On an Urban Legend

Today marks the 60th year since Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. The history of the world, arguably, changed in those few moments when three shots were fired in Dealey Plaza on that November morning. In the intervening years, our culture has parsed and picked and delved into every nook and cranny of the event in an effort to make sense of something so absolutely senseless.

The purpose of this post isn’t to argue any of the theories about who actually pulled the trigger (There are certainly several red flags about the whole affair and about Oswald himself). Rather let’s compare the shooting of Kennedy in 1963 with the shooting of Abraham Lincoln 98 years prior, because the similarities between the two events have become the stuff of an urban legend.

Let’s start with the men themselves. Kennedy was elected in 1960, while Lincoln first was elected in 1860. But when they first ran for congress, both men were elected in ’46–one hundred years apart. They both were military veterans. Both men were heavily invested in civil rights. Each one was in his 30s when he married a woman in her 20s. Both lost a son while serving as president. Same number of letters in their last names. Both were shot on a Friday. Each was seated next to his wife. The presidential couples were with another couple at the time of the shooting (The Kennedys with Gov. and Mrs. John Connelly, the Lincolns with Major John Rathbone and his fiancé). The other man of the two couples was also injured in both attacks.

The vice-presidents who assumed the office after the shootings also have some things in common according to the legend. Both men were named Johnson. Both were from southern states starting with a “T”–Texas for Lyndon Johnson and Tennessee for Andrew Johnson. Both Johnsons were born 100 years apart, 1808 for Andrew and 1908 for Lyndon. Both men have the same number of letters in their names. They served in the House of Representatives and in the Senate as well before becoming vice-presidents.

The circumstances of each assassination also reveal some urban-legendary coincidences. They were both shot in public view, from behind, and both died from shots to the head. Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater, while Kennedy was shot in a car made by the Ford Motor Company, in a model called a Lincoln. Both shooters carried out their dastardly deeds from places where they worked (John Wilkes Booth worked as an actor often at Ford’s Theater). Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and was later apprehended in a theater; Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and was apprehended in a storehouse barn.

Finally, the assassins themselves have some shared characteristics or events. For example, each one has the same number of letters in their full names (15 letters each). They were both shot and killed before they could stand trial for the murders they committed. They were both southerners. Each was living in a boarding house when they shot the president.

Of course, like most urban legends, coincidences are just that–coincidence. One historian, to prove this point, made connections between Kennedy’s tragic death and the assassination of Mexican President Alvaro Obregon in 1928, for example. And some can argue that the trivialization of presidential murder dishonors the men who died and the lives which were forever altered by the heinous acts of violence.

But, 60 years on, perhaps the deep angst that still hangs around the death of John F. Kennedy might lead us to look for something less tragic, less disastrous, and, well, less sad to divert our gaze from that moment. And you have to admit that this particular urban legend has plenty to distract.

And, sometimes, especially on days like these, we desperately need distraction.

On A Perfect Tackle

The 1954 Cotton Bowl Classic American football game featured two of the nation’s best teams that year, the Rice University Owls and the University of Alabama Crimson Tide. Rice came into the New Year’s Day game in Dallas, Texas, as the co-champions of the Southwest Conference with a record of 8-2. Alabama, on the other hand, was the Southeastern Conference champ, undefeated in conference play, but with also two losses on the season. Their record was 6-2-3.

The game started well for Alabama. After a trade of punts by the two, Rice began a drive that approached mid-field when the Tide’s defensive back (and quarterback), Bart Starr, intercepted an errant pass from the Rice quarterback. The ensuing Alabama possession saw the team’s prize running back, a young man named Tommy Lewis, score a two-yard touchdown run for his side. With his team up 6-0, Lewis’s Alabama side seemed to have the momentum. A punt in the second quarter pinned the Owls deep in their own territory, and a stop by Alabama could give them great field position with the lead.

That’s when Rice’s running back, a speedster named Dicky Moegle, took over the game. The halfback slashed and cut up the Alabama defense and scored for Rice to even the score and swing the momentum back to the Owls. Alabama seemed to not have an answer for the swift running back. It was midway through the second quarter when the Tide pinned Rice back to their 5 yard line. A stop there could give Bama the ball back and potentially the lead. That’s when Moegle took another handoff and turned up field.

