Kennedy Assassination 60 Years Ago And The Story Behind Jimmy Breslin's Classic Columns

Despite being his own best champion, Breslin would have told you he didn't invent anything, let alone "new journalism." He would say he was just trying to get the story.

When Jimmy Breslin of The New York Herald Tribune went to Dallas on November 22, 1963, just hours after President Kennedy had been assassinated, it was not his plan to write two pieces that would be taught in journalism classes for the next 60 years. But here we are. They are still considered two of the most important columns in journalism history. The first one, A Death in Emergency Room One, was a tour de force of deadline reporting. Breslin talked to everyone who wasn’t fast enough to get away. The result was a piece that provided so much detail from the emergency room, you would not be alone in thinking that Breslin was standing along side the doctors, taking notes. The second, It’s An Honor, tells the story of Clifton Pollard, the man who dug Kennedy’s grave at Arlington. Breslin had been at the White House with his colleague Art Buchwald and what seemed to be thousands of other reporters. Breslin knew he couldn’t sit there and write what everyone else did. He needed something different. That simple idea, move away from the crowd, was such a revelation that editors are still yelling it at reporters on their way out the door. The following is based on interviews with many of the people who were there over those few days, first in Dallas and then in Washington, D.C. as well as written recollections by some of them.

*****

Jimmy Breslin, the lead local columnist for The New York Herald Tribune, was tired, glad that it was Friday. Thanksgiving was now less than a week away and the city was taking on a somewhat festive mood that was slightly tempered by the fact that it was unusually warm. It had been reaching around 60 degrees and it would so again. It was hard to get in the holiday spirit when the temperature was still saying early fall.

With his wife Rosemary at home, starting to get ready for the holiday and the kids running around, he knew the best option was to be out and about, doing what he did best – look for a story. There were times that he would occasionally think about maybe being home more, doing more family stuff but those thoughts quickly disappeared in a puff of cigar smoke.

Rosemary would enable this behavior. She knew her husband’s strengths and she certainly knew his weaknesses. Being a reporter, writing, these were the things that not only did he excel at, it was the stuff that brought money into the house and kept food on the table. For her, his strengths clearly outweighed his weaknesses and she insisted that he stick with what he did well. Every once in a while, as Rosemary would drive him around, Breslin would grumble that it was time that he learned to drive.

She would have none of it, waving him off more dismissively than he could send someone on their way. As gruff as he could be, he knew that his wife could more than carry her own. She would tell him to forget about it, to use his time being driven around to focus on whatever his next column would be.

“Think about your next book,” she’d tell him, even though he didn’t always have an idea of what it would be. And, she said, if she wasn’t around to drive him, if she had to stay home with the kids or with her mother, then he should take the subway or a cab.

“You’ll see more than if you were stuck behind the wheel.”

It would have been hard for Breslin to argue, even if he had wanted. He was riding high in no small part because of her support. He hadn’t even been at the paper for a year and was having a great time. The Herald-Tribune had hired him based on the success of the “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?” his riotous accounting of the first season of The New York Mets. The team was owned by Joan Whitney Payson whose brother Jock owned the paper. He liked the book and, maybe just as importantly, he liked how Breslin had treated his sister.

“A helluva broad,” is how Breslin described her when he met Whitney.

And so here Breslin was, the Friday before Thanksgiving, on the phone with Danny Blum, the paper’s assistant city editor, trying to get a sense of what was going on in the city. Blum, through his ever-present cigar, told Breslin the bad news – it was a quiet Friday in November, not a lot had gone on overnight and the day schedule didn’t have a lot to offer.

The thing is, Jimmy didn’t have to write for the Saturday paper. And he already had a column done for Sunday. Blum told him that he’d done his share that week. And Breslin had. He’d been up in Harlem at the Abyssinian Baptist Church watching the charismatic Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., tend to his flock.

Powell, who had been the minster of the church since 1938 when he took over for his father, had been spending an increasing amount of time in Washington, D.C. since he was also a member of Congress. Powell had represented parts of Harlem and upper Manhattan since 1945 and was just finishing his first year representing a reconfigured district. While a Democrat, Powell was more than willing to take on the party establishment – in 1956, he backed Eisenhower for reelection, saying that the Democrats weren’t being strong enough on civil rights.

Tammany Hall, which ran Democratic politics in the city, had retaliated against Powell by redrawing his district in an attempt to hurt him politically. It hadn’t mattered and he won anyway. He also seemed fairly immune to other problems including a $211,000 civil judgment against him for having slandered a woman by calling her a, “bag woman.”

