"It kept going through my mind like a phonograph record playing over and over and over. But for John, it was even worse. His first night home, he cried out in his sleep. I would just pat him on the shoulder, and he'd go back to sleep. Ten days after, I asked him, 'What is it you dream, dear?' And he said, 'Nellie, somebody's always after me. With a gun.' So I just let him cry out. He did that for a month or six weeks and they were always after him."

Her own waking nightmare "has us all in the car. Everyone's having a wonderful time. Everyone's being so good, and then all of a sudden the horror starts. There is never anything good after that happening in that car. The car is filled with yellow roses, red roses and blood. And pieces of the president's brain."

Connally regrets that President Kennedy's legacy — and, by extension, the nation's — could have been so much brighter in the years ahead. "We were all in our 40s," she says of the passengers in the top car of VIP's. "We all had so much to give."

But Dealey Plaza would come to dictate an entirely different reality.

"For the first time in my life, I feared for my family," she said. "And I never had before. Mark, our youngest, was 11 at the time. There was this wall at the governor's mansion (in Austin) that he loved to walk around. Well, he could no longer walk around that wall. We were afraid somebody would snatch him off of it. Sharon, 14 at the time, could no longer go anywhere without someone going with her. It became, in some ways, a difficult life for us, and for me. And even to this day, I still take a glance behind me, just to make sure."

Gov. Connally, who survived his wounds, went on to serve as Treasury secretary in the Nixon administration and ran unsuccessfully for president in 1980. He died in 1993.

Mrs. Connally, who lives in Houston, says Nov. 22 will always be a part of her.

"I push it to the back of my head. I can bring it out any time I want, but I know it's not constructive. It was such a sad day. We all wanted to be there to begin with, but if you'd been in that car, believe me, you would never ever want to be there again."

Jim Wright was born in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of a chamber of commerce manager, who moved his family across Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

After serving as mayor of Weatherford, Texas, he ran for Congress in 1954, launching a 35-year career on Capitol Hill. He flew with President Kennedy on Air Force One to Texas, where, among several stops, the president would be speaking in Wright's beloved Fort Worth.