Use Your Special Abilities To Help the Grieving

 

Remembering is easy, but missing is heartbreaking, wrote a friend who lost her mother.

 

One thing that helps right away is the various faiths that sustain us as we gather to celebrate the life of the deceased at the visitation and service.

 

It is hard to go back to life and work when your attention span is measured in seconds. Time freezes. Restlessness and anxiety are constant companions. Rainy days are more dreary. Sunny days are an outrage. Laughing people are out of place in your world. Loss is ghastly, engulfing and shakes your day. You may be enveloped in grief, maybe feeling like a blob. Other words are gutted, disrupted, foggy, tortured, “suffocated” and having an aching emptiness.

 

You are always in grief's presence. Your “absence” still “walks through the door” every single day. But you can strive to become an intentional survivor and not a hapless victim. Seek help, reach out to others, set a goal, lament without shame, live your loss. Take it slowly. Take one more step. Take another step, said Tim Russert’s book about his father. Death is like mud; it’s dirty, messy and incredibly tough to walk through, but surprisingly, it holds vital ingredients to life, and when seeds are planted, it can help sprout new life. The Lord giveth and taketh. Dead leaves fall; new leaves grow.

 

Elizabeth Bernstein in the Wall Street Journal used the words shattered, unequipped and worthlessness for her grief. She suggested sticking to a routine or go the bearable moments route—an hour, half hour, five minutes, one minute. Give yourself permission to heal with prompts on sticky notes. Think of your quality time left—future--rather than the past. Read memoirs about grief, talk to friends who lost a parent or cuddle with a dog. Be the person you were taught to be: kind. You have to learn to comingle your pain with births and weddings you will attend. Loss has to integrate with living.

 

It seems the sorry window is never closed. Know that grief is unexpressed love. Erasure would be the outcome. Grief is: embracing or exclusion.

 

Do not suppress difficult emotions; they’ll only pop back up. Remaining silent is not an option. You don’t have to be “heroic.” Sometimes all grief stages blend together. You could get one stage one day and one the next. It is rough, but what a difference a day can make as you also have secondary losses such as income, family structure, lifestyle, past memories, support, future plans that were to be shared, identity and security.

 

Yell into your phone if you have to. Do a body scan while driving. Focus on your hands and how they feel on the wheel and how the air feels on your face. Quit doomscrolling. Instead, paint, scrapbook, knit, garden, cook, sing, decorate, organize, make something. Take a blank space and start writing.

 

One project is to draw a ring around a doodled person. Draw a larger ring around one close to them and so on. The one in the small ring can whine, complain, moan and say anything to the others. Speak only to larger rings. The goal is to help the small ring.

 

Boosting your optimism in a Wall Street Journal article says to create a positive mental TV channel that replays memories of pleasant episodes in your life. Call up your channel when you need a boost. Did something frustrate you? Write down three things that can help you see it more positively. Miss your train? Perhaps you got some exercise running to catch it.

 

Don’t assume grieving people are OK if they only post happy pictures on social media. They are not going to show you meltdowns, anxiety attacks or their upset stomach. They are hoping people don’t bolt from their lives. They are like a broken statue that can’t be glued together again. You don’t need to give them a lot of words, nor do they to you unless they want to. They may have no one to talk to when they are having a bad day so if they do, listen. Your presence is important for your friends where words fall short.

 

In “Dear Dana,” a friend lost her son and the author learned to avoid assuming anything, listened attentively and was present. Her hashtag while praying for her friend was #constant. I liked the line that said our lives are like a symphony. Sometimes you need the violins while other times only a tuba will do.

 

The Team Chase Foundation honors their son who died in a car accident. He never left home without a basketball. It was unimaginable pain. The foundation carries out good deeds. It allows him to be remembered. They’ve given out scholarships, provided funds for athletic camps, gave away basketballs, paid tolls for drivers, dropped a gift basket to a random new mom and passed out coffee gift cards to people on the street. They have round plastic discs with a QR code that can be scanned to record good deeds online. They have come from around the world. In Singapore, a person gave up his bus seat. In Florida, someone paid for groceries.

 

In her autobiography, Gov. Kristi Noem felt her world was shattering when she tragically lost her father. She was eight months pregnant, sitting in the same hospital where she was supposed to have attended a childbirth class that very same evening, preparing for a new life to enter the world. Instead, she was two floors down in the emergency room grieving for a life she didn’t think could ever be lost. It was very difficult for her, but now she is a governor. One of her favorite books is “Wolfpack.” “You were never Little Red Riding Hood. You were always the wolf,” it says. It talks about women having each other’s backs. You don’t always have to stay on the path. Take the microphone. Get the respect you’ve earned and give it to the pack, too.

 

Two sweet children’s books may offer help. My mom always kept the “Velveteen Rabbit” around. If a child loves a toy enough, it will become real. When I reread it (it's 100 this year), I loved this part: When you are real, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. “What we over-love, we often over-grieve,” said Bishop Fulton Sheen. Grief is proportional to the love shared.

