WHEN THE NEWS WENT LIVE WHEN THE NEWS WENT LIVE DALLAS 1963 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION BOB HUFFAKER, BILL MERCER, GEORGE PHENIX, WES WISE Foreword by Dan Rather TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING Lanham New York Boulder Toronto Plymouth, UK ▯ ▯ ▯ ▯ DEDICATION To our KRLD colleagues and our fellow journalists who rose to the challenge of 1963. To my wife, Veva, and our sons, Kevin Huffaker and Zachary Vonler. To John F. Kennedy’s memory. And to all who seek wisdom through lessons of history. Bob Huffaker To my wife of sixty-six years, Ilene, who persevered through my rambunctious fifty years of broadcasting; our children, Laura, Evan, Martin and David, and our beautiful and intelligent granddaughters, Maile, Emma, Myra, Rachel, Sadie, Amaris, and Felicia; to the gallant journalists who preceded and taught us, the wonderful people we served with, and to the young journalists who follow: may you strive always to report the truth. And to our chief writer, researcher, editor and friend, Bob Huffaker, without whose talent and intelligence this would never have been written. Bill Mercer To the reporters of today—from the journalists of yesterday. To my kids and grandkids, and to Lyn Ellen Lacy, my Mystery Woman. George Phenix To my wife, Sally, who was by my side at the Trade Mart when we got the awful news; to my son, Westley, Jr., who placed flowers at the grassy knoll; to my younger son and daughter, Wyn and Wendy, who gave of their time with their father to journalism. To the gallant citizens of Dallas, who suffered excruciating shock and pain, frustrating shame and unjustified blame, yet emerged with even greater character and compassion. Wes Wise ACKNOWLEDGMENTS W e are grateful to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza for permissions to reprint images and quote from archived KRLD News tapes in their Bob Huffaker and other collections—and for their dedication to preserving the memory of President John F. Kennedy, the history of his tragic death, and the broader view of his life and U.S. history. These professionals are engaged in outreach to the world, and in particular to its young. We thank our CBS News colleagues Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer, and PBS stalwart Jim Lehrer for their help and encouragement. Daniel Irvin Rather, author of Rather Outspoken and managing editor of AXS TV’s Dan Rather Reports, has been a friend and colleague since 1961, when he became CBS Southwest Bureau Chief and began his long and distinguished career with that network. Bob Lloyd Schieffer, who moderates CBS’s Face the Nation and lends sanity to Sunday mornings, is unusually qualified for that political hot seat, having covered all four of the major Washington national assignments: the White House, the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of State, and the United States Congress. He has served CBS News in myriad on-air assignments since his first anchor job at Fort Worth’s WBAP-TV. Before moving to television, he was a reporter for the Fort Worth Star- Telegram, once hauling Marguerite Oswald to Dallas police headquarters after her son shot the president. We are grateful to James Charles Lehrer, who, as City Editor of the old Dallas Times Herald, put up with Bob Huffaker and Frank Glieber invading his city room to broadcast KRLD radio newscasts daily over a prehistoric olive-drab microphone. Jim Lehrer went ahead to cut the trail for public television news, co-founding what is now the PBS NewsHour with his partner Robert MacNeil, and, from the days of his local public television Newsroom, providing a reliable and determinedly undramatic voice of news to the world for four decades. His fine book Tension City chronicles the history of U.S. televised presidential debates. This soft-spoken ex-Marine moderator deserves special credit for not decking either candidate during his twelfth nationally televised presidential debate: the Obama-Romney spectacle of October 3, 2012, in Denver. We thank our sturdy floor director Benny Molina, who stayed cool, friendly, and professional through all of our broadcasts, especially those from police headquarters in the uncertain hours and days after JFK’s assassination. We are grateful to writer and reporter Dean Angel and our Dutch film chief, Henk Dewit, who, during the frantic post-assassination days and nights, pushed the 16mm black-and-white through the big developers faster than normal limits just to get it on the air quicker—sometimes still a little damp and often streaked with developing soup. Gentle-spoken Dean and placidly fierce Henk were a good team. Dean had done his time in the U.S. Air Force, and Henk had done his in a Nazi work camp. Neither of them would have been distracted by the Devil himself. We are glad that reporter Dick Wheeler joined KRLD News just in time to land in the midst of this peculiar historic story. He became news director of KRLD radio and then had the sense to sail away and live on his sailboat for some idyllic days. We thank our departed KRLD colleagues: wise news director Eddie Barker; assistant news director Jim Underwood, a Marine veteran of Guadalcanal who ran toward the shots in Dealey Plaza; cool-headed cameramen Jim English and Gene Pasczalek; assignments