NOVEMBER 22, 1963 The Connallys Remember

The very personal memories of the JFK Assassination and aftermath, told by the now-grown children of Texas GovernorJohn Connally and Nellie Connally.

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Hi everyone, I'm Katie Rhis SheriffFryer, and this is my heart of
Texas. It was sixty years ago, and yet for an entire generation now
aging a tragedy that still reverberates fromDallas, Texas. The flash apparently official

(00:37):
President Kennedy died at one pm CentralStandard time two o'clock Eastern Standard time,
some thirty eight minutes ago. Thechildren of America's greatest generation saw the budding
camelot of their parents' wartime sacrifice shockinglyeclipsed, and a nation instantly enshrouded in

(01:00):
grief. As we again marked theanniversary of the assassination of John F.
Kennedy in Dallas, we looked tothe Texas experience and legacy of that day
with the children of Texas Governor JohnConnolly and First Lady Nellie Connolly, who
survived the assassin's bullets and would leadTexas through the turmoil and upheavals that followed.

(01:23):
I was sitting in class, andI was a senior, and we
had a lot of things going onin school that year that I was involved
in. So I got a runnercame down to my class. I believe
it was bookkeeping class around noon thatday and said, the principal wants to
see you in his office. SoI said, okay, So I got

(01:44):
up headed up there. I didn'tthink anything about it, because there could
have been a lot of reasons whyhe would want to talk to me about
things that were going on in school. So I went in there and I
walked into his office. He wassitting behind his desk and he was had
a little portable radio in his headthat he was trying to dial into a
station, trying to get a station, and he said, John, I've

(02:06):
got some bad news for you.And my first thought was the President's been
shot. Why would you think thatbecause you were so aware of the tensions.
Well, I was aware of eventsthat had taken place in Dallas with
other people of President Johnson, AmbassadorStevenson, and other There was a couple
of right winning groups up there thatwere difficult. And I also was aware

(02:30):
that my father had recommended against amotorcade, against a parade because not because
he was worried about security, butbecause it's very tiring. They had a
very tight schedule with all these towns, and it's very tiring to write in
a prade. You've done it.I've done it. You're trying to project

(02:52):
your personality to each side of thestreet, back and forth, and so
he recommended against it, and theWhite House overru But that was just the
first thought that popped into my head. And the next thing I heard,
he got a station and the announceron the radio station said, we've just
had shots ring out of the motorcadein Dallas, and it appears that President

(03:15):
Kennedy and Governor Connolly have both beenshot, and it looks like they might
have been shot in the head.So I heard it on that radio station
in his office. So I immediatelystood up and headed out to my car.
I was a senior. I hada car parked outside of the school,
and a DPS patrolman grabbed me beforeI could get to my car.

(03:38):
They were the people that guarded thegovernor Governor's mansion. If you were call
the Department of Public Safety, andhe grabbed me. And then we went
and picked up my younger sister,Sharon at her school, and then we
went picked up my younger brother MarkMark Connolly was eleven years old. I
was in class at Cacis Elementary Schoolin Austin and into the room walks my

(04:00):
brother and one of the DPS agentsstationed at at the governors mansion, and
they walked over and talked to myteacher, and then Johnny came and got
me and said we got to go. And I was assuming that they had
gotten in early from Dallas, thatthe traveling group the president, mom and
dad and all the folks with them, and that we were going to get
to meet the President early was myinitial thought. When we hit about forty

(04:24):
miles an hour in the school parkinglot and then about seventy down exposition on
the way to o' henry to pickup Sun, I thought, man,
we were really late. But thenwhen I saw them basically carrying Sharon out
helping her, just couldn't. Icouldn't deal with the news. I finally
looked at john in the car andsaid, Johnny, what's happening, sister,
Sharon Connolly? I'm a fourteen yearold girl, and I shot as

(04:47):
dead to me. And so afriend of mine took me down to my
locker and there was just a littlebit of a teen little incline like a
going down to where my locker was, you know, just a little bit
of a grade right there, andso my locker was up in my head
was in it. I was gettingmy coat out and my purse out of
my locker, and some kid comesand he kind of slides down that incline.

