Tales from the road: Meeting a witness to Nov. 22, 1963

Ex-Secret Service agent Paul Landis and I visited at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Marshfield, Mo.

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Well before the Civil War put me in its viselike grip, the assassination of President Kennedy did the same. This obsession started when I was 7 upon my discovery of a copy of JFK’s inauguration speech — an insert from the local newspaper — in a desk drawer in our house in suburban Philadelphia.

As a teen, when we lived in suburban Pittsburgh, I bought a copy of the Dallas phone book — remember them? — and called up assassination witnesses. Later, high school junior me argued with Arlen Specter — father of “The Single-Bullet Theory” — during a call-in segment on a KDKA radio talk show.

An image of the Kennedy motorcade taken
the moment the president reacts
to a gunshot wound.

That same year, I watched, horrified, as the Zapruder film played on American TV for the first time on the late-night show Good Night America, hosted by Geraldo Rivera. Then I bought a bootleg copy of the film of Kennedy's murder to study it for myself. In our basement, I watched, aghast, when Frame 313 — the gruesome head-shot impact frame — melted from the heat from my family's ancient 8-millimeter projector.

To this day, the assassination lingers in the corners of my mind, a nightmare that never goes away. During my Civil War talks in East Tennessee last week, I briefly mentioned this strange obsession. After each talk. an attendee asked me, “So who do you think did it?” But I demurred.

"Let's save that for a beer sometime," I told them.

At the Cherry Blossom Festival in Marshfield, Mo., in the spring, I met a small, gray-haired man who witnessed the horror of the assassination up close. Paul Landis, 88, is one of two living Secret Service agents who served in JFK’s detail in Dallas. What a good egg.

A cropped enlargement of the 
first assassination image shows
Agent Paul Landis (second
from left) reacting to a gunshot.

On Nov. 22, 1963, Paul rode on the follow-up car behind Kennedy’s Lincoln limousine — he’s the second of two agents with his head turned toward the Texas School Book Depository in the (in)famous image taken the moment the president was shot. At Parkland Hospital, he saw the blood and gore.

During our visit, I told Paul of my — ahem — “longtime interest” in the Kennedy assassination and of my 21-year employment at the Dallas Morning News, just blocks from the assassination site in Dealey Plaza.

After we put the paper to bed, I’d often drink beer with pals in the West End and then go stare at the “X” on Elm Street that supposedly marked the spot. For a short time, I had an office on the second floor, where Lee Harvey Oswald killer Jack Ruby placed an ad for his Dallas strip club the morning of the assassination.

Paul told me he has returned to Dallas three times since 1963. He thought it would be cathartic.

It wasn’t.

Friday is the 61st anniversary of JFK’s death. My God.