The judgment had been the impetus for Powell staying in D.C. and only arriving in New York on Sundays, the one day subpoenas couldn’t be served in the city. Breslin went up to take the temperature of the congregation. At the church, Breslin noticed Powell had managed to get a Federal Credit Union opened in the Abyssinian. He concluded that Powell’s strengths in politics and in the ministry were equally strong.

He concluded that Powell not only would be their minister, he would be their representative in Congress, “for as long as he wants to be.”

Breslin also spent time with his friend, Thomas Rand, forever captured in his columns as. “Fat Thomas.” Rand was a bartender and bookmaker whose weight was often set somewhere north of 400 pounds. Breslin met him because he was friends with Rosemary and hung on to him as a friend and a source of countless columns.

Jimmy wanted something light for the paper – there was only so much death, fire, politics, that anyone could write about it and Breslin liked to mix things up with stories about Rand and other characters in his life. Rand was just out of the hospital after a bout with gout. It was something that put a severe dent in his bookmaking business as he couldn’t take bets in the hospital. Jimmy wrote that when a client would call, a nurse would intercept.

Rand had ended up in the hospital, Breslin wrote, after a two-day bender that followed a trip up to Attica to visit his bother who was there “because of some business involving a gun covered by a New York State Conservation Dept. License. This, and a woman who displayed a strong memory when placed on the witness stand.”

In addition to his columns, Breslin had also made his fourth appearance on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.  The show was different back then. Still years away from Carson following the Dodgers and moving The Tonight Show to Los Angeles, the show was filmed in New York. While there were still actors from Hollywood and television, there were a number of Broadway stars who would drop by. Also, being in New York gave Carson and his producers a more literary selection to choose from. There would be authors like William Saroyan, Ben Hecht, and Mickey Spillane as well as reporters like Paul Gallico, Breslin and his colleague at the Herald-Tribune, Art Buchwald.

This time, Breslin was sandwiched between Dick Van Dyke’s well-known but slightly less famous brother, Jerry, and Charlene Holt, a supporting actress who popped up regularly on places like The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Burke’s Law.

Carson liked having Jimmy on. They’d first had him on back on April 1 to talk about the Mets book. Breslin had kept Carson laughing with stories about the Mets and, as a result, earned himself invitations back to the show.

So, all that said, Blum told Breslin to go about his day, adding that if he found something, give the desk a call. Breslin spent the rest of morning and the early afternoon hanging out, making calls, spending some time at Pep McGuire’s on Union Turnpike. He was looking for stories that could be columns, for things that could be spun into magazine pieces. He knew that Blum was right, he’d worked a good week. But there was little worse to Breslin than the paper appearing without his name in it.

***

At 1:34 that afternoon, things changed. For Breslin, for the paper, for the country. As reporters and editors and milled about the dusty 5th floor newsroom of the Herald-Tribune’s offices on West 41st Street, the United Press International teletype sent an electric jolt.

UPI A7N DA

PRECEDE KENNEDY

DALLAS, NOV. 22 (UPI)—THREE SHOTS WERE FIRED AT PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S MOTORCADE TODAY IN DOWNTOWN DALLAS.

JT1234PCS…

A copy kid ripped the bulletin off the machine and ran into the newsroom, making a line straight to national editor Dick Wald, yelling the whole way that someone had tried to kill the president who was in Dallas for a speech. The announcement set the paper on fire, people moving quickly, kicking up the dust as they moved. The paper, which had always played second fiddle to the Times, which was better staffed, better funded, was about to show just what they were capable of.

Wald and his boss, Jim Bellows, never ceded anything to the Times. That they were outmanned, outgunned, these weren’t blockades that would keep them from competing, they were just obstacles to overcome.

The two of them gathered around the city desk with city editor Buddy Weiss. Within five minutes, the three of them got the word from another screaming copy kid. Kennedy had been hit by at least one of the shots.

Bellows had a television that someone turned on to CBS as the interrupted As the World Turns with a card saying, CBS Bulletin, and Walter Cronkite intoning, “In Dallas, Texas three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas … United Press says that the wounds for President Kennedy perhaps could be fatal.”

Wald’s quickly decided that they had to get Bob Bird to Dallas as quickly as possible. The paper already had Douglas Kiker from the paper’s Washington bureau down there. Kiker had been traveling with Kennedy but it was his first week with the paper and Wald felt that they needed a veteran to assist.

Bird was that person. He had been at the paper for almost 20 years at that point. It would have been 20 had it not been for an incident in which he was fired for supposedly refusing an assignment. It was after work one night and Bird had been downstairs at Bleeck’s drinking with colleagues when a copy boy came in and handed him a note from Joe Herzberg, who was then the city editor.

