Per Michael Beschloss, that memo above are President Johnson’s notes from his first meeting with what had been President Kennedy’s Cabinet, 50 years ago yesterday.
Scott Murray was chosen to emcee the JFK memorial event?!
The weather has really screwed up two major television events in the area. You have the Super Bowl a few years ago, and on Friday at the JFK memorial even a flyover had to be cancelled as well as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra participation because of the clouds, rain, and cold weather. Overall the memorial service went well, but having the orchestra play with the Naval Academy Glee Club instead of a keyboard would have been more touching. But at least the bag-pipers got to play.
A lot of the overflow crowd was directed to watch the events on the big screens at Victory Park. KTVT reported numerous audio visual problems, which was funny because that area is controlled by rival WFAA, and WFAA’s PR firm stated they weren’t aware of any issues. But the Internet thought it was a poor idea as those big screens are actually four screens put together, which made for cross-hairs on JFK numerous times during a memorial video.
And some thought there was an inappropriate/humorous Dallas tourism ad that was badly placed on Texas Monthly’s website, just read the small print after the headline.
I knew the Parkland doctor that treated JFK also treated Oswald, but I didn’t now that years later he would end up treating Abraham Zapruder.
There’s a tradition in Dallas and for almost all slain police that the surviving spouse receives the flag off the coffin, somehow that was overlooked for J.D. Tippit’s widow but DPD finally presented her one on Friday.
JFK’s first letter as president had been to the Kennedy children. His second had been to the head of the Secret Service commending agent Rufus Youngblood who immediately after the first shot was fired in Dallas, threw himself on Johnson and his wife onto the floor of the car. CBS News
The Dallas Morning News had an article about a Secret Service agent that was assigned to protect the Oswald family after the assassination. LBJ actually made the order and the agent could not find a funeral home in Dallas to take Lee’s body.
In this LA Times article, it’s stated that before the end of 1963, Oswald’s mother received over $6,000 in the mail from various individuals show that the sins of the son would not be visited on the mother. I plugged that amount into the inflation calculator and that’s almost $46,000 in today’s money.
I didn’t know that Jackie Kennedy granted an interview a week after the assassination. Things in that interview that stood out to me:
She thought Jack’s last expression was so neat and wonderful even as a piece of his skull was coming off.
She’s specific about being covered in blood and brains. She knew he was dead but tried her best to hold his brain in. She mentioned nothing about it was repulsive to her, and that kind of reminded me of the time my mother kiss my father before the closed the casket for the last time. I thought it was touching, but kinda repulsing, but then again, I never lost a spouse.
Even though she was calm and repose, the docs tried to give her a sedative.
He was put in the coffin naked.
Everytime she got off the plane in Texas she was presented yellow roses, but in Dallas she was given red roses which she thought kinda funny.
She regretted wiping the blood off her face for the swearing in photo.
She really only wanted two things to honor him after his death, the eternal flame and the his name on the side of the nose of the Saturn booster rocket. She was advised that the name on the booster wouldn’t be dignified and it was arranged for Cape Canaveral to be named Cape Kennedy, which later returned to its original name and the space center being named after him.
She talked about John Jr’s interest in airplane and thought he might one day be a pilot or astronaut.
George Stephanopoulos stated “There is no family in American politics who is quite on par with the Kennedy’s.” I’d have to respectfully disagree with him as the Bush family has two presidents, one governor, a mafia kingpin (Barbara), and I’m sure I’m missing a few other Bush family accomplishments.
It was funny listening to Baylor fans for the past week. After the Tech game many were leaving AT&T Stadium talking about who they deserved to be in the national championship game and couldn’t wait to throttle Alabama. But as the week went on the reality of their soft schedule, lack of away games, and weakness of the Big XII this year started to seep in and most started to rightly fear Oklahoma State. Baylor has a good team and their fans should enjoy the season, but as I’ve been saying all year, because of their overly soft schedule and how they like to run up the score on weak opponents, they aren’t that good.
