Tuesday travel Dallas to open up assassin’s perch

Press, 24 May 1988, Page 30

Tuesday travel Dallas to open up assassin’s perch

“The Press” on the move

Story and photographs by LES BLOXHAM, travel editor, who visited Dallas last week as a guest of the Travel Industry Association of America and Continental Airlines.

A quarter of a century after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Dallas will open in November a public exhibit on the sixth floor of the building from where Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots.

The ritual in Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas has been the same each day for almost 25 years. From dawn to dusk, wet or fine, the tourists have come to a grassy knoll on Elm Street. They have come from within the United States and from distant shores. They have come to look at a red brick building and a particular spot on this busy street. They have come to the place where

bullets from an assassin’s gun violently, tragically slayed a President and changed the course of history. They have come in silence, often to leave in tears ...

At 12.30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald crouched with his $3O mail-order rifle behind an open window on the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository as the motorcade carrying President John F. Kennedy turned into Elm Street. When the open-top limousine came into view, Oswald aimed at Kennedy’s head and squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times. Within six seconds, the President was lying mortally wounded in the lap of his wife. The Governor of Texas, John Connally, who was seated in the same car immediately in front of the President, was also hit by a bullet and seriously injured. Oswald was arrested 75 minutes later in a cinema. The rest is history

... the swearing in of President Johnson; the slaying of Oswald by Jack Ruby outside Dallas’s police headquarters; the allegations of a conspiracy; and the Warren Commission inquiry into Kennedy’s assassination.

Meanwhile, Dallas has had to live with a reputation of being a violent city; a city of fear and hate. The schoolbook building became a symbol of shame. It was fire-bombed twice and many residents joined a vigorous campaign to have it torn down. For 14 years it remained abandoned; its fate hanging in the balance. In 1977, however, the Dallas County purchased it to house its administration offices and the County Commissioners’ Court. But the sixth floor remained an empty shell, firmly sealed and barred to the public. Tourists have constantly sought entry. They must, instead, content themselves with a polite refusal on the ground floor and an invitation to sign the visitors’ book.

“Remembering Kennedy brings tears to my eyes," wrote a woman from San Diego. "Please open the sixth floor to the public.” An English couple from Worcestershire noted: “This is a sad corner of Dallas, a small part of America that belongs to everyone. We all left a part of our lives here .. By 1983, 20 years after the slaying, pressure for a memorial on the sixth floor had become so intense that the county commissioners finally relented and agreed to establish a historical foundation.

Like Ford’s Theatre in Washington, where President Abraham Lincoln was

shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, the building in Dallas was declared a national historic site.

This cleared the way for plans to be drawn up to turn the sixth floor into a “tasteful, educational exhibit” at an estimated cost of SUS3.B million. Two thirds of this money will be used to ■install twin elevators at the rear of the building to provide direct access for the expected 500,000 visitors a year. The final approval was a personal triumph for Mrs Lindalyn Adams who had conducted a long battle to have the sixth floor opened. Now president of the Dallas County Historical Association, Mrs Adams emphasised that “we are not aiming to be a museum.”

There will be no artefacts. “No, Oswald’s gun will not be on display,” she said. “It is under lock and key in the National Archives and that’s where it should stay. “We are not creating a memorial to Lee Harvey Oswald.” Although some sensitivity still lingers on in Dallas, the association’s project director, Ms Conover Hunt, believes the city is finally ready to handle the tragedy and its aftermath. “This building belongs to the world; the general feeling here now is that the site is bigger than all of us,” she said. The exhibit will offer insights into many aspects of the tragedy. “We are in effect writing the first history of the assassination,” said Ms Hunt.

The 8500 sq ft display will contain photographic enlargements, movie films, graphs, charts and other related material. Visitors will be charged a “modest” entry fee.

The first section will include a brief history of the early 1960’s and an outline of Kennedy’s career and his rise to the presidency. The historically important “sniper’s perch” used by Oswald will be preserved, but the public will not be able to gain access to the actual window through which the shots were fired. This area will be sealed by glass walls, but visitors will be able to look down on to Elm Street and Dealey Plaza from the other windows along the sixth-floor frontage. Other sections will trace the background of the president’s trip to Texas, a chronology of events as they unfolded in Dallas and Washington between November 22-25, 1963, and the capture of Oswald and his own violent death. “Obviously we must be sensitive to the nature of this event which personally touched so many people,” said Ms Hunt. “We do not want the exhibit to interrupt the contemplative nature of the experience.”

The association is planning to open “The Sixth Floor,” as it will be known, on November 9. And who will declare it open?

“At this stage we are unsure,” said Mrs Adams, “but it would be rather nice to have the President here ...”