Top Down (10 page)

“I knew that there … that the bubble top could be used or not be used. And I know that a decision was made, and I do not know by whom because I was not involved in the deciding making process, that, uh, not to do it. There was concern because
it was rainy in Fort Worth and there was some concern about the rain. And when we got to Dallas, the sky, the skies, sky, excuse me, skies cleared up and a decision was made. I don’t know who made it to take off the bubble top.”

A prominent Dallas public relations woman who was professionally involved in the private side of the Kennedy visit said in a post-assassination exchange with a foreign journalist:

“At Love Field was first that I knew that he [President Kennedy] wasn’t going to have the bubble, the protective bubble over the convertible. I had sort of counted on it because I thought maybe he would have it anyway, and I didn’t want something to be thrown or maybe, you know, a placard to sail out in the airport … something like that. I remember feeling a little twinge, and we all talked about it later that … whether it became a matter of life and death that day for him because if he had the bubble, it wouldn’t have happened.”

There was an exchange with the then Congressman Jim Wright, a Democrat from Fort Worth, who said it was Kennedy’s decision to keep the bubble top off the limousine.

“By the time we got to Dallas, and he opted for his open touring car, the Secret Service tried to convince him to use a bubble top limousine which they had prepared for him there because of the safety precautions, security. He turned it down. John F. Kennedy made the judgment.”

“Did you hear that or did you …?”

“Yes, yes. He wanted to demonstrate his confidence and his faith in the people of Dallas and to be part of them, to share
with them, see them, to be seen by them, to look in their eyes, to wave to them.”

There was a different—and also partly incorrect—take from the assistant White House press secretary, Malcolm Kilduff, who was to later announce the death of President Kennedy at Parkland Hospital. He said the only reason to have the bubble up was if the weather was bad.

“It was a piece of plastic is all it was. I mean, it folded up into what it was two parts? And two parts that folded up and went into the trunk and all it was was to protect him from the weather. Now, I don’t say that the bullet would have gotten as clean a shot through that bubble as it would without the bubble, but you still could have gotten at him with the bubble on top. But the president always felt that the people … if the people were good enough to come out and see him that he was good enough to sit there in the open car and let them see him and so he could see them.”

Other Secret Service agents in Warren Commission statements and statements elsewhere said various things about whether having the top up would have made any difference:

“I would think that it would have deterred for, let’s say, the velocity of a missile coming in at great speed, I think it would deter …”

“If we had had a bubble top there would have been some obfuscation of the assassin’s view. It is a deterrent.”

“It might deflect a bullet …”

From the son of an agent: “My dad did remark several
times that he felt that one thing did kind of bother him about events that did unfold in Dallas. He felt the bubble top might have shielded the assassin’s view perhaps of the President or it may have possibly have deflected a shot and the President might have been alive today.”

Another agent, when asked by a reporter whether the bubble top was planned for use in Dallas:

“That Lincoln, of course, was not an armored car. The bubble top was not bulletproof. But I think most people figured that it probably was. Looking back on it now, you couldn’t help but wonder if Oswald would have tried the shot at all because he might have thought, ‘Oops, you know, this is a … this isn’t going to work because, you know, it’s bulletproof.’ Or the next thing is, if he had of tried, that thing has a curvature to it, and maybe it would have hit and glanced off? The next thing, that thing was put together in sections, and it had these … these strips about this size [holding fingers apart approximately two inches] metal strips and that thing was configured so you could have the bubble top on the front. You could have had it on and Oswald could had said, ‘Well, OK, I’m going to try it anyway,’ and shot and maybe it would have hit one of those metal pieces that helped keep the thing on. So, you just never know. That’s something to think about.”

The most direct and succinct of the bubble top statements was from Larry Akins, the Secret Service agent in charge of the Kennedy visit to Dallas.

“I was responsible for the bubble top. I ordered it put on
the car when we thought it would be raining during the motorcade and I ordered my agents at Love Field to take it off when the skies over Dallas cleared. Period. Full stop.”

And, full stop. I was impressed by two things. First, by the amount and the thoroughness of the work Marti had put into this effort to help her dad. Second, by how good a story this was.

Marti brought me back to the point of this whole meeting—
her
point, at least.

“Were you serious when you said you would talk to Dad?” she asked.

There it was. She had asked with a directness that was jarring.

“If you think it would help, certainly,” I said. “Where is he, exactly?”

“He’s in Kinderhook now. Near Albany. Dad’s hometown. Mom says he’s deteriorating quickly.”

I remembered mentions of Kinderhook from earlier conversations. My mind raced to Bernie, from whom I would try to get airfare and reporting time for Albany.

“He and Mom arrived from Singapore a few days ago,” Marti said. “They’re staying at least for Christmas, maybe longer, and I’m going to join them there next week after classes end.”

And as simply as that, I was left with nothing more to say other than I would see if I could make the arrangements to join her at Kinderhook.

It was time to go. We shook hands quickly.

I made a dash to 30th Street Station for a late-evening train back to DC from Philadelphia. I figured saving
The Dallas Tribune
the cost of a hotel room was the least I could do on this day of many accomplishments I had made for American journalism.

There was a sleety, sticking snow falling with an outside temperature of twenty-nine degrees when Marti and I rode into Kinderhook two weeks later. It was thirteen days before Christmas.

She had picked me up at the Albany airport in the Walters family station wagon, a year-old boat-sized Pontiac Safari. After first thanking me profusely for coming, she talked in a fast jabber during the entire forty-minute drive.

