The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 12

THE PALM BEACH POST SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1988 13A 2A THE PALM BEACH POST SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1988 The Assassination Of JFK: After 25 Years For 14 regular people, the morning carried no hint of history. But Nov. 22, 1963, would become a day of tragedy. And they would play a part. MHMa.

-Jft i I 1 Jt 1 1 a EST av A Ir Si ftl liM ml 1 II tti 4 One Day Dallas THE ASSOCIATED PRESS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS THE IMPACT: President Kennedy slumps toward his wife after being hit by the assassin's bullet. This Polaroid photo was taken by Mary Ann Moorman, who was standing with Jean Lollis Hill at Dealey Plaza. iisJi Si I i y) IT (Jll II II 1 PRELUDE TO TRAGEDY: President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy greet the crowds at Love Field Airport after their arrival in Dallas.

Less than 90 minutes later, the president would be dead. La 5 4 4 By ELIOT KLEINBERG Palrn Beach Post Staff Writer 14 ALLAS The death of President John F. Kennedy 25 years ago Tuesday particularly i 4 4 1 touched the lives of 14 people who were in Dallas that day. Six witnessed the assassination at Dealey Plaza. Another eight were at various places around the city.

Before the day was over, all would be part of the story and would be carrying memories that remain vivid a quarter-century later. These 14 people are neither poets nor historians. After hundreds of retellings, their stories are wrapped in simple, undramatic language. They tell what they saw, what they heard, what they felt. They remember all of it, down to the smallest nuance.

Here is what happened that day, as they recall it: vated in 1955. Even then, it was one of the nation's most active trauma cen-v ters. Soon it would be known worldwide as the place where Kennedy died. Dr. Ronald C.

Jones, nurse Audrey Bell and assistant administrator Steve Landregan were preparing to eat lunch. Aubrey Rike was at the emergency room's admitting Jones, 31, had just completed sur-, gery on a man's aorta. He was chief of resident surgery; years of college and medical school and five years as an intern were finally coming to an end, and soon he would be a full-fledged doctor. Bell, 36, was supervisor of operating and recovery rooms at Parkland. All Landregan, 35, could think was that his five children, whom his parents had taken out of school, would see Kennedy at Love Field.

His wife would see the president at the Mart, where she was helping at the luncheon. And he would miss out. 7 The hospital's operator paged the. chief of surgery "stat" hospital lingo for "immediately." In the cafeteria, Dr. Jones, nurse" Bell and Landregan were confused.

They knew that doctor was downstate at a convention. Jones went to a phone and heard, "The president's been shot, and they're bringing him to the ER." He told nurse Bell. She said, "You're kidding." Jones said, "I wish I were." More "stat" calls followed. Every-! one left their lunches and raced to the emergency area, past Aubrey Rike. DEALEY PLAZA: 'THEY'VE SHOT HIM' There was a mark on a curb where a bullet had scraped it, showering tiny pieces of concrete on Tague.

Later the curb would be cut out and flown to Washington. y.S. Post Office senior postal inspector Harry D. Holmes watched the assassination through his binoculars. He was working at his office, about a block south of the depository.

Holmes had figured he could see the parade well from there. He saw the impact, then heard people scream and saw them scramble "like ants" or throw themselves to the ground or on top of loved ones. He watched the Secret Service agent sprawl across Kennedy's car and "hang on for dear life" as it raced at about 80 mph up Stemmons Freeway toward Parkland Memorial Hospital. In other parts of town, eight more people were about to become players in the tragedy. rjK alias police Sgt.

Jerry Hill was lUl at his desk at the police sta-" tion, about 20 blocks east of Dealey Plaza. He was happy to have avoided parade duty. In an hour, the president would be out of town and everyone could get back to work. Hill, 34, had watched moments earlier as the parade passed and had mentioned to a co-worker how attractive Mrs. Kennedy looked in her pink dress.

A dispatcher ran in and said someone had shot at the president. Hill raced down to the basement, where he told a newspaper reporter: "Kennedy just got shot. Jump in." Hill and the reporter abandoned the patrol car and its driver in the congealing traffic and ran the last block to the depository. Within minutes, on the sixth floor of the depository, Hill and four other officers found boxes set up around the window in a semicircle. Three rifle shells lay on the floor.

