Christmas and the two kings who made France

This Christmas millions of people handed out presents and headed to church to celebrate the recognized date of Christ’s birth. This report will look at two other significant events and examine not only how they made two men more powerful, but also the role these events played in spreading the Christian message to an entire continent.  

Clovis, Christmas Day 496

Born in Gaul around 466, Clovis was the first major king of the Franks, a collection of various warring tribes located mainly in modern day France. Ascending the throne at the age of 15, Clovis took control of a small northern section of the country. Soon he proved himself a brilliant military leader, defeating the last Roman official in France in 486. He followed this with a string of other military campaigns which greatly enlarged his territory. In 493, Clovis married Clothilde, daughter of a noble and devout Catholic. According to legend, shortly afterward, Clovis found himself struggling in one of his many battles and prayed to God for victory, then the battle turned in his favor.

On Christmas Day, 496 Clovis, Clothilde and leading Frankish officials appeared in Reims. There, in a formal ceremony inside the basilica, Clovis was baptized a Christian. However, it was more than mere religious fervor which had moved Clovis, a pagan himself, to take this step. Ever since the Roman Emperor Constantine had converted to Christianity before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, the religion had been gaining traction in Western Europe, and by Clovis’s time, thousands of his subjects and those outside his empire had converted and the Church had gained a strong foothold in Gaul. Professor Bonnie Effros later said, “It was a very strategic move. By choosing Catholicism, Clovis in essence, united his people.” Further, by converting, he gained the support of many of the old Roman provinces, and especially the powerful Roman clergy. Finally, to assure the loyalty of those around him, Clovis had his family and his army of three thousand men baptized on the same day.

Newly converted, Clovis spun his ongoing conflicts into wars of religion, killing those who would not accept the faith and taking their goods for his own use. Clovis’s brutality was not confined to the battlefield. He also deeply distrusted his friends, extended family and Frankish nobles. He prevented any challenges to his reign by systemically ordering all contenders tortured and killed. Through these measures, by the time of his death in 511 Clovis had united the Franks and conquered Gaul. His conversion laid the foundations of Christianity in Europe and greatly strengthened the power of the Church.

After Clovis’s death, Gaul, now called France, was divided among his four sons, who were just as ruthless as their father. None of them, however, were able to hold together the kingdom Clovis had built, and the country disintegrated into a prolonged period of incompetent rulers, unrest and civil war. Finally, in 687, Pepin of Herstal emerged victorious. He would rule for 27 years. In 714, Pepin was succeeded by his son Charles. Like his father, Charles was a skilled military commander and in one of the most decisive battles in history defeated an invading Muslim army near the city of Tours in 732. Forever afterward, Charles was called “the hammer.” The victory also made him one of the most powerful men in Europe, though he never officially claimed the throne of France. Still, he had made his family the de facto power.

Under Charles, France remained stable and grew in power and prestige. Upon his death, his son Pepin the Short took his father’s place. In a rare instance of good royal nepotism, Pepin proved just as able a ruler. But, unlike Charles, Pepin had no qualms with declaring himself the outright king. First, he asked for the Pope’s blessing in taking the throne. The Vatican dealing with its own political problems in Italy was only too willing to do a powerful monarch a favor and Pepin was soon the ruler of France. With problems at home squared away, Pepin then marched on Italy to repay the Vatican and threw back an army threatening the Pope, and even gifted the pontiff with the conquered land. Church and state were now nearly inseparable.

Charlemagne, Christmas Day 800

By his death in 768, Pepin had greatly expanded the empire and drastically reformed the Frankish church by calling for better moral standards and higher education for the clergy. However, much work remained to be done and a steady ruling hand was needed to insure all gains that had been made would not simply be lost as before. Into this critical period stepped Pepin’s oldest son and heir to the Frankish throne, Charlemagne - “Charles the Great.”

