Feb 18, 2007 11:16 pm US/Central
New Video Shows Last Moments Of JFK
by Brooke Richie
DALLAS (CBS 11 News) ―
Many people have seen the historic and tragic footage of President John F. Kennedy gunned down in Downtown Dallas at Dealey Plaza.
Sunday night, people got their first look at a new piece of film shot by a Texas man just seconds before the assassin's bullets rang out 43 years ago.
The moments were captured by a man with a simple hope. George Jefferies, 82, kept home video of the event in a drawer for more than forty years.
"I took my camera to work with me on purpose, so I could make some pictures of them when they passed by," Jefferies said.
Jefferies stood fewer than six feet away from the ill-fated motorcade. "I stood on the side where the sun would be in their face," he said.
When shots rang out ninety seconds later, he was already gone. "Right after that, the office closed, just shut down, and so did Dallas," he said.
Jefferies is a collector. He still has the newspaper from that November day.
"I kept the Kennedy film in a can for all these years," he said. "I've known all those years that I had it, but I didn't know it had any meaning."
But Jefferies' son-in-law knew, and he contacted the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.
"It's really a spectacular looking film, the best film I have ever seen of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the motorcade," Gary Mack, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, said.
Jefferies is happy to contribute his images to the collective chronicle of that day. Historians are even happier for his contribution.
"These things, especially films and photographs, help us understand and know for sure what really happened," Mack said.
The museum decided to release the video this weekend in honor of President's Day and the museum's 18th birthday, which is tomorrow.
(CBS 11 News)
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