(05:08):
He's kind of almost sliding on hisside down. He calls out my
friend's name and goes, did youhear that? Governor calling and the president
are both dead? And I justlost it. I mean, I'm just
crying and crying. Then we gotto the mansion and you know, of
course it was crazy. People wereeverywhere, and as I remember, I
don't know if Johnny Mark had saidthis, but I remember I'm ceiling up
the windows for some reason. Iremember that what was probably the most impactful

(05:32):
to me. When you're a youngchild, you rarely see many grown ups
cry. You might see a parentcry a funeral or something like that,
but even in the funeral, everybody'sgenerally not crying at one time. And
when we had quite a bit ofthe governor staff was still in Austin because
the big event that night, andby the time we got to the Government

(05:53):
censom, the downstairs foyer of theprobably had thirty people in it, all
of who were older than me clearly, and all of whom were crying and
in shot. And that, asI recall, was pretty dramatic because I
went, WHOA, this is thisis not good. So your trap between
your brother who was seventeen and hewas mad and he was on a mission,

(06:15):
I mean, and talking to himand your little sister who's been carried
out of her classroom. M h. It was pretty challenging. I can
remember very clearly on the phone withthe Southwestern Bell operator trying to get through
to Parkland Hospital, and he wasseeing the telephone operator was crying on the
other end of the lank she knewthat she had and couldn't get through.

(06:38):
And when John couldn't get through,I'm sure he walked you through this,
but my reflection is that he calledthe Texapartment Polk Safety who had an airplane
and said I need it now,I'm going to Dallas. Sounds like you're
dad. Yeah. Well, hewas pretty direct and pretty forceful for a
seventeen year old. And so Sharonand I were then waiting at the house

(06:58):
with you know, family, friendsand folks around up while we were waiting
to hear what was going on,and I remember at one point just going
into my room and kind of curlingup on my bed and just laying there
until we got the word and thedad had survived his surgery, which was
quite a link of surgery. Itwas a long time. So I'm standing
in the hallway down downstairs in theGovernor's mansion and this little operators on the

(07:21):
line of me, and she's crying, and at one point she said,
well, I heard one of themdied, and I thought, we'll do
I even want to know, youknow what she heard. And she told
me she heard the president died.And I remember, I remember not being
comforted by that. I was furious. I was upset, scared, furious

(07:43):
as everyone was. I didn't knowwhat was going to happen with my dad,
but it didn't make me feel anyBut I just kept having this vision
of these two couples in this cartrying to do something for the people lining
the street, not for themselves.That's not something you do for yourself and

(08:03):
for somebody and just take it uponthemselves to shoot bullets into that car was
just the most horrific thing I'd everheard of, and I couldn't get that
out of my head. Meanwhile,I'm on whole mother called in from parking
on another line. Well, Igot on with her. She was crying
and she was saying that the presidentwas dead when they got to the hospital,

(08:24):
and of course, I said,how Dad, And she said,
well, he's going to be fine. And I said where is he and
she said, well, he's insurgery. Well she's crying and saying he's
going to be fine, but he'sin surgery. So I knew she didn't
know what was going on. SoI said, I'm coming. I'm coming
up there. You can't be thereby yourself, and she said, no,
you need to stay there with sharingin Mark. I said, no,

(08:45):
I arn't on and Katie or hereand a lot of other people.
I'm coming up there and I'll letyou talk to him, but I'm coming.
So I went to the guard deskat the mansion and I told the
DPS trooper there, I said,get a car. I'm to take me
to the airport. And I saidcall the DPS and have a pilot and

(09:05):
the plane waiting out there. I'vegot to get to Dallas as fast as
I can. So I got inthe car and with one or two other
folks went with me. That saidthey wanted to go also. I can't
now remember who that was. ButI got out to the airport and the
pilot was there, and the planewas there, and he said, we
can't take off yet, and Isaid why not. He said, well,
we're waiting on your uncle Maryly.He's coming up in Floresville. I

(09:28):
said, no, that's an hourand a half drive. I said,
I don't have that kind of time. I said, get Colonel Garrison on
the phone for me. And ColonelGarrison Homer Garrison was the head of the
department, the legendaryon Yes, Andso I got him on the phone and
I said, Colonel Garrison, thisis this John Conley Jr. I'm,
of course the third but Dad didn'tuse junior very much. And I said

(09:50):
this John Conley Jr. And Isaid, I'm at the airport with a
DPS pilot and I've got to getto Dallas. He wants to wait on
my uncle. I don't have thatkind of time. You need to tell
him to take off, and hesaid put him on the phone, and
he said, yes, sir,Yes, sir, and we took off.
So, of course I prayed thewhole way to Dallas, sat up
front with the pilot. It wasa single pilot plane, and we landed

(10:13):
at love Field right ahead of theSurgeon General, who had been down in
Galveston at a meeting and was flyingin from Galveston. But when I landed,
they had a police escort for me, and got the escort and we
turned the sirens on and went straightto Parkland, and I literally got to
Parkland Hospital in time. By thetime, they had my mother in a

(10:35):
little waiting room kind of area upstairsin the hospital. She'd been sitting outside
the emergency rooms, as had missusKennedy early on, but they had the
plane had left with the dead presidentand the new president, and Miss Kennedy
was gone, and they had movedmy mother up to another area that they

