Page 28 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - November 2013 Edition

Watching JFK’s Ghost Fade Away Watching JFK's Ghost Fade Away By Jim Schutze Dallas Observer Over the last three years as the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination has drawn closer, Dealey Plaza where he was killed has been the setting for an ugly battle. On one side has been an eclectic army of conspiracy theorists insistent on their right to use the plaza as their podium. Partisans on the other side have been old Dallas establishment types sometimes using heavy-handed and often illegal tactics to quell and quash such activity. This year a federal civil rights lawsuit produced emails and other communications proving that the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey face stung harder for those whose families were was assassinated in Dealey Plaza is a fact of Plaza was deeply involved behind the scenes in in the kind of leadership positions that made history which thankfully our city finally found a first seeking, then even taking part in the illegal them specific named targets in the tsunami of way to recognize and acknowledge in an arrest and jailing of a conspiracy author whom writing and publishing that ensued. appropriate way, which is the role of the Sixth the museum wanted expunged from the plaza. A year or so ago I found online an hour Floor Museum." The final outcome and expression of this battle and 15 minutes of raw videotape somebody Yeah. I watch that, and I ask myself, so, will be the memorial service itself on the 22nd posted 10 years ago. It was some kind of oral Schutze, what if the camera from the bad TV — ticketed and barricaded to keep the rabble history or documentary project in which an show were on you, and the interviewer said, out and the old guard in. interviewer talked about the assassination with "Mr. Schutze, how has it affected you that But now with the date upon us, all of a Robert Decherd, recently retired chairman and sometimes people in grocery stores think you sudden a very different and deeply personal CEO of A.H. Belo Corp., owner of The Dallas may be an escaped insane nitwit murderer with dimension opens. For those who were alive Morning News. The Decherds are a branch of really bad teeth?" when it happened, the murder of JFK is still the Dealey clan. I think about that, and I think maybe visceral. When opposing factions of the same In his 1967 book, The Death of a Decherd handled it pretty smoothly. But then generation of people confront each other at President, commissioned by Jackie Kennedy as there is this. I have come to know Robert Dealey Plaza on Friday, they will be divided by the official version of what happened, author Groden, the author whom the Sixth Floor barricades but united by the fact that for all of William Manchester singled out the Dealey Museum helped get thrown in jail on trumped- them the loss of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in that name for association with the climate of up charges. He's a nice man. I like him. place a half century ago is still today a personal extremism in Dallas that Manchester, like many I came across the internal police burden of grief. This anniversary probably will others to follow, blamed for the assassination. department email in which the arresting officer be the last time that is true. Manchester, by the way, also purveyed the false bragged to his superior that they had been able I married my wife, a Dallas native, 35 story about school children cheering with glee to make Groden's overnight incarceration even years ago, and it almost did not happen, I think, when they heard the president of the United harder on him by withholding his medications. because of the assassination. I moved here in the States had been murdered. This was an ugly business, this persecution of late 1970s. When we were dating, I repeated I have listened a couple of times to this Groden. Whoever was at the top of it, working stories I had heard to the effect that Dallas very long rambling interview with Decherd the puppet strings, needs to be deeply ashamed school kids cheered when the assassination was done 10 years ago, in which he is asked in all of himself or herself or themselves. announced on P.A. systems. I still remember the sorts of overcautious ways how he felt growing On the day Kennedy was shot in Dallas, look on her face, as if I had slapped her hard. up as someone whose family was singled out for Groden was an 18-year-old kid playing hooky I think we all know now those stories blame. At one point in response to a question, from Forest Hills High School in the nice part of were urban legends. That's not the point. The Decherd tells a remarkable story that he seems Queens, New York. He and his sister watched point for me was that I had to learn — had to see to want to minimize. At age 11, he was taken to the story break on television. Groden has it in her face — that these accusations were Parkland Hospital where his parents visited the devoted every day of his life since that day to deeply and painfully personal for people who shot and severely wounded governor of Texas, solving what he believes is an open murder lived here then. John Connally, who was in the motorcade with case. He is a best-selling author. He was a staff For about 30 seconds once several years Kennedy. So Decherd, this child from what expert to the 1976 House Select Committee on ago, I was accused of something truly horrible. sounds like a fairly sheltered background, sat Assassinations, which concluded that Lee I had written a nonfiction book about a grisly staring at Secret Service agents and cops in a Harvey Oswald probably did not act alone in the murder case. Somebody made a sloppy low- waiting room while his parents were in a room killing of the president. He is a man not without budget TV show about the case, for which I was down the hall with one of the guys who got shot. standing. interviewed on camera. It aired nationally, At another point the interviewer asks Groden is not unlike the army of unfortunately. Months later I was in the him if he has any difficulty with the association assassination experts and theorists who have checkout lane at a supermarket, and a young of his family name with the site of the been banished from Dealey Plaza for the 50th couple in the next lane who had caught only assassination. Decherd says his feelings for observations — a banishment carried out at the fragments of the show convinced themselves I Dealey Plaza include "only positive things instigation of the Sixth Floor Museum and with was the escaped, insane half-witted murderer. because that's the manner in which it was the heavy-handed cooperation of City Hall. The killer had really bad teeth, by the way. It's created." He says the naming of the plaza for his Many of them are in their 60s, 70s and even 80s. stupid and hilarious now. But in the moment, I forebear "was the pinnacle in my mind of a The assassination has been the dominant theme must tell you, it was a terrible thing. Especially deserved recognition ... so I celebrate Dealey and focus of their lives. when I think of his teeth. Plaza, and I don't look back on history and wish That's a tiny fraction of what people in it were otherwise. Continues on Page 30 Dallas felt in the years after 1963. If it was any "Things happen in a lot of cities and a lot worse for any element of the city's population of places for reasons that transcend our The ‘X’ Zone with Rob McConnell than others, then probably that slap across the understanding, and the fact that the president www.xzoneradiotv.com