Standing roughly 6 4’ with vivid blond hair and piercing eyes, Charlemagne looked every inch a king. Following Frankish custom, he at first shared power with his brother Carloman, though this lasted only until 771 when Carloman suddenly died; Charlemagne’s role in his brother’s death is still debated. Charlemagne’s first major decision was to march Frankish troops back into Italy to again rescue the Pope, who was again threatened by an invasion. Only this time, Charlemagne not only defeated the army, but continued the war until the rival ruler was deposed and Charlemagne had taken his throne. He then turned his army north and attacked Saxon held lands in what is today Germany and Denmark. However, this war proved more frustrating for the young king than his heretofore successful conflicts. For all the changes occurring in France, the Saxons had stubbornly held out against any form of centralized rule, or acceptance of a single god. Time and again, Charlemagne took his army into Saxon lands, defeated them and left, only to hear that his appointed officials had been killed and the area was again in full revolt. Finally, Charlemagne ordered anyone who did not accept Christianity to be executed, this led to the famous massacre in the German town of Verden, where Frankish troops killed an estimated 4,500 Saxons after they refused to give up paganism. These brutal tactics and several scorched earth campaigns in which Charlemagne ordered farms and homes burned led several leading Saxon chiefs to convert. By 804, the final Saxon revolt had been suppressed. In addition to this, Charlemagne led an expedition conquering a large part of Muslim Spain, known as the Spanish March.

While Charlemagne spent much of his time on military campaigns, he loved the day to day administration of his country. Europe at this time had gone into decline after the fall of Roman Empire, and no real effort had been made up to this point to rebuild the broken infrastructure. Charlemagne, during his reign, made rebuilding roads and schools a priority. He even set up a school at his palace at Aachen where he invited the best teachers and scholars in the realm. He also saw to it that schools were built across the empire, not only so that his people could gain a basic education, but so they could be infused with a strong sense of God.  Charlemagne himself was not entirely pious by today’s standards; he had five wives and five mistresses which produced 20 known children. But according to surviving records, he was a loving husband and father and saw to it that all of his children received a proper education, including his daughters which was extraordinary for the time. Oddly, while he allowed his daughters carry on open affairs with nobles, he never allowed them to leave his palaces or officially marry. His love was such that when his eldest son revolted against him, Charlemagne, rather than have the boy killed as most rulers would have done, decided instead to send him to a quiet monastery, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Charlemagne’s influence fell upon the Church as well. Many of the new schools established were located in monasteries. Not only did they educate children of nobles, but the children of all his subjects, including the sons of serfs. He saw to it that bishops were appointed to his councils and often used them as advisors. He also was not afraid to give these same men orders on how to interpret the bible and he called for higher moral standards for priests and parishes. Finally, Charlemagne often sent the Pope himself directives on how to do things.

In December, 795, Leo III was elected Pope but was soon accused of corruption and four years later was thrown into a monastery. Leo escaped and headed for the one man who had always been a friend to the papacy. When Leo arrived at Charlemagne’s court, the powerful ruler took him under his protection. Soon the charges were dropped and Leo returned triumphantly to Rome. It was at this point that there began to be suggestions about making Charlemagne the Emperor, a title not held in three hundred years.           

If the Frankish historians are to be believed, in December, 800, Charlemagne arrived in Rome with no idea about this growing campaign. On Christmas Day, he went in the basilica and knelt before Leo III to pray; the Pope suddenly pulled out a crown and proclaimed him the new emperor. Afterwards, Charlemagne told the Pope that had he known about the ceremony, he would never have come in. Though this makes for a good story, given the facts that Charlemagne made a point of knowing about everything in his kingdom, and the well-known close relationship his family had with the Church for three generations, this seems highly unlikely.

The Christmas coronation laid the foundation for later Popes such as Gregory VII and Innocent III to build a more powerful central church. This church would inevitably be linked with the power figures of Europe and their struggles for more control for the next eight hundred years, and would cement Europe as a Christian continent.

Charlemagne went on to rule for another fourteen years over lands stretching from the English Channel in the north to northern Italy in the south, and eastern Spain to western Germany. But, as the Charlemagne aged he found himself still fighting his enemies the Vikings. By 810, Charlemagne began slowly stepping away from the day to day affairs of his realm and looked increasing to his sons to manage the kingdom. That year he had his land split between three of his sons, but by 813 only one, Louis the Pious, remained alive and was declared king and co-emperor by his father. Four months later, Charlemagne died suddenly on January 28, 814.

Louis the Pious proved to be an extremely moral ruler, but he lacked his father’s political shrewdness and military brilliance. He also never earned the loyalty of the powerful nobles. Soon many of the policies established by Charlemagne fell by the wayside as these men began to ignore him. A civil war broke out among the descendants and the kingdom soon broke apart. It would be another three hundred years before Europe again became stable.