Marti’s super-enthusiastic gratitude may have been based on an assumption that I—the good guy who came to help—had paid for the trip out of my own pocket. I was not about to tell her that
The Dallas Tribune
had picked up the tab for the travel. That was after I convinced Bernie to “walk one more mile with me” on the Van Walters story—which remained off the record. It was a hard sell and to make it I had to agree to take whatever time it required as vacation. “If and when the story works out, maybe we’ll give you back the days,” said Bernie. That’s the way it was in the newspaper business.

Then Bernie said something that really got my attention.
“We’re talking about something different for you anyhow—maybe soon, Young Jack. Particularly if you can make this Secret Service story work.”

“You mean a new assignment?”

“Yeah, something like that maybe.”

That lit me up—big-time. I had been doing well, mostly interviewing Dallas-area and other Texas congressmen about what they thought about the current issues and big events of our time. I was definitely ready for some real stories—big ones that mattered.

“What exactly is it?”

“Later, Young Jack. Later.”

“Can’t you tell me anything? Please? C’mon, Bernie.”

There was a beat before Bernie said, “Just make sure your passport is in order.” And that was the end of the conversation.

Passport? I had one and it was definitely ready to go—but ready to go
where
? The
Tribune
had only one foreign bureau and that was in Mexico City. But I didn’t even speak Spanish …

Then it hit me! The White House! That had to be it. Travel the world with the president! Hey, I was ready for that. I really was. The White House! Journalism heaven, here I come!

Meanwhile, I had to make the Van Walters story go huge—and speak loudly. And that meant taking things one step at a time. Marti Walters was my focus at the moment.

Marti’s semi-monologue on the drive from the Albany airport was about how her mother embraced her when they’d
first greeted each other a few days ago. She held on tightly—much too tightly for Marti, who had come to the unpleasant conclusion that she was no longer comfortable being embraced by her own mother. At least Rosemary Walters wasn’t drunk. Marti only noticed a hint of some kind of liquor underneath her minty breath, probably the result of a big mouthwash-and-toothbrush effort.

There had been the letters from Singapore, with their brief “Dear Mom” responses. But there had been only a handful of times when Marti and her mother were actually physically together in the four years since the move to Singapore had happened. Those occasions included Marti’s high school graduation in San Antonio and three times when Marti went to Singapore during summer vacation since she’d been at Penn. Those trips were all brief—less than two weeks each—and most depressing because of her mother’s drinking and her father’s sad, miserable, unresponsive condition. Van Walters didn’t come to San Antonio to his daughter’s graduation and spent most of his time avoiding eye contact with her when she was in Singapore. They hadn’t had a conversation that lasted more than ten minutes or was about anything that mattered.

Marti said she could tell that her father was still alive and functioning at some level. But every conversation she had with her mother about her dad’s condition beyond that veered off in some oblique direction. She said Van was still able to work, but when Marti pressed for details she was told that work involved mostly staying in the office to consult with others on how best to protect Singapore’s leaders. Apparently he did little
or no field work himself. Talk of treatment options led to vague allusions to new medicines and therapies. There were never any specifics. Marti always left Singapore relieved—but scared and guilt-ridden.

When she’d arrived in Kinderhook a few days earlier, it had been almost nine months since her last visit with her family. As the moment approached, her thoughts, worries, fears had been mostly about her dad. What would he look like this time? Even thinner, whiter? Softer? Would there be a lobotomy scar on his forehead, deeper bruises on his temples? Could he even speak coherently? If so, what would he say to his daughter, and how would he say it?

And what would the daughter ask her father? More about the bubble top? The death of Kennedy? How crazy are you, Daddy?

“I’
M JUST SO
happy you are here, Jack,” Marti said to me finally as she and I approached Kinderhook. “I know it may sound strange because we’ve only just begun to get to know each other … but I’m not sure I could go through this without you.”

I was grateful to hear that. But it made me feel a bit like a heartless jerk, too. I was proving to be exactly the kind of heartless jerk some people consider us reporters to be. Willing to do anything for a story. But I was still trying to convince myself that as long as I did not permit this to get really personal, I was in the clear morally and ethically—no matter what happened down the line on the story.

We rode through downtown Albany across the Hudson River bridge and then south on Highway 9. Marti’s talk, still a bit frantic sounding, was suddenly about trivial things. We came to the Kinderhook town limits sign and then the Dutch Reformed Church Cemetery.

“Good to see you again, ‘O.K.,’ ” Marti said with a laugh, tossing her head in a bow toward a field of gray gravestones on the left. The gesture was aimed specifically at a sixteen-foot-high gray marble obelisk on the grave of Martin Van Buren, known as O.K. for short.

It was a memorial that made for an embarrassing comparison with the dominating obelisk of the 555-foot Washington Monument in Washington, DC. There was nothing in the District of Columbia, not even a park bench or a sewer culvert, named in honor of Van Buren. Marti said she knew from her dad that some wise guys around town took notice of the obelisk comparison between the first and eighth presidents by referring to their local hero Van Buren as “Shorty.”

But the Van Buren nickname “O.K.” actually had added something permanent to the language. It came from Van Buren’s being called “Old Kinderhook” to copycat his political mentor, Andrew Jackson, known famously as “Old Hickory.” Van Buren’s “Old Kinderhook” was shortened by political supporters to “O.K.”—and thus
okay
was born forever and for everyone.

I had already done a little homework on Kinderhook from the various encyclopedias and travel books in the bureau. I
knew that it was a postcard Hudson River Valley one-stoplight town, antique and Dutch, always beautiful and cozy.