JFK moment frozen in our memories

DALLAS — Moments before President John F. Kennedy's limousine reached the Texas School Book Depository on that November afternoon four decades ago, Nellie Connally turned to Kennedy and remarked, "No one can say Dallas doesn't love and respect you, Mr. President."

"You sure can't," he said.

The first shot sounded like a firecracker. The next two were unmistakably gunfire.

At the 40th anniversary of Kennedy's death, the moments remain frozen in the American psyche, the assassination still a source of fascination for historians, conspiracy theorists and an estimated 2.2 million people who visit Dealey Plaza each year.

"It's an age-old search for the truth," said Greg Silva, 39, a Hilmar, Calif., salesman who wasn't even born when Kennedy died but made it a point to visit The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza during a recent business trip to Dallas.

For others, the assassination endures as a deeply personal experience — a lingering mix of heartbreak, nostalgia and the lost promise of Camelot. Those emotions are clear at The Sixth Floor Museum.

"If you take people there that are old enough to remember the event, you lose them. They are back with their mother and father, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles," said Greg Elam, spokesman for the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau.

"You can tiptoe away and they'll never know it because they are back in that experience."

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Politics had brought the 46-year-old president to Texas, a pivotal and worrisome state in his 1964 re-election plans.

At the urging of local politicians, Kennedy ordered the reflective glass shield atop the presidential limousine removed for his visit to Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. With first lady Jackie at his side, Kennedy smiled and waved at the crowds from the back seat. Up front, Gov. John Connally and his wife, Nellie, beamed at the Texas welcome.

Just before 12:30 p.m., the motorcade slipped out of the glass and steel canyons of downtown and zigzagged toward Elm Street and a drab, seven-story brick building.

Then the shots rang out.

A half-hour later, Kennedy was declared dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital.

At 2:38 p.m., Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president aboard Air Force One, with Jackie Kennedy at his side.

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Forty years later, Kennedy remains an inspirational figure — a president more popular in death than in life.

"There's still so much sentiment for John F. Kennedy, and so much of it is colored by the assassination," said David Crockett, a political scientist at Trinity University in San Antonio. "He's the young, attractive, tragic martyr figure assassinated on television, with a wife who's mourning."