Spring Break
Journalist recounts Kennedy assassination
Zachary Austrew
Daily Reporter
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Four decades ago, Keith Shelton, a journalist on the political beat for the Dallas Times Herald, wrote his story about John F. Kennedy's visit to Dallas the night before it was due. He received a copy of the speech to be given at noon the next day, called it in to the newsroom, and there it sat until the presses were ready to roll.
But his story about the speech never ran. That cloudless November day was shattered by three rifle shots, assassinating President Kennedy on his way to give it.
Yesterday, Shelton, an NT alumnus and former journalism faculty member, spoke about that day in 1963 at the University Union Gallery's reception for 21 photographs of the Kennedys' visit to Dallas.
The photographs, black and white and never before published, were found inside a shoebox in University Union employee Katherine Fisher's family's attic during a move earlier this year. Shelton's account of the assassination was limited. The Secret Service forced the bus he and other press corps members were riding in to continue onward to the Dallas Trade Mart, the end-point of the motorcade. That is where Shelton became stuck, stuck with press phones that only called long distance and not local, stuck with news of the president's condition only through second-hand sources, stuck with a day when he came home from work and his wife had more information than he did.
The 50-plus in attendance of the talk asked Shelton about the conspiracy theories and if he was convinced of one. Shelton responded, "I've seen and read a lot about conspiracy theories, but I don't believe one of them." He thinks the public has a hard time believing the documented history because, "One punk kid did this much damage."
Speaking of Lee Harvey Oswald, Shelton said, "he [Oswald] changed history ... He destroyed Camelot."
The following days Shelton wrote two first-person accounts of the assassination events for the Dallas Times Herald, yesterday he told his own. He reported his account of that 41-year-old story, in remembrance of the day he lived and helped to record in the history books.
