Working on president kennedy that mrs. Kennedy walked into the operating room in the emergency area and took out a piece of his skull and offered it to the doctors and said, would this be of any help . Of course by then it was too late. Lets interrupt just a moment here. Yeah. Because julian parallels what you are saying with where he was and what was happening in the limousine as well. Can you overlap what sid was talking about . Then we will go back into Parkland Hospital. My memories are similar to sids. I was in the same White House Press bus. I was up in the front of it. When we heard the shots we had to decide what to do with the bus. I talked with to driver with another assistant press secretary who was on the bus with us. We decided the only thing to did was to go to we had thousands of people out there wait forth the president and they didnt know what happened. We might have to point out something about when this happened of course no one on the bus had any concept what had occurred. I would remind you this was before the dave cell phones. The only persons who are any outside communications were one person in the pool who had a radio telephone. Merriman smith, Merriman Smith who broke the story. With united press. Thats right. We didnt know what happened but knew something terrible happened we took the bus out the trade mart. I jumped out of the bus and all the guys ran for the pay phones. Thats when we had rows of pay phones in front of public buildings. They rushed to the public phones. And i rushed to the podium. The chairman was up on the podium. And i rushed in to him and said mr. Johnson, something terrible something terrible happened. We think the president and mr. Conley have been shot. He stared down at me seemed like forever, he said i think we will wait for a few moments, and then he turned and asked for a prayer. Luther holcomb. He was supposed to do the invocation, instead he ended up doing a prayer. I immediately rushed out. Incidentally i will tell you when i walked in the hall or ran into that hall the measuremer of 3,000 people who were waiting for the president and mrs. Kennedy to walk in tea minute it was erie when i knew they didnt have a clue what had happened. I ran into a friend outside. I commandeered her and her car to get me to Parkland Hospital. I got there in just a few minutes. It is not very far there. I saw an indoor i saw an in door. I was astounded there was no security, nobody in sight. I went in the in door which was wide open and found a nurse and asked her to take me to mrs. Conley. She took me to mrs. Conley, who inside a dark hallway. Two women had two straight chairs across the hall from one another. Mrs. Conley and jackie on the other. Neither spoke a word. I knew that the press would be crawling all over us shortly. I knew malcolm would represent the president. But i also knew they would want to know about governor conley. He was in the operating room. They started surgery on him. Were those chairs outside the operating area. Yes, there was trauma one and frahma two across the hall from one another. The president was in trauma one, mr. Connolly was in trauma 2. Norma told me what the seating arrangement was. We sketched out the seating arrangement. In the limousine in thats right. I ran down and found malcolm and we set up a temporary press room quickly in the nurses training room and malcolm got up, made the announcement that the president was dead. And i got up immediately after him and drew on the blackboard the sketch of the seating as reported to me by nellie. Okay. Larry . I think it might be instructive to tell about the shooting from the standpoint of John Connolly. Hes not here to do it for himself. But i can repeat the story he told, julian, told ben, told me. As julian said, the seating arrangement was in that limousine, on the right side in the regular seat was president kennedy. On the left side was mrs. Kennedy n. A jump seat right in front of the president was John Connolly, in front of the first lady was Nellie Connolly. The governor said when he heard the shot he said i have been around guns all my life. It never occurred to me that it was a backfiring of an automobile. I knew it was a gun shot because i have known gunshots all of my life. And he said when he heard the shot, he turned to his right to see president kennedy. And he couldnt see anything. And he turned around to his left so he could see president kennedy. And about that time the went into his back, out his chest, he turned it splintered and went into his leg. It was powerful bullet that did all of that. Then nellie grabbed him and pulled him over in her lap and bent over him to protect him. And the doctor says that he had a sucking wound and had she not done that air would have gotten in the wound and he would have died before he got to the hospital. So that was the story about the shooting from his standpoint. Fascinating in that sense, now, but coming back to Parkland Hospital, where the two of you were located at that time, and the announcement was made that the shooting had occurred and the president was dead, then the president how long was it before president johnson then moved toward air force one . Because at that moment he in effect was the president of the United States. Well, back up just a second. Malcolm, when he came into the nurses training room to make the announcement had just talked to president johnson downstairs in the emergency room area. And he said, mr. President , i have to tell the press that john f. Kennedy is dead. At that point, kilduff realized that he might have been the first person to call Lyndon Johnson mr. President. And he said the president was taken aback when he said mr. President , and he paused, i have to do this. Johnson said firmly and without hesitation, mack, i dont think you ought to make the announcement until i leave the hospital with mrs. Johnson. We dont know if this is a communist conspiracy. Give me a few minutes to get out of here back to love field and then you can