(10:56):
were operating on my dad. AndI got there so fast that doctor Shaw,
who was the head of thoracic surgeryat Parkland, had just come in
to brief her on my father's injuries, which were mortal. The bullet went
in his back and shredded his rightline and blew out a couple of ribs

(11:18):
and exited his chest, and ofcourse it put a large hole in the
front part of his chest and It'swhat they call in the medical business a
sucking wound. And what that meansis when you breathe in air, it
goes out the hole in your chestand it takes about four minutes to suffocate.
And when he got shot and fellover, and I'll give you their

(11:41):
theory of what happened in the carwhen he got shot and fell over,
mother pushed down on the top ofhim to protect him. Well, he'd
been turning to his left because hecouldn't he was up against the door on
the jump seat, couldn't turn tohis right, heard the shots, and
was turning to his left to seeif the present was okay. So his
right arm had crossed across his chestand his hand was sitting on his left

(12:03):
leg that the bullet went. Partsof the bullet went through the radio bon
of his wrist, and pieces werein his leg and so forth. But
when he fell over, it happenedthat his arm was over that hole.
And when mother pushed him down,she saved his life because they were about
nine minutes from Parkland and he wouldhave died also anyway. So we're in

(12:26):
the hospital and you know, thePresident Johnson's calling IRN checking on my dad.
And the thing was I was actuallyin the hospital with mother, still
hadn't left for the funeral when whenthey brought Lee Harvey Oswald into Parkland having
been shot by Jack Ruby. Sohe was brought in and died in Parkland
as well. The President Johnson's callingIRN, checking on my dad and saying,

(12:50):
you know the funeral's going to behere. You got to come to
the funeral. So she tells me, well, of course I can't go
to this funeral. Your father's stillcritical. She's you're going to have to
go and represent the family. AndI said, well, okay. I
said you need to write mss Kendya note. I'll take it to her.
And she said, oh no,I can't do that. I wouldn't
know, I wouldn't know what tosay. And I said, it won't

(13:13):
matter. Her husband didn't make it, and it looks like yours is going
to, and you just need tosend her a note with some personal feelings
about how you're thinking about her andwhat you think about being with them and
so forth. And I went andgot paper and a pen and handed him
to her and I said, youwrite this and I'll take it. The

(13:35):
chaos was almost incomprehensible to the childrenof those days. A president killed,
a new one installed the text,and the Connolly kids called Uncle Lyndon now
President Johnson and back in Washington withinhours. On November twenty second. Here
in Texas, their father, ourgovernor, was in critical condition undergoing extensive
surgery. Late that night in Dallas, a state trooper shot dead accosting the

(13:58):
assassin. Lee Harvey Oswald quickly apprehendedand arranged one thirty am on November twenty
third, and then fatally shot byJack Ruby and the Dallas County Jail hallway
on live TV on November twenty fourth. It has been shot before, A

(14:18):
shot y Oswald has been a shot. On November twenty fifth, John F.
Kennedy, the thirty fifth President ofthe United States, was buried at
Arlington National Cemetery the Monday before Thanksgiving. That funeral came pretty fast in DC.
It was like two days later orsomething, or three days later.
There was a state plane going upto Washington to participate in the funeral.

(14:43):
When we arrived, we landed it. I think that plane went into Andrews
Air Force Base because a secret servicecar met me. Everyone else went wherever
they went hotels or wherever they werestaying. And when we landed it,
I separated from the rest of thegroup, and the Secret Service picked me
up and took me to the Elms, which was at the time that was

(15:05):
the Vice President's residence, but ofcourse the vice President was now the president,
so President Johnson and Miss Johnson wereliving in the Elms. They had
not moved over, of course,to the White House, because Mss Kennedy
was still there. So they tookme to the Vice President's residence and they
were there, and he was meetingwith his advisors, a few of his
advisors, and I knew most ofthem. They were previous Texas people,

(15:28):
and some of them were John Conleypeople, and he had Ade Fords there,
and I spent a lot of timetalking to his wife, who was
a lady lawyer who smoked little thinblack cigars, and Jack Valinni and others,
Warren Woodward and some others that weremeeting with him. And so that
evening, Lucy and I Linda wason our way back up I think from

(15:50):
the University of Texas. But Lucyand I got in a Secret Service car
and the present's body was laying instate in the rotunda of the Capitol.
Of course, the line, andit was all the way. It was
a mile down Pennsylvania Avenue with peoplewaiting to go around that beer and pay
their respects to the fallen president.So Lucy and I are of course able