Despite all of the ebb and flow of royal politics during both Clovis’s and Charlemagne’s reigns, their respected Christmas events had signaled an important change in Europe. Clovis showed that barbarian rulers could be converted, albeit for political reasons. This greatly expanded the power of the Church and showed that Christianity could be more broadly accepted by rulers. By the time of Charlemagne’s Christmas, the creed and the power of the Church had become unbreakably intertwined. It would not be until the emergence of Martin Luther in 1517 that this alliance would be shaken, and it would not completely undone until the end of the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. So at a time when millions commemorate Christ’s birth and the spirit of the season, it could also be remembered that major political shifts took place on this date which spread Christianity as well.

D.B. Cooper

In the early afternoon of November 24, 1971, a pale, slightly-built man calling himself Dan Cooper stepped up to the Northwest Orient Airlines ticket counter at the Portland International Airport and asked for a one way ticket to Sea-Tac. He quietly boarded the flight and took a seat near the back. As the plane took off, he passed a note to the stewardess, which said, "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked." He then opened a briefcase to reveal a mechanism of wires and cylinders, and quietly demanded $200,000 and four parachutes.  And he said he would not allow the plane to land before everything was ready.

Hijackings had happened throughout the world,  but were extremely rare in the U.S. From 1961 to the day Cooper boarded his Seattle flight, there had been only four hijackings. In three cases the planes had been flown to Cuba, and in the fourth, the hijacker had been overpowered by the pilots. In spite of the former hijackings, and even a movie about a bomb aboard a commercial flight which had been popular in 1970, there was still no airport security; any person could walk directly to the gates with several carry on bags. The insides of commercial aircraft had no reinforced doors and bags were not scanned or searched before going on the plane.

Following Cooper’s instructions, the plane circled Western Washington for two hours. All the while, Cooper remained calm and polite to those around him. Because Cooper talked only to the stewardesses, the remaining passengers had no idea what happening on the plane, and were told that it was experiencing minor mechanical problems.  At 4:39 p.m., the FBI had been informed of the situation, Northwest’s president had agreed to pay the ransom, and everything was ready. The fight landed on the edge of the Sea-Tac runway. It was refueled and the money and parachutes were handed over. Among them was a dummy one which would never open. Cooper allowed the passengers to leave the aircraft, but ordered the crew to take off again. It was now almost 8 PM. five military planes and a helicopter followed just behind.

Cooper was angry that the money had come in duffel bag, and not a backpack as instructed. To fix the problem he opened one of the working parachutes and took out the canvas to stuff the money inside. He now had only two working chutes. Minutes later, Cooper told the pilots to head to Mexico City. He ordered that they stay at 10 thousand feet and maintain a speed of no more than 200 miles an hour. Then he headed to the back of the plane. He asked for the cabin stairwell to be lowered. A stewardess showed him the lever to pull, but said she would need a rope to open it. Cooper said he would do it himself. At 7:42 p.m., a gust of wind came through the plane as the back stairwell had been deployed. Cooper had tied the money to his chest and strapped on two parachutes. Outside, the weather was terrible, the wind had picked up and storm front had moved in bringing heavy hail and freezing rain. The ground between the Washington and Oregon border which the plane was now over, was 150 acres of dense forest on the roughest terrain in the area. Cooper waited a moment then jumped.

The plane landed in Reno. Sheriff’s deputies boarding it found the unused parachutes. Amazing one still on board was an easy open model. Instead, Cooper had chosen one that was much more complicated to handle and picked the fake parachute as his pickup. A tie clip used by the hijacker was also found, and the FBI began its search. The day after the hijacking, a newspaper article was published mistakenly calling the man “D.B.” Cooper instead of Dan Cooper, and the initials were forever linked with the case. Numerous suspects were interviewed and the area Cooper was thought to have jumped searched, but as the weeks dragged by nothing was found. In the wake of the hijacking several copycat crimes took place. Finally airports began adding security gates and searching bags and sky marshals were also put on several more planes. Back stairwells like the one Cooper had used were ordered permanently sealed shut. 

In 1980, a small amount of the money matching the currency used for the ransom was found by children along the Columbia River, but no more was ever discovered.

Over the years, several people were suspected of being the man known as D.B. Cooper. Among them was Kenneth Christiansen, a former paratrooper and Northwest flight attendant who was apparently angry with airline, and was suddenly able to buy a house after the hijacking. However, he didn’t match Cooper’s appearance. Another was Richard McCoy Jr., a Vietnam veteran who pulled off a similar hijacking over Utah jumping from the plane. Because he had left fingerprints at the scene, McCoy was quickly arrested and the money seized; he escaped from prison in and was killed in a shootout in 1974. Some believed he had been in the Portland area on the day of the hijacking, but evidence proved he was actually in Las Vegas. Other candidates for Cooper occasionally appear in the news; as recently as 2010, a woman claimed that her late uncle was Cooper and provided the FBI with a leather strap that she thought still had his fingerprints. None could be recovered from it, and his DNA did not match that found at the scene.

