MERRIMAN SMITH REMEMBERS
NOVEMBER 22, 1963:
EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF
PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S ASSASSINATION
BY UPI's MERRIMAN SMITH:
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- It was a balmy, sunny noon as we motored through downtown Dallas behind President Kennedy. The procession cleared the center of the business district and turned into a handsome highway that wound through what appeared to be a park.
I was riding in the so-called White House press "pool" car, a telephone company vehicle equipped with a mobile radio-telephone. It was in the front seat between a driver from the telephone company and Malcolm Kilduff, acting White House press secretary for the President's Texas tour. Three other pool reporters were wedged into the back seat.
Suddenly we heard three loud, almost painfully loud, cracks. The first sounded as if it might have been a large firecracker, but the second and third blasts were unmistakable. Gunfire.
The President's car, possibly as much as 150 or 200 yards ahead, seemed to falter briefly. We saw a flurry of activity in the Secret Service follow-up car behind the chief executive's bubble-top limousine.
Next in line was the car bearing Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. Behind that, another follow-up car bearing agents assigned to the vice president's protection. We were behind that car.
Our car stood still for probably only a few seconds, but it seemed like a lifetime. One sees history explode before one's eyes and for even the most trained observer, there is a limit to what one can comprehend.
I looked ahead at the President's car but could not see him or his companion, Gov. John B. Connally of Texas. Both men had been riding on the right side of the bubble-top limousine from Washington. I thought I saw a flash of pink which would have been Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy.
Everyone in our car began shouting at the driver to pull up closer to the President's car, but at this moment, we saw the big bubble-top and a motorcycle escort roar away at high speed.
We screamed at our driver, "Get going, get going." We careened around the Johnson car and its escort and set out down the highway, barely able to keep in sight of the President's car and the accompanying Secret Service follow-up car.
They vanished around a curve. When we cleared the same curve we could see where we were heading--Parkland Hospital, a large brick structure to the left of the arterial highway. We skidded around a sharp left turn and spilled out of the pool car as it entered the hospital driveway.
I ran to the side of the bubble-top.
The President was face down on the back seat. Mrs. Kennedy made a cradle of her arms around the President's head and bent over him as if she were whispering to him.
Governor Connally was on his back on the floor of the car, his head and shoulders resting in the arms of his wife, Nellie, who kept shaking her head and shaking with dry sobs. Blood oozed from the front of the Governor's suit. I could not see the President's wound. But I could see blood splattered around the interior of the rear seat and a dark stain spreading down the right side of the President's dark gray suit.
From the telephone car, I had radioed the Dallas bureau of UPI that three shots had been fired at the Kennedy motorcade. Seeing the bloody scene in the rear of the car at the hospital entrance, I knew I had to get to a telephone immediately.
Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent in charge of the detail assigned to Mrs. Kennedy, was leaning into the rear of the car.
"How badly was he hit, Clint?" I asked.
"He's dead," Hill replied curtly.
I have no further clear memory of the scene in the driveway. I recall a babble of anxious, tense voices -- "Where in hell are the stretchers . . . get a doctor out here . . . he's on the way . . . come on, easy there." And from somewhere, nervous sobbing.
I raced down a short stretch of sidewalk into a hospital corridor. The first thing I spotted was a small clerical office, more of a booth than an office. Inside, a bespectacled man stood shuffling what appeared to be hospital forms. At a wicket much like a bank teller's cage, I spotted a telephone on the shelf.
"How do you get outside?" I gasped. "The President has been hurt and this is an emergency call."
"Dial nine," he said, shoving the phone toward me.
It took two tries before I successfully dialed the Dallas UPI number. Quickly I dictated a bulletin saying the President had been seriously, perhaps fatally, injured by an assassin's bullets while driving through the streets of Dallas.
Litters bearing the President and the Governor rolled by me as I dictated, but my back was to the hallway and I didn't see them until they were at the entrance of the emergency room about 75 or 100 feet away.
I knew they had passed, however, from the horrified expression that suddenly spread over the face of the man behind the wicket.
As I stood in the drab buff hallway leading into the emergency ward trying to reconstruct the shooting for the UPI man on the other end of the telephone and still keep track of what was happening outside of the door of the emergency room, I watched a swift and confused panorama sweep before me.
Kilduff of the White House press staff raced up and down the hall. Police captains barked at each other, "Clear this area." Two priests hurried in behind a Secret Service agent, their narrow purple stoles rolled up tightly in their hands. A police lieutenant ran down the hall with a large carton of blood for transfusions. A doctor came in and said he was responding to a call for "all neurosurgeons."