 

I also read “Invisible String.” Here is the synopsis. As long as love is in your heart, the invisible string will always be there. We are all connected by it. It can help comfort separation anxiety, loneliness and loss and explore unbreakable connections. It can be used in bereavement, in the military, at camp, funeral homes, prisons, among the recently divorced and at going away parties. It transcends time and space.

 

Those we love are always connected by heartstrings into infinity, said Terry Guillemets.

 

At initial bad news, you feel your heart drop. Half of my heart is gone, said Andrew Pollack, whose daughter was a school shooting victim. Your heart may feel like it’s in a tug-of-war. On Facebook, I saw a post that said it is odd that his heart failed him; he didn’t have any loving flaws. He carved his name on hearts, and now it’s on a tombstone.

 

I loved you your whole life, said another post. I will miss you the rest of mine. It was about a dog. Likely your pet is saying thanks for everything/I had a wonderful time.

 

“A Year of Playing Catch” by Ethan Bryan was a book given to a man whose son died in an automobile accident. He played catch with a different person for 365 days. It was a vehicle to open up about his son. Some came from as far as Israel.  The son was a complete joy, effortless to raise. He watched out for others. He would recognize if a classmate was having an off day and make sure they were all right. He had time for everybody. Ethan’s first catch was with the survivor of the car wreck. They threw the ball until they couldn’t see it anymore. Inclement weather would lead to a gym. Now people come to him and they are able to shoulder some of each other’s pain. Even though he was hurting, he could help. He said he was on a journey with no clear end.

 

Even though Mike Tyson said he could have gotten his gun and gone crazy after the death of his daughter, he said he had to act dignified, not psycho because others also lose kids.

 

No one is immune from grief. In “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone,” it was said even assholes have people who grieve for them. To some it may seem odd, but President Thomas Jefferson wrapped the last piece of his wife’s Martha’s handwriting in her hair and hid it in his writing desk.

 

Calvin Coolidge Jr., 16, played tennis in shoes without wearing socks. It led to an infected blister on his toe. He spiked a fever and had severe blood poisoning. July 4, 1924, was President Coolidge’s 52nd birthday, but his son was in Walter Reed Medical Center. Many Americans thought of Coolidge as the taciturn, expressionless, unemotional caricature in political cartoons and newspaper gossip, but in the day’s after Calvin Jr.’s death, everyone was stunned by the open demonstration of the President’s grief. When he received the bill for Calvin Jr.’s funeral services, the President refused to pay for several months, as if he was unable to come to terms with the fact that his son was gone. The President “lost his zest for living.”

 

David Jeremiah told a story about Speaker Sam Rayburn learning that the teen daughter of a reporter friend had died in a tragic accident. Early the very next morning, he knocked on the door. Rayburn asked if there was anything he could do.  His friend, shocked and grieving replied, “I don’t think there is anything you can do. We’re making all the arrangements.” “Well, have you had your coffee this morning?” Rayburn asked. “No. We haven’t had time” replied his friend. “Well,” the Speaker of the House replied, “I can at least make the coffee.” The friend knew Rayburn was supposed to be having breakfast at the White House.  “Well, I was, but I called the President and told him I had a friend who was in trouble, and I couldn’t come.” Rayburn canceled breakfast with the President of the United States to make coffee for his grieving friend. Could you be such a friend?

 

When he was just 22 years old, Bob Saget suffered a burst appendix that ended up being gangrenous and was removed. Tragically, Bob Saget lost two sisters, both at young ages. In 1984, his sister Andi died from a brain aneurysm when she was 35 years old. His other sister, Gay, died nine years later at 44 from an autoimmune disease. Three uncles died from heart attacks before they were 40. The star explained that this caused him to become "obsessed with death" from an early age, saying that comedy was a lifesaver for him early on. It pushed him harder to make people laugh. It was a defense mechanism and it truly helped him survive. It helped keep him mentally alive rather than letting adversity destroy him. Days after his mother gave birth to twins Robert and Faith in 1954, the hospital suffered an outbreak of dysentery, which infected their two newborns and proved to be fatal. Bob was born two years to the day after the twins, sharing their birthday. His parents named him Robert, which Saget reported he regarded as an honor. Saget cited his family's dark, twisted sense of humor as the thing that helped them survive these losses, and that death was a regular topic in their household.

 

A detective on a true crime show was wondering what is the best way to say dead. He didn’t have to. A mother asked, “You found her, didn’t you? She’s dead, isn’t she?”  An extra bouquet was carried at another daughter’s wedding and one put on the grave.

 

The Wall Street Journal had a lengthy article about altered lives after shootings. Some survivors discover purpose in helping others. Others fall into depression, anxiety and addiction. One said they kept thinking that at some point a certain anniversary would make her OK. Some suffer prolonged grief disorder. To this day, one writes her name, date of birth and mother's cell on her thigh and shoulder with a Sharpie when she leaves home just in case she falls victim. One cried when she saw a similar pair of corduroy pants like the ones she wore during the shooting she was in. Columbine High School removed Chinese food from the cafeteria because that was what was served the day of the shooting. The principal has a book, “They Call Me Mr. De.” In the first 10 years after the shooting, he was in six car accidents, always in April, the anniversary month. He finished out 15 years to fulfill a pledge to continue until every student in area schools had graduated since the shooting date. The Rebels Project is a support group for those affected.

