That Day in Dallas

I was five years old, watching As the World Turns with my mother the way we always did during lunch, when Walter Cronkite broke in to announce that President Kennedy had been shot.

I lived in Oak Cliff, the south part of Dallas, a few miles from where Lee Harvey Oswald was captured later that day at the Texas theater. My family was acquainted with the police officer who was shot and killed when he confronted Oswald on an Oak Cliff street.

I remember my mother crying. It was probably the first time I saw her cry. As she made up the beds after we'd gotten the news she punched the pillows harder than usual, as she said "Why would anyone want to do that to that man?!"

I went outside and climbed up to the top of our swing set in the backyard. From my perch I could look to the north and see the skyline of downtown Dallas on the horizon. I have a very strong memory of thinking how strange it was that the things they were talking about on TV were really happening, right over there.


For the next several days there was nothing but news coverage about the assassination on TV, including the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald and then the President's funeral. The images stay with me - Caroline kneeling with her mother beside the flag draped coffin in the rotunda, the caisson carrying the coffin, the grief-stricken faces of Mrs. Kennedy and the President's brothers, the horse with the backward boots, John John's salute and the eternal flame.


When I was a teenager I went on trips with my church's youth choir. Sometimes, after singing at a church in another city, we would stay in the home of the church's members. Once, I recall our host making comments about us being from Dallas, the "city that killed the president."


As I grew up in Dallas , I went to movies at the Texas Theater, worked a couple of summer jobs near where Officer Tippett was shot, and often drove along Stemmons Freeway overlooking Dealy Plaza and the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

But never without thinking of that awful day.

MLK & Me

When I was very young, I would often go with my family to Love Field airport in Dallas to drop off or pick up visiting relatives. My father seemed to have a knack for spotting old friends or famous people in the crowds and sometimes we'd have an opportunity to meet someone special.

I remember once we were introduced to a very nice black man. I guess it stuck in my mind (I think I was 3 years old) because we didn't encounter many black people in my white neighborhood in Dallas, Texas. But I remember how my father spoke with such respect as he introduced us. Clearly, this man was somebody special and I was told I would remember meeting him. And I did.

I was much older before all the blanks in my child-like memory were filled in and I realized that that man was Martin Luther King, Jr. He was on his way to a meeting of the Atlanta Pastor's Conference, and my parents told him about my grandfather who would also be there. We later heard that my grandfather did meet him there and when Dr. King heard his name he said, "Oh, I just met your three beautiful grandchildren in Dallas!"

I remembered Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and he remembered me.



*Author's note -- please take a moment to read the comment left by "TheVaryIdea". That's my dad, telling the rest of the story.

Panama Canal

A couple of posts ago I had been tagged by somebody, and I listed among my "six things about me" that I had operated the gates of the Panama Canal. That raised a couple of eyebrows among my readers and prompted requests for the rest of the story. I'll do you one better...I have pictures.

In 1974, I spent the summer with my aunt & uncle, who were missionaries in Guatemala at the time. I was 16 years old (you do the math) and had never traveled farther than a few hours from my home in Dallas, Texas. The whole story is much too long to tell here, but it was truly an amazing experience in so many ways.

After spending a few weeks at their home in Guatemala City, we drove to meetings with other missionaries in Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama. My aunt & uncle had met a man from Panama who had brought his church's youth choir to their church in Guatemala and he had told them if they ever came to Panama, he'd give them a tour of the Miraflores Locks where he worked. So they took him up on his offer.

I confess the photographer in me cringes when I look at these pictures, but these were taken with a Kodak Instamatic on 126 film, long before I knew what I was doing. And these slides have been stored away for years, not always under the best of conditions. Did I mention that the lab messed them up when they were developed? They did, so I had to do a little digital manipulation to bring out the images the best I could. Here they are....

Here's a picture of me (on the right), my cousin and a friend (daughter of missionaries) in front of the Miraflores Locks. We're standing on top of one of the gates.



We went up into that control tower you see behind us in the picture and stood on the balcony watching the locks fill up and the boats come through. At that time, every ship that came through the canal had to display the American Flag, since it was still American territory. This was an amazing moment when we saw a Soviet ship come through...flying the American flag! Here it is:





We waved to all the sailors, taking pictures of them. You can see in one of those pictures that they were taking pictures of us, too!

It took quite a while for the water to drain between the different sections of the lock so the gates could be opened. I loved watching all the pelicans flying around while we waited...you don't see many pelicans in Dallas! Here's one that shows the difference in the water level as it drained and filled up:



And we did, indeed operate the gates ourselves. We toured inside the control tower. They had a huge mock-up of the locks laid out simulating the whole process with buttons and levers all around. Of course none of it made sense to us. But when our friend said "push that button" my cousin did, and when he told me "now, pull that lever" I did. And outside those huge nine-story tall gates began to swing open!