It was about 1:15 p.m. Moments later, on a police radio, someone shouted that an officer was shot. Police rounded up Arce and his fellow workers at the depository for a roll call. They could not account for one: Oswald. DALLAS TRADE MART: WATCH FOR WEAPONS Jy fcf-'" i he six people who saw John Kennedy shot were at Dealey he saw the shots strike the president, Hargis thought, 'I knew deep down in my heart that he was Archer was in the basement of the police station on the Sunday after the assassination and saw Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald.

Plaza, a two-block area on the AT OSWALD'S CELL: Lawmen Jerry Hill (left), Bobby Hargis and Don Archer stand outside the cell at the Dallas police station where Lee Harvey Oswald was held for questioning. Hill helped capture Oswald at the Texas Theatre. Hargis was part of Kennedy's motorcycle escort. When 1 A PUFF OF SMOKE: Jean Lollis Hill, a schoolteacher, was the one of the closest witnesses to the assas sination. She is certain that she saw a puff of smoke from the area now known as the knoll.

L. I ike, just 25, ran ambulances for a local funeral home that handled emergency calls for She said: "I'm positive. I saw his head explode right in front of me." Someone pulled the phone from her hands. In the next few weeks, Hill says now, callers would tell her how many witnesses had already died, warn she could be next, and advise her to keep quiet. She did, for two decades.

Then she decided it was safe to talk. Her children were grown, she believed the principal players in the assassination were dead, and anyone who meant her harm would have done something by now. eastern edge of downtown named for the former publisher of a newspaper. Two fountains separate three east-west streets Elm, Main and Commerce that slope down an embankment, then converge under a railroad trestle called the triple underpass. About 300 people had joined them at the end of the parade's route through downtown Dallas.

At about 12:30 p.m., the motorcade swung west onto Elm Street right in front of the Texas School Book Depository. A sound like that of a firecracker snapped, then echoed off surrounding buildings. Kennedy seemed to lean over as if straining to hear something Texas Gov. John Connally was saying. When he came back up, a shot struck his head.

He fell in the lap of his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy. She climbed onto the back of the car, and a Secret Service agent pushed her back. She said, "Oh my God. They've shot him." The motorcade disappeared beneath the triple underpass. Less than a minute had passed since it turned onto Elm.

Mil 4 The route had appeared in the morning paper, and the blue convertible passed a solid wall of people, perhaps hundreds of thousands, all the way to downtown. As it inched along at 11 mph, Hargis feared cars in the motorcade or people watching would knock his Harley-Davidson motorcycle dowh. "'V" About halfway through the parade, Kennedy had stepped from the car to shake hands, and Hargis watched as I Secret Service agents grew angry and nervous. Once the motorcade reached downtown, the throng had thinned enough so Hargis could move alongside the car, where he offered the president maximum protection. But he was south of the car, and the depository was north.

He watched another shot rip into Kennedy's head, "I knew deep down in my heart he was killed," Hargis says 25 years later Dallas." Hargis parked and ran to the north side of the street and up the hill he dubbed the grassy knoll. He couldn't pinpoint the source of the shots because of the echoes, but Kennedy's head movements had indicated the shot had come from over the president's right shoulder. Hargis followed the line of sight up, up, up to the upper floors of the Texas School Book Depository. the city. Ten minutes earlier, he and his partner had stood on the roof of their vehicle to watch the presidential parade before being called away to transport a patient to Parkland.

Rike had seen many medical emergencies before. This was differ-, ent. Secret Service agents ran into the hospital, screaming and cursing. A pale and frightened Lyndon Johnson walked in. The vice president had had one heart attack, and Rike thought he was having another.

Kennedy and Gov. Connally, who also had been shot, were wheeled in. Rike recognized the first lady imme-; diately. Although Kennedy's head was covered with a coat, Rike recognized the blue pinstriped suit he had seen 10 minutes earlier in the parade. By 12:40 p.m., when Dr.

Jones and nurse Bell got to the tiny trauma room, it was filled with half a dozen nurses and doctors working feverish-, ly, handing trays over each others' heads. Her first public statements would come after a British company staged an mock trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. "They convinced me that at long last we would be given a chance to tell our true story and let the audience make up its own mind," she says 25 years later. who's who of Dallas had gathered for a unity luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart, and they ean Lollis Hill watched the bullet hit Kennedy's head. Hill had seen Harrv Truman ssociated Press photographer Jim Altgens watched the president die through a viewfinder.