 

As a community, El Paso painted rocks and used messages that said Faith and El Paso Strong after the Walmart shooting.

 

“Gone Too Soon” by Chris Daughtry says today could have been the day that you blow out your candles. Make a wish as you close your eyes. Today could have been the day everybody was laughing. Instead I just sit here and cry. Who would you be? What would you look like?

 

Michael Jackson has the song, too.  Here one day, gone one night. Like the loss of sunlight on a cloudy afternoon, gone too soon. Like a castle built upon a sandy beach, gone too soon.

 

It’s hard when young people die, but I like the fact that while many nursing homes have the funeral home enter through the back door, some do an honor walk. The staff forms a line along the walls to the entrance. This is honoring a deceased resident. This is embracing death. This is sacred.

 

Remember the promise of eternal life. Our heavenly reunion will last for eternity. Your loved one is in better hands. Eulogistically, recall an accolade, commendation, homage or tribute. Recall the moments when time stood still and everything was right, good, whole and wonderful.

 

A medical journal article suggests some doctors may want to write clinical obituaries (drafting informal summaries of benefits gained in the doctor-patient relationship to celebrate the patient’s life). I read of one doctor who tracks loss in medicine. On average, he lost a patient every six weeks since May 2015. He said guilt can be toxic or negative or lead to growth. It can motivate learning more to benefit patients.

 

Some say grief never gets better; you just handle it. It does get better.  You will probably become more compassionate toward the grieving. People have no idea the compassion the daily mail can bring—send a card or note to someone grieving.  Get rid of If-Onlys and Should-Have-Dones. No guilt trips!

 

Something that brings some joy to me is a car passing me on the road with a BSV license plate—my father’s initials. I think my father has turned up in the right place at the right time. I read where someone heard a flutter in the middle of the night and knew an angel was looking down. You come to the realization that “they can see us.”

 

Someone saw ladybugs while climbing a mountain he and his late friend used to scale. A lady noticed heart shapes after her son, 7, died. In leaves, puddles, rocks and clouds. In sea wood on a beach, she found a plastic heart. It looked like one of his old toys used in learning shapes and it fit in the exact slot when she took it home.

 

I watched a video from Plymouth Hall Museum. There were death knell codes back in the day, rung twice three times for a woman or three times three for a man. Then, the bell would toll one stroke for each year of the deceased’s life. Those listening and counting had a good idea of who was gone. Newspapers and telephones eventually made the death knell obsolete. Now with technology, Caitlin Abrams shares stories from cemeteries on TikTok. There is a TikTok video of ashes that spell “I heart u” in water.

 

Bells don’t ring anymore, but pay attention to the obituaries now. It may be someone you know and can assist the family in some way. Death is always going to be a part of your life. Do something.

 

One teen girl did 89 random acts of kindness for 18 months for her late great-grandmother who died at 89. She launched her plan at a McDonald's drive-thru, where she paid the $5 bill of the customer behind her. Other random acts: donating items to the Humane Society, hanging out with orphaned puppies there and “being a happy presence,” handing out smiley face stickers, putting out pools for people to take to keep dogs cool and there was one who helped a father who lost his newborn Photoshop the tubes out of the picture. Do you have such ability for a special idea, especially after initial grief support drops off?

 

 

 

 

Part II research from book

In 1984, Billie Sol Estes told a grand jury investigating the 1961 shooting death of Henry Marshall, an official with the Department of Agriculture, that Mac Wallace was his murderer. Estes, a long-time conman who served two prison terms for his crimes, said that Marshall possessed information linking Estes's fraudulent schemes to a heavily funded political slush fund run by LBJ. According to Estes, he and Johnson discussed the need to stop Marshall from making their illegal ties public. In exchange for immunity from prosecution, Estes was also prepared to provide the Department of Justice information of eight killings orchestrated by Johnson, including the assassination. He claimed that Wallace persuaded Jack Ruby to recruit Oswald and that Wallace fired a shot that struck Kennedy.

Barr McClellan, author of “Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK,” reiterated many of Estes's claims in 2003 stating that Johnson, Wallace, Estes and Cliff Carter were responsible for the death of Marshall. According to McClellan, Wallace fired one shot at Kennedy from the sixth floor then ran and escaped. He stated that fingerprints and an eyewitness placed Wallace in that location and that Wallace could be seen as a "shadowy figure" in photos of the building. In their 2003 obituary of Estes, the New York Times wrote that none of Estes's claims against LBJ were backed by evidence. McClellan was a lawyer with the law firm in Austin that handled LBJ's secret financial empire before and after he became president.

