JFK controversy lives on at Sixth Floor Museum

Dealey Plaza and the historic buildings that border it remain much as they were on that fateful noon hour in November 1963. The controversy also lives on, scribbled on the inside of the wooden stockade fence that marks the summit of the famous grassy knoll near where John F. Kennedy was killed. “Google JFK to 911” reads one scrawl. “You’re the patsy!” reads another, referring to Lee Harvey Oswald’s plea that he was being set up to take the fall for the death of a president.

Visitors arrive at the plaza soon after the sun rises and are there until it’s a red ball sinking over the horizon, walking the white concrete pergola, the knoll, the triple underpass, pointing to the painted white Xs on the street where Kennedy was shot or up at the windows of the Texas School Book Depository.

The touts come early as well, prowling Elm and Houston streets for the camera clickers, opining on conspiracy theories and hawking $20 glossy brochures.

The visitors are locals and tourists, or out-oftown businesspeople grabbing an hour to walk the convergence on the west end of downtown. This day, two young women laugh as one waits for traffic to pass, then runs out onto Elm Street and gleefully splays out, playing dead on the white X while the other snaps her picture on an iPhone.

The locus of the crime — and the controversy — remains the red brick edifice overlooking the plaza, the Texas School Book Depository.

On the sixth floor, where Oswald, according to official history, fired the shots that killed JFK, is the Sixth Floor Museum.

As estimated 350,000 come each year.

“The vast majority of the people I wouldn’t say are typical museumgoers,” said Nicola Longford, executive director of the Sixth Floor Museum.

“People are still coming to this museum to try and understand what happened.”

The sixth floor still has the original floorboards, wooden pillars and light fixtures from 1963. The story of Kennedy’s trip to Texas is retold in artifacts, panels, audio and visual displays.

There is the large scale model of the plaza, created for the investigating Warren Commission in 1964. You can see Oswald’s wedding ring and Jack Ruby’s hat.

The corner window, where investigators found the famous sniper’s nest, is recreated as it was found that day, but is walled off under glass.

The museum is also a research facility, with more than 50,000 artifacts — video, audio, text — along with programs, lectures, and a reading room.

The Kennedy case cannot be divorced from the conspiracy theories that continue a half-century later, ranging from the cogent to the hare-brained. The museum attempts to walk the line without disappearing down the rabbit hole. The video presentations address the main unanswered questions and inconsistencies.

“We present the facts and the basic storyline of what happened and we leave it to our guests to come to their own decisions,” said Longford.

The museum is one of many sites hard-core history buffs can still suss out in Dallas. Walk east of Dealey Plaza through downtown and you can retrace the route of Kennedy’s motorcade and see the old police headquarters where Oswald was held, and the ramp Ruby supposedly went down en route to kill him on Nov. 24.

South of downtown in Oak Cliff, visitors can see the rooming house where Oswald lived, the corner of 10th and Patton where Oswald is said to have gunned down policeman J.D. Tippit and further on to the Texas Theatre, where he was caught.

A 20-minute drive west, in Irving, city officials have retrofitted the bungalow where homeowner Ruth Paine lived with Oswald’s wife Marina and their children. Oswald was living in Dallas at the time, but stayed at the Paine house on the night of Nov. 21. He got up the next morning, is believed to have taken a rifle from the garage, and caught a ride to the depository with a coworker, Wesley Frazier.

Irving archives co-ordinator Kevin Kendro said staff, working with photos provided by Paine, tracked down period pieces, and built the living room couch from scratch, so that everything resembles the house as it was in 1963.

One highlight, he said, is the cluttered, claustrophobic single-car garage where officials say Oswald kept the murder rifle wrapped up in a blanket.

He said visitors also linger in the bedroom where Oswald spent his last night as a free man.

“Just the decor of the house takes people back,” said Kendro.

“There’s nothing like standing in the space where historic events actually happened.

“You can picture the Paine house in your mind, you can picture Dealey Plaza or the sixth floor, but there’s nothing like going there and really seeing it and feeling what it was like.”

If you go:

www.jfk.org www.cityofirving.org www.visitdallas.com