It seemed that he was gone for a 95 yard touchdown the moment he crossed the line of scrimmage. Not one Alabama defensive player laid a hand on him. He was headed for a score that could potentially crush the life and fight out of the Tide that afternoon. That’s when Tommy Lewis made a play that will live in not only Alabama lore but also college football history. He seemingly came out of nowhere to make a perfect tackle of Moegle near the Alabama 40. Both teams were stunned. It seemed that no one could have caught up with the Rice speedster. But, Lewis had stopped him. When you see it on film (it’s on YouTube) today, you notice right away that Lewis used perfect technique to wrap up Dicky Moegle and bring him to the ground cleanly.

The fans were stunned. The radio announcer stumbled for what to say about what had transpired on the play. The players on both benches couldn’t believe what they had just witnessed. The referees huddled for several minutes about the play. The Rice bench was screeching at the men in the striped shirts because of the tackle. Finally, the head ref, still shaking his head over what he’d witnessed, moved to the center of the field and raised both his arms straight over his head to signal touchdown for Rice.

Dicky Moegle finished that day with 265 yards on 11 carries and three touchdowns. He would go on to be named an All-American for that season. Rice defeated Alabama 28-6 in the Cotton Bowl that day, and it would mark the last time Alabama would make it to a bowl game for the next several years.

But what about Tommy Lewis and the tackle? Well, you see, the reason Moegle was awarded the touchdown despite Lewis’s perfect tackle was that, when Tommy stopped the Rice runner, he had done so by leaving the team’s bench and running onto the field to make the stop.

After the game, even though Rice won handily, the press wanted to talk to Tommy Lewis. They asked him why he’d done what he’d done; what possessed him to leap from his sidelines and stop what was a sure touchdown for Rice when he wasn’t even in the game. His answer is one of the rallying cries for the Crimson Tide to this day.

“I guess I’m just too full of Alabama,” Tommy Lewis said sheepishly.

On an Assassination Attempt

General Edwin Walker was a decorated soldier who was a career soldier up until the time he, well, wasn’t. Walker graduated from West Point. He commanded troops in World War 2. He fought in Korea. Then, after Korea, something either happened to Walker or he felt less need to stay quiet. What happened was that Walker became political and vocally so. Now, there’s nothing wrong with military people having an opinion. The issue arises when they let those opinions determine if and when they obey orders or they use their opinions to coerce people under them to make choices based on those opinions. And that’s what Walker started doing in the 1950s.

You see, General Walker fell into bed with extreme right-wing politics. He was an extreme anti-communist (ok, nothing wrong with anti-communism), but he bought into the idea that much of the US government and military were agents of the Soviet Union. This was the period of the Cold War, and America saw the USSR as its mortal (and moral) enemy. Walker joined forces with people like extreme racists, John Birch Society folks, and other radical right-wing groups.

In the mid-1950s, President Eisenhower gave Walker command of the troops detailed to insure that the segregation of Little Rock Arkansas schools went off without interference from violent racist groups. To say that Walker found the duty distasteful is an understatement. He carried out his orders, but he didn’t like it and said so. He threatened to resign (not retire), which would have meant he was giving up his military pension. But Ike offered to re-assign him, and Walker accepted. But the changing political and social landscape proved too much for him to keep his opinions quiet. When the University of Mississippi was integrated in the early 1960s, Walker decided it was time to resign.

The now former general decided to enter politics as a pro-segregation, anti-communist, pro-Bible/Christian, and anti-, well, anti pretty much everything candidate. And he decided to run for governor of Texas. He gave a speech in which he said that he had been “on the wrong side” during his work in Little Rock, but that now he was “standing for the right,” and he probably didn’t see the irony of his words. And he drew adoring crowds in a state in the south that was still largely living separate existences between the black and white population. Fortunately, his brand of extremism was defeated by the more centrist appeal of John Connelly in the election.

But his anti-communist views were some of the most troubling. He was firmly convinced that Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and even Dwight Eisenhower were all Russian/communist plants in our government, hell bent on the destruction of the nation he’d sworn to protect and defend. And this anti-communist stance drew the attention of a man who wished Walker dead. One evening, as Walker sat at his desk in his house in a Dallas suburb, a shot rang out. Walker grabbed at his forearm, as splinters from the shot entered his body there.

He leapt up and ran to the window. There, he saw where a bullet had shattered the window sill. It was the splinters of metal from the bullet that had fragmented when it hit the sill that had pierced the former general’s arm. He was lucky to be alive. A few inches to the right and a bit higher, and the shot would’ve pierced his anti-communist brain. And that’s interesting that the shooter was fairly close, on the same level even, as Walker, but still missed the headshot.

Eight months later, Lee Harvey Oswald, who’d failed to kill Edwin Walker, got his headshot with a much more difficult shot into the brain of John Kennedy.