An unforgettable event in the history of America.
A day in history that will live in infamy. November 22, 1963, the 35th president of the United States was shot dead by a shooter with wife Jackie by his side. Multiple theories and many years later, the horror still lives on in the hearts and minds of the eyewitnesses who survived the shocking assassination. For years, they mourned in silence. However, a new documentary series called: “JFK: One Day In America made them speak. Here are the six voices.
1. Clint Hill- The secret service agent
Clint J Hill, the former US Secret Service agent, recalled, “I think about the event as it happened, and I go right back to the moment that it happened. I mean, it’s there, it’s like a movie running through my brain.” He continued, “Mrs. Kennedy was screaming. ‘They shot his head off! I love you, Jack.'” Hill said that he’s living with guilt. “I should have been able to do more than I did. I wasn’t fast enough [than the bullet].”
2. Paul Landis- Another Secret Service agent
Landis recounted the horrors of the day. “We got to Trauma Room 1 [and] I couldn’t look at the President. I was feeling faint.” He continued, “I thought, ‘You can’t do this, Paul. That was a time when you’re needed more. You’ve gotta stay with it, you gotta hang in there.'” Landis said he boarded the plane to Washington, DC, and was so shaken that he broke down. [Agent] Roy Kellerman said to him, “Come, Paul. You got to witness this.”
3. Buell Frazier- A 19-year-old co-worker of Lee Harvey Oswald
Frazier drove Lee Harvey Oswald to work because he didn’t have a car. He recounted, “That day, I drove Lee Harvey Oswald over to where we were employed… I paid a big price for that… I’m a time traveler. I go back to that day many times.” While revealing the details of what he witnessed that day, the then-19-year-old Frazier said, “That morning when I left to go to work on November 22, 1963, that young boy has never come home.”
4. Gayle Newman- a Dallas resident
Newman watched the motorcade route with her husband, Bill, and two children. She recalled, “We were one lane-width away from him when he was shot in the head. Never in my mind- when I got up that morning, did I think that I would see something so horrific. I thought it was a firecracker. Then, as they got closer to us, directly in front of us, that other shot hit the side of his head,” per Texas Monthly.
5. Ruth Paine- Close Friend of Marina Oswald, estranged wife of Lee Harvey Oswald
Paine recalled, “It hurts to go back to that time. To remember the days. To remember the feelings. The disappointment, the pain. I felt angry that I had unwillingly been helpful in some way…” She hadn’t the slightest idea she’d be seen as someone who was involved in the assassination. Talking about Oswald, Paine admitted, “I didn’t know he had a gun. I didn’t see him as dangerous. I had him at my house frequently, with my kids, per Yahoo!
6. Sid Davis- Washington Correspondent for Westinghouse News Radio
Davis recalled, “I went back to Washington [from Dallas] and got back around midnight. I went to the White House. I was broadcasting on the arrival of the casket… this was the President of the United States.” He said if he had stopped to think how grave the assassination was, he wouldn’t have been able to conclude the ongoing broadcast. “I started wrapping up the broadcast, and I did the closing, and I said that he [Kennedy] enjoyed Robert Frost.”