Herzbeg wanted Bird to cover the return of General Douglas MacArthur the next day. The copy boy, seeing that Bird was drunk, told him what the boss said and stuffed the assignment sheet into Bird’s pocket.

The next morning, Bird walked into the city room at 11 a.m. as he always did. Herzberg fired him for having skipped the assignment. The Newspaper Guild, the union that represented reporters, appealed the decision on his behalf. Bird was ordered reinstated after the arbitrator ruled that he had had the right to be drunk on his own time.

In the years since, Bird had redeemed himself on countless assignments. Most recently, he’d spent the better part of the previous year in Jerusalem, covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi who’d helped develop the plans for he extermination of the Jew and others.

As Bellows, Wald, and Weiss worked out a plan, Bellows got a call from Jock Whitney, the paper’s owner and publisher. Whitney, a staunch Republican, had been having lunch with Kennedy’s predecessor, former president Dwight Eisenhower. He wanted to make sure that his paper was on top of things.

Off the phone, Bellows returned to Weiss and Wald and said Breslin should go as well. That was easy since Breslin had already called and let them know he’d be heading there.

Breslin had called Wald as soon as he had heard the news out of Dallas letting him know that he would go, that he needed to be there. Wald didn’t argue. He knew that while the Times would have many more people on the story, he knew that having Bird and Breslin along with Kiker would more than keep them in the game.

Wald told Breslin that they were also sending Bird and while they hadn’t yet figured out how they were going to get them to Dallas, they were working on it jimmy told him that he’d head to LaGuardia Airport while they figured it out.

Breslin moved quickly, grabbing a few things. He let Rosemary know what was happening, and that he was off to Dallas, not one hundred percent sure when he’d be back. It would be at least a few days.

She assured him that she’d be ok, that the kids would be ok. Her mother would be around to help.

Back at the paper, Wald was struggling with logistics. Deciding which reporters that they wanted would be absolutely meaningless if they couldn’t figure a way to get them to Texas. At the time, as large a city as Dallas was, it was not a bustling hub of commercial aviation.  Without many flights to pick from and the added pressure of Breslin calling what seemed like every 5 minutes to get updates – at one point, he’d thought he’d found a way to get there through Atlanta on his own but it had fallen apart – Wald knew that he’d have to be creative.

Armed with the Herald Tribune credit card, Wald picked up on the phone and called American Airlines to charter a 707 to take people to Dallas. He knew that there probably weren’t the words to describe just how upset the accountants were going to be. He also knew that this was definitely not a time for business as usual. It would also be a lot easier to ask for forgiveness than to try and get permission. Fight secured, he would reach out to other news organizations in the city and see if they wanted to chip in

As Wald juggled working out the fight details with taking in details from Kiker over the phone – while national editor, Wald had always considered himself a better rewrite man – Mickey Carroll, a young reporter on the city desk, burst into the city room.

Carroll had been walking to the paper from the Port Authority when he noticed people gathering around cars that had pulled over, their radios turned up loud enough so everyone could listen to the latest out of Dallas. He picked up his pace and went straight to Weiss at the city desk.

“Here,” Weiss told him, handing all of the cash in the city desk’s drawer. It was long before the days where everyone had credit cards and ATMs could be found on almost every corner. “Take this to LaGuardia and find Bird and Breslin. They’re headed to Dallas.”

Once on the plane and telling the story to Breslin and Bird, Carroll told the two that Weiss had paused and looked up at him.

“You go, too,” he had said. “They’ll need another hand.”

Carroll was convinced that he got to make the trip not so much because the two others would need his help and more because Weiss had just felt a little guilty about only sending him as far as the airport.

***

President Kennedy had arrived the previous morning for a two-day trip to Texas that was part unofficial campaign swing and part peacemaking mission. He hadn’t officially announced that he’d be running for a second term but everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before he did. In the previous two months, he’d visited nearly a dozen states, including campaign-like stops in Philadelphia and Boston.

Texas was another story.

There was no doubt that the state would prove crucial in the election. The problem was that the Democratic Party was fracturing. The state’s governor, John Connolly, and the senior senator, Ralph Yarborough, were warring. Connolly, who was close to Johnson, was more conservative than Yarborough who was a leader of the party’s progressive wing.

While Johnson shared many of Yarborough’s beliefs, he was close to Connolly who had been his aide. Johnson told Kennedy that the two didn’t want anything to do with each other. Yarborough was even doing his best to avoid Johnson knowing that his former senate colleague would pressure him.

Kennedy finally had enough of it and ordered one of his aides to force Yarborough into Johnson’s car as they rode in the motorcade from the Dallas airport. That’s exactly what happened.

