On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas. Although the nation would never forget that terrible day, few bear the scars as deeply as those who witnessed it. These are their stories.
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00:00 On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas. Although the
00:06 nation would never forget that terrible day, few bear the scars as deeply as those who
00:10 witnessed it. These are their stories.
00:13 Dallas native Janice Gush was only 14 years old when President John F. Kennedy was killed.
00:17 Although she was too young to vote, she was nonetheless an admirer of the handsome young
00:21 president and his glamorous, socialite wife. On the morning of the president's arrival,
00:25 Gush and a friend skipped school and positioned themselves along the parade route. Gush told
00:29 ABC News,
00:30 "It was such an impulsive thing. We both had pink rollers the size of orange juice cans
00:34 in our hair. We had no makeup and were right there on the curb as the motorcade came by."
00:38 "The guys, they were just so much clapping and, you know, just people waving, and they
00:44 seemed like they were happy."
00:46 Gush came within feet of the president and the first lady, close enough to notice JFK's
00:50 bushy eyebrows and that Jackie Kennedy's lipstick perfectly matched her pink outfit and hat.
00:55 She remembered,
00:56 "We could have reached out and touched them if we wanted to."
00:59 Still buzzing from their brush with the Kennedys, Gush and a friend headed to a nearby drugstore,
01:02 where they noticed a distraught woman sobbing in her car. Gush approached the crying woman,
01:07 who told her the president had been shot. Gush recalled,
01:10 "It was like a moment frozen in time. It was so quiet, and I looked at the store manager
01:14 and she had tears running down her face. I remember putting my hands on my face and felt
01:18 the tears. How could that have happened? I was heart-sick."
01:22 The Chisholm family, John, Marvin, Faye, and their 3-year-old son, Rick, were in downtown
01:26 Dallas on a shopping trip. Little Rick needed a new pair of shoes. At the last minute, they
01:30 decided to watch the president and first lady pass. By happenstance, the Chisholms found
01:34 themselves in the crowd on Elm Street directly in front of the Texas School Book Depository.
01:38 In a 2013 interview with the New York Post, Marvin Faye Chisholm recalled the afternoon
01:42 of the day she came to remember as the worst of her life, saying,
01:46 "I was standing in front of the book depository and the shots came over my head."
01:50 Like many witnesses, Mrs. Chisholm initially thought the shots were firecrackers until
01:53 she saw the bullets strike Kennedy. In the ensuing chaos, John Chisholm heard someone
01:58 say the assassin was on the train tracks. Hoping to catch the gunman, he made a dash
02:01 for the grassy knoll, only to be tackled by what he believed to be Secret Service agents.
02:06 Chisholm and his family were taken to the police station and detained for 12 hours.
02:10 The assassination had a lasting impact on Rick Chisholm despite his young age. As he
02:14 told the Daily Campus,
02:15 "For a long time I had this dream of somebody getting killed in a car, but I never knew
02:18 what it was until I was 13 years old."
02:21 Orville Nix, a 52-year-old maintenance man employed at Dallas' Terminal Annex building,
02:26 was waiting to meet his wife, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter when he captured one of
02:29 the most important and controversial pieces of film in American history. Positioned opposite
02:33 Daly Plaza's now-infamous grassy knoll on the corner of Main and Houston Streets and
02:37 armed with his Keystone movie camera, Nix filmed the driver's side perspective of the
02:41 presidential limousine as the assassination unfolded.
02:44 "Government sources now confirm that President Kennedy is dead."
02:49 Until his death in 1972, Nix maintained that the shots came not from the book depository,
02:53 but from the fence at the crest of the grassy knoll.
02:56 Nix's friend Forrest Sorrells, Secret Service special agent in charge of the Dallas district
03:00 who was positioned in the back seat of the car immediately in front of the presidential
03:03 limousine, was among those who concurred with Nix's assessment. Nix's copy of the film and
03:08 his camera were confiscated by the FBI. According to Nix, the film returned to him appeared
03:12 to have been altered.
03:14 The original film, which Nix sold to United Press International for $5,000, was given
03:18 to the United States government and has remained missing since its use in the 1978 House Select
03:23 Committee on Assassinations. Along with the famous "A Brooder" film, Nix's footage was
03:27 instrumental in the Warren Commission's investigation of the assassination.
