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#jfk assassination
reality-detective · 9 days
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William Cooper 🤔
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jadespost · 2 years
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yeoldenews · 4 months
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An essay my mom wrote when she got home from school on the day Kennedy was shot, and updated later in the week.
I love the blank space she left for the shooter's name because it hadn't been released yet.
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mrskennedy · 4 months
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“ I don’t think Jackie ever really got over the assassination. I suppose maybe, she found a way to move on.” - John Davis
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deadpresidents · 4 months
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"Thank you Mr. President" Jackie Kennedy's letter to LBJ less than 24 hours after burying JFK
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When Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as President on board Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, Jackie Kennedy was standing next to him, her pink Chanel dress, white gloves, and bare legs smeared with the blood and brain matter of her assassinated husband.  Traumatized and almost certainly in shock, Jackie wanted to support the new President and new First Lady as power was officially transferred in the same solemn ceremony that has always marked such an occasion in American History.  As the Presidential airplane left Dallas and returned to the nation's capital, Jackie sat in the back of the plane with the coffin containing her husband's body.
Despite her deep personal loss, her traumatic experience, and her obvious physical exhaustion, Jackie threw herself into planning President Kennedy's funeral as soon as she returned to Washington, D.C.  Jackie was sensitive to the needs of the country and protective of her husband's legacy.  When she arrived at the White House, she requested information about the exact specifications of Abraham Lincoln's funeral after he was assassinated in 1865.  Even though it was the middle of the night, Kennedy staffers went to the National Archives and the Library of Congress to research the Lincoln funeral and Jackie helped make plans for the pageantry that would commence over the next few days.  With a few minor exceptions, JFK's funeral was nearly an exact replica of Lincoln's funeral almost 100 years earlier.  The effect was monumental.  Kennedy's funeral will always be remembered as a dignified, iconic moment in our nation's history.
As Jackie Kennedy prepared to bury the 35th President, Lyndon Johnson consumed himself with becoming the 36th President, continuing Kennedy's work and leading the nation through the darkness of the assassination and its aftermath.  When Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base on the night of November 22nd, the Secret Service urged now-President Johnson to take a helicopter directly to the White House.  Johnson immediately vetoed the move as he thought it would disrespectful for him to land on the South Lawn of the White House (as Presidents regularly do) while Kennedy's family still lived in the building.  When LBJ arrived at the White House via motorcade to begin his work that night, the new President went directly to an office in the Old Executive Office Building rather than working out of the Oval Office.
Over the next few weeks, President Johnson extended many kindnesses to Jackie Kennedy.  LBJ and Jackie had always had an extremely close relationship, and Johnson never forgot how kind Jackie had been when LBJ was Vice President -- a depressing time for Johnson due to his lack of power and influence.  During his Vice Presidency, Johnson had experienced many problems with members of Kennedy's Administration, but was always treated very well by President and Mrs. Kennedy. 
The Kennedys had two young children who had just lost their father, and the first thing that LBJ did as President was write two letters to President Kennedy's children to read when they were old enough to understand them.  When JFK was elected President, the Kennedys hoped that their daughter Caroline would be able to attend a normal school with children her age.  When it became apparent that the logistics wouldn't allow that, a room was prepared at the White House for Caroline's teacher to hold class daily.  When JFK was assassinated, LBJ insisted that Caroline's class continue using the White House for classes as long as Jackie wished.  In fact, LBJ urged Jackie to continue living in the White House throughout the entirety of his term.  Jackie moved out within a few weeks, but she appreciated President Johnson's offer.
What Jackie Kennedy most appreciated, however, was President Johnson's presence at John F. Kennedy's funeral.  On November 25, 1963, the entire nation stopped and world leaders gathered in Washington to bury the slain President (one place that the nation didn't stop was Dallas, where JFK's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed as he was being transferred to another police facility).  Kennedy's funeral was historic and emotional.  The enduring image is of John F. Kennedy, Jr. -- celebrating his 3rd birthday on that very day -- stepping forward to salute as father's flag-draped casket passed by.
