May 9 2012, Dallas and JFK

Today we were taken on a tour of most of the Dallas locations that are associated with the assassination of JFK in November 1963. Our tour guide was Jerry Dealey, a local history buff who happens to be the great grand-nephew of George Bannerman Dealey, after whom Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was assassinated, is named. After the tour finished at around 1pm, we had a light lunch and then spent a couple of hours in the sixth floor museum in the old Texas Schoolbook Depository building, from where Oswald fired the fatal shots. You are not allowed to take photos in the museum, but I took plenty on the tour, and here is a small selection.

The Texas Schoolbook Depository, viewed from our hotel window at the Lawrence Hotel (before we checked out this morning). The shots were fired from the square window on the right edge of the building, one floor down from the top. We would call this a fifth floor window, but Americans call the ground floor the "first" floor, and so the sniper's nest is always referred to as being on the sixth floor.

Even 49 years after the event, Dealey Plaza was alive with tour groups, including school groups, all day. The Book Depository is at left background, with the sniper window just visible above the trees to the right. The famous grassy knoll is on the left, and if you enlarge the picture by clicking on it, you may just be able to see the white "X" on the road, to the right of the man in the foreground, indicating the point at which the fatal head shot found its mark.

Our guide, Jerry Dealey, talking to us behind the picket fence so beloved of conspiracy theorists, atop the grassy knoll. Part of a school party can be seen in the background.

The white "X", clearly visible between the picket fence and the lamppost on the far side of the road.

The emergency entrance at Parkland Memorial Hospital, where the stricken President was brought.

The pickup truck just left of centre marks the spot where Officer J D Tippitt's patrol car was parked when he was shot dead by Lee Harvey Oswald, junction of Tenth and Patton in the Oak Cliff suburb of Dallas.

After murdering Officer Tippitt, Oswald fled into this cinema, the Texas Theatre, just a couple of blocks away. Witnesses told the police that he was in there, and he was arrested after a brief scuffle inside the auditorium.

This famous photograph shows Oswald, in about April 1963, in his back yard, holding the rifle that killed Kennedy and wearing the pistol that killed Tippitt. The photo was taken by his wife, Marina.

The house still exists, and on payment of $5 to the owner, I got to stand in the same spot.

Leaning on the concrete plinth upon which Abraham Zapruder was standing, being steadied by his secretary, when he shot his famous film of the assassination. The head shot struck home immediately behind me.

An interesting footnote. This photo shows Elm Street at left and the grassy knoll at right. You can just see the white "X" on the roadway on the left. The lampost was originally next to the kerb, where you can see the replacement paving slab, but they all had to be moved because motorists driving down Elm became too easily distracted by the history of the place and kept crashing into them!