03:31 Ricky Mormon, age 11, wanted to see the presidential motorcade wind through downtown Dallas, but
03:35 Friday, November 22, was a school day. As a consolation, his mother, Mary Ann Mormon,
03:40 promised to snap a photo of the president. Mormon and her friend Jean Hill found the
03:43 perfect vantage point to watch a procession pass through Dealey Plaza. Standing just feet
03:48 from the curb directly opposite the grassy knoll, Mormon and Hill would have an unobstructed
03:52 view of the presidential limousine.
03:54 The friends were excited to see the handsome young president up close. As the motorcade
03:57 approached, the cheering got louder. Anxiously, she readied her camera. In a 2013 interview
04:03 with the New York Post, Mormon recalled what happened next, saying,
04:06 "As the car turned the corner and came down past us, Jean hollered, 'Mr. President, look
04:10 this way, we want to take your picture.' And I put the camera up and snapped the picture
04:13 when I thought he was looking at me."
04:16 Mormon, shown here in a still frame of the home movie famously shot by Abraham Zapruder,
04:21 took just one photograph of the president that day.
04:24 An unwitting witness to history, Mormon captured the moment Kennedy was struck by the fatal
04:28 bullet. Years later, she would tell documentary filmmaker Alan Gubner that at first she thought
04:32 there had been a gust of wind because she saw Kennedy's hair lift.
04:36 "She had no idea that what she was photographing was the assassination of the president of
04:41 the United States."
04:43 Then she heard the first lady scream. Mormon told PBS,
04:46 "Jackie hollered, 'My God, he's been shot!' We heard that so plain."
04:50 The afternoon of November 22, 1963, began on a note of inconvenience for James Tay.
04:56 A 27-year-old car salesman from U.S. Texas was in Dallas to meet his girlfriend for lunch,
05:00 but the president's visit had caused traffic through Dealey Plaza to grind to a standstill.
05:05 Since it was apparent he was going nowhere for a while, Tay parked his car and stood
05:08 near a bridge abutment to watch the motorcade. As the procession drew near, he heard a noise
05:12 similar to a firecracker.
05:13 In 2013, just a year before his death, Tay recalled what happened next in an interview
05:18 with KXAS-TV, saying,
05:20 "I'm standing there in disbelief at somebody throwing a firecracker, then crack, crack,
05:24 two rifle shots about a second apart and something stings me in the face."
05:28 A bullet intended for Kennedy had struck a nearby curb, spraying Tay with fragments of
05:32 concrete and lead. Realizing he was in the line of fire, he quickly dove for cover. Tay's
05:36 injury and the damage to the nearby curb were instrumental in investigators' determination
05:40 that the shots had come from the schoolbook depository, and that one round had missed
05:44 the motorcade entirely.
05:46 At the time of the assassination, Dallas Police Officer Robert W. Hargis was riding his motorcycle
05:51 at the left rear side of Kennedy's limousine. In a 1973 interview, the former patrolman
05:56 recalled that the route from Love Field to Dealey Plaza was so packed with spectators,
06:00 the entire motorcycle section, part of the local security contingent, was forced to fall
06:04 back behind the Secret Service car. It wasn't until the motorcade turned from Main on to
06:09 Elm Street that Hargis was able to assume his assigned position.
06:12 As the procession turned left in the direction of the Triple Overpass, Hargis heard the first
06:16 shot. A year before his death, Hargis related his perspective of the assassination in the
06:21 Dutch documentary Back and to the Left, escorting JFK, saying,
06:25 "Within five seconds, that second shot hit the president in the head, and a plume of
06:29 bloody matter went up and I rode right through it."
06:32 Soon after, a friend noticed that Hargis was covered in gore. As Hargis remembered,
06:35 "A buddy asked me, 'You got something on your lip?' and picked it off, and it was a piece
06:39 of the president's skull bone in his brains. I noticed that I had it all over my uniform.
06:44 I felt bad about that."
06:46 For decades identified in photos only as the "Girl in Blue," Toni Glover didn't come forward
06:50 with her story until 1995. Just 11 years old at the time of the assassination, Glover was
06:55 standing on a stone pedestal in Dealey Plaza across the street from a schoolbook depository
07:00 as the president's motorcade passed.