Another stirring image from that day was accompanying President Kennedy's funeral cortége.  As Kennedy's casket rested on the exact same caisson that carried Abraham Lincoln's casket, a remarkable procession of some of the most famous, powerful people in the world followed behind it.  Led by Jackie Kennedy and the slain Presidents two brothers, Robert F. Kennedy and Edward Kennedy, scores and scores of political leaders, diplomats, monarchs, and more trailed the casket, marching in complete silence other than the sounds of their feet on the pavement.  Dozens upon dozens of countries were represented -- not just by ambassadors or minor officials, but by Kings, Queens, Emperors, Presidents, and Prime Ministers.  When one looks at the photos, our eyes are immediately drawn to the majestic strength of Jackie Kennedy leading the procession.  If the faces of those behind her are scanned, they reveal legendary leaders such as Charles de Galle, Haile Selassie, U Thant, Golda Meier, King Baudoiun I, Lester Pearson, Willy Brandt, Queen Frederica, Eamon de Valera, Prince Philip, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and scores of other international figures, not to mention the leading Americans, who took to the streets of Washington, D.C. -- on foot -- to honor President Kennedy.
It's often forgotten that Lyndon Johnson was there.  Johnson was such a larger-than-life character and so rarely relegated to the background that it's difficult to imagine a scene where he would not be the major player.  Since President Kennedy had been murdered in broad daylight on the streets of a major American city just three days earlier, the Secret Service -- understandably nervous due to their failure to protect one President that week -- was adamantly opposed to President Johnson's participation.  Johnson overruled the Secret Service concerns and turned down their insistence that he ride in an armor-plated limousine.  For maybe the only time in his life, Lyndon Johnson -- now President of the United States -- went virtually unnoticed to the public.
Yet, one person did notice.  And, on November 26, 1963, despite all that she had been through; despite all that she was feeling; despite all that she had lost; despite the fact that just 24 hours earlier she had buried her husband, the father of her two young children, the 34-year-old widowed former First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy sat down in the White House and wrote this letter to the new President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson:
November 26 Tuesday Dear Mr. President, Thank you for walking yesterday - behind Jack.  You did not have to do that - I am sure many people forbid you to take such a risk - but you did it anyway.  Thank you for your letters to my children.  What those letters will mean to them later - you can imagine.  The touching thing is, they have always loved you so much, they were most moved to have a letter from you now. And most of all, Mr. President, thank you for the way you have always treated me - the way you and Lady Bird have always been to me - before, when Jack was alive, and now as President. I think the relationship of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential families could be a rather strained one.  From the history I have been reading ever since I came to the White House, I gather it often was in the past. But you were Jack's right arm - and I always thought the greatest act of a gentleman that I had seen on this earth - was how you - the Majority Leader when he came to the Senate as just another little freshman who looked up to you and took orders from you, could then serve as Vice President to a man who had served under you and been taught by you. But more than that we were friends, all four of us.  All you did for me as a friend and the happy times we had.  I always thought way before the nomination that Lady Bird should be First Lady - but I don't need to tell you here what I think of her qualities - her extraordinary grace of character - her willingness to assume ever burden - She assumed so many for me and I love her very much - and I love your two daughters - Lynda Bird most because I know her the best - and we first met when neither of us could get a seat to hear President Eisenhower's State of the Union message, and someone found us a place on one of the steps on the aisle where we sat together.  If we had known then what our relationship would be now. It was so strange - last night I was wandering through this house.  There in the Treaty Room is your chandelier, and I had framed - the page we all signed - you - Senator Dirksen and Mike Mansfield - underneath I had written "The day the Vice President brought the East Room chandelier back from the Capitol." Then in the library I showed Bobby the Lincoln Record book you gave - you see all you gave - and now you are called on to give so much more. Your office - you are the first President to sit in it as it looks today.  Jack always wanted a red rug - and I had curtains designed for it that I thought were as dignified as they should be for a President's office. Late last night a moving man asked me if I wanted Jack's ship pictures left on the wall for you (They were clearing the office to make room for you) - I said no because I remembered all the fun Jack had those first days hanging pictures of things he loved, setting out his collection of whales teeth etc. But of course they are there only waiting for you to ask for them if the walls look too bare.  I thought you would want to put things from Texas in it - I pictured some gleaming longhorns - I hope you put them somewhere. It mustn't be very much help to you your first day in office - to hear children on the lawn at recess.  It is just one more example of your kindness that you let them stay - I promise - they will soon be gone - Thank you Mr. President Respectfully Jackie
At the LBJ Library on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin, there are many displays of priceless, historic artifacts that tell the story of the years of Lyndon Johnson, his service to the United States, and the world that he knew.  As you pass through the exhibits, it's difficult not to be astonished, inspired, and touched by what you see around you during your visit.  Many of the things you'll see there will take your breath away, but nothing leaves an impression on your heart and soul like the seven pieces of paper containing these words in Jackie Kennedy's handwriting -- words that somehow convey strength and fragility, evoke optimism and sadness, and simultaneously project support while demonstrating a sense of loss that very few of us can imagine.  Items like these are the source materials for what history truly is -- a biography of humanity, a story about people.