The priests came out and said the President had received the Last Sacrament of the Roman Catholic Church. They said he was still alive, but not conscious. Members of the Kennedy staff began arriving. They had been behind us in the motorcade, but hopelessly bogged for a time in confused traffic.
Telephones were at a premium in the hospital and I clung to mine for dear life. I was afraid to stray from the wicket lest I lost contact with the outside world.
My decision was made for me, however, when Kilduff and Wayne Hawks of the White House staff ran by me, shouting that Kilduff would make a statement shortly in the so-called Nurses Room a floor above and at the far end of the hospital.
I threw down the phone and sped after them. We reached the door of the conference room and there were loud cries of "Quiet!" Fighting to keep his emotions under control, Kilduff said, "President John Fitzgerald Kennedy died at approximately one o'clock."
I raced into a nearby office. The telephone switchboard at the hospital was hopelessly jammed. I spotted Virginia Payette, wife of UPI's Southwest Division manager and a veteran reporter in her own right. I told her to try getting through on pay telephones on the floor above.
Frustrated by the inability to get through the hospital switchboard, I appealed to a nurse. She led me through a maze of corridors and back stairways to another floor and a lone pay booth. I got the Dallas office. Virginia had gotten through before me.
Whereupon I ran back through the hospital to the conference room. There, Jiggs Fauver of the White House transportation staff grabbed me and said Kilduff wanted a pool of three men immediately to fly back to Washington on Air Force One, the presidential aircraft.
"He wants you downstairs, and he wants you right now," Fauver said.
Down the stairs I ran and into the driveway, only to discover Kilduff had just pulled out in our telephone car.
Charles Roberts of Newsweek Magazine, Sid Davis of Westinghouse Broadcasting and I implored a police officer to take us to the airport in his squad car. The Secret Service had requested that no sirens be used in the vicinity of the airport, but the Dallas officer did a masterful job of getting us through some of the worst traffic I've ever seen.
As we piled out of the car on the edge of the runway about 200 yards from the presidential aircraft, Kilduff spotted us and motioned for us to hurry. We trotted to him and he said the plane could take two pool men to Washington; that Johnson was about to take the oath of office aboard the plane and would take off immediately thereafter.
I saw a bank of telephone booths beside the runway and asked if I had time to advise my news service. He said, "But, for God's sake, hurry."
Then began another telephone nightmare. The Dallas office rang busy. I tried calling Washington. All circuits were busy. I then called the New York bureau of UPI where the General News Desk seemed quite shocked to hear from me. I told them about the impending installation of a new president aboard the airplane.
Kilduff came out of the plane and motioned wildly toward my booth. I slammed down the phone and jogged toward the runway. A detective stopped me and said, "You dropped your pocket comb."
Aboard Air Force One on which I had made so many trips as a press association reporter covering President Kennedy, all of the shades of the larger main cabin were drawn and the interior was hot and dimly lighted.
Kilduff propelled us to the President's suite two-thirds of the way back in the plane. The room is used normally as a combination conference and sitting room and could accommodate eight to 10 people seated.
I wedged inside the door and began counting. There were 27 people in this compartment. Johnson stood in the center with his wife, Lady Bird. U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes, 67, a kindly-faced woman stood with a small black Bible in her hands, waiting to give him the oath.
The compartment became hotter and hotter. Johnson was worried that some of the Kennedy staff might not be able to get inside. He urged people to press forward, but a Signal Corps photographer, Capt. Cecil Stoughton, standing in the corner on a chair, said if Johnson moved any closer, it would be virtually impossible to make a truly historic photograph.
It developed that Johnson was waiting for Mrs. Kennedy, who was composing herself in a small bedroom in the rear of the plane. She appeared alone, dressed in the same pink wool suit she had worn in the morning when she appeared so happy shaking hands with airport crowds at the side of her husband.
She was white-faced but dry-eyed. Friendly hands stretched toward her as she stumbled slightly. Johnson took both of her hands in his and motioned her to his left side. Lady Bird stood on his right, a fixed half-smile showing the tension.
Johnson nodded to Judge Hughes, an old friend of his family and a Kennedy appointee.
"Hold up your right hand and repeat after me," the woman jurist said to Johnson.
Outside a jet could be heard droning into a landing.
Judge Hughes held out the Bible and Johnson covered it with his large left hand. His right arm went slowly into the air and the jurist began to intone the constitutional oath, "I do solemnly swear I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States..."
