Date:
Saturday,
November 23, 2013 9:07 PM
San Diego Union-Tribune,
Date:
Saturday,
November 23, 2013 9:07 PM
San Diego Union-Tribune,
By Laura Walcher
Veteran San Diego publicist Laura Walcher and
her husband, Bob, were
living in
Dallas at the time of the Kennedy assassination and had their
own
encounter with the celebrated Zapruder film. The following is an
essay
Laura Walcher wrote about her experience.
Here’s
how it went: WFAA-TV broadcast engineer Bob Walcher took a roll
of
film from a colleague at the station, who had collected it from a
distraught
Abraham Zapruder. He stashed it in his pocket, waiting for
processing,
to see what it might or might not contain, given the chaotic
newsroom
situation. But the film was 8 mm; the station could only
process
16 mm! Staff made a frantic call to the local commercial film
processor
for help — another hour crawled by before the lab could stop
the
run and put it on the development schedule. At the network, Walter
Cronkite
had announced the president had been shot. The president, he
now
said, has died.
Meanwhile,
across town, in Neiman Marcus’ cafe, along with a packed
house
of diners, shoppers, and newshounds, I’d been rooted to the
blaring
television set. Coverage began calmly enough, the crowd at the
scene
cheering the beginning of the motorcade, close-ups of President
Kennedy
smiling, waving, Jacqueline serenely by his side, the perfectly
beautiful
companion, sunny, charming in her signature chapeau.
Back
then, in Dallas, the Kennedys may have been the most optimistic
people
on earth. Or those in the greatest denial, because too much of
the
city didn’t want them, didn’t respect them. The city did not love
their
president.
I
did. I managed to convince my squirming toddlers in tow — Billy, 5,
and
Jean, 3 — how exciting our outing was; that we were going to watch
the
motorcade, that they were going to see a great American president,
one
they’d remember all their lives.
Now,
I stood in that packed cafe, shockingly riveted by the first news
of
the shooting, gasping, awaiting the next report. When the final news
came
that the president had died, every person I could see leapt up,
arms
raised with screams, shouts, and cheers of glee.
Alone,
enfolding my tiny children who had, of course, no understanding,
I
also screamed, bursting into tears of grief and rage, unable to
believe
the sight of the cafe crowd celebrating the death of President
Kennedy.
A
mile from home, I’d stashed Jean into her stroller, with big-boy Billy
running
along. We’d gone just for the walk, sunny day, using the
shopping
center as our destination, knowing the president was coming to
town,
happy to be able to watch the event.
Now
we raced back, as fast as I could move with children in a stroller,
to
watch in horror the rest of the story unfold — to wait, wait, wait,
for
Bob to get home, to seek some understanding, to wish it all away.
It
had been hard to be happy in Dallas, to say the least. To begin with,
we
were Northerners, New Yorkers, Jewish. Those traits, in themselves,
were
enough to draw the disdain of some neighbors. Far worse, the
appalling
bigotry we encountered, pervasive and ugly toward Dallas’
African-American
citizens. I needn’t repeat how they were treated, what
they
were called there, then, but it was highly insulting, highly unkind.
The
unfolding of events continued to batter us: the hunt for, the arrest
of,
Lee Harvey Oswald, the debate about who he was, murdered before he
could
reveal anything about himself — so sad, so tragic, so infuriating.
No
Zapruder film was needed as witness to Lee Harvey Oswald’s death.
Nearly
all the media were there. Nearly. Yet in the midst of the
tumbling
events, Bob, with the WFAA staff, had inexplicably been sent to
cover
a routine church service, a nonevent, wholly interrupting the days
and
nights that were otherwise consumed with the president’s fate — and
taking
one more potential eyewitness off the scene.
Maybe
Oswald had compatriots. And maybe he didn’t. It’s still hard to
know,
absolutely, for sure, the truth of the man, the truth of the deed,
despite
the immense number of investigative reports, books, films, and
continuing
emerging “facts.”
Today,
I’m told that Dallas is a “better” city, Yet, our country is
still
threatened by a polarized populace, a divisive mood that sadly
resonates:
could it lead to some other cafe full of Americans cheering
for
the death of an American president?
Dallas
may indeed be a different city. But I might never know, at least
first
hand; I don’t even want to be there to change planes.
Walcher is Principal PR Counsel to J. Walcher
Communications.
©
Copyright 2013 The San Diego Union-Tribune, LLC. An MLIM LLC Company.
All
rights reserved.
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