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underqualifiedcritic · 4 months
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"He wept after seeing a photograph of his late brother in the office of a former aide, wept when asked to comment on the Warren Commission report, and wept after eulogizing JFK at the 1964 Democratic convention with a quotation from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: "When he shall die, take him and cut him into little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with the night and pay no attention to the garish sun."'
The Last Campaign, Thurston Clarke
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luckybunttv · 4 months
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Man, someone should put all of the Sonic the Hedgehog games, movies, television shows, comic books, board games, and parade balloons into a single, canonical timeline.
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Oh it's me, I did that. My good friend Lizstar and I put together this totally accurate, complete, and not at all spurious, correct timeline of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Click the image link for the full size.
I will now take questions.
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cafe-au-tism · 1 year
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they shot jfk. what
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ghost-opal · 7 months
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some photos recently unveiled by the Biden administration. What do you think? 😸
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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
November 22, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
NOV 23, 2023
“It all began so beautifully,” Lady Bird remembered. “After a drizzle in the morning, the sun came out bright and beautiful. We were going into Dallas.” 
It was November 22, 1963, and President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy were visiting Texas. They were there, in the home state of Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, to try to heal a rift in the Democratic Party. The white supremacists who made up the base of the party’s southern wing loathed the Kennedy administration’s support for Black rights.
That base had turned on Kennedy when he and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, had backed the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in fall 1962 saying that army veteran James Meredith had the right to enroll at the University of Mississippi, more commonly known as Ole Miss.   
When the Department of Justice ordered officials at Ole Miss to register Meredith, Mississippi governor Ross Barnett physically barred Meredith from entering the building and vowed to defend segregation and states’ rights. 
So the Department of Justice detailed dozens of U.S. marshals to escort Meredith to the registrar and put more than 500 law enforcement officers on the campus. White supremacists rushed to meet them there and became increasingly violent. That night, Barnett told a radio audience: “We will never surrender!” The rioters destroyed property and, under cover of the darkness, fired at reporters and the federal marshals. They killed two men and wounded many others. 
The riot ended when the president sent 20,000 troops to the campus. On October 1, Meredith became the first Black American to enroll at the University of Mississippi.
The Kennedys had made it clear that the federal government would stand behind civil rights, and white supremacists joined right-wing Republicans in insisting that their stance proved that the Kennedys were communists. Using a strong federal government to regulate business meant preventing a man from making all the money he could; protecting civil rights would take tax dollars from white Americans for the benefit of Black and Brown people. A bumper sticker produced during the Mississippi crisis warned that “the Castro Brothers”—equating the Kennedys with communist revolutionaries in Cuba—had gone to Ole Miss. 
That conflation of Black rights and communism stoked such anger in the southern right wing that Kennedy felt obliged to travel to Dallas to try to mend some fences in the state Democratic Party. 
On the morning of November 22, 1963, the Dallas Morning News contained a flyer saying the president was wanted for “treason” for “betraying the Constitution” and giving “support and encouragement to the Communist inspired racial riots.” Kennedy warned his wife that they were “heading into nut country today.”
But the motorcade through Dallas started out in a party atmosphere. At the head of the procession, the president and first lady waved from their car at the streets “lined with people—lots and lots of people—the children all smiling, placards, confetti, people waving from windows,” Lady Bird remembered. “There had been such a gala air,” she said, that when she heard three shots, “I thought it must be firecrackers or some sort of celebration.”