make the announcement. So they waited three or four minutes so the car could get away and the president was safe going to love field. Then malcolm, eyes full of tears stood up at the microphone. He was the assistant press secretary. Io this younger person who had never handled anything of this enormity is now in charge of making the announcement that the president of the United States is dead. So he opened his mouth and tried to talk, and nothing came out at first. And then he said, president john f. Kennedy died today at 1 00 Central Standard time. He was he was killed by a bullet to the brain. I have nothing further to say. At this point, all hell broke loose. It was chaos in there. We all ran for telephones. I had demand eared a phone earlier so i had a phone to go to. I ran out and made the announcement. I will backtrack for just a second. This is not a self serving statement but i think something you ought to know about people in the press. While we were waiting to get the announcement of president kennedys death, i had been in that same nurses area during near that training room waiting for this briefing to take place and some of my friends my friends from washington were talking to two priests. One of them was father oscar hubert. As i recall, he was about 67 years old and he was the parish priest in the Parkland Hospital area, our neighborhood. And just as i got over there to hear what he was telling the reporters, i heard him say, hes dead all right, i gave him the last rites. And i told mrs. Kennedy that i thought his soul had not yet left list body. I ran back to my phone, i talked to my boss, jim schneider. And i said, can you keep me off the air for a second, i have got to tell you something. They cut me off the air. I said, jim, there is a priest here who says president kennedy is dead. And i hear a gasp at the other end. He said what do you want to do . I said what do you want to do . We talked. We both agreed it was too person. We would figure that father hubert would know what a dead person looked like but we were deal with the president of the United States. And we decided to keep it to have air until the official announcement. If you are a reporter the congenital thing you want to do is break the story. The other end of it, the dreadful saying yourself the president is dead. The other side of it, shouldnt we get more defining detail . All of these things went through my mind. But we held it. We didnt do anything until we had it on the air. I bring that up because i dont think that would happen today. I think the press is a lot different today than it was then. But we did hold it. Then it was like an eternity waiting formal come kilduff coming to make the announcement. Seemed like hours yet it was only a minute and a half, maybe. Most people relate the announcement that the president was dead to walter kron kite on cbs. Anybody know how he got that word. The wire service. I think he got Merriman Smiths bulletin. Just to Say Something about Merriman Smith. Those of you in the room, gwen gibson and joon crisp and some of these people who know these reporters. Merriman deserves some comment somewhere along the line. He got a Pulitzer Prize. He was one of the greatest reporters who ever lived. He covered roosevelt, truman. He was a genius. He had a radio phone. In those days we had a phone assigned to the press pool. This is the pool, representing television, radio a television reporter, a radio reporter, a wire service reporter. It rotated. I was in it going to fort worth. Matter of fact when i was chosen to be the pool man i didnt want to be the poolman that it was peer points turn and there was an argument whether i was going to be on air force one. Merriman smith was a reporters reporter. He was magnificent in his reporting of it. He had the telephone, the one phone. He always sat up in the middle front seat of the pool car, which was usually a ford, not a big car. The first thing he would do when we got into a city, no matter what city, no matter how dull the story, smitty always got the telephone and we used to laugh at him because he would say we are going on mass boulevard, on main street, and there is a traffic light, we laughed at him, he believed that telephone belonged to him. He also believed air force one belonged to him. When dallas hit, he has the telephone, the story of the century, his chief competitor sitting behind him, the guy from Associated Press what is dying a Million Deaths because smithy has that phone and not only did he not let go of it. Not only did he tell what happened he couldnt have something fresh happen all the time, he would say to the office, he was dictating to the united press here in dallas, now repeat what i just told you. And the guy in the back seat is dying. So they started there were various stories about it that there was a big fight between the ap and the upi. A friend of mine says it was more of a tussle. But the guy in the back seat had the disadvantage because he couldnt wrest that phone out of smittys hand and smitty won a pil Pulitzer Prize for what he did. They are all great reporters. Lets jump to the famous photograph of lbj with his hand raised, the judge hughes administering the oath of office. You were there on the plane, i think in you said you were the only one still alive. I am the last surviving one of the three in the pool till alive. All the people in that picture are gone except for bill moiiers. I want to get the how he dot there in just a few moments. Bill was in austin when the shooting took place. Brooks is gone, thomas is gone. They are all gone. All these people. Describe how that picture took place. What happened . I was on the air broadcasting the president s at the time when the White House Travel Office person grabbed by my suit collar from behind. He said i had to go with him. I said i am not leaving damity, i am on the air. He said we need a pool. I said it is peer points turn. Grab him. I mean we are arguing over covering the biggest story of the century. But