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About 2,500 people were expected

A tent was up outside the Governor’s Mansion for a reception before the big event of the day. The invitations to that affair, scripted in handsome cursive, had gone out.

Largely because Gov. John Connally and others had tirelessly worked the phones, checks poured in for the $100-a-plate fundraising dinner at Austin Municipal Auditorium. The caterer didn’t know exactly how many plates to set. Connally said sales had “far exceeded” his predicted 2,500.

The excitement was such that Superintendent Irby Carruth announced that Austin schools would close at 2:30 p.m. so students could see the motorcade. A hand-drawn map of the route was printed in the newspaper. Unlike Dallas — where Kennedy people and the press were braced for a possibly hostile reception — Austin was giddy.

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A photo of Lyndon Baines Johnson being sworn in

“The man on the street, the kids, clerks and stenographers will have ample opportunity to see and wave their greetings to President John Kennedy and the presidential party when the president visits Austin Friday,” the Austin Statesman declared on Nov. 19. On Nov. 21, the headline: “Austin all agog over Kennedy visit.” And a second story: “Till just before departure/Jackie held up wardrobe decision.”

The plane was to land at 3:15, and Kennedy would be taken by motorcade along a published route to the Commodore Perry Hotel — “Austin’s hotel of distinction” — at Eighth and Brazos streets at 3:30, attend a reception on the lawn of the Governor’s Mansion and head to what is now part of the Long Center for the fundraising dinner, the only overtly political event on the president’s Texas itinerary.

After steaks and a speech that Kennedy hoped would reunite the liberal and conservative wings of the Texas Democratic Party, they’d fly by helicopter out to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson’s ranch in the Hill Country to kick back after a long and tiring trip.

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A page from the Austin American-Statesman’s special section from Nov. 23, 1963, on the John F. Kennedy assassination.

Longtime LBJ caterer and self-proclaimed barbecue king Walter Jetton, almost certainly cowboyed up to the nines in his trademark Stetson and pressed white shirt, would tend to the barbecue pit at the ranch. It was whitetail season, and rumor had it that Johnson had ordered deer be positioned in such a way that the president could get a good shot. (The details of Johnson’s scheme, if in fact it existed, are lost to history.) Richard “Cactus” Pryor was booked to entertain, as he frequently did at the ranch.

Local and White House press were invited to a post-deadline cocktail party with “grazing food” in Colonnade Room III of the Commodore Perry Hotel, hosted by the local chapter of what later became the Society of Professional Journalists. Democrats from all over the state were checking in there and at other Austin hotels to settle in and get ready for the big dinner. During the visit, University of Texas coach Darrell Royal was going to give the president a football autographed by the soon-to-be national champion Longhorns.

Neal Spelce, who was working as news director and anchor at a TV station in town, was ready. They had filmed the preparations at the auditorium, tables and folding chairs filling the lower level, programs laid out.

“The idea was this was to be a big unity-type dinner,” said the veteran Austin broadcaster. “John Connally pretty much personified the conservative wing and (Sen. Ralph) Yarborough personified the liberal wing, and there was all this tug-of-war for control of the party. They wanted a show of unity, plus it was a big fundraiser, raising a bunch of money for the Kennedy re-election campaign.”

Amid intraparty fighting and even rumors that Kennedy might be preparing to dump Johnson from the 1964 ticket, the president planned to deliver a galvanizing speech in which he called Johnson “my strong right arm” and spoke of past promises fulfilled and future growth, concluding: “So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our nation’s future is at stake. Let us stand together with renewed confidence in our cause — united in our heritage of the past and our hopes for the future — and determined that this land we love shall lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace and abundance.”

Fourteen members of Texas’ congressional delegation would be along for at least some part of the trip. “Never before in the storied history of Austin has such a large concentration of state and national leaders been here,” the Austin American reported on Nov. 22. For the people of Texas, it was to be their first chance to see Kennedy as president, and the first lady’s first official trip since the death of her infant son Patrick in August.

Johnson, in his remarks at the Austin dinner, intended to mention the pockets of antipathy directed at Kennedy from political extremists in Dallas and elsewhere. He was to conclude: “And thank God, Mr. President, that you came out of Dallas alive.” The line was sure to get a great reception.

‘Anything but ominous’

In Dallas, spectators lined the motorcade route, including a group of children with a sign that said, “Please stop and shake our hands.” The president complied.

Connally aide Julian Read was in charge of herding reporters on a press bus that day. Despite the dark warnings about the reception the president could receive in Dallas, “the mood inside the bus was anything but ominous,” Read wrote in his book, “JFK’s Final Hours in Texas.” “The air was filled with light banter akin to a holiday outing. Reporters were uniformly surprised by the warm reception for the president and his wife.”

In the president’s limousine, Texas first lady Nellie Connally turned and said, “Mr. President, you certainly can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.”

The press bus was following the limo. Read heard “a pop. And then pop-pop,” and then the limo rocketed away.

In Austin, Spelce was at the Driskill Hotel meeting with Police Chief Bob Miles and finalizing details for covering the visit when the news from Dallas broke, a UPI bulletin. It was 12:36 p.m.:

THREE SHOTS WERE FIRED AT PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S MOTORCADE TODAY IN DOWNTOWN DALLAS, TEXAS.

The chief was informed. Spelce sprang out of his seat and dashed to his TV station a few blocks away to begin days of wall-to-wall coverage. The three Connally children were pulled out of Austin High, O. Henry Middle and Casis Elementary schools and taken to the Governor’s Mansion where, because of three gunshots, there would be no reception since — as the world would learn in about an hour — there was no President Kennedy to be received.