For the last week/week-and-a-half Barry has been blogging about Judge Jerry Ray chastising a Tarrant County jury. I actually went through the whole Mineral Wells school system with his daughter and we were both in the same graduating class of 122 students, but I don’t think I actually said more than five sentences to her, which is kinda sad when you think about it. I think a lot of that had to do with her father getting my favorite coach fired. The way I remember the story is that she was playing junior high basketball and that coach said a curse word. She told her father and with him being a prominent member of the community was working to get the coach fired over the issue. Keep in mind, this is all coming from the memory of events of me as a junior high kid. That coach had a good relationship with my family as he coached my brother about a decade prior and called one evening. When I answered the phone and heard my coach on the other end I thought I was in big trouble as I didn’t know anything about this issue. The first thing Coach told me was that I wasn’t in trouble and he just wanted to talk to my father, as it turns out, he was trying to get some trusted members of the community to vouch for his character to save his job. Well, he got fired, or maybe just didn’t want to deal with the small town politics and just quit. His wife continued to teach in the school district and they both remained in Mineral Wells, but he drove to a new coaching/teaching gig in Joshua for the rest of his career if I recall correctly.
I’ve noticed that Yahoo! is starting to make their video web presence more visible, but I don’t think the interface is as intuitive as it should be and they seem to be focusing on more professional made stuff, for instance, this ‘Royals’ parody of on white girls. There’s been such a backlash on YouTube lately because of their advertising measures and forcing users to be a part of Google+, Yahoo! has a real chance to do something.
Scott Murray was totally the wrong person to emcee that event. He always sounds disingenuous, like a PR guy selling Shinola. He is the posterboy for 'cheesy' promotions. Too bad Murphy Martin isn't around anymore, he would have been perfect. He was always the dignified professional announcer. Tony Lawrence would have been very good, too.
I think you have JFK & LBJ confused in item 10.
Why does that story about Jerry Ray getting a coach fired not surprise me? I have a feeling Mr Ray lives in a very large glass house. I also wonder what shenanigans took place in his court to innocent defendants.
I imagine being beheaded is like it was portrayed in Apocalypto.
It was a pretty great night to be an oSu alum. Baylor should be proud of the season they've had, which isn't over, but Stillwater at night is already a tough place to play, and this oSu team are no slouches. Gundy has been building one heck of a program.
From the overhead view the attendance seems sparse. I understand that the Dealey Plaza crowd was to be limited to only 5000 and the weather was bad, but still the turn-out appears paltry compared to what I imagined from all of the media lead-up stories. I was also surprised that there were demonstrators, some of whom the police had to restrain. There were a few people carrying signs that said "LBJ Did It". I hope that the DMN is correct and the city can now get over the assassination fixation; 50 years is enough.
Scott Murray was totally the wrong person to emcee that event. He always sounds disingenuous, like a PR guy selling Shinola. He is the posterboy for 'cheesy' promotions. Too bad Murphy Martin isn't around anymore, he would have been perfect. He was always the dignified professional announcer. Tony Lawrence would have been very good, too.
I think you have JFK & LBJ confused in item 10.
Why does that story about Jerry Ray getting a coach fired not surprise me? I have a feeling Mr Ray lives in a very large glass house. I also wonder what shenanigans took place in his court to innocent defendants.
I imagine being beheaded is like it was portrayed in Apocalypto.
It was a pretty great night to be an oSu alum. Baylor should be proud of the season they've had, which isn't over, but Stillwater at night is already a tough place to play, and this oSu team are no slouches. Gundy has been building one heck of a program.
JFK Memorial Event:
From the overhead view the attendance seems sparse. I understand that the Dealey Plaza crowd was to be limited to only 5000 and the weather was bad, but still the turn-out appears paltry compared to what I imagined from all of the media lead-up stories. I was also surprised that there were demonstrators, some of whom the police had to restrain. There were a few people carrying signs that said "LBJ Did It". I hope that the DMN is correct and the city can now get over the assassination fixation; 50 years is enough.