There was also an emotional element to the trip.

In August, the president and Mrs. Kennedy lost their son, Patrick. Jackie had given birth prematurely and for more than 30 hours, doctors had struggled to keep him alive. Ultimately, they couldn’t do it and Patrick died. The trip to Dallas was Jackie’s first public trip with her husband since that had happened.

As important as Texas was, some of the president’s aides were concerned about him making the trip. A powerful right-wing element was rising in Dallas, fed in part by a perception that Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, were being soft on communism.

Just a month earlier, Kennedy’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, was in Dallas for a speech to mark United Nations Day. He was physically attacked, even spit on. A few days after that incident, on October 28, a woman from Dallas named Nelle M. Doyle wrote to Kennedy’s press secretary, Pierre Salinger, imploring him to keep Kennedy out of the public eye while he was in the city.

“As much as I would appreciate and enjoy hearing and seeing him,” she wrote. “This ‘hoodlum mob’ here in Dallas is frenzied and frustrated because their attack upon Ambassador Adlai Stevenson on the 24th backfired on them. I have heard that some of them have said that they ‘have just started.’

“No number of policemen, plainclothes men nor militia can control the ‘air, Mr. Salinger—-it is a dreadful thought, but all remember the fate of President McKinley. These people are crazy, or crazed, and I am sure that we must realize that their actions in the future are unpredictable.”

When Kennedy woke up in Fort Worth on the morning of the 22nd before they headed to Dallas, one of his aides brought him a copy of the Dallas Morning News. On page 14 where a a full page ad from a group that called itself, “The American Fact-Finding Committee” excoriating him for betraying his country while aiding communists.

He wasn’t surprised to see an ad like that.that it was in The Dallas Morning News was also not a surprise since the paper’s publisher, Ted Dealey, had turned it hard to the right after he took it over from his father, George, a Dallas icon. The president would be riding though Dealey Plaza, which had been named for him.

“We’re headed into nut country,” the president told Jackie, handing her the paper as they had their breakfast and prepared to leave Fort Worth for Dallas.

***

At LaGuardia, Breslin, Bird, and Carroll settled in on the plane, marveling at what a good job that Wald had done in chartering the flight. American Airlines had provided a 707 usually used by companies flying executives. Instead of row after row of seats, the plane had tables for people to work, easy chairs and couches for people to sit in.

It was more of a flying newsroom or conference room than a passenger plane.

The set-up gave the reporters not only give people a chance to meet in a small group with their colleagues and plan, it also have them a chance to mingle with competitors, trade tips. While they were normally not generous with people from other organizations, this time there was a shared sense of purpose. People who had been to Dallas shared information with those who hadn’t.

Before the plane took off, there had been news of an arrest but no one who the person was. The people who knew Dallas assumed that it had been a right wing extremist of some sort. There was a history of anti-government people selling in the area and it seemed logical that whomever had fired the shots could be one of those people.

After doing some reconnaissance and trading ideas with reporters from other places, Breslin, Bird, and Carroll sat down to hammer out their approach. Since Kiker had already left Dallas to follow the new president back to Washington, Bird’s role was clear-cut.  He would focus on the main piece. Since it was clear that Jimmy would go his own way, Bird figured he’d have Carroll to help him,

Jimmy had another idea.

“Work on the guy they arrested,” he told Carroll. “That’s a good part of the story. Everyone will be trying to report what happened. Work on the guy. That can be your story.”

Meanwhile, in quiet moments on the flight, Breslin thought about what had happened. Kennedy wasn’t the first president to be shot, let alone killed, but something was different and Breslin could feel it. Kennedy was young, older than Breslin but young enough to be relatable. Breslin had friends who not only had worked on the campaign in 1960 but had followed Kennedy to the White House. There was also Kennedy’s Catholicism, the first Catholic elected president. While Breslin was more focused on the president’s age, there was some pride in the fact that like him, Kennedy had been a Catholic in the modern world, one whose religion helped define him without governing every aspect of his life.

Jack Ruby also popped into Breslin’s head as the plane moved toward Dallas. It had been a few years before ad Breslin had dropped into the West 57th Street office of Joe Glazer, an agent who owned Associated Booking. Glazer represented people like Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. On the day that Breslin dropped in, he was still representing boxer Sugar Ray Robinson who was on the downward side of his career.

Breslin was still focused mostly on sports at that point and was looking for a story. He knew that Robinson’s career wasn’t long for the world and wanted Glazer to tell him when the great boxer was going to hang up his gloves. In Glazer’s office was a guy he introduced to Breslin as Jack Ruby.

Ruby said he owned a big nightclub down in Dallas – it was a strip club on the second floor of a building – and was trying to get Glazer to book Armstrong into his club.

While Breslin had not been impressed, he figured it was probably worth looking him up in Dallas; could be good for a column.

The plane landed at Love Field in Dallas in early evening and Breslin hit the tarmac running. He didn’t know exactly what his angle would be but he knew it was there. The first stop was the hotel, checking in, talking with people he met along the way. There were about 15 different directions he thought about going in; he would have to start on one, move on to the next. Until something stuck.

At the hotel, Breslin headed down to grab some dinner with Bird and Carroll. They also mixed with some reporters, caught the news on television, and tried to get a sense of what was already out there. One shock was that it turned out that the guy they arrested was not a right wing, anti-government type. Details were still sketchy but it seemed that Lee Harvey Oswald was from the opposite side of the political spectrum, with ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union.

Back in his room, Breslin settled in, tired but his mind, racing. Going through his notes from talking with reporters who had been on the scene, an idea was forming in his head. Before heading to sleep, he called Rosemary to check in on her and the kids. And also to ask a favor.

“I need helping getting in touch with Father Oscar Huber,” he told her. “He gave last rites. Call the church and see if the father can help.”

Saturday morning, Breslin woke early and headed to Dealey Plaza, the crime scene. Even though it was early, as he stood in the shadow of the Texas School Book Depository, he felt the sun starting to bear down. Since Kennedy had been in a moving car when he was shot, there was no chalk outline. Breslin did, however, see a large white “X” marked on the ground where the limo had been when Kennedy was shot. Standing in the road, Breslin looked at the X and thought about Kennedy, the choices that he had made, and how those choices led to the point where two young children who barely knew their father, would now never get the chance to make that happen.

He took in the scene, walking down the highway toward the underpass nearby, feeling the early sun on his shoulders and following the path of the limo that sped Kennedy away. Breslin then went to Parkland Memorial Hospital where the fight to save Kennedy’s life had taken place.

While waiting for the press conference, Breslin tracked down the funeral director who told Breslin that he was making sure that the president would be carried back to Washington DC in the best possible bronze casket as well as the priest who delivered last rites.

He also called Wald for what seemed to the editor like the 700th time that morning. Breslin told Wald that his piece was coming together, that he was going to try to talk to a surgeon and that would make the piece. He didn’t go into a lot of deal but told him that he’d be running up against deadline. The last part was not a surprise to Wald.

Breslin’s regularly was the last copy to make edition. As city editor, Buddy Weiss had more than once threatened that the paper would go to print without his column if he didn’t file. At least once, Weiss had followed through on his threat, leaving the paper’s readers without a Breslin column the next morning.

***

Dr. Malcolm Perry was not thrilled to be back at Parkland on Saturday morning. Especially after the day before. After desperately working with his colleagues in an unsuccessful attempt to save the life of the president, the 34-year-old had been forced to sit for interviews with the FBI and Secret Service about what had gone in the operating room. Then he was told he had to brief reporters on the steps that they had taken, the nature of the president’s injuries. It had been an unpleasant experience for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that, for Perry, his life was about the patient, not about himself.

After the battle in the operating room, the interviews with law enforcement, the press conference, Perry had gone home to his wife, his son, and daughter, settling into a chair in front of the television. Watching film of Kennedy on television, he had reflected on the day thinking that he had never seen a president before.

And now, on Saturday, he was back at it, back at the hospital not to treat any patients but to once again deal with reporters, try to bring them into the operating room and understand what had happened there. He had seen between 150 and 200 gunshot wounds since getting his medical degree eight years earlier. In some ways, yesterday was just another one. At the same time, he knew that those ways paled in comparison to the ways that it was unlike anything he had ever seen.

Perry had been told by Steve Landregan, the assistant administrator and public relations officer for Parkland that there would be a second press conference. Landregan had been bombarded by calls. As packed as the briefing had been the day before, there were hundreds more reporters in the city and they all wanted their chance to hear from the doctors. The whole thing bothered Perry for a couple of reasons including that it was hospital policy that they don’t disclose the name of the doctor who treats a patient as well as the enormity of the incident and the emotion attached to it. Of course, it was that second reason that made it clear his name would be out there and that he would have to talk with reporters on behalf of the hospital.

Before the Saturday press conference, Perry had to take a call from commander James Humes of the Bethesda Naval Hospital. Humes was a doctor and wanted to convince Perry not to go into too much detail about what the examination of Kennedy had turned up after he died. In what would turn out the be the seed of a conspiracy theories that would live for decades, confronted with Kennedy on the table in the operating room, Perry quickly performed a tracheotomy. It was the only thing to do, Perry and his colleagues had decided.

The thing was, Humes pointed out, was that by performing the tracheotomy Perry had damaged a wound that was there. As a result, they would never be able to conclusively make statements about the extent of the gunshot wound and damage it caused. While no one disagreed with Perry’s decision, valuable evidence had been lost.

Perry said that he understood.

A little later, Perry sat at a desk in the administrative suite of offices, once again facing a battalion of reporters.

“I had been having lunch Dr. Ronald Jones in the cafeteria when, somewhere around 12:30, and I cannot give you the time accurately since I did not look at my watch in that particular instant, an emergency page was put in for Dr. Tom Shires, who is chief of the emergency surgical service in Parkland. I knew he was in Galveston attending a meeting and giving a paper, and I asked Dr. Jones to pick up the page to see if he or I could be of assistance.”

Perry told the reporters how Jones rushed back to the table and told him what happened. They rushed to the emergency room’s trauma room 1 where Kennedy was already on the table, his clothes off to the side, having been cut away, and the president’s soon to be widow in her plum dress with her husband’s blood all over the front, standing off to the side.

During the roughly 45 minute press conference, most reporters focused on details like the times that things had happened and the procedures, Breslin’s questions veered toward what Perry had been thinking, what he had been doing before hand. Once the formal press conference ended, Breslin grabbed Perry and asked more about things that Perry felt were seemingly irrelevant – he wanted to know about Perry’s impression of the president, of what it had been like to go home that night, to be back with his family – leaving the surgeon somewhat befuddled.

“Thank you,” Breslin told him as they wrapped up their conversation. “God bless you.”

It was a small gesture that left Perry impressed and appreciative.

After the press conference, Breslin headed over to Holy Trinity Parish, a few blocks from the hospital. There he sat down with Father Oscar Huber who had administered last rites to Kennedy and had comforted the president’s widow.

Breslin took what he learned from Perry and used it to take the reader inside Perry’s head from the moment that he first heard the hospital page to when he finally got home and saw his family. Mixing the details from Perry with what he learned from Father Huber and the funeral director, Breslin spun it into a 2500-word piece, A Death in Emergency Room One.

He didn’t manage to file in time for the first edition but that was not a surprise to Wald, Bellows, and Weiss. First edition deadline for the Sunday paper was early afternoon on Saturday and no one expected him to make it. He did, though, make second edition with plenty of time. All three editors read the piece. Barely a word was changed.

Breslin ended the piece with something that Perry had said at the press conference that had just stuck with him. “I never saw a president before.”

The piece was not mistake free. Breslin made some minor errors — he got the names of some the procedures wrong, it was another doctor that answered the page for Dr. Shires – but, overall, Perry would say that Breslin was right on with the focus of the piece, the major elements he had right.

Still, when the piece came out on Sunday and made its way to Perry, the surgeon was not happy, feeling it was “overly dramatic, garish and in poor taste.” It was only over time that he came to recognize that what mistakes there were were to be expected in such a moment and that, while not perfect, Breslin’s piece did capture the moment, emotion and all.

Once the piece was in, Breslin retreated to the hotel for dinner with Bird and Carroll; dinner and a lot of drinks. By this point, Breslin had started to get himself worked up, convinced that Oswald was going to get killed, that while Kennedy’s assassination had pushed the nation to the edge, Dallas had gone over the cliff.

“They’re going to kill Oswald,” Breslin kept telling them. “There’s no way that the cops’ll stop it, even if they wanted.”

Bird and Carroll tried to reassure him that the police were doing everything they could; that the FBI was there, the Secret Service. Oswald killed the president, they’re not going to have two high-profile murders in the city within days.”

“We’ll see,” Breslin said.

Breslin had had plenty to drink by the time that they finished dinner and he decided to head back to police headquarters. He wanted to hear more from Jesse Curry, the Dallas Police Chief. Curry, who had been with the department since 1936 and its chief for almost four years, was under tremendous pressure. The world was blaming Dallas with much anger being directed toward him and the department. The FBI seemed to be leading the charge.

Earlier in the day, tired of being blamed, Curry told reporters that he’d heard that the FBI had had Oswald under surveillance, that they’d known that he was in Dallas and a threat to the president. That prompted an angry call from the head of the FBI’s office in Dallas, J. Gordon Shanklin, insisting that the bureau had not been tracking Oswald – something that would be disproved concretely years later – and demanding that Curry tell reporters that he’d been wrong. Curry told Shanklin he’d clear things up but, in the end, would only say that he didn’t know if the FBI had been in contact with Oswald and, if they had, when that was.

At the police station, Breslin had only gotten himself more worked up over the danger that he thought that Oswald was in. “They’re going to kill him,” Breslin shouted at Curry. The chief’s insistence that Oswald was well-protected only made Breslin more infuriated, After some back and forth, the police finally walked Breslin out the door.

Back at the hotel, Breslin got in touch with Wald, telling him that he was convinced that there was more out there, details that he missed. He wanted to continue reporting, even going back to people that he’d already spoken with.

He told Wald that he needed to stay, that there was a book that needed to be written.

“You need to get to D.C.,” Wald told him. “There’s a book out of this, absolutely. Lots. But not now. You’re wanting to look at a hurricane that hit and how it affected one city. This thing is hitting the whole country.”

Breslin started to protest but eventually gave up. Wald was relieved. He knew that if Breslin had insisted on staying in Dallas to write a book, there would be nothing that he could actually do about it. Wald was able to convince him to get on the next flight to Washington.

***

Arriving in DC, Breslin knew that it was going to be harder to find a story to make his own. As crowded with reporters as Dallas had been, Washington was now filled with thousands of reporters from all over the world. He headed over to the paper’s DC bureau and got together with David Wise, the bureau chief who had just started his new position the week before.

Breslin and Wise had known each for several years. Both were represented by literary agent Sterling Lord. Lord and Wise’s older brother, Bill, had worked at True magazine. When Lord left the magazine to become an agent, he signed Breslin, among others, and convinced Bill Wise to run Jimmy’s piece.signing, among others, Breslin became friendly with both brothers and was thrilled to see David in the bureau.

Also there was Art Buchwald, the paper’s acclaimed columnist whose humorous writings flowed from a satiric view of goings-on. Buchwald was also one of the best-sourced reporters in Washington and one who was able to take things seriously while still satirizing them in print. The weight of the moment was not lost on him.

By this point, Buchwald was the paper’s real star despite having only been working out of Washington, D.C. for about a year. Before that, he’d been working for the Paris Herald Tribune. His start there was the stuff of legend. He was fresh out of the Marines, moved to Paris, heard the Tribune was looking for an entertainment columnist.

He showed up one day, approached the managing editor who told him they were not looking for a columnist and, if they were, it wouldn’t be him. A few weeks later, Buchwald, hearing that the managing editor had returned to the states for a tour, went back to the paper, told the editor who greeted him that he’d been talking to the managing editor about a column.

That editor hired him, much to the surprise of the managing editor who was surprised to see Buchwald sitting at a desk, working away. Within a few years, he’d established himself as one of the paper’s stars. So, when he had a chance to move to Washington, he took it.

At the bureau, Buchwald suggested that Breslin come to the White House with him.

There, Jimmy stood by the driveway as dignitaries arrived to pay their respects. There was French President Charles de Gaulle and Haile Selaisse of Ethiopia. And hundreds of reporters. Breslin was one person in a sea of media and started to despair. He knew that he could not do his job if he was surrounded by this many other reporters. He needed to find another way to get at the story, another angle, something that he could report on his own without crowds around him.

He walked into the White House lobby where Buchwald was watching the scene unfold. That’s when it hit him like a bolt.

“I’m going to the cemetery and get the gravedigger,” he told Buchwald.

“Yeah, that’s a great idea,” Buchwald told him. “That would be very good.”

It was all the encouragement that Breslin needed.

At Arlington National Cemetery, he was able to track down Mazo Kawalchik, the foreman of the gravediggers. He put Breslin in touch with Clifton Pollard who agreed to see him.

Breslin went to Pollard’s three-room apartment on Corcoran Street, getting there about nine. Pollard greeted him with a firm handshake – Pollard dug around 10 graves every shift –  and let him in as he got his day started. Breslin drank coffee and talked with Pollard’s wife, Nettie as her husband put on his khaki overalls before coming into the kitchen to eat the breakfast of bacon and eggs that Nettie had made for him.

Pollard told him about growing up in Pittsburgh, then joining the army and serving in Burma during World War 2. After the war, he settled in Washington, getting a job digging graves at Arlington, working his way up to becoming Kawalchik’s right-hand man.

“I’d been expecting the call” Pollard told Breslin. “Maybe Mazo would have called someone else, or even decided to do it himself. I just felt that he would call.”

Pollard told Breslin about how he liked Kennedy, voted for him, because he thought he’d be strong on civil rights. Pollard had even taken his stepson to Kennedy’s inauguration,

The two then went down to the cemetery where Pollard went to work in an area in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, using a reverse hoe to dig the grave. As the hoe brought up the first bit of soil, Pollard stopped and got out. The machine had left tracks on the grass and he wanted to use soil from the grave to grow some new grass for the area,

“I’d like to have everything, you know, nice,” Pollard told Breslin.

After a while, the grave was done, waiting for Kennedys body. Pollard was off to dig more graves. Breslin was off to write his column. Back at the Washington bureau, he called Bellows, telling him what he had. Bellows loved it, thought it was a great piece. Almost. He told Breslin he should go back to the cemetery in the morning and talk to Pollard at the funeral. The piece would hold until Tuesday’s paper.

Bellows told Wald the plan, the great story that Jimmy was on.

While Breslin thought that Bellows was right, that the piece was almost there but needed the other element. The only problem was that it left open the possibility that he would not have something in Monday’s paper. It was already after noon. In the world of newspaper deadlines, the day was disappearing.

He headed back to the White House where he found Bill Haddad, the inspector general of the Peace Corps and a friend. Haddad was sitting in an office with Sergeant Shriver, talking over the events of the past few days. Breslin was telling them about his spat with the Dallas Police Chief. “They just don’t get it,” Breslin told them. “Oswald is in danger.”

That’s when it happened. The television was on, offering live coverage from the basement of the Dallas jail where they were going to bring Oswald out. As they watched, a man thrust himself toward Oswald. At that moment, a phone rang and  Shriver answered it. He just went completely blank and put the phone down.

“What happened?” Haddad asked him.

“They shot Oswald,” Shriver said, confirming what they’d seen.

Breslin, who could see it unfolding before his eyes, lost it, shouting, “I told them. I told them. I told them” again and again. Haddad and Shriver had to physically restrain him, almost had to sit on him to get him to calm down.

He fled the White House, furious at the Dallas police for not having listened, worried for the world for what was happening, He still needed to come up with a column for Monday’s paper. He went over the Capitol where Kennedy was lying in state.

He watched as the Spanish ambassador was on his knees before Kennedy’s flag-draped mahogany coffin, noticing that the wood was reflecting the brightness of the six large television lights. He watched people coming and going, silently stopping before the coffin. Then he noticed a honor guard walking out from where the senate offices were and realized that there was armed soldiers standing by the coffin.

Breslin had been so focused on the coffin and the people paying respects that he hadn’t noticed the scene right in front of him. Looking at his watch, realizing the time, Breslin left the Capitol to head back to the Washington bureau. As he made the short trip, the thought of hatred kept popping into his head.

“Everybody has a piece of this murder,” he wrote at the end of his column. “Everybody who ever stood off and said, ‘that Jew bastard,’ and everybody who ever said, ‘I don’t want niggers near me’ is part of this murder.”

He finished the column and filed. He got it in, for him, early. He had had time to spare.

The next morning, he returned to Arlington for the funeral, looking for Pollard. He didn’t find him until it had ended. Pollard was on the other side of the hill from where he had dug Kennedy’s grave, working hard on digging graves for servicemen who would not get the pomp and circumstance of the fallen president, whose actions would go mostly unnoticed except by family and friends.

“You didn’t even want to see the funeral?” Breslin asked him.

“I tried to go over,” Pollard replied. “But a soldier told me it was too crowded and he couldn’t let me through. I’ll go over later a little bit, Just sort of look around and see how it is, you know. Like I told you, it’s an honor.”

Breslin ran back to the bureau and filed his column. It ran the next day under a headline that came from Pollard’s words. “It’s an honor,” was the name of the piece that would go on to be taught in journalism schools for generations; “the gravedigger theory,” people would call it, telling reporters that when confronted with scenes where large group of reporters were gathered, to go find another angle.

***

After filing the column, he was spent, physically and emotionally. He went to the train station to head back to New York. Once he got to Penn Station, it was on to another train, the subway to take him home to Forest Hills Gardens. After checking in with Rosemary and the kids, he quickly headed over to Union Turnpike and Pep McGuire’s, one of his favorite spots.

Breslin would say that he spent the better part of the next 48 hours there, “getting stewed.”

The only break he really took was to make a call to his friend, David Wise, in the Tribune’s Washington Bureau.

On Monday, Wise had been struggling the day before to capture the atmosphere.

He’d started his story writing about the bugler played taps but had been unable to fully hit the high, final, sixth note. He couldn’t figure out the ending and fighting with his typewriter, trying to get it right, before finally hitting his mark.

“And then, it was over…the three volleys of muskets, and the solitary bugler who could not quite bring himself to play the high, sixth note of taps, the note that like the heart of a nation, had broken.”

Sitting in his office on Tuesday, Wise picked up the phone. It was Breslin.

“You son of a bitch,” he said. “I saw that last line.”

Breslin hung up. Wise felt it was the greatest compliment he’d received as a reporter.