HOLDING BACK TEARS: Aubrey Rike was an ambulance driver and gave Jacqueline Kennedy a cigarette at the hospital where the president was treated. 'I was holding back tears We were pretty well Later, he helped place Kennedy in the coffin. IN THE VIEWFINDER: Photographer Jim Altgens watched through his camera as a bullet hit Kennedy, but he froze in shock. 'I was all lined up on him, and I never pulled the I- 1 7Xii7 i I rs. Kennedy, in her bloodstained dress, seemed star- i tied, but poised, as if this was I anny Arce mistook the first gunshot for a backfire and was ID) wondered what was keeping the presidential party, which had been running late all morning.

It was about 12:30 p.m. Police officer Don Archer stood on a dais inside the cavernous building about 3 miles north of Dealey Plaza on Stemmons Freeway, lie was watching 2,500 of Dallas' most wealthy and politically active residents gather for a posh show of support for Kennedy. Waiters began serving salads. The Texas Democratic Party had settled into warring conservative and liberal wings, and Kennedy had come to Dallas to heal the rift. From there, he was to head for a weekend of hunting at the LBJ ranch in the Texas Hill Country.

looking at the police motorcy when he made a whistlestop tour through her native Oklahoma during the 1948 campaign. She also had seen President Eisenhower, and she wanted a close look at this one. -The schoolteacher and a friend, Mary Ann Moorman, armed with a Polaroid, had left the crowded sidewalk on the north side of Elm Street and, after flirting with a cop, passed through a police line to a grassy area on the other side of Elm. Hill had stepped into the street and called to Kennedy, a few feet away: "Hey, Mr. President, look this way.

We want to take your picture." Then she saw the bullets hit. She gasped and shouted, "Oh!" Something caught her eye. She saw a flash and a puff of smoke from a bush on a hilly area on the north side of Elm, in front of the motorcade. In another corner of the hilly area known since as the grassy knoll she saw a man in an overcoat running away. Her friend was prone, shouting, "Get down! They're shooting!" Hill shook her off, shock turning not to fear but to anger.

She wanted to catch thekiller. She ran back across Elm Street, into the path of a motorcycle. Hill braced for the impact, but it missed her. When she looked back, the man in the coat was gone. LONG-DISTANCE VIEW: Postal inspector Harry Holmes, watching from his office, used binoculars to catch a glimpse of the presidential motorcade.

After the shots were fired, he saw onlookers scramble for cover. rcher usually chased down stolen cars. He was thrilled to have been assigned to the secu He had a chance at the photograph of a lifetime. He blew it. Altgens had been scheduled to work in the office that day, a Friday.

But he had convinced his boss to let him do a photo essay. The Kennedys and Connallys were smiling and waving. The wind caught the first lady's hat and she reached up, blocking her face. When he heard the gunshots, he froze. "I was all lined up on him (Kennedy), and I never pulled the trigger," Altgens says 25 years later.

"It was a question of shock in my case. I'd never photographed anybody being killed right before my very eyes." He saw the crowd appear to chase someone and followed, but there was no one. By then his shock was melting into instinct. He sprinted four blocks to his bureau and called his chief at the wire service's second office, across town. He said, "Kennedy has been shot." The bureau chief, whose calm, businesslike reaction amazed Altgens, sent down the line a "flash" the highest wire dispatch priority.

It read in part: AP photographer James W. Altgens said he saw blood on the president's head. Altgens said he heard two shots but thought someone was shooting fireworks." Within 40 minutes, three of Altgens' photos, the first images from Dealey Plaza, were racing around the world. something she had known might hap- -pen. She did not cry.

Dr. Jones recalled the medical school adage: "One day, you may be treating the president of the bank." This was no bank. Kennedy's feet hung off the short 1 table. Nurse Bell saw his shirt, white with blue stripes, and it occurred to her that a president should always wear all-white shirts. Kennedy was not breathing.

Jones suggested placing a tube in a bullet hole in the throat. Inserting it forever destroyed any evidence about the direction of the bullet, but Jones and Bell thought it looked like an entry wound impossible if only Oswald, behind the president, shot at the mo- torcade. Bell cut the sleeves, instinctively slitting along the seam. Often, pa--tients were wearing their only shirts, Bell said, "Where's the injury?" Another doctor raised the pres-' ident's head. Bell knew the wounds were fatal.

