Kennedy's Last Days: The Assassination That Defined a Generation Read online

  Caroline Kennedy grew up to attend Radcliffe College and later earn her law degree from Columbia University. She married author and designer Edwin Schlossberg, whom she met while she was working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. They have three children. Ms. Kennedy is an author and speaker and volunteers her time to charitable organizations.

  The Kennedy grave site in Arlington National Cemetery. [LOC, DIG-highsm-18141]

  John F. Kennedy Jr. became a symbol for the tragic history of the Kennedy family. The image of him on his third birthday saluting his father’s coffin broke hearts worldwide. Erroneously thought to be nicknamed “John-John”—that name was fabricated by the press—John Jr. attended college at Brown University and then went on to the New York University School of Law and worked in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. On July 16, 1999, he was piloting a small plane when it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The accident killed John Kennedy Jr.; his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy; and her sister, Lauren. He was 38 years old. His ashes, and those of his wife, were scattered at sea.

  President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964. Martin Luther King Jr. and others witness this historic moment. [LBJ Library]

  Lyndon Baines Johnson inherited a great deal of unfinished business from the Kennedy administration. He masterfully cobbled together coalitions within Congress to help pass the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson, working closely with Martin Luther King Jr., framed the issue in terms of JFK’s legacy in order to gather support for the act. However, Vietnam was an inherited headache that proved to be his undoing. As the antiwar movement gained traction, LBJ, fearing defeat, chose not to run again in 1968. Upon leaving Washington, he returned to his Texas ranch, where he died of a heart attack at the age of 64 on January 22, 1973.

  Bobby Kennedy was devastated by his brother’s assassination. He continued in his role as U.S. attorney general for nine months and then decided to run for the U.S. Senate. He was elected and served for four years. Then, in 1968, he launched a bid for the presidency. On the night he won a major victory in the California primary, he gave a brief speech at the Ambassador Hotel. Just past midnight on June 5, 1968, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated by a disturbed lone gunman, Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy lived for 26 hours before dying on June 6, 1968, at the age of 42.

  Robert F. Kennedy, September 25, 1963. [LOC, DIG-ds-00976]

  Jack Ruby, whose real name was Jacob Rubinstein, argued that he shot Lee Harvey Oswald to redeem the city of Dallas for the assassination. At trial, he was convicted of murder with malice and sentenced to death. He was eventually awarded a new trial after a judge agreed that Ruby could not have received a fair trial in Dallas, due to the enormous publicity surrounding the shooting. But before the new trial could get under way, Ruby was admitted to Parkland Hospital for symptoms of the flu. Instead, he was found to have cancer in his liver, lungs, and brain. He died of a pulmonary embolism on January 3, 1967, at the age of 55. Jack Ruby is buried next to his parents in Westlawn Cemetery, in Norridge, Illinois.

  Martin Luther King Jr. continued his civil rights crusade and became one of the world’s most admired men. He was named Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1963. On December 10 of that year, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 4, 1968, King was shot down in Memphis, Tennessee, by an assassin named James Earl Ray, a racist who escaped to Canada, and then to England, before being arrested for the murder of Dr. King. On November 2, 1986, a national holiday was declared in King’s honor.

  The Oswald family history is complicated and not always clear. Lee Harvey’s father, Robert E. Lee Oswald, died before Lee was born. He served in World War I and is buried in New Orleans. He was Lee’s mother’s second husband.

  Lee did not have a father figure in his life. He and his mother moved 21 times before he joined the Marines at age 17. In her testimony before the Warren Commission, Marguerite Oswald said her son read a lot and liked to keep score watching football games on TV. She does not mention that school officials thought he might have a personality disorder.

  Marguerite Oswald spent the years after the assassination attempting to convince people that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent. She lectured to groups and even made a recording reading the letters Lee sent to her from Russia. She died in 1981 at the age of 73.

  A time capsule honoring Martin Luther King Jr. was buried under Freedom Plaza at 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. It will be opened in 2088. [LOC, highsm-14536]

  Marina Prusakova Oswald was whisked away to a hotel right after Oswald was shot. There, the FBI interviewed her for hours. A few months later, she testified before the Warren Commission. Marina remarried in 1965 and became a U.S. citizen in 1989. She has appeared in several documentaries about Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination.