(16:12):
to jump that line. We wentwith the service and went through another whole
entrance into the Capitol and were ableto pay our respects and then go back
to the Elms. And then thenext morning we left the Elms to go
over to the White House because thefuneral activities were going to start, and
so we I was just in thelimousine with the Johnson family. It was

(16:33):
just it was a Secret Service driverand a Secret serviceman in the right front
seat, and then it was theJohnsons and me in the back, all
of us in the back of it. I think most people I heard one
person comment that I was a SecretService agent because no one knew who I
was. I was just a darkheaded young man in an overcoat. But
I was right next to President Johnsonvirtually the whole time, so we In

(16:57):
fact, it was kind of onehumorous note in retrospect, none of this
share was about thinking this was fun, or thinking it was historic, or
I'm lucky to participate in this,I'm a part of history. There were
no thoughts about this. This countrywas in turmoil, the country was angry.

(17:18):
I was angry, I was upset. I still didn't know in Washington
if my dad was going to actuallymake it. So this wasn't a fun
thing that I did. In retrospect, it's very possibly historic, but it
wasn't fun, and it wasn't Wow. I can't believe I'm here. No
thought like that entered my head.But we went through the mansion, the

(17:40):
White House, and then when wecame out into those doors that opened out
into the pork Tosshire. Now I'magain, I'm thinking about the Kennedy family.
I'm thinking about the fallen present.This is a funeral. To me.
This is not some sort of paradeor some sort of positive media thing.
Funeral. So I'm constantly surprised bythings. When we first exited the

(18:04):
doors from the interior to the WhiteHouse into that porkishire, a Secret Service
agent grabbed me by the throat andhe was taking me out of there because
I'm walking out right next to PresidentJohnson. Of course, I don't have
any buttons on. I don't havethe right buttons or earpieces or anything,
so he didn't know how I was. Well, Rufus Youngblood, who was

(18:25):
the new head of the President Johnsondetail grabbed you and said, no,
it's Governor Conley's son, and sohe immediately turned me loose. I don't
think anybody really realized that it happened, but he was. He was going
to physically drag me out of therebecause he didn't know how I was.
So then I thought, in mymind, I don't think anybody even noticed
this. That literally happened in secondsbecause young Blood caught it so fast.

(18:48):
But in my mind, of course, I'm thinking, okay, we're going
to go out here, and Iknew we were going to walk to Saint
Matthew's for the church service, andso I'm thinking, well, okay,
we're going to go out here andget in the under the Porkyshire and we're
going to take up our positions,and then the Kindy family is going to
come out, because to me,it's a funeral. Well, we walked
out on that level, that raisedlevel before you walk down onto the drive

(19:11):
there under the porkishare and there's onehundred and fifty world leader, literally one
hundred and fifty world leaders lined upthere and the entire Kennedy family. That
was a shock to me because againI'm thinking funeral, the deceased families,
the big deal. But they werewaiting on the President of the United States,
so that didn't register with me.That surprised me. So we took

(19:33):
up our positions. I was justoff the president shoulder. I actually be
walking right next to the military gentlemanthat had the launch codes, and we
walked in that procession to the church. All those old films that they have
of that procession, you can seeme in them. People don't know who
I am. Again, they justthink I was another Secret Service agent because

(19:55):
I'm just a dark headed young guywalking off the present shoulder in that.
So we go to the funeral inthe church, and then of course afterward
everyone goes out. And there hadbeen some talk about among the Kennedy's about
whether to walk to Arlington, butthat was I want to say it was
thirteen miles or something. It wasconcluded correctly that people ought to ride.

(20:18):
So again I got in the Presencelimousine in the back with him, and
we started this long procession out toArling, which was lined every foot of
the way by ten deep people allthe way out to Arlington. And so
we got out there finally to Arlingtonand exited the limousines, and then you
had to walk up to the placeon the hill where the eternal flame was,

(20:42):
where the barrier was actually going totake place. Of course, they
had chairs for the Kennedy family andfor the Johnsons up there to one side,
and then the other three sides aroundthe flame. The burial site were
just filled with ex presents and congressmenand senators, and I just melted into
that crowd. We were just standingthere. I was standing there next to

(21:03):
General Eisenhower and President Truman and people, and we were just standing there.
But once again, I wasn't thinking, wow, this is interesting here,
this is neat. I was extremelyupset and very saddened by the President's death
and still worried about my dad.So anyway, when the funeral was over,
we went back down the hill towardthese limousines. Mss Kennedy and Attorney

(21:27):
General Robert Kennedy had had already gotteninto their limousine, which was part in
front of President Johnson's limousine. Theywere already in it and the doors were
closed, and President and Ms Johnsonwere going to go up there and convey
their respects. And President said,Johnny, you come with us, and
he knew I had a note inmy pocket from my mother for Miss Kennedy,