editor Joe Dave Scott; Fort Worth correspondent Steve Pieringer; reporter and anchor Warren Fulks; versatile Frank Glieber; director Leigh Webb; film chief Henk Dewit; towering engineer Howard Chamberlain, Bill Mercer’s bodyguard in the chaotic police headquarters; and engineer Otto Nilson, an old shipboard radio operator who knew the stars. We are grateful to, and for, the talented Janet Harris and Veva Vonler, whose editorial wisdom guided this book, and Kay Banning for her detailed and scholarly index. Among our competitors who covered this dark story, we are grateful to Bert Shipp, author of Details at Ten. Bert was WFAA-TV News, and plenty of fun. We lift a cup to Hugh Aynesworth, the crew-cut Dallas Morning News aeronautics and space reporter who witnessed the president’s murder in Dealey Plaza, sped to the Texas Theater and covered the arrest of Lee Oswald, then was with us in the police basement when Jack Ruby shot the young assassin to death. Hugh’s book JFK: Breaking the News puts the facts in perspective. To Kent Biffle, Dallas Morning News reporter and now author of A Month of Sundays and a great body of fine writing, who was among reporters held inside the Texas School Book Depository while police combed the place just after Oswald’s hasty departure. To Mike Cochran of the Associated Press, author of Texas vs. Davis and Deliver Us from Evil, who carried Oswald’s coffin to the grave and is still a fine and prolific writer. And to the late and beloved Alex Burton, author of Just One Kiss, Baby, for leaving his native Canada to soothe our tears with erudite and indomitable wit that was kind and well aimed. Bob Huffaker, 2013 FOREWORD T here are times when it seems like yesterday. But more often it feels like an episode from another lifetime, and one feels fully the fifty years that separate us now from November 22, 1963. Time does funny things to how we look back at history’s landmarks, whether they are ones of triumph, like the first moon landing, or of tragedy, like the killing of a president. The millions of unfolding moments and perspectives that make up our understanding of an event in real time become condensed, distilled, and abbreviated into a handful of images and impressions. From the remove of passing decades we begin to imagine that we have gained a bird’s-eye view of how things went. Seen from this vantage point, subtleties fade, and the confused and chaotic starts to appear orderly. The vagaries of chance seem in hindsight to become inexorable, fated. So it has been with the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the dark days that followed. Today, mention of that time conjures the newsreel that has become our mental shorthand for all that happened in Dallas: the morning arrival at Love Field, Jackie’s dress and pillbox hat, Abraham Zapruder’s devastating footage of the fatal shot, the swearing in of President Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One, Jack Ruby’s deadly lunge toward Lee Harvey Oswald. We see these things in our minds’ eyes, and we tell ourselves that we have something approaching the full picture. There are, famously and still, enough arguments, theories, and claims about the hows and whys of what happened in Dealey Plaza to fill a good-sized library. But the broader story, the story of a nation’s descent into grief and shock over four unforgettable days, has hardened over the years into an apparently orderly and seamless narrative. Such is the view from afar. For those who were in Dallas that day, though, the view was very different. The minutes, hours, and days after President Kennedy was shot provided no The minutes, hours, and days after President Kennedy was shot provided no ready answers about just what was going on, what would happen next, or what any of it meant. There was, instead, a jumble of images, impressions, and information, very little of which had yet taken coherent form. Uncertainty reigned, not tidy story lines. For millions of Americans transfixed by the terrible breaking news, television emerged as a way to keep track of it all. But the journalists who brought the story to the television airwaves could only rely on their skill, their experience, and their stamina to make sense of what was clearly, at the time, the biggest story of their lives. This book tells the stories of four men who were at the very epicenter of it all. Bob Huffaker, Bill Mercer, George Phenix, and Wes Wise were among those responsible for covering the assassination and its aftermath for KRLD, the Dallas CBS television and radio affiliate. From the presidential motorcade to Parkland Hospital, from Lee Harvey Oswald’s shooting to the trial and lonesome death of Jack Ruby, they were there, on the inside. The view they were afforded of these events was unique; the tales they have to tell, one of a kind. People often ask me “what it was really like” to be in Dallas on the day Kennedy was shot. It’s a difficult question, one which I can only answer with my own, personal impressions. They are strong, and vivid, but they are necessarily and by definition limited. When the News Went Live provides an eloquent answer to that tough question, as four newsmen who were there, on the ground, tell how it “really was” through their eyes and ears. Dan Rather, CBS News