Marshall had been asked to investigate the activities of Billie Sol Estes and discovered that over a two-year period, Estes had purchased 3,200 acres of cotton allotments from 116 different farmers. Estes sent his lawyer, John P. Dennison, to meet Marshall in Robertson County. At the meeting in January 1961, Marshall told Dennison that Estes was clearly involved in a "scheme or device to buy allotments, and will not be approved, and prosecution will follow if this operation is ever used." Marshall was then offered a new post at headquarters. He assumed that Estes had friends in high places and that they wanted him removed from the field office in Robertson County. A week after the meeting between Marshall and Dennison, A. B. Foster, manager of Billie Sol Enterprises, wrote to Clifton C. Carter, a close aide to Johnson, telling him about the problems that Marshall was causing the company. On June 3, 1961, Marshall was found dead on his farm by the side of his Chevy Fleetside pickup truck. His rifle lay beside him. He had been shot five times with his own rifle. He had a lame arm. Soon after County Sheriff Howard Stegall arrived, he decreed that Marshall had committed suicide. No pictures were taken of the crime scene, no blood samples were taken of the stains on the truck (the truck was washed and waxed the following day), no check for fingerprints were made on the rifle or pickup. Marshall was beaten so badly one eyeball was hanging from its socket

Marshall's wife and brother refused to believe he had committed suicide and posted a $2,000 reward for information leading to a murder conviction. The undertaker, Manley Jones, also reported: "To me it looked like murder. I just do not believe a man could shoot himself like that." The undertaker's son, Raymond Jones, later said his daddy said Judge Farmer told him he was going to put suicide on the death certificate because the sheriff told him to.

Sybil hired an attorney, W. S. Barron, in order to persuade the Robertson County authorities to change the ruling on Marshall's cause of death. One man who did believe that Marshall had been murdered was Texas Ranger Clint Peoples. He had reported to Col. Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, that it "would have been utterly impossible for Mr. Marshall to have taken his own life." Peoples also interviewed Nolan Griffin, a gas station attendant in Robertson County. Griffin claimed that on the day of Marshall's death, he had been asked by a stranger for directions to Marshall's farm. A Texas Ranger artist, Thadd Johnson, drew a facial sketch based on a description given by Griffin. Peoples eventually came to the conclusion that this man was Wallace, the convicted murderer of John Kinser. In the spring of 1962, Estes was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on fraud and conspiracy charges. Soon afterwards it was disclosed by the Secretary of Agriculture, Orville L. Freeman, that Marshall had been a key figure in the investigation into the illegal activities of Estes. As a result, the Robertson County grand jury ordered that the body of Marshall should be exhumed and an autopsy performed. After eight hours of examination, Dr. Joseph A. Jachimczyk confirmed that Marshall had not committed suicide.

On April 4, 1962, George Krutilek, Estes’s chief accountant, was found dead. Despite a severe bruise on Krutilek's head, the coroner decided that he had also committed suicide. The next day, Estes, and three business associates, were indicted by a federal grand jury on 57 counts of fraud. Two of these men, Harold Orr and Coleman Wade, later died in suspicious circumstances. At the time it was said they committed suicide but later Estes was to claim that both men were murdered by Wallace in order to protect the political career of Johnson. It was eventually discovered that three officials of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in Washington had received bribes from Billie Sol Estes. Red Jacobs, Jim Ralph and Bill Morris were eventually removed from their jobs. However, further disclosures suggested that the Secretary of Agriculture might be involved in the scam. In September 1961, Billie Sol Estes had been fined $42,000 for illegal cotton allotments. Two months later, Freeman appointed Estes to the National Cotton Advisory Board.

Tommy G. McWilliams, the FBI agent in charge of the Marshall investigation, came to the conclusion that Marshall had indeed committed suicide. He wrote: "My theory was that he shot himself and then realized he wasn't dead." He then claimed that he then tried to kill himself by inhaling carbon monoxide from the exhaust pipe of his truck. McWilliams claimed that Marshall had used his shirt to make a hood over the exhaust pipe. Jachimczyk discovered a 15 percent carbon monoxide concentration in Marshall's body. Even J. Edgar Hoover was not impressed with this theory. He wrote on May 21, 1962: "I just can't understand how one can fire five shots at himself." The Robertson County grand jury continued to investigate the death of Marshall. However, some observers were disturbed by the news that grand jury member, Pryse Metcalfe, was dominating proceedings. Metcalfe was County Sheriff Howard Stegall's son-in-law. On June 1, 1962, the Dallas Morning News reported that Kennedy had "taken a personal interest in the mysterious death of Marshall. As a result, the story said, Robert Kennedy "has ordered the FBI to step up its investigation of the case." In June 1962, Billie Sol Estes, appeared before the grand jury. He was accompanied by John Cofer, a lawyer who represented Johnson when he was accused of ballot-rigging when elected to the Senate in 1948 and Mac Wallace when he was charged with the murder of John Kinser. Billie Sol Estes spent almost two hours before the grand jury, but he invoked the Texas version of the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer most questions on grounds that he might incriminate himself. Despite the evidence presented by Jachimczyk, the grand jury agreed with McWilliams. It ruled that after considering all the known evidence, the jury considers it "inconclusive to substantiate a definite decision at this time, or to overrule any decision heretofore made." Later, it was disclosed that some jury members believed that Marshall had been murdered. Ralph McKinney blamed Pryse Metcalfe for this decision. "Pryse was as strong in the support of the suicide verdict as anyone I have ever seen in my life, and I think he used every influence he possibly could against the members of the grand jury to be sure it came out with a suicide verdict."

