For Lisa Thruston, eulogizing a dead president meant rising early, plunking down $15 for 35 roses and heading for Dealey Plaza.

The 38-year-old Dallas resident braved the clear chill of 9 a.m. Sunday to place the red roses next to a plaque that marks the spot where President John F. Kennedy was cut down by a sniper 35 years ago.

"I remember reading that everywhere else Jackie Kennedy went, they gave her yellow roses. But in Texas, they gave her red roses," said Ms. Park Thruston, who joined about 30 other people milling about the plaza at that early hour.

Her roses nestled amid other bouquets as well as larger floral displays of remembrance, a cross, various messages written with varying degrees of proficiency, several candles and a message staked to the ground with a miniature British flag. The note read: "The U.K. Still Grieves."

The message was left by 58-year-old Ian Griggs, a retired policeman from London. By 10 a.m., Mr. Griggs had joined a growing throng. He elbowed through a cadre of souvenir hawkers and bystanders.

"The assassination of President Kennedy had a profound effect in England," said Mr. Griggs, who was spending Nov. 22 in Dallas for the 11th time. "He was the leader of the free world, and we thought it [the assassination] would start World War III."

Mr. Griggs said that when the president's killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, was slain on his way to arraignment by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby, the British "began the conspiracy theory before anybody in the U.S. did."

The Londoner said the assassination was "the worst thing that ever happened to Dallas" - and, he added, looking at all the tourists, "perhaps the best."

By 11 a.m., the plaza was teeming with people - people in wheelchairs and carriages, people with canes, teens in baggy jeans sipping from McDonald's cups and carrying backpacks. The crowd pontificated, pondered and pointed at various spots around the plaza.

Manfred Seidler said he long ago dismissed the commonly held belief that an angry Oswald had acted alone when he killed the beloved president. The German native, who now lives in Seattle, carried a camera and a copy of The Killing of a President, an informational packet sold on the plaza year-round that advances the theory that JFK was killed in a conspiracy.

"Europeans have always questioned it [the assassination]," said Mr. Seidler, 51, who came to the United States in 1959. "We were brought up on Hitler and misinformation and propaganda."

His visit to Dallas at the time of the anniversary was coincidental, he said. Mr. Seidler had been to the plaza Saturday, just hours after his plane arrived. A visit to The Sixth Floor Museum left him disappointed, he said.

"It's all one-sided," said Mr. Seidler. He thumped his newly purchased packet. "You couldn't find something like this in there."

At Union Station, meanwhile, the Coalition of Political Assassination was holding its fifth annual national conference. The theorists, academics and researchers question the Warren Commission Report, which concluded that Oswald - not a government agency and not gangsters - killed Kennedy.

They do not believe that the assassination was the work of a lone gunman or that the government has disclosed everything it knows about Kennedy's killing.

At 11:30 a.m. Sunday, a crowd of 75 was listening to a lively debate about the veracity of the Zapruder film, 18 seconds that have launched - and shot down, depending on whom you ask - a thousand conspiracy theories.

Deborah Currie always takes a few days off from work around the assassination anniversary. The coalition's conference made her days off a little more special this year, she said.

"I use this time of year to review what has been learned in the past year," Ms. Currie said. She attended several of the conference seminars and purchased some books for her already considerable library on political killings.

"I only know that President Kennedy's killing did not happen the way they say it did," she said.

The coalition rallied at Dealey Plaza around noon for a memorial ceremony. About 200 people listened to conspiracist-author Mark Lane, whose book Rush to Judgment was among the first to challenge the Warren Commission's findings.

"This is a nation that murdered its own president," Mr. Lane shouted during his 10-minute speech.

Three miles away in Oak Cliff, the Texas Theater drew no attention on this anniversary. Sandwiched between a quick-loan office and a rent-to-own furniture and appliance company, the theater where Oswald was apprehended shortly after the president's shooting barely gets a mention on the tourist circuit.

Its brown exterior is faded to a pale yellow. Broken windows, empty pop cans and litter now mark the site of this footnote to history.

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