Shock and numbness

Spelce went to the auditorium and found a scene he described as eerie — everything perfect, everything ready, the catering staff weeping.

For days, Spelce said, “People were walking around with blank stares. Just numb. And glued to the TV sets. People were mesmerized, maybe a little more here because there was this anticipation that he was going to be here in just a few hours. The community had rallied around the idea that this was a historical occasion. Over the weekend, downtown was almost a ghost town. People started showing up in church who hadn’t been there in a while.”

Ben Barnes, freshly elected to the Texas Legislature and an early supporter of Connally’s campaign for governor, had spent seven or eight weeks plotting out the trip, working closely with Kennedy advance man Jerry Bruno, who for decades would blame himself for the assassination.

“This was a political trip,” said Barnes, who would go on to become lieutenant governor. “He came to raise money. He was also down in the polls. Connally was 10 or 11 points higher than Kennedy.”

Barnes remembers Nellie Connally spotting a problem in the proposed itinerary: a short turnaround for the first lady to freshen up at the hotel before the governor’s reception.

“She’s going to be mad as hell if she only has 15 minutes to change clothes,” Barnes recalls Connally saying.

Barnes, among others, had lobbied against a motorcade in Dallas. But Yarborough wanted it. And, more importantly, so did the president. He wanted people to see him.

“We delivered (Lee Harvey Oswald) a home run when that parade route was planned to get the most people out,” Barnes said.

Barnes was having lunch at the Forty Acres Club on the UT campus with Frank Erwin, a powerful state Democrat, and Bill Moyers, then deputy director of the Peace Corps and soon to become Johnson’s press secretary. Moyers got a call from the Secret Service: Johnson wanted him to proceed immediately to Love Field in Dallas. The Texas Department of Public Safety called Barnes, saying Kennedy and Connally, the latter a close political ally and personal friend, had been shot. Barnes arranged for a DPS plane to take Moyers. The door was open and both engines were running when they got to the airport.

“I never saw a plane take off like that,” Barnes said. “It was a terrible ordeal. We didn’t know if Connally was going to live or not.”

In Dallas, the president’s limo sped to Parkland Hospital while a press bus full of reporters covering Kennedy’s visit went to the Trade Mart as planned. Upon arrival they all rushed to the bank of pay phones as Connally aide Read told event organizers they feared something awful had happened.

Read had planned to return to Austin to work on Connally’s speech that night after the morning breakfast event in the Crystal Ballroom of the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, where the first couple had spent the night in room 850. Jacqueline Kennedy, as she was wont to do, was late in arriving to the event, but when she did it was like a movie star walked in. Read decided to stick around. The rain had passed, the bubbletop was removed from the president’s limo, the sun was out, and the crowds were much larger and more welcoming than expected. It was going to be a great day.

No more. Barnes went to the state Capitol and with Texas House Speaker Byron Tunnell arranged a memorial and prayer service in the chamber that night. Calls were made to area hotels and motels, and programs printed on a mimeograph.

“We had to do something,” Barnes recalled. “People were beside themselves. There was some comfort to that.”

Earlier, Westinghouse Broadcasting’s White House reporter Sid Davis had arrived at Love Field just as the president’s casket was being loaded onto Air Force One. A number of seats had been removed to accommodate it, and Secret Service agents had to use a hammer or mallet to knock off the casket’s handles to get it on the plane. It was broiling inside. Davis remembers Johnson saying, “I feel like I’ve lived a year since this morning.”

Johnson asked Jacqueline Kennedy, still wearing her blood-soaked outfit, if she would like to stand with him as he was sworn in. When she appeared, Davis said, “the sobbing turned to outright bawling.”

The oath was administered in 28 seconds. Davis got off the plane to file his solemn report.

‘Shame we’ll never live down’

Shock, grief and fear gripped the nation — if not the world — especially in Austin, where high expectations were replaced with horror. How could this have happened? How could it have happened here? Was it a conspiracy?

“Oh, no,” a woman described as a “gray-haired mother” told an Austin newspaper reporter. “All through the war, all over the world, and we in Texas have to do this. The shame we’ll never live down.”

Two days later, Dallas cabaret owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters — on live television and in a crowd of lawmen numerous enough to quell a riot.

Margaret Berry, long considered UT’s unofficial historian, remembers walking to lunch when someone told her the news that Kennedy had been shot. She didn’t have tickets to that night’s dinner; her mother was quite ill at the time. But she knew people who did. Those people were now possessing grim keepsakes.

She also remembers a memorial service sometime later at University United Methodist Church, which she said President Johnson chose because it was a pretty church on campus. She sat in the balcony.

At the time, some predicted that the assassination was the event that would unleash an era of violence and madness. And so it was to be.

“Dallas, Oswald, Ruby, Watts, Whitman, Manson, Ray, Sirhan, Bremer, Vietnam, Nixon, Watergate, FBI, CIA, Squeaky Fromme, Sara Moore — the list goes on and on,” Austin journalist Gary Cartwright wrote in a 1975 Texas Monthly article on Ruby, whom he knew. “Who the hell wrote this script, and where will it end? A dozen years of violence, shock, treachery and paranoia, and I date it all back to that insane weekend in Dallas and Jack Ruby — the one essential link in the chain, the man who changed an isolated act into a trend.”

Fifty years on, the aftershocks remain more faint but ongoing. Something — call it innocence or confidence or plain, naive hope — has eroded, forever melted away.

When, Berry was asked, did things return to normal? Her answer was bitter and rhetorical:

“Did they ever?”