Billie Sol Estes was released from prison in December 1983. Three months later he appeared before the Robertson County grand jury. He confessed that Marshall was murdered because it was feared he would "blow the whistle" on the cotton allotment scam. Billie Sol Estes claimed that Marshall was murdered on the orders of LBJ, who was afraid that his own role in this scam would become public knowledge. According to Estes, Clifton C. Carter, Johnson's long-term aide, had ordered Marshall to approve 138 cotton allotment transfers. Billie Sol Estes also told the grand jury that he met Carter and Wallace at his home in Pecos after Marshall was killed. Wallace described how he waited for Marshall at his farm. He planned to kill him and make it appear as if Marshall committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. However, Marshall fought back and he was forced to shoot him with his own rifle. He quoted Carter as saying that Wallace "sure did botch it up." Johnson was now forced to use his influence to get the authorities in Texas to cover up the murder.

The grand jury did change the verdict on the death of Marshall from suicide to death by gunshot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Killing Kennedy, new book by Jack Roth

At a recent JFK conference I attended, disturbing news regarding Dealey Plaza was discovered.. The city is planning to “renovate” it – meaning removing the picket fence, the grassy knoll and who knows what else, and replacing these markers of the assassination with something more acceptable to the city. We were told that the Dallas newspaper and The Sixth Floor Museum are pushing this idea. We see this as a move to begin removing any and all references to the assassination. Students (such as the ones who attended) or people new to the details of the assassination would not be able to see the terrain exactly as it was in 1963 and be able to make their own judgments about what happened there.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” -- Carl Sagan

Now for my notes on the new “Killing Kennedy” by Jack Roth. Everything you read is like a storm drain. One thing leads to more that goes down the drain. Most excellent book and what I learned:

Ever heard anyone say I’m a patsy? No. Oswald did because he was. Jim Garrison said he is the only assassin who hopped on public transportation to get away. Oswald didn’t have money to travel as alluded.

Bullets over ballots could be a theme. The shots didn’t come from the grassy knoll. They came from the Pentagon. The assassination is not a stand-alone thing that happened on 11/22/63. Leaders didn’t suddenly become corrupt that day. It’s standard operating procedure. Governments are corrupt. Ninety percent believe there was a conspiracy. The other 10 percent work in the government and the media. Reporter Jim Koethe was killed with karate chop to the throat as he came out of the shower. It’s safe to say that is the only death of its kind. One of the chapters was from someone who examined backgrounds of politicians, celebs and business leaders and in almost every case the overwhelming majority of them were popular in high school. They played a sport. People who run things in high school go on to run society. That’s why they have a vested interest in social hierarchy because it has served them well.

Dave Morales, CIA--file has been sanitized. X-rays of JFK are copies.

Who controlled Texas? Some of the occupants of the TSBD included right-wingers like the Byrd family. They owned a lot of land in Dallas and were good friends with LBJ. You can see pictures of them at football games. Bill Shelley, Oswald’s supervisor at the TSBD was CIA. He had connections to anti-Communism groups. Dulles was fired but operated behind the scenes. LBJ put him on the Warren Commission so he is controlling the evidence after the assassination.

