In Dallas, the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) is one of several groups sponsoring events to commemorate the day.
COPA will hold a full day organizational meeting of its sixteen Working Panels on Tuesday, November 21. These include Photographic, Medical and Ballistic Evidence, and Fundraising Support panels.
That same evening, author Robert Groden will appear at the Paramount Hotel in Dallas to help raise funds for COPA. According to a COPA press release, "He will show his new video which collects all the existing film records of the murder of John F. Kennedy, and uses modern film techniques to make clear what actually occurred on November 22, 1963."
On November 22, COPA representatives will be on the grassy knoll. Again from their press release:
For more information, call (202) 785-5299.At exactly 12:30, the time of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 32 years ago, we will hold a moment of silence in Dealey Plaza to commemorate his life and his still unsolved murder. This moment of silence is a tradition begun by researcher and journalist Penn Jones. We will be present at Dealey Plaza that morning to introduce visitors to the work of the national coalition. Some members of the Coalition on Political Assassiantions will speak briefly. Please join us in this rememberance and our quest for justice.
The Dallas-area group JFK Lancer, publishers of The Assassination Chronicles, is hosting a Bookstore-Hospitality room on November 21 and 22. Anyone interested in the JFK case can stop by to "purchase materials, [have] informal discussions, [or] just say hello." JFK-Lancer's Bookstore-Hospitality room will be at the Paramount Hotel, one block from Dealey Plaza. Special room rates are available. For more information, called (214) 761-9090.
Group spokesmen say there are plans to expand and welcome new members and contacts from outside the U.K. They say they'll assist visiting researchers to the U.K. by putting them in touch with their counterparts or by acting as guide, host, etc.
Contact Ian Griggs (Secretary) via email at igriggs@easynet.co.uk or phone 01992-719805 (011-44-1992-719805 from North America).
But to use a phrase those two In Living Color guys made popular...hated it! Written by Stanley Shapiro, A Time to Remember is basically Back to the Future meets the Warren Report. Be forewarned, I'm going to spill the beans on this one. If you don't like spoilers, you'd better stop reading right now.
I should mention first that this book has been kicking around for a while. It was published in 1986; the copy I found (for $2.50) is a Signet paperback. You're not likely to find it easily.
The story of A Time To Remember is pretty simple, and indeed might appeal to science fiction fans. David, our hero, longs for a revered dead brother, who was killed in Vietnam. When David's path crosses with the inventor of a time machine, ba-boom--David decides he'll take a trip back to 1963 and stop Oswald. In the world of this novel, no Oswald means no assassination means no Vietnam war means no dead revered brother.
It is annoying to me that the premise of this novel is based on the assumption that the lone gunman theory is legitimate. The same idea--stop Oswald to save the dead brother--would have worked with a conspiracy theory, and even provided a nice plot twist. Oswald could have been somehow neutralized by David--kidnapped or killed, or trapped inside an elevator perhaps--but, surprise! The assassination goes down anyway. What would David have done then?
But that isn't how it happens. Not only does David not stop Oswald--he finds himself the prime suspect in the assassination! David's girlfriend Laura comes back from the future to rescue him, but encounters problems of her own. She too fails to alter history, and for a while she and David are both on the lam in Dallas, the prime suspects in the assassination.
The events of November 22 play out several times during the course of A Time to Remember, but each time, our heroes fail in their quest. Finally, after a few hard-to-swallow developments--David and his cohorts gaining an audience with new President LBJ, for example, and convincing him they're from the future--November 22 dawns yet again. Lee Oswald rises in the Paine home, leaves $175 and his wedding ring on a bureau, then heads out to the Paine garage to get his Mannlicher Carcano. He is still the Oswald according to Earl Warren.
Tense, almost fevered by the malice within him, he enters the garage, where he has hidden the rifle. Disassembled, it lies concealed in brown wrapping paper. Picking it up, he feels its hardness beneath its paper sheath. Soon it will bring him the sense of self-worth he has so desparately sought all his life.
Not so fast, Lee! The inventor of the time machine has come back to save the day. Like Jack Ruby, he has stalked Oswald; unlike Ruby, he is a genuine good guy driven to murder. He is unfamiliar with firearms, so after consulting with the gun dealer "remembers the advice to aim and then fire." He drives off, leaving the gutshot Lee bleeding in a gutter.
He knows he will die on that curb, unnoticed, unknown. He is filled with outrage at this last cruel turn of a star-crossed life. He curses a fate that always stopped him just when he was about to make a move that would have given that life meaning. He dies wondering why anyone would have wanted to kill him.
But it's okay, because everyone else lives happily ever after. Kennedy is not slain, and goes on to a second term. The Vietnam War, fought only by the Vietnamese, is over by 1966. The revered brother doesn't die. David is reunited with him--not as his brother, since as a time traveller David has a time-space problem--but as a sort of surrogate brother. With his knowledge of the future (unaltered, even though history has been changed), David makes a killing on the stock market. He marries Laura, who is obliged to stay with him in 1963. All is well in the world. It is indeed a time to remember--but a book to forget.
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