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As in years past, I monitored (albeit casually) the Dallas media during my stay in that city for JFK Lancer's "November in Dallas" conference.
The first item I saw was a column by Steve Blow of The Dallas Morning News, on Friday, November 21. In an item headlined "Footnote keeps history's flame burning bright," Blow recounted the story of Dallas resident Clayton Lyle. The 84-year-old Lyle was a colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the time of the assassination.
"Gas and electricity were his speciality," Blow wrote, before telling the story of the man selected to arrange for the eternal flame on the slain President's grave.
The flame proved durable, but not quite eternal. "About a month later, a general called my office. He said, 'Well, you tested the flame for everything but holy water.'" It seems that a priest and altar boys were blessing the site and the flame was doused rather than sprinkled with holy water."A guard standing nearby got out his cigarette lighter and immediately relit it," Mr. Lyle said.
The president's grave was moved in 1965 to a permanent site, and the eternal luau lamp was replaced with another fixture.
Also in the Morning News that day was a story about the ARRB, which had just released the Oswald interrogation notes kept by Dallas police Capt. J.W. "Will" Fritz. See Fritz Took Notes in this issue of Fair Play.
On Saturday, November 22, there was surprisingly little in the Morning News, compared to a year earlier (see Fair Play #14, "Blarney and Barnacles"). Where last year the paper felt obliged to take an editorial stance, the 34th anniversary of the assassination went entirely unmentioned this year, save for two items: a column by Bob St. John about a Cleburne, Texas man who served in the Navy with JFK during World War II ("He was a damn nice guy"), and an Associated Press story buried on page 29A, "Replaying History":
Radio stations air rediscovered JFK tapes
to mark 34th anniversary of assassinationA new generation has heard the chilling news that President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas.
Excerpts from forgotten audio tapes were broadcast Friday on WBAP-AM (820). KRLD-AM (1080) aired taped reports that had been archived. Both radio stations are in the Dallas-Forth Worth market.
The WBAP announcer's voice was taut with strain and disbelief as he reported the shooting that shocked the world.
"It has not been fully confirmed, but police radios are carrying that the president has been hit," Bob Welch said.
A contract employee of KXAS-TV (Channel 5), a former sister station of WBAP, recently found the reel-to-reel tapes, labels turned to the wall, while looking for storage space in the basement room where the station keeps old film.
KXAS turned the tapes over to WBAP, which played some of them on the eve of the 34th anniversary of the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination.
"It gives you goose bumps," said WBAP operations manager Tyler Cox.
On KRLD, reporter Bob Huffaker reported a warm reception for the president's motorcade as it passed his downtown vantage point just before the shooting.
"There was no danger whatsoever and none in evidence of adverse reactions to the president's visit," Mr. Huffaker said.
But with the crack of rifle shots, the story, and the world, changed.
"Here is a bulletin from The Associated Press and the WBAP newsroom," an announcer said. "President Kennedy may have been shot in Dallas."
KRLD's Jim Underwood was breathless as he described officers swarming toward the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza.
"The police are now surrounding the area down here," Mr. Underwood said. "Sirens are screaming. And evidently police believe that the man who fired the shots is still in the Texas School Book Depository building at teh corner of Elm and Houston in downtown Dallas."
Minutes later, Norwood McLendon of WBAP read the grim bulletin from his news wire:
"The Associated Press reports from Dallas that President Kennedy was shot today just as his motorcade left the downtown section."
On the evening of November 22, one of the local TV stations had some coverage of the assassination's anniversary, including videotape of the gathering on the grassy knoll. There was even a sound bite from Kerry McCarthy, JFK's cousin. But whatever station it was deemed it more important to first note that within the last twelve months, Lee Oswald's old apartment on Neely Street was sold and renovated to a man interested in the building's historical value. This man also said he accepted the Warren Commission's findings.
The next morning, The Dallas Morning News had two JFK-related stories: a profile of Mary Ferrell (see below), and an item on page 39A headlined, "Dealey Plaza still draws those who wonder what happened," written by some hack named Nita Thurman.
The 34th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination brought them all to Dealey Plaza on Saturday --- historians, conspiracy theorists, hucksters, panhandlers and ordinary people who wanted to touch an extraordinary moment in history...
Blah blah blah. This article contained obligatory quotes such as, "It's the single greatest murder mystery of all time," but failed to mention the presence of Kerry McCarthy. That a Kennedy was actually in Dealey Plaza on the anniversary of her cousin's death was not viewed as significant by the News.
Also from The Dallas Morning News on November 23:
JFK experts honor quintessential collector She has a photographic memory and what may be the world's largest private collection of Kennedy assassination information.She knows every name ever connected with the case and can call it up in seconds on her custom-designed computer database. Government investigators, movie directors and researchers have consulted with her.
But to the world at large, Mary Ferrell is invisible.