(21:51):
and so we went up there.And again I just assumed when we
were walking up to their limousine thatthey would roll down that back one,
but we would lean in pay ourrespects and that would be it. But
we got right about the back quarterpanel of that limousine and that door flew
open and out came Miss Kennedy andRobert Kennedy. That just amazed me because

(22:14):
protocols they were not fans of LennonJohnson but he was the president, but
he was the president and they werethe bereaved, and it shocked me that
in my mind, it would havebeen perfectly appropriate for us to lean in
that back window and then they goon, but they jumped out, and
President made his comments, he wassorry about President Kennedy and so forth,

(22:36):
and he introduced me to the AttorneyGeneral, who shook hands with me,
but his face was and he noddedwhen he shook hands with me, but
his face was literally woulden. Hehad been My parents had been friendly with
he and Ethel when my dad wasNavy secretary. They used to go out
to their place in Virginia from timeto time to dinners. They'd have out
there things that were out there.There's a funny story about mother about that

(22:59):
one time she she went out there. They drove up. They had a
bunch of cars driving up to thefront of the house, and the Attorney
General and Ethel Kendy were out ontheir porch, had these two big dogs
out there with her. They droveup and Mother was scared to death of
dogs, and she said, Ican't get out, and my dad said,
Nelly, get out of the car. She said, I can't get
out, and he said, Nellie, get out of the car. She

(23:22):
wouldn't get out. Finally, finallythe dogs went inside the house, so
she got out and she got inthere, and then they got into the
area of the house where they werehaving ladies and gentlemen cocktails and stuff.
And Mother was sitting on a couchand she was afraid of dogs, but
she had some kind of attraction toanimals because they would just come up to
her. I mean, so thesetwo dogs just came sap right down beside

(23:45):
her, I mean, not onthe couch, but right in front of
her, on this couch. Andso Ethel at one point said, okay,
it's time for dinner, and let'sall go in for dinner. Mother
said, Ethel, I can't moveto you movies dogs. So they went
in to dinner. But anyways,oh, he knew I was, he
knew my parents. He shook handsme, but he was just incredible,

(24:07):
incredibly bereaved and upset and just almostwouldn't and then introduced me to Mss Kennedy,
and I told her how sawry Iwas. I wanted to express the
feelings of the people of Texas andmy family on her terrible loss and the
loss to the whole country. Andshe was holding on my hand. I
stuck out my right hand to shakehands. And you know how when you

(24:27):
shake hands to meet somebody, youshake hands, then you start turning loose,
you know, immediately, or shewouldn't turn loose my hands. She
said, you tell your mother thatI'm so glad your father's going to be
all right. That's the only goodthing that's come of this, and she's
got the tears on her veil andso forth. And at this point I'm
thinking, I'm not thinking how needit is that I'm shaking hands with her.

(24:48):
I'm thinking, I've got this noteand the inside left pocket of my
overcoat, and I need my righthand to get it to give it to
her. And she hadn't turned toloose my right hand, so I was
starting to think about whether I couldget into that coat pocket with my left
hand or jott And she turned meloose, and I gave her the note
and said that, you know,my mother asked me to give this to

(25:10):
you. They were back into thelimousine, and then I flew back the
next day, then got back intothe whole recovery thing with my dad and
everything. The first time we gotto go up is Mark and I got
to go up. It was Thanksgivingand we had Thanksgiving with Mom and Dad
and John in the hospital and Dadhe had a room, you know,
with the bed and stuff in it, and then there was an adjoining little

(25:32):
room, a small room with ahad little table, I believe, a
little couch, not huge, butjust another little room attached. And so
they set that up and we hadThanksgiving and so much to be thankful for
at that time. I mean,he came in and he insisted, Dad
insisted in sitting at the table withus, and you know, he was
hooked up to all the tubes andall the things, but he was there

(25:52):
and alive, and we were sograteful. And then it just, you
know, it took a bed andhe talked to us about what happened,
and not literally everything that happened,you know, kind of what happened.
We went on. I think itwas like Thanksgiving Day. We were in
Dallas. We went to Eugene Lupe'shouse. He was a dear friend of
mother Dad's from Dallas, and wewere staying there and then got the okay

(26:14):
to go in and see Dad.And I've never seen him in that condition,
obviously, I'd never seen him set. He was pretty pale. He
was laying in the hospital bed.His right hand and arm were in a
cast, and it was one ofthose where they had the big wire circle
out on the end of it sothey could pull tension on each of the
feathers so that while the wound washealing, his hands wouldn't draw up and

(26:37):
so it would have its full rangeof motion when it was all over.
But we did get to see him. It was pretty brief. We were
there for just maybe an hour andthen headed back out. And I do
remember Texas was playing I think Aand M that day on TV. No
would be it Thanksgiving, Yeah,And they had wheeled a TV in for
him because he requested it, andTexas was behind and he was getting so

(27:00):
frustrated they turned his TV off andtook it out of the ring. I
have never heard that story. Henever told me that story. Well,
that's the way it went. Andthey put in the backup quarterback, Tommy
Wade. I'll never forget that.And he was a great pastor and passed
him down the field a couple oftimes and Touches pulled it out the end.

