Oswald's Ghost

Last night I watched the program “Oswald’s Ghost” on PBS. Yes, yet another show about the Kennedy assassination. I found fascinating the statistic, given at the end, that 70% of Americans still believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, that there was, indeed, some kind of conspiracy. I myself have always found it difficult to believe that this man who came across as somewhat stupid (he wasn’t, actually) would have done this all on his own, but the hard evidence really does seem to point to that being the case. Indeed, the historian Priscilla Johnson McMillan, who wrote a book about Oswald and his wife Marina, insists that not only was Oswald capable of carrying out such an act on his own, his personality and history were such that it was highly unlikely he would do it with anyone else. He was the proverbial loner, turned killer.

Of course, like everyone else who was above the age of 10 on Nov. 22, 1963, I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news. As I was coming out of study hall at Robert E. Lee High School, San Antonio, Texas, someone came rushing past and said the president had just been shot in Dallas. Naturally I didn’t believe it. My next class just happened to be Civics, and the classroom happened to have one of the school’s few televisions, mounted up on the wall, for accessing educational programs. When I walked into class the T.V. was on, and there it was, in unflinching black and white. We didn’t have class, we just watched the news unfolding. A couple of girls cried. One young man – obviously a died-in-the-wool Republican, and one of many Texans who did not like JFK – announced that “he for one was glad.” Our teacher, whom absolutely no one liked, went up a few points in my book when she said, “Tommy, that’s a terrible thing to say, no matter what your politics are.” I personally had been a big fan of Kennedy’s, and was mortified to be living in a state where a president could be murdered on the streets.

Even when the bell rang and students for the next class started coming in, many of us did not move. The event produced the same kind of dumbfounded disbelief that September 11, 2001 did 38 years later; and, as we all know, became indelibly etched on a nation’s consciousness as a Defining Moment.

The program was the source of one disappointment for me: learning that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who was at the center of the 1991 Oliver Stone movie JFK, was apparently something of a self-aggrandizing, homophobic nut case. You certainly didn’t get that impression from Stone’s film! I came away from that movie more convinced that ever that there had been some kind of elaborate conspiracy; but apparently Stone pretty much swallowed whole whatever Garrison told him (or wrote in his book), even though (it would seem) so much of Garrison's “evidence” was conjured out of gossamer. Even other conspiracy theorists at the time of Garrison’s investigation (late 60s) felt that Garrison was a “flake” and his investigation was bogus. Too bad. Kevin Costner was so convincing...

One of the most affecting parts of last night’s program for me was the scene of Oswald’s murder at the hands of Jack Ruby two days after his arrest. It brought back the amazing memory of passing through our living room and glancing at the television – which, as in most households of the time, had been on all but nonstop for several days – and seeing that murder take place. I stopped, gawked at the T.V., and said out loud, “My God, they’re having live murder on the television now.” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Another amazing statistic that the program supplied was that 2,000 books have been written about the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps it’s time to move on.