Nov 22, 2008 6:35 pm US/Central
Dealey Plaza Visitors Reflect On Anniversary
DALLAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
It is a grim anniversary for Dallas and for America. It was 45 years ago Saturday that President John F. Kennedy was killed by a gunman in Dealey Plaza. It's an event that still haunts the city of Dallas all these years later. A young president, popular in some circles but nonetheless still struggling to get re-elected, is instead cut down as a nation watched in horror.
Everyone of a certain age remembers the moment he or she heard. 12:30 p.m. November 22, 1963. President Kennedy was shot while riding in a motorcade, half an hour later he was gone. Bill Luten was in a junior high history class when the principal came over the intercom. " He was very emotional you could hear like he was crying. We were pretty stunned as we came out of school."
Honor and opportunism mix freely now in Dealey Plaza. Vendors hawk memorabilia and books, or theories on whether one gunman really did it all. Bill Luten tires of the conspiracy theories.
"Do they come just to see the spot or do they come to honor the man? It's both, these conspiracy theorists? They need to go home."
For some, the anniversary prompts a recurring pilgrimage. Basilina Munez comes from Monterrey, Mexico to pay respects. She says she brings flowers to celebrate Kennedy's life, not his death, and he did a lot for Hispanic people.
Most people just look, at the book depository building, at the sniper's perch, the grassy knoll and the triple underpass.
Robert Rowe was an undercover officer that day, and helped arrest Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald tried to shoot Rowe's fellow officer Nick McDonald.
"At the same time he hollered, 'He's got a gun!' He lunged across that row of seats over to where his hands were and gun was and he grabbed his hand and the gun, too. I was that close to history."
McDonald was saved when he jammed the webbing of his thumb between the hammer and striker plate of Oswald's gun. It wasn't until later that Dallas Police connected Oswald to the killings of the President and Officer J.D. Tippitt.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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