The Secret Service agents had no such moment of confusion. The cars sped forward, “terrifically fast—faster and faster,” according to Lady Bird, until they arrived at a hospital, which made Mrs. Johnson realize what had happened. “As we ground to a halt” and Secret Service agents began to pull them out of the cars, Lady Bird wrote, “I cast one last look over my shoulder and saw in the President’s car a bundle of pink, just like a drift of blossoms, lying on the back seat…Mrs. Kennedy lying over the President’s body.” 
As they waited for news of the president, LBJ asked Lady Bird to go find Mrs. Kennedy. Lady Bird recalled that Secret Service agents “began to lead me up one corridor, back stairs, and down another. Suddenly, I found myself face to face with Jackie in a small hall…outside the operating room. You always think of her—or someone like her—as being insulated, protected; she was quite alone. I don’t think I ever saw anyone so much alone in my life.” 
After trying to comfort Mrs. Kennedy, Lady Bird went back to the room where her own husband was. It was there that Kennedy’s special assistant told them, “The President is dead,” just before journalist Malcolm Kilduff entered and addressed LBJ as “Mr. President.” 
Officials wanted LBJ out of Dallas as quickly as possible and rushed the party to the airport. Looking out the car window, Lady Bird saw a flag already at half mast and later recalled, “[T]hat is when the enormity of what had happened first struck me.” 
In the confusion—in addition to the murder of the president, no one knew how extensive the plot against the government was—the attorney general wanted LBJ sworn into office as quickly as possible. Already on the plane to return to Washington, D.C., the party waited for Judge Sarah Hughes, a Dallas federal judge. By the time Hughes arrived, so had Mrs. Kennedy and the coffin bearing her husband’s body. “[A]nd there in the very narrow confines of the plane—with Jackie on his left with her hair falling in her face, but very composed, and me on his right, Judge Hughes, with the Bible, in front of him and a cluster of Secret Service people and Congressmen we had known for a long time around him—Lyndon took the oath of office,” Lady Bird recalled. 
As the plane traveled to Washington, D.C., Lady Bird went into the private presidential cabin to see Mrs. Kennedy, passing President Kennedy’s casket in the hallway. 
Lady Bird later recalled: “I looked at her. Mrs. Kennedy’s dress was stained with blood. One leg was almost entirely covered with it and her right glove was caked…with blood—her husband’s blood. She always wore gloves like she was used to them. I never could. Somehow that was one of the most poignant sights—exquisitely dressed and caked in blood. I asked her if I couldn’t get someone in to help her change and she said, ‘Oh, no. Perhaps later…but not right now.’”
“And then,” Lady Bird remembered, “with something—if, with a person that gentle, that dignified, you can say had an element of fierceness, she said, ‘I want them to see what they have done to Jack.’”
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
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wisteriasymphony · 10 months
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hoping i'm the first person here to make miraculous ladybug/jfk assassination crossover art
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reality-detective · 9 months
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You Decide 🤔
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tasty-tiktoks · 3 months
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leeradziwilll · 4 months
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Lee Radziwill at the state funeral held for President John F. Kennedy on November 24th, 1963.
Also photographed are her mother Janet Auchincloss, step father Hugh D. Auchincloss, and her half brother James Auchincloss.
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mrskennedy · 4 months
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“All this pent up emotion in the Kennedy circle (not to mention the hundreds of thousands of letters of condolence that flooded into the office designated for Jackie in the executive office building) focused on the thirty four year old widow. It induced an abnormal atmosphere of suppressed hysteria, emotion, catatonic grief that marked Jackie for life. Even in her private life she became someone extraordinary, touched by fate and celebrity. No one would would ever be able to react normally to her again; nor would she ever, however hard she tried- and she did try- be able to escape her golden cage.”
- Sarah Bradford, excerpt from the biography “America’s Queen”
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deadpresidents · 4 months
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Waking Up In Dallas: November 22, 1963.
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Two American Presidents woke up in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Neither of them were the two men who actually served as President on that tragic day -- John F. Kennedy or Lyndon B. Johnson.
The 37th President of the United States, 50-year-old Richard Nixon, had arrived in Dallas on November 20th for a conference of the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages on behalf of Pepsi-Cola, a company that his New York law firm was representing.  On November 21st, Nixon sat down with reporters in his room at the Baker Hotel, where he criticized many of the policies of President Kennedy, his 1960 opponent, who would be arriving in Dallas the next day.  That night, Nixon and Pepsi executives including actress Joan Crawford, who had been married to Pepsi's chairman, Alfred Steele, until his death in 1959, were entertained at the Statler Hilton.
