The Grassy Knoll

This time of the year (November), we are reminded once again by a barrage of articles, documentaries, and op-eds of that fateful 1963 day in Dallas, Texas when John F. Kennedy was fatally wounded. Re-examinations of events, places and personalities sure enough surfaced to jolt us once again into our communal mourning. Did Harvey Lee Oswald act alone? Was there only a single bullet or three bullets? What was Jack Ruby’s connection with Oswald? Was there someone else, dubbed the Umbrella Man, on the grassy knoll that fired another shot? Was there a right-wing conspiracy that plotted the President’s death?

Once again, we are watching the presidential motorcade winding down Dealey Plaza through Abraham Zapruder’s Bell and Howell lens. Not surprisingly, we are still shaken by the minute but unmistakable red mist before President Kennedy’s head jerked back and the First Lady in her elegant raspberry-colored pillbox hat and coat crawled onto the back of the top-down Lincoln Continental to reach for the Secret Service agent moving towards her. A narrated tour of the various locations inevitably ensues. We visit the messy 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository where we are shown the bolt-action assassination rifle and the window from which a clear view of Elm Street was evident. We proceed to the Parkland Hospital Trauma room where JFK was pronounced dead. We listen to the interviews of Lee Harvey Oswald who still looks so mild and composed, and to my untrained eye, could stand in for the singer Bobby Darin’s younger brother. We see Oswald snaking through policemen and reporters when we hear the single pistol shot that ends his life. We then join the sombre horse drawn caisson bearing Kennedy’s casket along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Rotunda. We hear the sounds of muffled drums and the clacking of horses’ hooves. This is the state funeral that is forever seared into our collective consciousness.

I remember hearing the news over the car radio as I was being driven to my Manila high school. Like everyone else I talked to that day, we did not think that JFK was really dead, and that the news report was some sick joke perhaps emanating from Russia at the behest of Khrushchev who hated JFK for the Cuban Missile Crisis stand-off, to demoralize us all. That night, I finally believed that it was true after watching Walter Cronkite announce his death. There was a strange certainty and finality to Cronkite’s calm reading of the news flash. The world seemed a little more unfriendly and dangerous that night. I looked for reassurance. I stared out the window and the lone voice of a balut vendor only exacerbated the agonizing sense of alienation I felt.

I am returning to the Grassy Knoll from which I could see the motorcade and perhaps the larger implication of JFK’s death. Somehow, over the years, the Grassy Knoll has become a vantage point for me to see the larger picture of his death. It seemed distrust of government began with his murder and now paranoia over US government cover-up and conspiracy is reaffirmed crisis after crisis. As Kennedy represented the coda of freedom and civil rights, and an almost chivalric quest for world peace that only true democracy can produce, Oswald’s bullet shattered forever the visage of the modern Camelot where the knights of liberalism and truth stood ready to save the world. Finally, the once invincible American style of leadership was seen as fully mortal and finite. I am sure there are more social and political fall-out from his untimely death. As I watched the parade of TV commentators talking about the assassination, I sensed an air of collective guilt hovering silently, but no one dared address this specter.

As with millions of people, I am still baffled by the entire tragedy except for the certainty of the reprising lyrics from Camelot:

Yes, Camelot, my boy!
Where once it never rained till after sundown,
By eight a.m. the morning fog had flown...
Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot.