The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Zapruder kin talks about impact of famous film
For nearly two hours Oct. 11, a group inside the Dr. Wayne L. Roderhorst Performing Arts Center at Lakeland Community College were treated to a rare glimpse into the story behind what is arguably one of the most haunting home movies ever produced.
Alexandra Zapruder, granddaughter of Abraham Zapruder, the Dallas businessman who filmed President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, talked about the film, how it affected her family and how they became unintentional caretakers of the only assassination of a U.S. president caught on film.
The casual, questionand-answer session between Zapruder and Todd Arrington, site manager at the National Parks Service James A. Garfield Historic Site in Mentor, played out like a fireside chat in front of an audience of roughly 120.
During a brief interview with Zapruder before the presentation, she talked about what researching and writing her 472-page autobiographical account of the film, entitled “Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film,” meant to her and what she hopes the public gains from it.
“On my website, I have a quote by Abraham Joshua Heschel that says: ‘What happened once upon a time happens all the time.’ That is why I do it,” the 47-yearold writer and mother of two said shortly before the presentation. “I believe people in the past have as much complexity as we do today... and that sheds a light on the human condition, on us living in the present.”
Zapruder’s resumé includes
founding staff member of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.; completing her first book, National Jewish Book Award-winner “Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust,” in 2002; writing and co-producing “I’m Still Here,” a documentary film based on that book, which aired on MTV in May 2005 and working with the nonprofit group Facing History and Ourselves in an effort to “develop interdisciplinary educational materials for (Salvaged Pages) designed for middle and high school teachers,” according to a news release from Arrington.
“Twenty-Six Seconds” is her second book.
“I look for stories that are compelling — that have truth in them,” she said Oct. 11. “I look for stories that are not only about the past, but that are also relevant for the present.”
Just like she did during the public presentation, Zapruder explained beforehand how deeply the Zapruder Film affected her family, who rarely spoke about it.
The film, which Abraham Zapruder intended to make as a keepsake commemorating a president he and his family deeply supported, catapulted them into the limelight of intrigue, conspiracy theories, media bombardment and governmental inquiry, none of which was necessarily
pleasant.
Throughout the Oct. 11 presentation, Zapruder made it clear how gingerly her grandfather treated the film and its care. She talked about how much it meant to him to make sure it was handled with dignity and respect because, after all, it depicts a gruesome, horrifying event resulting in the death of a widely beloved U.S. president and the immediate aftermath his family witnessed.
“I would say that, more than a blessing or a curse, it became a burden or a responsibility,” she said before the presentation. “It was a privilege, I think, for our family. But this isn’t anything anybody would’ve chosen.”
Arrington in an Oct. 10 phone interview contrasted Kennedy’s assassination to James A. Garfield’s.
“The connection for us is simply that we’re talking about an assassinated president. But there’s nobody around today that was alive when James Garfield was assassinated,” he said. “There are no photos and nobody alive today remembers it. A lot of people remember the Kennedy assassination and, not only do we have the murder of the president. But we have it on film.”
Both Arrington and Zapruder spoke about the array of implications surrounding the famous 26-second film: technology’s rapid evolution, matters of privacy, copyright, public record, ethics, freedom of expression, ownership, conspiracy and emotion, among others.
Zapruder said that, although the film brought her family into the public eye more than any of them would have probably preferred, “we certainly tried to handle it with dignity and I think we’re better people for having grappled with these issues.”
During her presentation, Zapruder talked about the battle her family fought for custody of the film and the lengths her grandfather went to make sure it was treated responsibly.
Nearly 36 years after being made and through countless legal battles, the Zapruder family and a panel of federal arbitrators settled on $16 million as the Zapruder Film’s worth.
That may seem like a fortune. But, to the Zapruder family, it likely will never fully compensate them for the whirlwind of inquiry and attention into which they were pulled.
Alexandra Zapruder, who put it this simply during her talk — “We would’ve given back the money if we could’ve gotten rid of the film, any day.”
When asked what she hopes people take away from her book, and from the presentation, she said one thing that’s especially important to her is that people realize, even with documentation as poignant as the Zapruder Film, there are still so many unanswered questions surrounding it.
“The Zapruder Film is a visual record. But it doesn’t give us any answers or even an understanding of how this could happen,” she said. “You can watch it and watch it again and still never understand why this happened.”