  Marina Oswald holding June, Robert Oswald, and Marguerite Oswald holding Rachel, at Lee Harvey Oswald’s funeral. [© Corbis]

  Lee Harvey Oswald’s daughters, June and Rachel, were very young in 1963. Their mother protected them from the press and waited about six years to tell them about their father. Both girls took their stepfather’s name.

  Robert Oswald, born in 1934, is five years older than Lee Harvey Oswald. He was in military high schools and then in the Marines while Lee was growing up. Robert remembers that Lee had a vivid imagination and thought he could be anybody and do anything he wanted. In a 1993 interview, Robert said, “I think I’ve come to an understanding of Lee.… I watched the deterioration of a human being. You look at the last year—his work, his family, trying to go to Cuba.… Everything is deteriorating. It was a terrible thing to look at.”

  Robert paid $710 for Lee Harvey Oswald’s funeral, which took place on the same day as President John F. Kennedy’s and Officer J. D. Tippit’s.

  You can read biographies of each of John Kennedy’s eight siblings and their parents on the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website (www.jfklibrary.org).

  Some of the crew of PT-109. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

  THE CREW OF USS PT-109 ON ITS LAST MISSION

  (In order by rank)

  Lieutenant (junior grade) John F. Kennedy

  Commanding Officer (standing, far right)

  Ensign Leonard Jay Thom

  Executive Officer (bottom row, far right)

  Ensign George Henry Robertson Ross

  Lookout / Gunner

  QM3C Edman Edgar Mauer

  Quartermaster, cook, and signalman (top row, 3rd from left)

  RM2C John E. Maguire

  Radioman (top row, 2nd from right)

  S1C Raymond Albert

  Gunner

  GM3C Charles A. Harris

  Gunner (bottom row, far left)

  MOMM1C Gerard E. Zinser

  Motor mechanic

  MOMM1C Patrick Henry McMahon

  Motor mechanic

  MOMM2C Harold W. Marney*

  Gunner

  MOMM2C William Johnston

  Gunner

  TM2C Raymond L. Starkey

  Torpedoman

  TM2C Andrew Jackson Kirksey*

  Torpedoman (bottom row, 2nd from right)

  * Killed in action

  Kennedy’s inaugural remarks were addressed not only to the American people but also to citizens in friendly countries and those in less friendly ones. [© Bettmann/Corbis]

  A gift to President Kennedy from E. E. Mizerek. The text of his inaugural address is bordered by the seals of the 50 states. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

  JOHN AND JACKIE KENNEDY: SOME FAMOUS AND INTERESTING WORDS

  John Kennedy

  My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

  Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.…

  Ch
ange is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

  Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

  If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

  The best road to progress is freedom’s road.

  Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

  Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.

  The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.

  In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon; it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

  Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.

  I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.

  President De Gaulle welcomes Jackie Kennedy to Paris on May 31, 1961. [© Bettmann/Corbis]

  Jackie Kennedy

  If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.

  A camel makes an elephant feel like a jet plane.

  There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.

  Now I think that I should have known that he was magic all along. I did know it—but I should have guessed that it would be too much to ask to grow old with and see our children grow up together. So now, he is a legend when he would have preferred to be a man.

  This portrait was taken in September 1961, when the Kennedys were visiting friends in Newport, Rhode Island. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

  THE ZAPRUDER FILM: A MOMENT-BY-MOMENT RECORD

  ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1963, Abraham Zapruder, an executive of a Dallas clothing company, spent his lunch hour in Dealey Plaza. He used an 8mm camera to film the passing motorcade carrying John Kennedy, his wife, and other dignitaries. His camera caught the moments when the president was shot. Zapruder returned to his office and asked his assistant to call the police or find a Secret Service man. Agent Forrest Sorrels in the Dallas Secret Service office took the film to the local Eastman Kodak processing plant to be developed. The film captured 26.6 seconds in 486 frames of film.

  Zapruder’s color film was used by the Warren Commission and is crucial to all experts who try to re-create the events of that day. Zapruder was shaken by what he saw through the lens. He wept when interviewed about the assassination even years later.