07:01 "I was five feet higher than anyone else, determined to watch that car every second
07:09 I possibly could."
07:10 Glover came from a troubled home, and she fantasized that if she could get JFK to wave
07:14 or look at her, it would mean that he knew she existed. She remembered her hope. No one
07:18 would hurt a kid that Kennedy knew. When interviewed by The Morning Call, Glover shared,
07:23 "I went there with this magical thinking that just a wave and a smile would change my life
07:26 forever. And he did indeed look up and smile and wave, and it took my breath away. I was
07:31 just floating on air. So I just kept watching the car as it went down the street, and his
07:35 head exploded."
07:36 "And I hope you'll excuse me if I am out of breath. A bulletin. This is from the United
07:39 Press from Dallas. 'President Kennedy and Governor John Connally have been cut down
07:43 by assassin's bullets in downtown Dallas.'"
07:45 Glover, now an English professor at the University of Scranton, struggled with depression for
07:49 decades after witnessing the assassination.
07:52 Tina Towner, 13, stood across the street from the Texas School Book Depository with her
07:55 mother Pat and father James Towner. Tina was tasked with capturing the motorcade with her
08:00 father's 8mm movie camera. So Tina, intent on getting the best footage possible, was
08:04 too consumed with operating the camera to get excited about the president and first
08:08 lady. As the procession moved out of her field of vision, Tina Towner stopped filming. No
08:12 sooner had Towner lowered the movie camera when she was startled by a sound she assumed
08:16 was firecrackers. Recognizing the sound of gunfire, a quick-thinking stranger pulled
08:20 the teen to the ground.
08:22 Towner's film documenting the moments just before the assassination continues to reveal
08:26 clues about the fateful day. In 2012, she wrote a book about her experience titled "Tina
08:30 Towner, My Story as the Youngest Photographer of the Kennedy Assassination." James Towner
08:35 avoided talking about the assassination for the rest of his life.
08:38 Dressed in their Sunday best, Bill and Gayle Newman made a day of seeing the Kennedy motorcade
08:42 with their young sons, Billy and Clayton. Their day started at Love Field, where they
08:45 saw the Kennedys disembark from Air Force One. They decided to go downtown afterward
08:49 to catch the motorcade and ended up in Dealey Plaza. Fate replaced the Newmans' mere feet
08:54 from the motorcade, making them the closest civilian witnesses to Kennedy's assassination.
08:58 "It was just right by us when it all happened, just right in front of us."
09:02 In a 2018 interview with the Hot Springs Village Voice, Bill Newman said,
09:06 "Just as the car passed in front of us, the third shot rang out, and I remember seeing
09:10 the side of President Kennedy's head blow off."
09:12 "I didn't know what was going on, so I just grabbed the boy and fell on him, in the hopes
09:16 that it wasn't a maniac or I…"
09:17 Believing themselves to be in the line of fire, the Newmans dove to the ground, shielding
09:21 their sons with their bodies.
09:23 Paul Landis was one of the Secret Service agents on duty that fateful day in Dallas,
09:26 and the events that unfolded under the wide Texas sky were so traumatic that within a
09:30 year he had left the service. He didn't speak about what happened for decades, and when
09:34 he released his memoir in late 2023, what he shared wasn't a rehashing of the same,
09:39 oft-told tale. In fact, it was pretty shocking.
09:43 According to Landis, the so-called "magic bullet" theory wasn't some magic after all.
09:47 Rather than the long-accepted and widely implausible theory that the same bullet that killed JFK
09:51 also hit Texas Governor John Connally Jr. multiple times, Landis said that he actually
09:56 plucked a bullet from the seat in front of Kennedy and behind Connally. Landis grabbed
10:00 the bullets when they'd already reached the hospital because he didn't want it to fall
10:03 into the hands of someone looking for a souvenir.
10:05 "People were pushing and shoving and I just got shoved right up against the examination
10:12 table."
10:13 He put it on the stretcher by JFK and says that what happened to it after that is speculation.
10:17 In an interview with The New York Times, Landis said,
10:19 "There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me. So it
10:23 was, 'Paul, you've got to make a decision,' and I grabbed it."
10:26 The implications are staggering. Landis says he always believed Oswald acted alone, but
10:31 the presence of the bullet that wouldn't have hit Connally has caused him to question the
10:34 official story.