Josepha Johnson, LBJ’s sister, died mysteriously on Christmas Eve 1961. They had a party that night and Mac Wallace was there. She was found dead the next day. The coroner called it natural without examining over the phone. She was buried the next day. Wallace’s fingerprints were said to be found in the TSBD and he was said to be a good shot. And he practiced. Johnson was involved in murders back to 1951. The first was John Douglas Kinser. He took a liking to Josepha as well as Mac’s wife. Mac was at the Department of Ag in Washington as an economist. The job was arranged by LBJ. There was a menage a trois. Mac’s wife was said to be bisexual. Immediately after the first shot at Kinser, one golfer outside the clubhouse observed a man inside holding a revolver. Three golfers on the course observed the man running from the clubhouse and getting into his car, and one of them noted the car's make and license plate number. Three patrolmen with the Texas Highway Patrol stopped the car nine miles from Austin on the Burnet Highway. According to one of the patrolmen, the driver perfectly fit the description provided by the golfers and his shirt was torn and bloodied. The suspect and witness were taken to the headquarters of the Austin Police Department for questioning. Wallace was identified as the man leaving the scene with a snubnosed pistol, and three bullet shells were found near Kinser's body. Detectives revealed no motive in the killing as Wallace refused to answer their questions. He was charged the following day with murder and the justice of the peace set bail at $30,000. Two days after the killing, the district attorney accused the local sheriff of "obstructing the investigation" stating that he had refused to transport Wallace to the Texas Department of Public Safety for identification testing. According to the sheriff, Wallace protested the move and his defense attorney, Polk Shelton, had asked that Wallace not be moved. Wallace was represented at the trial by John Cofer, longtime lawyer to Johnson, who had also represented LBJ during his contested election to the United States Senate in 1948 that was tainted by allegations of voter fraud. A paraffin test on Wallace's hands tested positive for gunshot residue and that blood on his shirt matched blood found at the club house at the golf course. The prosecution did not attempt to establish a motive for the shooting, nor did it produce an eyewitness to it or the murder weapon. The following day, the prosecution and defense completed their closing arguments and the jury was charged that afternoon. After deliberating into the evening, the jury was sequestered. After listening to 29.5 hours of testimony from 23 different witnesses, on Feb. 27 the jury returned its verdict finding Wallace guilty of "murder with malice." He was sentenced to five years --suspended. Questioned as to why the prosecution did not attempt to provide a motive, Shelton stated that they were not required to establish a motive but it was "probably because they couldn't." On Jan. 7, 1971, Wallace died when his car ran off the road 3.5 miles south of Pittsburg, Texas, on U.S. Route 271. Noting that the highway was neither icy nor wet, the investigating patrolman stated that Wallace had struck a bridge abutment after apparently losing control of his car.

A number of authors claim Wallace was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy upon orders from then-VP Johnson.

LBJ was manic depressive. He would stay in bed for days. He described it as being in a Louisiana swamp, drowning with the gators and snakes.

There was a plane crash at LBJ’s ranch in 1961 or 62. The actual crash was three days earlier than announced. He wasn’t on the plane. Taxpayers had paid for a runway on his ranch before he was president. The plane’s ownership was a mystery.

Two of JFK’s closer aides Dave Powers and Kenneth O’Donnell reported what they witnessed including the shots from the grassy knoll. Decades later Tip O’Neill was told by them that the FBI said it couldn’t have happened that way, that they were imagining things. So they testified the way they wanted them to and didn’t want to add more pain and trouble for the Kennedy family. This was not learned until O’Neill’s memoirs. Imagine what non-close friends were twisted to do.

One lady’s father filmed something, got in his car, drove from the TSBD to the First National Bank where his cousin was president and left the film.

A cheap metal casket was taken out of Kennedy’s hearse into the morgue at 6:30 p.m. The honor guard took the Britannica casket (empty/bricks}? from the motorcade at 8 p.m. There was a body switheroo on the helicopter during the swearing in. And one in an ambulance. Kennedy meant nothing while he was alive, so dead either.

JFK’s cerebellum was said to be swinging in the breeze.

Oswald’s landlady received threats, so she closed the house to the press and other visitors. But you can see the boarding house where Oswald lived today for a $30 cost of admission. It includes a sit-down with the granddaughter of the landlord. She said people want to know the man. She says she can help them do that. She was at her grandmother’s house every day after school, she says, so she recalls frequent interactions with “Mr. Lee.” He helped her with schoolwork and played with her brothers, she says. She remembers him as a kind young man.

In September 1980, Charles Harrelson surrendered to police after a six-hour standoff in which he was reportedly high on cocaine. During the standoff, he threatened suicide, stating that he had killed both Judge Wood and Kennedy. In a television interview after his arrest, Harrelson said: "At the same time I said I had killed the judge, I said I had killed Kennedy, which might give you an idea to the state of my mind at the time." Joseph Chagra later testified during Harrelson's trial that Harrelson claimed to have shot Kennedy and drew maps to show where he was hiding during the assassination. Chagra said that he did not believe Harrelson's claim, and the AP reported that the FBI apparently discounted any involvement by Harrelson in the Kennedy assassination. In 1982, Harrelson told KDFW-TV, "Do you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy, alone, without any aid from a rogue agency of the US government or at least a portion of that agency? I believe you are very naïve if you do."

Latest JFK Conference

Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain a child. Cicero. This was a quote by speaker David Denton at the JFK Assassination Conference this weekend. He said agents were removed from the security detail before the motorcade. “Maybe they had to go to lunch?”

A presentation was made by Paul Bleau who reviewed 16 textbooks and did email exchanges with authors. He said they skew Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin. The only investigation referred to in any of them was the Warren Commission. One teacher did a lesson with a mock scene with 11 teams acting out various scenarios.