  You can watch the film on YouTube.

  Abraham Zapruder was standing at the west end of the colonnade, taking movie film when Kennedy was shot. [William A. Mueller/Shutterstock.com]

  INVESTIGATING THE ASSASSINATION: THE WARREN COMMISSION

  ON NOVEMBER 29, 1963, one week after President Kennedy was assassinated, President Johnson announced the formation of a commission to investigate the event. The group, which was formally named the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, was led by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren. Its seven other members included Gerald R. Ford, then a representative from Michigan, who would become the 38th president after Richard Nixon resigned, and Allen W. Dulles, former director of the CIA under President Kennedy.

  With thoroughness and speed, the Warren Commission, as it came to be called, interviewed 552 witnesses and considered 3,100 exhibits. It took testimony from 10 federal intelligence agencies, including the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA, military intelligence, and the Department of State.

  JFK chats with Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warren and his wife, Nina, before a dinner at the White House. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

  The final report, submitted just 10 months later on September 24, 1964, was 888 pages long. A few months later, the commission published 26 volumes of evidence that it had reviewed and more than 50,000 pages of documents, memorandums, and transcripts of its meetings.

  Chief Justice Warren hands President Johnson the commission report. The seven other members of the committee attend. Future president Gerald Ford is fourth from the left. [LBJ Library]

  Lee Harvey Oswald never had a chance to defend himself in court, and so the commission did not have his testimony to consider. They took seriously their charge to be neutral fact finders and concluded that Oswald, alone and unaided, shot and killed President Kennedy and wounded Texas governor John Connally, and that Jack Ruby also acted alone. It found that the motivation for Oswald’s act was his “urge to try to find a place in history” and that it was the product of his whole life, one “characterized by isolation, frustration, and failure.”

  The report also recommended changing the protocols for presidential security.

  You can read the report at the National Archives website: www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report.

  SOME FACTS ABOUT THE EARLY 1960s

  THE EARLY 1960S LOOKED BACK to the fifties a little bit in style and fashion but began to change when the Kennedys moved in to the White House in 1961. Glamour was in vogue. Young people began to loosen up, dancing the twist and watching West Side Story. Here are some top lists from the year 1961 (unless otherwise noted).

  TIME LINE

  May 29, 1917

  John Fitzgerald Kennedy is born to Joseph and Rose Kennedy on Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts.

  August 26, 1920

  The Nineteenth Amendment is adopted. It gives women the right to vote.

  September 12, 1924

  John begins kindergarten at Edward Devotion School.

  May 20, 1927

  Captain Charles Lindbergh leaves New York in the plane the Spirit of St. Louis for the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

  September 1927

  The Kennedy family moves from Massachusetts to New York.

  October 29, 1929

  U.S. stock prices drop precipitously, causing the Great Depression.

  September 19, 1931

  John begins his freshman year at the Choate School, a private high school in Wallingford, Connecticut.

  March 4, 1933

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt is sworn in as the 32nd president of the United States.

  December 1935

  John has a serious case of hepatitis and is forced to withdraw from college.

  The 1937 Harvard junior varsity football team. Kennedy is standing third from the right in the third row. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

  January 7, 1938

  FDR appoints Joseph Kennedy to be ambassador to Great Britain.

  June 20, 1940

  John graduates cum laude from Harvard.

  October 8, 1941

  John joins the U.S. Navy Reserves.

  December 7, 1941

  Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.

  December 8, 1941

  The U.S. declares war on Japan.

  August 2, 1943

  PT-109 is sunk by a Japanese destroyer.

  May 31, 1944

  John enters a hospital in Massachusetts because of back problems.

  June 12, 1944

  John is awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroic conduct as the commanding officer of PT-109.

  August 12, 1944

  John’s older brother, Joe Jr., is killed on a mission over the English Channel.

  April–June 1945

  John covers the conference that drafts plans for the United Nations, as a reporter for the International News Service.

  August 6, 1945

  The U.S. drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. More than 140,000 people are killed instantly. As many as 30,000 more die of radiation poisoning within months.

  August 14, 1945

  Japan surrenders.