By Dick Miller
WE.CONNECT.DOTS: Last week we reported how several hundred newsrooms dealt with news of the crime of the century. We squeezed the most of printing technology of that time to bring readers definitive news of President Kennedy’s assassination quickly.
Events continued to unfold Saturday, Nov. 23, 1963. Greenville Record-Argus publisher Frank Frampton said we needed local coverage of the weekend in Washington. With crowds expected in the millions at the capitol, travel by car would be impractical.
Three of us, representing the Record, boarded a bus at 4 a.m. Sunday. Reporter Martin Conoboy – by virtue of age and experience – was the leader. My function was to be a photographer. I had less than three years newsroom experience and most of that was in sports. The third member of our crew was Tom Frampton, 15, son of the publisher who helped Conoboy and me.
The bus passengers were typical – elderly, working people and students.
During a stop for brunch in a Georgetown restaurant, we learned Lee Harvey Oswald, captured only hours after the shooting, was himself shot while in custody.
Event after event from NFL football games to Boy Scout troop meetings were cancelled across the nation. The busses were to return by 6:30 a.m. Monday. No one would miss weekday work.
In 1963, black-and-white roll films comprised still news photography. Most press photographers were just beginning to switch from the cumbersome 4-by-5 graphics to roll film, twin lens reflexes. Neither were easy to use in crowds. The Record owned a Rolle flex twin-lens camera, a precision German-made instrument. The lower lens had the shutter and snapped the picture.
The photographer framed the picture through the upper lens by peering through a mirrored apparatus on top of the camera.
Single lens, smaller reflexes were not on the market yet. The camera operator had to anticipate his picture with a twin-lens camera because of the difficulty in seeing peripherally. That is where Frampton helped. While I shot one picture, he was looking for the next.
“For many, the most sober moment was the view of the uniformed riders in the white horse cortege bearing the flag-draped casket of the deceased President on his silent return to the capitol,” Conoboy wrote in his Monday story.
A quiet crowd some ten-deep on each side of Pennsylvania Avenue was estimated by some to be as many as nine million. Many wept. Those determined to see JFK lying in state in the Rotunda gathered somberly in a miles-long line for six or eight hours.
My memory is a white saddled horse, rider-less, but with knee-high shiny black boots in the stirrups, backward.
Only one of my pictures could be published. At that time our darkroom was not heated, requiring a warming of the chemicals on a hot plate. Winter had not set in and our technician did not believe a warm-up was necessary. Out of four dozen negatives, only two were printable.
I concluded that if this was going to be the most important news story I would ever cover and I was not ready. My friends were juniors in various colleges. What was I doing?
Young Frampton would become a lawyer and marry the daughter of Earl Miller, editor of the Record-Argus. He later would serve one term as a state Common Pleas judge and today is a professional mediator and arbitrator of some renown.
Toward the end of the Sixties, I swapped journalism for politics, thinking I would be dealing with less Sacred Cows.
BOTTOM LINE: The assassination remains the most memorable event of most people who lived through it. In 1963, we were less than two decades from the most horrible war in history. High on WWII’s resounding victories — as a nation — we were still giddy and ecstatic. JFK symbolized our hopes and aspirations.
As theories evolved about JFK’s killing, a growing number of people were convinced our government was hiding facts.
This was the beginning of the cynicism shaping our judgments today.