On Nov. 22, 1963, Ed Hoffman stood on the shoulder of the Stemmons Expressway in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated. The deaf witness claimed he saw a man with a rifle moments after the shots were fired. He later described how a man wearing a dark suit and tie, with an overcoat, ran west along the wooden fence with a rifle and tossed it to a second man who was dressed like a railroad worker. The second man then disassembled the rifle and put it in a soft brown bag. Hoffman immediately tried to alert the Secret Service agents about what he had seen. However, unable to understand what he was trying to say, he was threatened with a machine gun (believed to have been George Hickey). He then attempted to tell his story to a Dallas policeman (believed to be Earle Brown). Unable to understand him, Brown waved him away. Hoffman then visited the local Federal Bureau of Investigation office. No officers were there and so he left written details with the receptionist. (The FBI never responded to this note.) Hoffman told his father, Frederick Hoffman, about what he saw. His father, concerned that his son could be in danger, urged him not to tell anyone about what he had seen. Hoffman did tell his story to his uncle, Robert Hoffman, a Dallas police officer. However, the police officer decided not to take the story to the Dallas Police Department. In June 1967, Hoffman took his story to the FBI.  When agents checked out his story they discovered his father did not want it investigated.  Hoffman did keep quiet until 1975 when he wrote to Edward Kennedy about his story. Kennedy replied: "My family has been aware of various theories concerning the death of President Kennedy, just as it has been aware of many speculative accounts which have arisen from the death of Robert Kennedy. I am sure that it is understood that the continual speculation is painful for members of my family. We have always accepted the findings of the Warren Commission report and have no reason to question the quality and the effort of those who investigated the fatal shooting of Robert Kennedy." On March 25, 1977, Hoffman contacted the FBI again. This time Hoffman took with him Richard H. Freeman, one of the supervisors at Texas Instruments where he worked. Freeman understood sign language and was able to help explain in more detail what Hoffman saw. Again the FBI showed little interest in pursuing the story.

S. M. (Skinny) Sam Holland on Nov. 22, watched the motorcade from the overpass in Dealey Plaza. He said that when Kennedy was shot he saw a puff of gunsmoke under the branches of a tree on the grassy knoll. Holland later gave evidence to the Warren Commission, who reported: "According to S. M. Holland, there were four shots which sounded as though they came from the trees on the north side of Elm Street where he saw a puff of smoke.

Motorcycle cop Bobby Hargis was riding to Kennedy's left and behind him, was struck by brain matter/skull when the President's head exploded. That must mean that the shot came from in front of Kennedy and to his right. This claim goes back to Josiah Thompson's book “Six Seconds in Dallas.”  This debris [from the President's head] hit Hargis with such force that he told reporters the next day, "I thought at first I might have been hit." It seemed like the motion of the President's head or his body and the splatter had hit me, it seemed like both the locations needed investigating, and that's why I investigated them. But you couldn't tell, there was -- it looked like a million windows on the Book Depository. You couldn't tell exactly if there was anyone in there with a gun.

Given Hargis' position to Kennedy's left and behind him, he should have been able to see the back of Kennedy's head blow out, if that indeed had happened. Yet he explicitly says that he saw a "splash come out on the other side." He, in other words, is describing a wound to the right side of Kennedy's head. So it's deeply ironic that conspiracy authors have used him as a "back of the head" witness. Hargis remained consistent in his story. He was on the force only a week when he was given the assignment to flank JFK's limo -- left side, ten feet behind. A few minutes later, while at the TSBD, a co-worker leaned forward and flicked something off Hargis' upper lip.

On Nov. 22, Abraham Zapruder filmed the motorcade. Zapuder's film was sold to Life Magazine. In charge of the purchase was C. D. Jackson, a close friend of Henry Luce, the owner of the magazine. According to Carl Bernstein, Jackson was "Henry Luce's personal emissary to the CIA." On the 29th Life Magazine, published a series of 31 photographs documenting the entire shooting sequence from the Zapruder film. It was only later discovered that the critical frames that depicted the rearward motion of Kennedy's head had been printed to indicate a forward motion. James Wagenvoord, the editorial business manager and assistant to Life Magazines executive editor, realized that a mistake had been made: "I asked about it when the stills were first printed, (they didn't read right) and then duped for distribution to the European and British papers/magazines. The only response I go was an icy stare from Dick Pollard, Life's director of photography. So being an ambitious employee, I had them distributed." In its Dec. 6 edition, Paul Mandel wrote an article about the assassination in Life Magazine. "The doctor said one bullet passed from back to front on the right side of the President’s head. But the other, the doctor reported, entered the President’s throat from the front and then lodged in his body. Since by this time the limousine was 50 yards past Oswald and the President’s back was turned almost directly to the sniper, it has been hard to understand how the bullet could enter the front of his throat. Hence the recurring guess that there was a second sniper somewhere else.”

The Texas State Archives once displayed the bullet-riddled clothes worn by Gov. John Connally on the day he was wounded. The white cotton shirt, with faded bloodstains clearly visible, and a black business suit were the centerpiece of a display. “There are bullet holes both in the back and the front of the suit jacket. There is one bullet hole in the wearer’s right cuff, and there is another in the left leg, on the front. Connally donated the shirt, suit and the striped tie he was wearing to the state archives while he was still hospitalized.

As was said, you don’t put all your marbles in one guy. As in if it was Oswald. But it wasn’t!

Tidbit: Marina Oswald’s mail was watched for seven years.