(27:21):
Predd didn't get to see the finish. We'll be right back with conspiracy.
That won't die, maybe until thebaby boomers do. Outside the sun

(27:48):
was about to break through the Drissolefrom Port Worth the Keunnedy's fluted Dallas.
With them was Governor Connelly. Thestory he told the Warren Commission. He
repeated to Eddie Barner, how aboutthe plane trip over from Fort Worth to
Dallas. Were you uh with thePresident dirt? Yes, Uh Uh I
was with the President from the timehe arrived in San Antonio on the twenty
first. UH travel in the carwith him at all times, and uh

(28:11):
Miss Conley and I did, andwe flew over from uh Fort Worth with
him, and H he was jubilingabout uh the reception he'd had you see
at Fort Worth. This was thethird stop we'd made, and UH we
were all eagerly awaiting uh uh thearrival in Dallas, which we didn't talk
about much, as you had toknow because it's not a very long flight,
and the seven h seven from UHfrom Dallas, from Fort Worth to

(28:33):
Dallas. Almost half of the presidentsin this century have been targets for would
be assassins. But the President Kennedy, this was a risk that had to
be taken, and arriving in Dallas, he took it. He loved to
mingle in the crowds. It seemedto give him new spirit and sustenance,
and he thought a president should seeand be seen. But the people he
did not want risk to force himinto a close protected automobile. Since the

(28:56):
rain had stopped, there was noother reason for using one so in an
open inconvertible. The Kennedy sat onthe back seat, the Connolly's on the
middle or jump seat, and themother cat stuff. We received as as
warm as enthusiastic, as spontaneous areception as we did in any city in
the state. Uh and it wasreally wonderful, to the point for just
as we turned down by the courthouse, uh Nellie turned around and and said

(29:22):
to the President she she was soimpressed by the warmth of the reception.
She turned around and said to thePresident, but you can't say that that
Dallas doesn't love you too. Ifyou remember, they put the Warrant Commission
together very quickly to try to addressall of the conspiracy ideas that were floating
around. It was every everything fromthe mafia to the communists to Lynnon Johnson,

(29:45):
the you know everything, everybody andanybody that had any connection to Texas
was possibly part of it. Andso all that was being written about.
And then the commission came up withthe magic bullet theory, which was a
major problem. And the magic bullettheory was that a bullet went through President

(30:08):
Kennedy's neck, that was the firstshot, and that it then somehow dropped
down and did all this damage tomy father and then ended up on my
father's stretcher in a barely misshapen state. And because of the time necessary to
throw bolts on the man liquor carcanorifle, and the leaves on the tree

(30:29):
and etcetera, etcetera, and allthe later tests they did, which were
all done in thousands of a secondand therefore had a lot of range of
mistake built in, they came upwith this magic bullet theory. But my
parents' testimony in front of the ofthe Warrant Commission was what I'm about to
give you, which was very specific, and they never changed it in the

(30:51):
thirty years that succeeded. And thatwas that both of them had been hunters.
They weren't hunting much anymore at thattime, but they had been,
and they both heard the first shot. And mother was sitting in front of
Ms. Kennedy, and so allshe had to do was turn her head
back, and she saw the Presidentgrab his throat and his face go kind

(31:11):
of blank. My father, asI said earlier, was against the He
was a big man and he wasagainst the door, and so he couldn't
turn and the direction they heard itfrom was behind them and off to their
right, and so he started toturn to his left. Well, the
second shot hit him, and hedidn't hear that shot, And that is

(31:34):
frequently the case when a bullet hitssomeone, it travels faster than the speed
of sound, and so the personthat hits doesn't hear the sound because they're
in an immediate shot from getting thevictim by the bullet. Mother heard that
shot and she saw it hit mydad, and that's when she grabbed him
and pushed down on him. Bothof them heard the third shot, and

(31:57):
both of them testified that with thatshot, it felt like someone had thrown
a handful of gravel across their backsas they were huddled down into the kind
of the floor of that area betweenthose jump seats, And of course what
they felt was the brain matter andskull fragments from President Kennedy because it was

