Dealey Plaza and Again Im Broken
In this sombre Texas city, there was silence where 50 years ago there was gunfire. Instead of screams, bells pealed across Dealey Plaza. And there was order and reflection in place of anarchy and panic.
The sky was grey, simply this was Dallas'south moment of clarity: a solar day when a demonised city faced its past in front of the world, hoping that by paying tribute to John F Kennedy'south life, information technology will no longer exist defined past his death.
Sleeked past drizzle and shivering in the cold, thousands gathered outside the Texas school book depository, from whose sixth flooring fifty years earlier Lee Harvey Oswald fired the three shots that killed the 35th president of the United States.
At 12.30pm, the time when Kennedy was struck as his motorcade passed along Elm Street, a brusque period of placidity was observed, broken by the ringing of bells followed past a rendition of of America the Beautiful by the US naval academy men'south glee society.
The half-hr ceremony, called The 50th, was Dallas's starting time major public commemoration of the killing. It featured prayers, hymns and speeches and was a tribute to Kennedy'southward life rather than a reprise of his murder. Later, in the evening, a candlelit vigil was held at the location where a law officer, JD Tippit, was fatally shot by Oswald.
At a location that resonates and so vividly of death, fifty-fifty half a century later and even for people who were not born or have ever visited the U.s., little needed to be said 22 November 1963.
The ceremony addressed the consequences, not the conspiracies. The mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, told the crowd that the U.s.a. had been forced to "grow upwards" on the day Kennedy died. He called the murdered president an "idealist without illusions who helped build a more just and equal world".
Rawlings unveiled a monument on the grassy knoll that is inscribed with the last words of a speech that Kennedy never got to evangelize to local businesspeople at the Dallas Merchandise Mart:
We in this country, in this generation, are – by destiny rather than choice – the watchmen on the walls of world liberty.
We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our ability and responsibility, that we may practise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of 'peace on globe, practiced will toward men.'
That must always exist our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength.
For every bit was written long ago: 'except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh only in vain'.
Access to Dealey Plaza was tightly controlled: five,000 tickets distributed through a lottery, and Dallas police conducted background checks on the winners and restricted admission in and around the plaza. The weather forced the cancellation of a operation from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and an air forcefulness flypast, though the atmospheric condition suited the subdued tone of the occasion.
The stage was backed with a large banner showing Kennedy's profile. A big screen played archive footage of Kennedy's career and a giant paradigm of him hung at the eastern end of the plaza. The U.s. and Texas flags flew at half mast.
Earlier in the 24-hour interval, at Arlington National Cemetery only outside Washington, where President Obama paid his own tribute before this week, attorney full general Eric Holder paid his respects at Kennedy's recently refurbished grave. A British cavalry officeholder stood baby-sit, bagpipes played and a flame burned steadily, as information technology has for the last half-century. About an hour later, Jean Kennedy Smith, 85, the last surviving Kennedy sibling, laid a wreath at her brother's grave, joined by about 10 members of the Kennedy family.
In Dallas, onlookers began assembling hours ahead of the start of the ceremony. Mark Monse, 59, said he had come to the site of the bump-off "just to see where it took place … I call up this [ceremony] is appropriate, far more so than the cottage industry that has developed with 500 books in 50 years and all the conspiracy theorists."
Emil Gosselin had travelled from Vermont "to show my support for the president". The 61-year-quondam remembers existence at school when the janitor walked in and told him what had happened. "Information technology was similar the globe stopped," he said.
Brad Glazier, lx, came from Delaware to nourish the ceremony and a briefing held by a group of Coalition on Political Assassinations – they adopt to exist called "assassination researchers" rather than conspiracy theorists. Glazier was watching a puppet show in elementary schoolhouse when the principal broke the news. He wore a yellowish T-shirt with the briefing'due south logo, a coin with an image of Kennedy's bleeding caput, and a slogan calling for more than archive material to be released: "l years in denial is enough. Costless the files. Find the truth".
While Dallas has grown dramatically over the by 50 years, Dealey Plaza has changed niggling. Information technology is office traffic artery, function historical relic, part morbid circus. Simply about 300 yards away from the stretch of grass at its centre stands the building from where Oswald took aim the president's motorcade, according to the Warren Commission – though on any typical day, people hawking books, pamphlets and DVDs on the grassy knoll are dandy to tell you otherwise. Threatened with sabotage in the 1970s, the depository is now a museum dedicated to the assassination.
Unable to conduct their ain ceremonies on the plaza, as they have done annually since the murder, groups of conspiracy theorists met nearby. One grouping of about fifty people marched through through the crowd on Main Street chanting "no more lies". But the ceremony passed off without incident.
Well-nigh xc minutes later on the ballot-winners, dignitaries and news cameras had left Dealey Plaza, a few protestors marched through – but the place seemed to be returning to normal. Hucksters and hustlers were back, telling anyone who cared to listen the truth about what really happened, and why.
And past Mon the barriers, scaffolding and journalists will have departed, leaving a few tourists, a lot of commuters, and a urban center getting on with going forward.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/22/jfk-assassination-dallas-arlington-ceremony
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