Being an Aunt

 

There was a story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday called Be the Favorite Aunt or Uncle You Were Destined To Be. Appropriate since I babysat last night. It tells about a girl who knew where to turn for a breakup, for feeling safe, for love and wanting what’s best for her. Aunts and uncles can be like a second set of adults who care deeply. Caring aunts and uncles play vital roles in a family. They are mentors who offer perspectives and experiences. They listen without judgement. Almost every niece or nephew claims a “fun one.”  This one gets down on the floor, reads, attends their birthday parties and often travels with them. I haven’t with the greats yet, but for the ones who live here I sprung for New York City and Boston and Maine.  I would never underestimate their parents’ permission. Here is one thing from the story that has yet to take place. My photo on their fridge! LOL. The person is the story said truth is expected and communication is NOT by text. If the parents need to know something, find a way to make the niece of nephew tell them. Needing help is not a sign of weakness. They can ask about boyfriends, school and careers. They don’t have to listen to aunts and uncles, of course. The girl in the story always thought she would grow up to be a cool person because her aunt and uncle loved her. I hope the same.

Saluting M*A*S*H

 

M*A*S*H premiered on Sept. 17, 1972. I can remember many boring Sundays when I couldn’t wait to watch the show because it made me laugh. I still sometimes say, “I need a good M*A*S*H episode. What is your favorite episode? Who is your favorite character? (I didn’t like B.J. after Trapper, Winchester or Potter). My favorite that I will NEVER forget is when a patient dies on Christmas Day and Hawkeye turns the clock ahead so his family doesn’t have to remember that. Lt. Col. Blake’s final scene was only known by Alan Alda. The episode was described as like marching in a parade and then getting hit by a brick. I was so mad I didn’t get to watch the last episode in 1983 because I was covering M*A*S*H parties all over town for The Times. It was much later that I watched it. Well, Corp. Klinger was ahead of his time, wasn’t he? Wearing the female clothes. He actually served in the Korean War. The show had 109 Emmy nominations and 14 wins. Hawkeye wrapped up 25 nominations. He has been married since 1957. The actual war lasted three years, one month and two days, but the show aired 11 seasons. The finale remains the most-watched TV series episode in history. Parade magazine did a story and said Army boots messed with the audio. The cast donned sneakers and were shot from the waist up. Radar’s lost teddy bear showed up at an auction where a medical student paid $11,800 for it. He sold it back to Radar, now 79, who sold it at an auction for $14,307.50 in 2014. Radar is an inventor and owns patents for a special fishing pole and a toilet seat lifting handle. Loretta Swit has written books on needlepoint and watercolor painting  and is a longtime animal activist. The guest list on M*A*S*H included Patrick Swayze, Leslie Nielsen, Shelley Long, Laurence Fishburne, Blythe Danner, Teri Garr and Ron Howard. The cast ate pizza and had beer every Friday night. They would tell stories, play games and rib each other.  When they were called to the set, the connection was there. They stay in touch and try to get together for dinner once a year. For a show that ranked at the bottom, Hawkeye would joke that they were in the top 72. On the way to a restaurant to celebrate the end, much of the cast realized the streets were empty. It hit them that people were at home watching the finale. Also, they  never tried to forget that real people suffered in Korea. M*A*S*H, I salute you. “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen.”

One of the Best TV Episodes Ever

 

I’ve been talking up the 911 on Fox episode of April 27, 2020. It ranks in my top three episodes ever on a TV show. Buck, a firefighter, made a daring rescue and wanted to celebrate. He is still pining over his former girlfriend. Everyone at the station had plans, most with significant others, which he does not have. He went to a bar and sat next to a retired firefighter, Red, who was always consumed by his job. They became friends. Buck went to Red’s home and saw a photo of a woman from a long time ago. He inquired about her. Buck ends up finding out that her spouse died. He takes Red to her home to get them reacquainted. It turns out she has Alzheimer's and didn’t recognize him. He was kicked out. Red is mad at Buck. He has mesothelioma and a heart attack and goes to the hospital. Red, who has no one in his life, eventually forgives Buck. Red advised Buck all along, don’t work too hard and don’t have any regrets. When the man is discharged, in dramatic fashion, Buck arranges for firefighters to stand at the exit and salute and applaud his way to a seat on a fire truck, one last time before he died. The song, "Keep Me In Your Heart," by Warren Zevon, which I had never heard, is playing. I’ve played it numerous times a day since. Shouldn’t all of our heroes be recognized that way?

An honor walk is a ritual where hospital staffs hold flameless candles in the corridor, shoulder to shoulder. It's compassion and dignity for a donor wheeled to the operating room, for one. It's collective attention. This moment matters.

My other two favorites are M*A*S*H when the doctors arrange the clock so the soldier doesn’t die on Christmas Day so that his family won’t always have to remember that. And on Northern Exposure when Holling arranges a Christmas mass for his girlfriend, Shelly, though they were an odd couple. She was dejected that she wouldn’t have her childhood memories. They were in Alaska. She walks to a little church and it is aglow with candles and Hollings steps out singing Ave Maria.