(32:21):
the third shot that hit the topof his head. So their testimony was
very consistent, and anyone else likemyself who's a hunter, would know that
you can't shoot a thirty caliber bulletthrough a person that's as large as I
am or my dad was a sixy three two hundred pound man and and
have it go through his back,through his body, shred his line,

(32:45):
blow out, a couple of ribs, go through the radio bone of his
wrist, and pieces in his legand still come out barely misshapen. So
what we theorized, being shooters andknowing more about bluellistics, was that the
pristine bullet they found was the onethat went through the present's neck and it
didn't hit anything hard, it waslike going through it was just soft tissue,

(33:09):
and it spilled into the car asit exited his throat, and then
somehow it got swept up onto mydad's stretcher. Well, in very recent
history here we've learned more about themystery of the magic bullet because a secret
service ation has gone public here inthe last few months of his story that

(33:30):
he found the bullet in the car, and it was right where President Kennedy
had been sitting. So we wereright all along that that bullet exited his
throat and fell basically down into hislap on the seat he was sitting on,
which was not the same seat wheremy father was. So that agent
was afraid that some souvenir hunter wouldpick that up. So he took it

(33:53):
into Parkland and he put it ona stretcher. It just happened to be
my father's stretcher that he put iton because they'd find it. And so
that was the testimony, and wehad the clothes my parents wore at the
mansion for some months after that,and they had all the blood and brain
matter from President Kennedy on it,So there was a lot of evidence that

(34:14):
their testimony was correct. My fatheralways thought over the succeeding thirty years that
had there been a conspiracy, especiallyif it had been involving the mob,
I know everyone thought that made sensebecause because Bobby Yes, he went after
him, and of course they werevery helpful, the Chicago people, through

(34:36):
the President Kenny's father, were veryhelpful in the sixty campaign, and then
he went after him, and soit wasn't unreasonable to think that maybe they
engineered that. But the other sideof it was any number of high ranking
mafia people had been put in prisonover the years since the assassination, and
not one of them said, ifyou'll give me immunity, I'll tell you

(34:58):
about the assassination one of them.And so my father's assumption right up to
his death was that it was Oswaldall along the day we buried him in
Austin. We buried him at theState Cemetery, and Richard's Governor Richards was
nice enough to let us have themansion for after the burial. And several

(35:21):
of my father's old staff people andsome of whom had gone up to be
on President Johnson's staff. We'd justbeen at the mansion a very few minutes,
and we just buried him an hourbefore at the State Cemetery. And
three or four of these fellows gotme off in the corner and said,
John, we need to we needa ruling from you. And I said

(35:43):
what, And they said, well, the conspiracy theories have come out of
the woodwork today and they're all giveninterviews and talking to the press and so
forth. They want to exhume yourfather's body to check it for bullet fragments
from the bullets back at the assassand I said, well, of course,
we just buried him an hour ago. And I said, you can

(36:04):
tell them three things. Number One, they took a lot of fragments out
of his body at the time ofthe assassination, and those were available at
Parkland. And then the reviews thatwere done by the pathologists and so forth
in connection with the Warren Commission report. They had those bullet fragments. Number
two, they had thirty years toask him if they could take any more

(36:24):
fragments out of his extent that therewere any, and number three no,
And so that was the end ofthat. But interestingly enough, Diana and
I went out to Pat Nixon's funerala week later. She literally was dying
when President Exon came to my dad'sfuneral, and no one really knew that.
She died a week later. Exactlya week later, Mother said I

(36:45):
can't go out there and do this. She was way too upset. She
said, you and Dianea are goingto have to do that. So we
went out there, and when wetalked to the president out there, it
was a small funeral, mostly justformer staff people, maybe one hundred people
or so, not a big funeral. We went to his funeral too,
and that was of course fifteen hundredpeople, but past was small and much

(37:06):
more intimate. And when he gotahold of us when we were leaving,
he wanted to talk to everybody,and he just were agents. He had
read every story in that week aboutit, and he was going, don't
she let him, don't she lethim? Exhume him, don't you let
me? I said, miss brother, we're not going to do that.
I couldn't get him to turn LucidDiane. He was holding on to her
and talking to me about all this. There's a big line of important people

(37:29):
behind us, and I kept thinkingthey got to be wondering what's going on
up there because people talking to him. But he was so plugged in on
all those stories, and he wasjust vehement about don't I said, I've
already made that. Really, we'rewe're not doing that. But anyway,
that's just a later chapter of thewhole conspiracy idea. Because my parents' testimony

(37:50):
was not the testimony that was adoptedby the Warrant Commission because they didn't subscribe
to the magic bullet theory. I'mnot sure that I ever knew that.
I mean, I interviewed your parentsmany times, and your father up until
I did a big interview on thetwenty fifth anniversary of the assassination, and