In the early morning of November 22nd, a car dropped Nixon off, alone, at Love Field, the Dallas airport that would host President and Mrs. Kennedy, Vice President Johnson and Mrs. Johnson, and Texas Governor John Connally and his wife in just a few hours.  Nixon later remembered the flags and signs displayed along the motorcade route that Kennedy would soon follow.  Nixon approached the American Airlines ticket counter to check-in for his flight to New York City and told the attendant, "It looks like you're going to have a big day today."
Nixon landed several hours later in New York at an airport that would be renamed after John F. Kennedy a month later.  He described what happened next in his 1978 autobiography, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon:
Arriving in New York, I hailed a cab home.  We drove through Queens toward the 59th Street Bridge, and as we stopped at a traffic light, a man rushed over from the curb and started talking to the driver.  I heard him say, "Do you have a radio in your cab?  I just heard that Kennedy was shot."  We had no radio, and as we continued into Manhattan a hundred thoughts rushed through my mind.  The man could have been crazy or a macabre prankster.  He could have been mistaken about what he had heard; or perhaps a gunman might have shot at Kennedy but missed or only wounded him.  I refused to believe that he could have been killed. As the cab drew up in front of my building, the doorman ran out.  Tears were streaming down his cheeks.  "Oh, Mr. Nixon, have you heard, sir?" he asked.  "It's just terrible.  They've killed President Kennedy."
The close 1960 Presidential election changed the relationship between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, but they had once been very close.  When they first entered Congress together in 1947, they considered each other personal friends, and when Nixon ran for the Senate from California in 1950, JFK stopped into Nixon's office and dropped off a financial contribution to Nixon's campaign from Kennedy's father.  Nixon would later write that he felt as bad on the night of Kennedy's assassination as he had when he lost two brothers to tuberculosis when he was very young.  That night, he wrote an emotional letter to Jacqueline Kennedy:
Dear Jackie, In this tragic hour Pat and I want you to know that our thoughts and prayers are with you. While the hand of fate made Jack and me political opponents I always cherished the fact that we were personal friends from the time we came to the Congress together in 1947.  That friendship evidenced itself in many ways including the invitation we received to attend your wedding. Nothing I could say now could add to the splendid tributes which have come from throughout the world to him. But I want you to know that the nation will also be forever grateful for your service as First Lady.  You brought to the White House charm, beauty and elegance as the official hostess of America, and the mystique of the young in heart which was uniquely yours made an indelible impression on the American consciousness. If in the days ahead we could be helpful in any way we shall be honored to be at your command. Sincerely, Dick Nixon 
••• On the morning of November 22, 1963, the 41st President of the United States also woke up in Dallas, Texas.  George Herbert Walker Bush was the 39-year-old president of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company and chairman of the Harris County, Texas Republican Party, and had stayed the night of November 21st at the Dallas Sheraton alongside his wife, Barbara.  Bush was planning a bid for the U.S. Senate in 1964 and making the rounds to line up support amongst many Texans who considered him far too moderate.  One of the groups that was strongest in opposition to Bush was the ultra-right wing John Birch Society, which had recently been lodging vehement protests against President Kennedy's upcoming visit to Dallas.
Conspiracy theorists claim that there were far more sinister motives for George Bush being in Dallas on November 22, 1963.  Some claim that Bush was a secret CIA operative involved in planning or even carrying out the assassination of President Kennedy.  Some even argue that a grainy photograph of a man resembling Bush taken shortly after the assassination proves that Bush was actually in Dealey Plaza at the time of Kennedy's shooting.
He wasn't.  He wasn't even in Dallas.  We know where George Herbert Walker Bush was at the time of JFK's assassination -- we have plenty of eyewitnesses who can confirm it.  While Lee Harvey Oswald was shooting President Kennedy, George Bush was about 100 miles away from Dallas, in Tyler, Texas, speaking at a Kiwanis Club luncheon.  Like Nixon, Bush and his wife, Barbara, had also boarded a plane that morning in Dallas -- a private plane that transported them to Tyler for the Kiwanis Club event.  While Bush was speaking, word of the President's assassination reached the luncheon and the local club president, Wendell Cherry, leaned over and gave the news to Bush.  Bush quickly notified the crowd, and said, "In view of the President's death, I consider it inappropriate to continue with a political speech at this time."  He ended his speech and sat down while the luncheon broke up in stunned silence. 
