DALLAS– Just minutes after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot as his motorcade rolled through downtown Dallas, Associated Press reporter Peggy Simpson rushed to the scene and immediately joined police officers who had converged on the building from which the bullets fired. from a sniper had been fired. .
“I was kind of under their armpit,” Simpson said, noting that every time she could get information from them, she would rush to a pay phone to call her editors, then “go back to the police.”
Simpson, now 84, is among the last remaining witnesses sharing their stories as the country marks the 60th anniversary of the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination on Wednesday.
“A tangible link to the past will be lost as the last voices of that period are gone,” said Stephen Fagin, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dealey Plaza, which tells the story of the murder from the Texas School Book. Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald’s sniper position was found.
“So many of the voices who were here even 10 years ago to share their memories — law enforcement officers, reporters, eyewitnesses — so many of those people have passed away,” he said.
Simpson, former U.S. Secret Service agent Clint Hill and others are featured in “JFK: One Day in America,” a three-part series from National Geographic released this month that combines their memories with archival footage, some of which has been colorized for the press. first time. Director Ella Wright said hearing from those who were there helps tell the behind-the-scenes story that complements the archive footage.
“We wanted people to really understand what it felt like to be back there and experience the emotional impact of those events,” Wright said.
People still flock to Dealey Plaza, where the presidential motorcade passed through when Kennedy was assassinated.
“The murder certainly defined a generation,” Fagin said. “For the people who lived through it and came of age in the 1960s, it represented a major shift in American culture.”
On the day of the assassination, Simpson was originally assigned to attend an evening dinner for Kennedy in Austin. Since she still had time before she had to leave Dallas, she was sent to watch the presidential motorcade, but she was nowhere near Dealey Plaza.
Simpson had no idea anything unusual had happened until she arrived at the Dallas Times Herald building, where the AP’s office was located. As she stepped out of an elevator, she heard a newspaper receptionist say, “All we know is that the president has been shot,” and then she heard the newspaper editor briefing the staff.
She rushed to the AP office in time to watch over the shoulder of the bureau chief as he announced the news to the world, then ran to the Texas School Book Depository to find out more information.
Later, at police headquarters, she said, she witnessed “just a wild, crazy chaotic, unfathomable scene.” Reporters had filled the hallways as an officer walked through with Lee Harvey Oswald’s gun raised. The suspect’s mother and wife arrived, and at one point authorities held a press conference where reporters asked Oswald questions.
“I was just with a bunch of other reporters just trying to find some information,” she said.
Two days later, Simpson was covering Oswald’s transfer from police headquarters to the county jail, when nightclub owner Jack Ruby emerged from a group of news reporters and shot and killed the suspect.
As police officers struggled with Ruby on the ground, Simpson rushed to a nearby bank of telephones “and began dictating everything I saw to the AP editors,” she said. At that moment, all she thought about was getting the news out.
“As an AP reporter you just go to the phone, you can’t process anything at that moment,” she said.
Simpson said she must have heard the shot, but she doesn’t remember it.
“Ruby was probably standing within a few feet of me, but I didn’t know him, didn’t see him, didn’t see him emerge from the crowd of reporters,” she said.
Simpson’s memories are included in an oral history collection at the Sixth Floor Museum, which now contains about 2,500 recordings, according to Fagin.
The museum curator said Simpson is “a great example of someone who was right where the action took place that weekend and became embroiled in truly historic events while just doing her job as a professional journalist.”
Fagin said oral histories are still being recorded. Many of the more recent stories involved people who were children in the 1960s and remembered hearing about the murder at school.
“It’s basically a race against time to capture these memories,” Fagin said.