.
Johnson was, soon after Kennedy’s death, sworn in as President inside the Presidential suite of Air Force 1, the Presidential jet at Love Field in Dallas.
The museum, where picture taking is prohibited by the Kennedy family, examines the life, times, death and legacy of Kennedy – the fourth President to be assassinated in office after Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield ((1881), and William McKinley (1901) – is located at the very spot where Oswald, according to government probers, shot and killed him.
The museum’s exhibition area uses historic films, photographs, artifacts and interpretive displays to document the events of the assassination, the reports by government investigations that followed, and the historical legacy of the national tragedy.
Officials say the museum, rented from the Dallas County Historical Foundation, is self-sufficient in funding, relying solely on donations and ticket sales, and opened its doors on Presidents’ Day, Feb 20, 1989.
A museum webcam features a live view from the sniper spot at the 6th floor, where a restricted room is enclosed in glass walls containing cartoons, purportedly containing the fingerprints of Oswald and used as seat and rifle rest before the shooting occurred.
Former President Dwight Eisenhower, who served under Gen. Douglas MacArthur when the latter was in the Philippines, shared, after he was informed of Kennedy’s death, “a sense of shock and dismay that all Americans must feel at the despicable act that resulted in the death of our President.”
President Charles de Gaulle of France, in the language of a military man who had seen a comrade fall, said Kennedy “died as a soldier, under fire, for his duty and in the service of his country…I salute this great example and tis great memory”
The austere, eloquent tribute from a man who himself survived three assassination attempts in leading his country – and who differed often with Kennedy – set the tone of shock and grief through the world upon which Kennedy had so much impact as a man as a leader.
Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, who had faced Kennedy in cold-war talks ranging from the missile crisis to improved East-West relations, expressed his “own shock and greatest sympathy to the American peoples” through US Ambassador Foy Kohler.
Available records showed Oswald, eventually shot dead by Jack Ruby while the former was being escorted by police to his hearing, had just been hired as an orderly (stock clerk) at the Texas Book Depository Building in October, a little over a month before the assassination.
Missing after police cordoned off the building minutes after the assassination, Oswald was captured at the Dallas Texas Theater, following a tip, with police quoting him as shouting “it’s all over now.”
Many speculations remain whether Oswald acted alone or with others.
But the JFK Museum at the 6th floor continues to be a window through which history, some visitors said, may be read.