"She's very much in the background, but she is the hub of the JFK research community," said Debra Conway of JFK Lancer, a Grand Prairie research firm. "No one writes a paper without Mary. No one publishes a book without Mary."
"It's often said about people like us that we're just doing it to get attention, and that is absolutely not true of Mary. ... She just helps everybody," said Peter Dale Scott, an English professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has known Ms. Ferrell for almost 20 years.
"She's a researcher's researcher," Mr. Scott said.
Now in her 70s and in frail health, Ms. Ferrell received a prolonged standing ovation from her colleagues Saturday as she presented the keynote speech at a conference of assassination researchers at the Dallas Grand Hotel.
After undergoing several surgeries this year, "I want to assure you that my X-rays were not forged, my brain was not removed," she joked.
Ms. Ferrell said she was standing on Elm Street, a few blocks from Dealey Plaza, when President John F. Kennedy was shot, 34 years ago Saturday. Listening to a radio, she heard a suspect described as a white male, around 30, 6 feet tall and 165 pounds, wearing a white shirt and khaki pants.
So she was surprised when a 5-foot-9 man, 23, wearing a red-brown shirt and brown pants was arrested.
"I didn't go out and measure him," she said. "I'm surprised I didn't."
She got every edition of every newspaper and began compiling every name ever mentioned. After that compilation grew to more than 40,000 cards, she got her first computer. She's now on her seventh.
A time line of every move Lee Harvey Oswald is known to have made is now available to researchers, thanks to her efforts.
Hundreds have come to stay with her, sometimes for weeks, she said.
"I've never had occasion to tell one of those people goodbye that I couldn't say sincerely, 'I'm sure I learned more about the assassination from you than you did from me,' " she said.
She has so many materials - magazines, newspaper articles, copies of government documents, books, videotapes, photos and so on - that her husband built a room onto their Dallas house to accommodate her library.
"If it can't be found elsewhere, Mary has it. ... She's embarrassed to say she has all the X-rated girlie magazines that featured JFK," said Jack White, a Fort Worth researcher.
She shares photocopies and computer disks freely, never asking any money in return, her colleagues said.
"She will not even let you buy her dinner," Ms. Conway said. "She's an iron butterfly."
And she does not, absolutely not, give interviews. A reporter did her wrong once, and that's it for reporters.
Mr. White said Ms. Ferrell is the only person he's ever met who had a photographic memory. She told him that once, someone with the government showed her a secret one-page document, on the condition that she just look at it and not copy it.
"She said, 'That's very interesting, thank you,' and then she went home, sat down at her typewriter and re-created the entire thing," Mr. White said.
Paul Hoch, a researcher in Berkeley who has known Ms. Ferrell since the late 1970s, said he sometimes avoids phoning her for help because she's so interesting. A simple question can digress into a long, fascinating - and expensive - conversation, he said.
Mr. Scott said her very existence is a boon to researchers, not only because of her scholarship but also because of her warm personality.
"We haven't solved the case and we're not likely to, but you get to meet some wonderful people and she's one of them," Mr. Scott said.
"She's helpful to everybody unless they show themselves to be antagonistic, and then she cuts them off," Mr. White said.
Mr. White said that after he'd compiled a slide show on Lee Harvey Oswald in the 1970s, Ms. Ferrell had enough pull with the U.S. House of Representatives' Select Committee on Assassinations that on her recommendation, Mr. White was invited to testify before them and later became a paid consultant.
Oliver Stone, creator of the movie JFK, and author Norman Mailer also consulted extensively with her.
"She deserves to be honored by the city," Ms. Conway said. "Such a small group of people are aware of what she's contributed to the world."
However, Kennedy conspiracy researchers are a notoriously prickly bunch, and Ms. Ferrell has not escaped attack, Mr. White and Ms. Conway said.
Some researchers can't accept her at face value as someone who's fascinated by the assassination and disseminates information for free, Ms. Conway said.
Part of that has come because of her connections with Dallas' power structure, Ms. Conway said. Ms. Ferrell was secretary to a powerful Dallas law firm and on the staff of former Gov. Dolph Briscoe.
Author Harrison Livingstone, in his 1993 book Killing the Truth, devotes a subchapter to Ms. Ferrell, accusing her and other old-guard researchers of wanting to keep control of material and implying that she is either either a dupe or an agent of the FBI.
"Even when offended, she has not lost her temper," Mr. Scott said in introducing her Saturday before her speech.
In her keynote address, Ms. Ferrell spoke of the end of her research, which is now winding down as her health falters. But she praised the younger generation of researchers who have become interested in the assassination and what she called the "official charade" that followed.
Her database will go to JFK Lancer, which she trusts to keep it open, she said. "The answers to the questions that remain," Ms. Ferrell said, "lie in the strength of our resolve to continue demanding the truth."
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