Wright reflects on experience
By Andrew Heep
Skiff Staff

On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy’s day began with the sound of raindrops falling on the streets of downtown Fort Worth.

Stories below, outside his window in the Texas Hotel, a crowd braved the rain and began to assemble in the street in hopes of seeing the president.

TCU professor Jim Wright, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, remembers that day well and says it will be forever burned into his mind, even though he says it seems like “an eternity ago.”

Wright, who was serving in Congress at the time, remembers that day because he was with Kennedy in Fort Worth and later in Dallas when the president was shot.

That morning, Kennedy spoke to a breakfast meeting of the Chamber of Commerce and commended the young Congressman.

“He speaks for Fort Worth, and he speaks for the country, and I don’t know any city that is better represented in the Congress of the United States than Fort Worth,” Kennedy told the Fort Worth crowd.

After the breakfast, Wright was in Kennedy’s party that boarded Air Force One and headed to Dallas’ Love Field. As they exited the plane in Dallas, Secret Service agents had arranged an armored closed-top limousine for the president to ride in that day, but Kennedy refused to ride in it.

Wright said Kennedy wanted the people of Dallas to be able to see him, but more importantly, he wanted to be able to see them.

Wright says Kennedy was well-received everywhere he went. Even before he was president, Wright said, people would try to touch him and would scream in excitement when he passed. Wright compares the reaction to Kennedy to the way some people of the time reacted to Frank Sinatra or even the Beatles.

The presidential parade began, and Wright was riding in an open-top convertible that was about five or six cars behind Kennedy’s. As they crept their way through the crowded downtown streets of Dallas, they approached Dealey Plaza, packed with people.

Wright said he heard two rifle shots ring out. He was startled at first, but immediately thought to himself how foolish it was that someone was giving a 21-gun-salute with a rifle. Then a third shot came just slightly out of cadence and Wright knew something was wrong.

“I was concerned, I didn’t know what, but I don’t know that it crossed my mind ‘Oh my God somebody has shot the president.’ I just knew it was trouble. And there was something wrong,” he said.

Moments later Wright looked ahead to the president’s convertible, where he saw Jacqueline Kennedy turned facing backward and leaning over the rear seat, as the car launched forward and headed up the entrance ramp to the freeway. Wright’s car quickly followed as the motorcade headed to Parkland Hospital.

“When we got there at Parkland, they were carrying Kennedy out in a stretcher into the hospital,” he said. “And I looked into the back seat of the car that the president was in and saw all that blood, and I knew right away that it was probably fatal.”

Soon afterward came the announcement that President Kennedy had been pronounced dead at 1 p.m.

Secret Service agents insisted that Vice President Lyndon Johnson leave the hospital and get back to Air Force One as soon as possible. Federal Judge Sarah T. Hughes was called to meet the plane at Love Field and swore in Lyndon B. Johnson as America’s 36th president.

Wright called Nov. 22 “a terrible letdown” for the nation.

“It was such a coming of age,” he said, “and a realization that Camelot could not last forever.”