The brief ceremony ended when Johnson, in a deep firm voice, repeated after the judge, ". . . and so help me God."
Johnson turned first to his wife, hugged her about the shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. Then he turned to Kennedy's widow, put his left arm around her and kissed her cheek.
As others in the group -- some Texas Democratic House members, members of the Johnson and Kennedy staffs -- moved toward the new president, he seemed to back away from any expressions of felicitation.
The two-minute ceremony concluded at 2:38 p.m., CST, and seconds later, the President said firmly, "Now, let's get airborne."
Col. James Swindal, pilot of the plane, a big gleaming silver and blue fan-jet, cut on the starboard engines immediately. Several persons, including Sid Davis of Westinghouse, left the plane immediately. The White House had room for only two pool reporters on the return flight and these posts were filled by Roberts and me, although at the moment we could find no empty seats.
At 2:47 p.m., CST, the wheels of Air Force One cleared the runway. Swindal roared the big ship up to an unusually high cruising altitude of 41,000 feet where at 625 MPH ground speed the jet hustled toward Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.
When the President's plane reached operating altitude, Mrs. Kennedy left her bedchamber and walked to the rear compartment of the plane. This was the so called Family Living Room, a private area where she and Kennedy, family and friends had spent many happy airborne hours chatting and dining together.
Kennedy's casket had been placed in this compartment, carried aboard by a group of Secret Service agents.
Mrs. Kennedy went into the rear lounge and took a chair beside the coffin. There she remained throughout the flight. Her vigil was shared at times by four staff members close to the slain chief executive -- David Powers, his buddy and personal assistant; Kenneth P. O'Donnell, appointments secretary and key political adviser; Lawrence O'Brien, chief Kennedy liaison man with Congress; and Brig. Gen. Godfrey McHugh, Kennedy's Air Force aide.
Kennedy's military aide, Maj. Gen. Chester V. Clifton, was busy most of the trip in the forward areas of the plane, sending messages and making arrangements for arrival ceremonies and movement of the body to Bethesda Naval Hospital.
As the flight progressed, Johnson walked back into the main compartment. My portable typewriter was lost somewhere around the hospital and I was writing on an over-sized electric typewriter which Kennedy's personal secretary, Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln, had used to type his speech texts.
Johnson came up to the table where Roberts and I were trying to record the history we had just witnessed.
"I'm going to make a short statement in a few minutes and give you copies of it," he said. "Then when I get on the ground, I'll do it over again."
It was the first public utterance of the new chief executive, brief and moving:
"This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me it is a deep personal tragedy. I know the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help -- and God's."
When the plane was about 45 minutes from Washington, the new President got on a special radio-telephone and placed a call to Mrs. Rose Kennedy, the late President's mother.
"I wish to God there was something I could do," he told her. "I just wanted you to know that."
Then Mrs. Johnson wanted to talk to the elder Mrs. Kennedy.
"We feel like the heart has been cut out of us," Mrs. Johnson said. She broke down for a moment and began to sob. Recovering in a few seconds, she added, "Our love and our prayers are with you."
Thirty minutes out of Washington, Johnson put in a call for Nellie Connally, wife of the seriously wounded Texas governor.
The new President said to the governor's wife:
"We are praying for you, darling, and I know that everything is going to be all right, isn't it? Give him a hug and a kiss for me."
It was dark when Air Force One began to skim over the lights of the Washington area, lining up for a landing at Andrews AFB. The plane touched down at 5:59 p.m., EST.
I thanked the stewards for rigging up the typewriter for me, pulled on my raincoat and started down the forward ramp. Roberts and I stood under a wing and watched the casket being lowered from the rear of the plane and borne by a complement of armed forces body bearers into a waiting hearse. We watched Mrs. Kennedy and the President's brother, Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy, climb into the hearse beside the coffin.
The new President repeated his first public statement for broadcast and newsreel microphones, shook hands with some of the government and diplomatic leaders who turned out to meet the plane, and headed for his helicopter.
Roberts and I were given seats on another 'copter bound for the White House lawn. In the compartment next to ours in one of the large chairs sat Theodore C. Sorensen, one of Kennedy's closest associates with the title of special counsel to the President. He had not gone to Texas with his chief but had come to the air base for his return.
Sorensen sat wilted in the large chair, crying softly. The dignity of his deep grief seemed to sum up all of the tragedy and sadness of the previous six hours.
As our helicopter circled in the balmy darkness for a landing on the White House south lawn, it seemed incredible that only six hours before, John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been a vibrant, smiling, waving and active man.
Oregon newspaper on November 24, 1963....
