John F. Kennedy Sites in Dallas-Fort Worth
By Mark Doty and John H. Slate
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About this ebook
Mark Doty
Mark Doty's books of poetry and nonfiction prose have been honored with numerous distinctions, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and, in the United Kingdom, the T. S. Eliot Prize. In 2008, he won the National Book Award for Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems. He is a professor at the University of Houston, and he lives in New York City.
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John F. Kennedy Sites in Dallas-Fort Worth - Mark Doty
Zabel.
INTRODUCTION
No one living in North Texas in 1963 could have imagined how the course of history would change on a November day in Dallas. A day that started with hope and energy for many Texans ended with sadness and shame, much of it displayed publicly on television and in print media around the world. Scarred by the events of November 22–24, 1963, Dallas and the Fort Worth area have taken a half-century to come to grips with one of the darkest events in American history: the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy.
Commonly known at the Metroplex, the Dallas–Fort Worth area had a population of 679,684 in 1963. Today, the population is nearly two million. Dallas, the Big D,
and Fort Worth, Where the West Begins,
both have long and colorful histories that have been recounted in stories about the Old West, gunfighters, cattle drives, and 20th-century bandits Bonnie and Clyde. Yet, much of this was overshadowed by the Kennedy tragedy, and along with it came a begrudging acceptance of the responsibility of preserving the history of this event. By the late 1980s, Dallas came to understand its place in history, though the struggle continues to preserve houses, structures, and landscapes with historical importance.
Some of the events of that weekend occurred in very public spaces. Others happened in shadowy apartments and on city streets. Surprisingly, the majority of sites associated with that day can still be visited in the avenues and neighborhoods of the greater Dallas–Fort Worth region. While many of the sites are well known and well traveled, it is hoped that the reader will take the time to see the less-visited and less-viewed places that played a role in the larger story.
President Kennedy himself had a keen sense of the significance and importance of historical preservation in understanding history. In October 1963, just a month before his assassination, the president recognized delegates to the 17th annual meeting of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In his speech, the president commended the organization’s efforts to preserve historical sites and cultivate an awareness of the country’s past, saying, What you are attempting to do and what interests me, of course, is trying to maintain and keep alive in this country a very lively sense of our past . . . making it possible for those who come now and perhaps can only catch American history through seeing and feeling it, giving them some sense of what a great procession this has been.
This book is a small reminder of what happened that weekend, and, hopefully, an admonishment to ensure that future generations can trace the footsteps and tire tracks of our past.
One
FORT WORTH
On November 12, 1963, Pres. John F. Kennedy held an important planning session for the upcoming election year. At the meeting, he underscored the importance of winning Florida and Texas and revealed his plans to visit both states in the next two weeks. His wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, always a draw, would accompany him on the trip through Texas.
On November 21, the president and first lady departed on Air Force One for a two-day, five-city tour of Texas. After stops in San Antonio and Houston, the president flew on to Fort Worth, home to a large share of the country’s defense aircraft industry. Kennedy’s speeches in Fort Worth were an important gesture to the city’s business community and to the burgeoning defense industry in Texas, as well as a nod to the Air Force tactical bombing wings headquartered at Carswell Air Force Base.
Air Force One landed at Carswell Air Force Base in rainy Fort Worth on Thursday, November 21, 1963, at 11:30 p.m. Originally known as Tarrant Field, it operated from 1942 to 1994 as a an Air Force strategic air command base. It is named after Medal of Honor recipient Maj. Horace S. Carswell Jr. For most of its operational lifetime, the base supported strategic bombing groups and wings. Today, the base is known as Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth/Carswell Field and is operated by the Navy. Below, pilots and crewmen stand around the first Convair B-58 airplane upon its arrival at Carswell Air Force Base. The Carswell tower is in the background. (Above, 7th Bomb Wing B-36