Bush's wife, Barbara, wasn't at the Kiwanis Club luncheon.  While her husband was speaking, Barbara Bush went to a beauty parlor in Tyler to get her hair styled.  As her hair was being done, Barbara began writing a letter to family and heard the news over the radio that JFK had been shot and then that the President had died.  In her 1994 memoir, Barbara included the letter, part of which said:
I am writing this at the Beauty Parlor, and the radio says that the President has been shot.  Oh Texas -- my Texas -- my God -- let's hope it's not true.  I am sick at heart as we all are.  Yes, the story is true and the Governor also.  How hateful some people are. Since, the beauty parlor, the President has died.  We are once again on a plane.  This time a commercial plane.  Poppy (George H.W. Bush's family nickname) picked me up at the beauty parlor -- we went right to the airport, flew to Ft. Worth and dropped Mr. Zeppo off (we were on his plane) and flew back to Dallas.  We had to circle the field while the second Presidential plane took off.  Immediately, Pop got tickets back to Houston, and here we are flying home.  We are sick at heart.  The tales the radio reporters tell of Jackie Kennedy are the bravest.  We are hoping that it is not some far-right nut, but a "commie" nut.  You understand that we know they are both nuts, but just hope that it is not a Texan and not an American at all. I am amazed by the rapid-fire thinking and planning that has already been done.  LBJ has been the President for some time now -- two hours at least and it is only 4:30. My dearest love to you all, Bar
As Barbara Bush noted in her letter, the Bushes did not stay another night at the Dallas Sheraton on November 22nd, as they had originally planned.  They returned to Dallas on the private jet that had transported them to Tyler earlier in the day, and caught a commercial flight home to Houston.  The "second Presidential plane" that took off while Bush's plane circled Love Field was the plane that had transported Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to Dallas earlier that day, Air Force Two.  Johnson was already heading back to Washington, now on Air Force One, with the casket of John F. Kennedy.
••• The 37th President of the United States and the 41st President of the United States woke up in Dallas, Texas on the morning of November 22, 1963.  The 31st President, 89-year-old Herbert Hoover, was in failing health in the elegant suite he called home at New York's Waldorf-Astoria.  Within the next few weeks, he would be visited by the new President, Lyndon Johnson, and President Kennedy's grieving widow, Jackie, and the President's brother, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.  The 33rd President, 79-year-old Harry Truman, learned of JFK's death in Missouri, while the 34th President, 73-year-old Dwight D. Eisenhower, heard of the assassination while attending a meeting at the United Nations in New York.  Truman and Eisenhower would squash a long, bitter personal feud that weekend while attending Kennedy's funeral in Washington.  The 38th President, 50-year-old Michigan Congressman Gerald Ford, was driving home with his wife Betty after attending a parent conference with their son Jack's teacher when they heard the news on the radio in their car.  Two days later, President Johnson would call on Ford to serve on the Warren Commission investigating the assassination.  
The 39th President, Jimmy Carter was 39 years old and had just gotten off a tractor near the warehouse of his Plains, Georgia peanut farm when a group of farmers informed him of the news of the shooting.  Carter found a quiet area, kneeled down in prayer, and when he heard that Kennedy had died, cried for the first time since his father had died ten years earlier.  Ronald Reagan, the 40th President, was 52 years old and preparing for a run as Governor of California.  A little more than 17 years later, the now-President Reagan would also be shot by a lone gunman in the middle of the day.  While Reagan would survive the attempt on his life, it was very nearly fatal and reminded his wife, Nancy, of November 22, 1963.  As she was transported to George Washington Hospital following Reagan's shooting, Nancy would later note, "As my mind raced, I flashed to scenes of Parkland Memorial Hospital in Texas, and the day President Kennedy was shot.  I had been driving down San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles when a bulletin came over the car radio.  Now, more than seventeen years later, I prayed that history would not be repeated, that Washington would not become another Dallas.  That my husband would live."
