I had just walked into the library at the University of Maryland School of Journalism when I saw a knot of fellow students crushed around the Associated Press teletype machine. Whats up? I asked someone. Somebody shot the president, said one of them, darkly. It didnt sink in. So, I remember saying something stupid: I hope the guy had a good aim. It wasnt something I meant; it was merely the first thing in my young head. Oh, you shouldnt say that, one female student breathed. I silently kicked myself in the rear end and pressed into the small crowd around the wire machine. Thats how I first learned of the assassination of John F. Kennedy that morning fifty years ago. I had no way of knowing that within 24 hours Id be lying on my belly at 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, grasping an ancient Speed-Graphic plate camera and shooting at the flag-draped caisson containing the presidents dead body and of that wonderfully alive and high-spirited caparisoned horse. And the muted drums that to this day send a ka-thug rhythm through my mind. That was my recollection of November 22 and 23, 1962. I was just three months out of the Navy, serving as an enlisted journalist and broadcaster with Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. So, I had had some experience in journalism. I was at the University of Maryland to formalize my career with a degree. I was lucky to get a part-time job as a reporter-rewrite man for Army-Navy-Air Force Times while I attended classes. So, I knew my way around the Pentagon and was building up contacts as I walked from ring to ring in that great building. Back at the J-School library, I was just itching to get into the reportage to cover this historic moment. But how? I was just another college kid. Then, it occurred to me: Was there anyone at Navy Times assigned to the job? I ran to a phone to call John Sprinkman, then editor of Navy Times. No, he said, they hadnt assigned anybody. And I got the job. Through a senior fellow reporter at Navy Times, I got a White House press pass. But I had to pick it up where? At the White House, naturally. That was easier said than done. First I had to get down there. Pennsylvania Avenue outside the front of the White House was a crush of humanity. It was though everyone living in Washington came to that spot just to be close to the assassinated president whose body by then had been returned from Dallas. I parked my car about three blocks north of Lafayette Park. And, with the heavy Speed Graphic I had stolen from the J-school dragging behind me, I made it at last to the White House gate and explained my predicament to an unenthusiastic guard. No ones allowed through this gate, he said, firmly. But Ive got a White House press pass, I responded. But its inside the White House. No ones allowed through this gate, he repeated himself more firmly. And that was that. There I was — in a crush of people with this bulky camera at my side and with nothing to use it on. So, I worked my way past the Treasury Building and to 14th Street to the spot where Pennsylvania picks up on its way to the Capitol. I knew at some point the funeral parade carrying the presidents body would pass that way, leaving me an opportunity to take a few shots. I only had a few seconds to knock off those shots as the parade passed. But, at the tail end, a motley crowd of newspaper people for the most part straggled. So, I just fell in with the Fourth Estate. I noted that, in the crowd of reporters, everyone who had a camera had a 35-millimeter hand-held. I was the only one with a 4 x 5 Speed Graphic. How embarrassing! Soon, everybody else along Pennsylvania Avenue fell in with the reporters. So much so that it was becoming a real risk that the crowd was going to overtake the parade! I remember at one point I accidentally knocked my Speed Graphic against the head of a young boy in a stroller pushed by a woman who appeared to be his mother. What the hell, I thought, was she doing there? Within seconds, a company of Marines broke through, stopping the crowd in mid-step. It was there that I took the best picture of the day: an enraged newspaperman standing a full five feet tall with a wrinkled shirt and balding head looking up defiantly into the nostrils of a young and frightened Marine carrying his M-13 at parade rest. It was a classic example of the eternal conflict between news media and government. With the news people pressing against the Marines, the armed column dissolved, allowing us to proceed behind the funeral parade to the western steps of the Capitol. We were headed to the basement rotunda where Kennedys body would lie in state. But we first had to get up the steps. The crowd swept over those white granite steps like a wave of water in a gale. As I got about halfway up the steps, I heard gunshots ring out. And then a voice that said, Hes been shot! Hes been shot! Lee Harvey Oswald has been shot! The crowd of news people around me paused for a second to turn their ears to someones hand-held radio that broadcast that message from Dallas. And then, after under a minute, we pressed on up the steps. At last, I found a spot in the rotunda as a line of mourners formed to file past the closed casket of the president. And, after an hour or so, someone said, There she is — Look! There she is. I looked across the rotunda at the front of the line. There she was, indeed. The presidents wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Her face was twisted in anguish and the blood of her husband still streaked across the same outfit she wore in Dallas. Without a camera with a zoom lens, I couldnt get a good shot of her. The result of all that effort was a picture of the caparisoned horse on the front page of Navy Times along with a cutline. And no further word of the historic assassination of the Commander in Chief was published in that edition. So, I learned two lessons: • Not every story is spoon fed by a press conference or press release. From a journalistic standpoint, it was my first true experience in covering history where the events are self-described as they occur around the reporter. • No two people on this earth share the same concept of what makes news. I will never understand why the editor of Navy Times so ignored the event of the 20th Century by doing no more than publishing a picture of a horse.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 00:07:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015