Mrs. Kennedy stepped from trail-ma room one, and Landregan got her cles when another shot hit Kennedy. When people dived for cover, so did he. Arce had left the depository, where he worked as a shipping clerk, and walked a few yards west on Elm so he could get a better view of the president. He was standing just in front of the grassy knoll and had been impressed with the Kennedys' healthy tans.

Arce, 18, was a high-school dropout who'd spent the past year working at the depository, a private textbook distribution center. He'd overslept that morning and arrived at work late. In his pocket was a stub from his last weekly paycheck: $40 after taxes. One of his co-workers was Lee Harvey Oswald, who did not mingle with the others and said little. Sometimes Arce would see him reading the newspaper.

At times, Oswald snorted in derision at something he'd read. Within minutes, officers converged on Arce's building. He was barred until he produced his paycheck stub, proof of employment. WW' 1 Lfy nW; iv' UAifefe I i 1 ff L'flutJMy i i i rity detail on the podium, which was festooned with flags and other decor. He had never seen a president in person.

Memories of the Bay of Pigs invasion were fresh, and a Secret Service agent had said to watch for Cubans. "If one gets up with any type of weapon, you all try to put him down," the agent said. Archer asked, "What does a Cuban look like?" The agent paused a minute, then replied: "That's a damn good question. If anybody gets up with a weapon, just put him down." Archer heard sirens go by. A wave of whispering rolled across the room.

Archer saw an agent put something to his ear. The man's eyes grew wide, and all the agents dashed to the exits. After a few minutes, a rabbi an Myl f'i I ni would insist 25 years later ay that the man in the overcoat Bi was Jack Ruby, the man who ar salesman Jim Tague, 27, hadn't even planned to see the president. The motorcade had otorcycle cop Bobby W. Har- no ji gis was close enough to touch If the fender of Kennedy car a chair and a glass of water.

She asked Rike for a cigarette, and he started to hand her the pack. A Secret Service agent snatched it and tore off the top. Satisfied it was safe, he gave her a cigarette. Within 10 minutes of Kennedy's arrival, a heartbeat monitor showed a straight line. Nurse Bell was preparing another room for surgery, she returned and said, "We're ready when you are." "We won't be needing the room," a doctor said.

"The president's dead." It was about 1 p.m. A little later, a hearse pulled up with one of the finest caskets avail- A CALL FROM JOHNSON: Lyndon Johnson called Irving Goldberg, a lawyer, for advice on assuming the presidency. "I said to myself, 'I've got to be very sure of what I killed Kennedy's assassin. By a little after 1 p.m., two men with badges had questioned Hill for about 30 minutes. They clearly had witnessed everything.

Hill, a weekend target shooter, insisted there had been "four to six shots, at least one from in front of the president." They kept saying: "Three shots. The rest were echoes." They took her friend's Polaroids. She never found out who they were. Hill found a telephone and called a friend in Oklahoma to say, "The president's Her friend said, ow, Jean, are von "rp?" stopped traffic in Dealey Plaza, and Tague, on his way to lunch with a friend, had stepped from his car next to the triple underpass at the southwest corner of the plaza. The motorcade was about 250 feet away when Tague heard the shots.

A few minutes later, a deputy approached. "You've got blood on your face," he said. "I reached up, and there were a few drops of Tague says 25 years later. "I remembered something stinging me jt the time of the gunfire." nounced the shootings, led a short prayer and sent everyone home. Archer ended up back at the police station.

THE HOSPITAL: COME TO ER, 'STAT' The car bearing Kennedy raced past the Trade Mart to Parkland Memorial Hospital, a Dallas landmark for decades that was reno when he heard the first shot. Hargis, 32, had pulled escorts like this before in six years as a motor jockey, and he had been hoping the ordeal of a parade would end soon. He and about 350 other officers a third of the force were assigned to the visit. Hargis had led the motorcade from Dallas' Love Field airport, where the clear skies and 70-degree temperature had eliminated the need for the Plexiglas car bubble. STAFF PHOTOGRAPHS BY SCOTT WISEMAN A MEDICAL EMERGENCY: At Parkland Memorial Hospital, nurse Audrey Bell room, similar to the room snown, Jones ana ceiiumeu save namcuj, assistant administrator Steve Landregan and Dr.

Ronald Jones were pre- though Bell knew at once his wounds were fataL Outside; Landregan gave Mrs. paring to eat lunch when they learned Kennedy had been shot. In the trauma Kennedy a glass of water. The original trauma room no longer exists. Please see KENNEDYnext page.