(38:12):
even then he always said the samething. Share of this country leaks like
a sieve. If there had beenany sort of conspiracy, somebody would have
spoken that's what he thought. Hethought that till he died, and mother
thought that until she died many yearslater, and there just never was any
evidence there was anybody other than Oswalt. Do you think that too, I

(38:36):
do. I do. The testimonythey gave was very consistent with what I
know about cheating and ballistics and soforth. But his wounds, my father's
wounds, and with the presence woundsbecause the bullet crack through his throat was
a completely different one than the onethat hit his head. So if you

(38:58):
look at all those in the pen, the shots as blissed, I mean,
they were just accidental. I mean, I was all sighted in I'm
sure on the first shot very carefully, and then he pumped two more shots
into that car as fast as hecould. One missed the president hit my
father, and the other one hitthe president in the head. But I
don't know if he knew at thatpoint where he was pointing. He was

(39:20):
probably pointing right in the middle ofthe present's back, and that was where
the first one went in, veryhigh in his back, right at the
base of his neck. So thoseshots were without regard to what Oswa was
thinking when he pulled the trigger.Those shots were and what they did and
the damage they did was pretty clear. And then the only one of those
bullets that could have survived and beenin a nearly pristine state would have been

(39:44):
the one that went through the softtissue of the president's throat. My opinion.
Now, I'm not a ballistic sexfurther a bullet pathologist, but that's
just that was our family's position throughout, and it's still his mind. Well,
it's sort of like you lived theinevitable Anniversary. Remembrances and specials are

(40:04):
still playing out even on this sixtiethanniversary, but maybe now to a smaller
audience. What is the fascination orwhy has the baby boomer generation been unable
to let go? Certainly everyone knowswhere they were that day and what they
were doing and what they heard andwhat they thought, and those memories have

(40:24):
not died. Everyone you talk tothat's in our generation remembers very clearly what
they were doing and how they heardand so forth. So, yes,
I think you have an enormous numberof live witnesses as long as the Baby
Boomers exist. Later, just thepassage of time, we've had a number,

(40:44):
as you know, of presence thathave been assassinated and shot and so
forth, and those events pale andbecome part of history, but not so
fervent as they are now still aboutthe Kennedy assassination. And I think a
part of it also has to dowith the whole Camelot thing, the whole
idea of the Kennedys as the young, handsome, beautiful first couple that sort

(41:09):
of rejuvenated the White House and broughtsuch youth and optimism and so forth to
it. It's not just that itwas a presidential assassination. It was who
it was, and how the Camelotstory, be it myth or not,
how that story got created and gotfrozen in time affected with the assassination.

(41:30):
It was also a generation, thatof the greatest generation, and he was
a young president. Your father andhe were the same age. My father
was born the same year your fatherwas. These were our people. They
weren't generalizing our It was the oldpresident, and it captured the imagination and
this thought in the space race andall the things that were going to be

(41:53):
that had been made right after WorldWar Two and that terrible time of the
what this country and the whole worldhad gone through with a depression in World
War Two, and suddenly we havea new world and it gets shot down
like that. Yes, I thinkit's all those things. But even at
that we had a different generation ofpresence following World War Two with Eisenhower and

(42:20):
others. But the Kennedys were theepitome of youth and wealth and beauty,
and they just brought a whole differentidea into the public consciousness. And I
think that's part of what There wasso much optimism and the world got robbed
of that. Of course, thenthat got wrapped up in Robert Kennedy's death
and Martin Luther King and just awhole series of terrible events after that time.

(42:46):
And so it's somewhat unique, butit's still recent enough, and it's
still very very fixed in people's mindswho were alive on that day and old
enough to understan what was happening.I will go to our own graves still
remembering it. The perspective of theConnolly children of the event that shook the

(43:17):
world is unique, as is theuncommon strength and focus of then seventeen year
old John Connolly, the third,fourteen year old Sharon Connolly, and eleven
year old Mark Connolly. Each nowhas children and grandchildren of his or her
own, and their own distinct anddistinctive life accomplishments. The lawyer, statesman,

(43:38):
the philosopher, artist, and thecowboy banker. We continued our conversations
with each and you'll hear the echoof their parents and of Texas itself in
the next three episodes of My Heartof Texas. Thank you for the Connolly's
for once more remembering the past,but taking us ever toward the horizon.

(43:59):
Thanks to Katie, rh News producerJeff Biggs for organizing our thoughts, and
creative producer Jacob dan Tone for hismany extra audio and editing touches. And
many thanks to all of you listeningwith My Heart of Texas. I'm Sheriff Fryer.