i did go. They had an Unmarked Police car waiting for us. They said we are going out to air force one. We took off doing 60 to 70 miles an hour through dallas over curbs, driveways, however this Police Officer could get there, trying to get to air force one back to washington. Got to the airport and mrs. Kennedy just arrived with the casket. They were putting the casket onto the aircraft and they had to carry it up the incline of the rear stairs. It is a 7 07, a big airplane. It was a brandnew airplane. They designed the colors the colors you see on air force one today is designed by mr. And mrs. Kennedy. They had to knock handles off the casket so they could get it in the airport. They managed to get this thing in there. I went around the side of the airplane with Merriman Smith and Chuck Roberts and climbed in from another side of the aircraft coming from the front end of the plane went back to the mid ships and i saw mrs. Johnson and president johnson in there with a group of people and president johnson was talking to marie famer his secretary. I talked to marie and they said they were trying to get a judge from downtown to come out and do the swearing in. Mrs. Kennedy was in the rear with the casket. Marie told me when the president arrived on the aircraft, which was maybe 15 minutes, no more than that, than mrs. Kennedys arrival. The first thing he did was he asked for a hot cup of vegetable soup. And he said to marie, i have lived a year since this morning. And then he told her, and i overheard him tell her that i would like for you to go and ask mrs. Kennedy if she will stand with us at the swearing in. And marie went back and talked to mrs. Kennedy or sent a message back, yes, i will come, but i want a few minutes to compose myself. And so we waited. By this time, the room was stifling hot, probably 120 degrees. We hadsitting under the hot sun and only one engine was running to keep the electronics going. It was probably a few minutes before mrs. Kennedy appeared in the doorway. Thats when the sobbing the quiet sobbing by the Young Kennedy staff. You have to understand these were young people in their 20s and 30s who had made the long march to the campaign, made him president , they had gone through the bay of pigs and the cuban missile crisis and he was their hero and now he was gone. And the satness of this scene was evident on the faces of these young women with the mascara streaking their cheeks as they were waiting for mrs. Kennedy. And once she came into the room, the crying became almost unbearable among everyone. The sobbing was just unbelievable. Was mrs. Kennedy crying . Was Jackie Kennedy crying . No, she was not. She was standing in the doorway and we could see her. President johnson left his place in the middle of the room, walked over to her, took her by both hands, and he walked backward, sort of backward and took her and placed her to his left in the center of the room. And he pulled mrs. Johnson over to his right. And he asked for a glass of ice water. And marie brought him some ice water. Then he looked at the judge. And he said proceed. Now, as a pool reporter, it is my responsibility to write everything i saw. I am just a rinky dink rrt who are covered the Police Station in ohio and now i am covering one of the biggest stories in the world and i have to tell you i was worried i wouldnt get everything i had to get. It was such an important story. I examined her pretty carefully. I saw blood on her legs, it can congealed on both legs. I saw blood and speckles of brain matter on her skirt and on her blouse. I noticed that she was unblinking. She was in grief, but she had her wits about her. She knew exactly what was going on. She understood everything that was going on. I dont think she would have come forward had she not known what was going on. I think in the annals in history this is one of the most courageous thing i have ever seen between the president and another first lady where she i believe suffering probably the worst thing that could happen to a married couple,s losing your husband in a murderous situation, leaving the casket to come up front to attend the ceremony took a lot of courage. And i think mrs. Kennedy felt it was important for her to be in that room. At the same time, i thought that gesture by president johnson asking her to come forward, he said if he would like to stand with us, because he knew the circumstances. I think that the opportunities for greatness were there in that setting for so brief a time. The compassion shown by president johnson, i have never seen it since. He invited all the kennedy Staff Members on the airplane that wanted to in, he asked people to get closer together so more kennedy people could answer the the thing. And his behavior, i never saw anybody more resolved about what he had to do it. He had his wits totally about him. As soon as the oath was finished he kissed mrs. Johnson. Then he kissed mrs. Kennedy on the check. Then he weapon over to president kennedys secretary, evelyn lincoln, he shook her hand and health her tightly and said he was sorry this that happened. Then he fended off almost any effort on the part of anyone to come up and congratulate him, which was another sign of i think his greatness. He did not want this to turn into a celebration. And the somber mood that existed from the beginning was there at the end. My friend Chuck Roberts, one of the other poolers went over to president johnson, he shook his happened, looked up at the president the president was 63 or 64, he looked up at the president and he told me later, he said i looked up at him and now hes different. He said, i didnt know what to say. So i said, god speed, mr. President. And i thought, i wish i could have said Something Like that. It was so appropriate for him to have said that. And then president johnsons first order was, lets get airborne. They knew they had to move that airplane out of dallas and get back to washington. One interesting sidelight, the air force one pilot, i understand