The 41st President, Bill Clinton, and the 43rd President, George W. Bush, were both 17 years old and in school -- Bush at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and Clinton at Hot Springs High School in Hot Springs, Arkansas.  Clinton was in his fourth period calculus class when his teacher was called out of the room and returned to announce that President Kennedy had been killed.  Four months earlier, Clinton had traveled to Washington with the Boys Nation program and, during a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House, pushed his way to the front of the line and shook President Kennedy's hand.  The 44th President, Barack Obama, was a 2-year-old living in Hawaii.
••• The 35th President, 46-year-old John F. Kennedy, would die in Dallas on November 22, 1963.  Lyndon B. Johnson, 55, would become the 36th President in Dallas that day.  But they woke up that morning in Fort Worth at the Texas Hotel.  Kennedy had slept the last night of his life in suite 850 on the eighth floor, now the Presidential suite.  LBJ had slept the last night of his Vice Presidency in the much more expensive and elegant Will Rogers Suite on the thirteenth floor.  The Secret Service had vetoed the Will Rogers Suite for the President because it was more difficult to secure.  It was raining in Fort Worth as they woke up, but the skies had cleared by the time they landed in Dallas.  Before breakfast, President Kennedy, Vice President Johnson, and Texas Governor John Connally headed outside and briefly addressed a crowd that had gathered long before the sun had come up in hopes of seeing JFK.  Jacqueline Kennedy didn't accompany them outside and President Kennedy joked to the crowd, "Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself.  It takes her a little longer but, of course, she looks better than we do when she does it."
Afterward, they headed inside for breakfast in the Texas Hotel's Grand Ballroom with several hundred guests.  The President sent for Mrs. Kennedy to join them, and her late arrival to the breakfast excited the guests in the ballroom.  When the President spoke to the group, he joked again, "Two years ago I introduced myself in Paris as the man who had accompanied Mrs. Kennedy to Paris.  I'm getting somewhat that same sensation as I travel around Texas."  Then he noted, "Nobody wonders what Lyndon and I wear."
When the breakfast ended, the Kennedys headed upstairs and had an hour or so to wait before heading to the airport for the short flight to Dallas.  It was during this time that Jackie Kennedy saw a hateful ad placed in that morning's Dallas Morning News accusing President Kennedy of collusion with Communists and treasnous activity.  Trying to calm Jackie down, the President joked, "Oh, we're heading into nut country today."  But a few minutes later, Jackie overheard Kennedy telling his aide, Ken O'Donnell, "It would not be a very difficult job to shoot the President of the United States.  All you'd have to do is get up in a high building with a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight, and there's nothing anybody can do."
••• Even though the trip from Fort Worth's Carswell Air Force Base to Dallas's Love Field would only take thirteen minutes by air, the trip to Texas was first-and-foremost a political trip -- a kickoff of sorts to JFK's 1964 re-election campaign -- and a grand entrance was needed.  So, JFK and Jackie boarded the plane usually used as Air Force One, LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson boarded the plane usually used by the Vice President, Air Force Two, and the huge Presidential party took to the skies, covering thirty miles in thirteen minutes, in order to get the big Dallas welcome that they were hoping for.  They landed in Dallas at 11:40 AM, and President Kennedy looked out the window of his plane, saw a big, happy crowd, and told Ken O'Donnell, "This trip is turning out to be terrific.  Here we are in Dallas, and it looks like everything in Texas is going to be fine for us."
At 2:47 PM -- just three hours and seven minutes later -- everyone was back on Air Force One as the plane climbed off of the Love Field runway and into the Dallas sky.  John F. Kennedy, the 35th President, was in a casket wedged into a space in the rear of Air Force One where two rows of seats had been removed so that it would be fit.  Lyndon B. Johnson had officially been sworn in as the 36th President about ten minutes earlier on the plane by federal judge Sarah T. Hughes.  On one side of Johnson while he took the oath was his wife, Lady Bird, and on the other side, the widowed former First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, still wearing a pink dress splattered with her husband's blood and brain matter.
Two American Presidents woke up in Dallas on November 22, 1963 -- Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush -- but they weren't in town when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, no matter how many ways conspiracy theorists try to twist the story.  The President who died in Dallas that day, John F. Kennedy, and the man who became President in Dallas that day, Lyndon B. Johnson, woke up in Fort Worth on the morning of November 22, 1963.  But they'll be forever linked with Dallas -- and the world that woke up the next morning would never be the same again.    
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