It is likely that, as in the case of killer Jack the Ripper, the real identity of D.B. Cooper will never be revealed. Given the weather conditions that November night in 1971, and the fact that he picked the worst chutes possible, Cooper was in all probability killed minutes after he jumped ether on impact or as a result of drowning in the Columbia River, as none of the money taken was ever put into circulation. To this day it remains of the Northwest's most enduring mysteries.

The Kennedy Assassination

November 22, 1963

As the clock neared 12:30 p.m., the excitement built; what had started minutes earlier as only small groups of people quickly grew until throngs filled the sidewalks. In buildings surrounding the area, hundreds paused at their work to lean out windows or take a break to step outside – it was rare to have the opportunity to see the President of the United States.

On the sixth floor of one of these buildings, a man sat looking down at the waiting crowds. He was also waiting, but for a far different reason. All of his life he had been brushed aside, not because he was weak, which he was, but because everyone in his life had failed to see that he was important. He was determined to show them that they were wrong. He was just minutes away from committing an act that would stun a nation, shock the world, and permanently embed his face and his name in history.

Five hours earlier, the sun had moved over a cloudy and cold Dallas sky which threatened rain. At the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, John F. Kennedy readied himself for a busy day of speeches and glad-handing.

Born into a family of wealth and privilege in 1917, Kennedy had made a name for himself in World War II when his PT boat had been cut in half by a Japanese destroyer. Two men had died, but Kenney had managed to keep the remaining crew alive on two tiny islands for six days before they were rescued. After the death of his older brother Joe a year later, his father thrust all of his political ambitions onto his younger son. Elected to the House of Representatives in 1946, Kennedy had become a rising star in the Democratic Party and won a Senate seat in 1952. All the while he made no secret of his plans to run for the presidency, finally receiving the nomination in 1959. In one of the closest races in history, he had beaten Vice President Richard Nixon by just two-tenths of a percent. The photo finish had caused Kennedy to walk a tight rope throughout his first term, trying to appeal to liberals on social issues, while not appearing too soft on Communism to conservatives. Many decisions such as the future of American involvement in South Vietnam and Civil Rights legislation still needed to be made at the time he made the fateful trip to Dallas, Texas.

The purpose of Kennedy’s visit was twofold. First, Kennedy hoped his presence would smooth out an interparty fight that had broken out between Texas Senator Don Yarborough’s liberal Democrats and Governor John Connally’s more conservative wing. The trip was also meant to serve as a warm up for the presidential campaign of 1964, which was about to swing into full force.

Lee Harvey Oswald was already up that morning; the night before, he had visited his wife and two infant children living several miles away. Dressed in grey slacks and a grey shirt and coat, he walked to the house of Linnie Randall. Randall’s brother had helped Oswald get a job at the nearby Texas School Book Depository three weeks earlier and was his ride to work. As he watched Oswald approach the house, Randall noticed that he was carrying a long object wrapped in paper which bulged out on one end. Oswald quickly put it in the back of the car before she could get a better look at it. Her brother was also curious; when he got out to the car and saw it, he asked, “What’s in the package Lee?” “Curtain rods,” Oswald replied.

Oswald, born in October 1939, had a life markedly different from Kennedy’s. His father had died two months before he was born, and his mother was by most accounts a self-absorbed woman who wanted little to do with her children. Much of Oswald’s early years had been spent moving from one place to another. This lack of stability caused him to turn inward and become distant, and he eventually began reading Communist material. At sixteen, he had joined the Marine Corps and showed skill with a rifle. One Marine would later remember, “In the Marine Corps he was a good shot, slightly above average…and as compared to the average male…throughout the United States, he was an excellent shot.” Still, he had done little else to impress his fellow Marines, who saw him as weak and complaining. Soon Oswald began professing his love of Communism more openly, and found that he hated Marine life. In 1959, he asked for a discharge in order to care for his mother. Upon receiving it, he spent just two days with her before taking a journey to Russia, securing a six day tourist visa, and applying for citizenship. Oleg Kalugin, a major general in the KGB, remembered, “The initial reaction to any foreigner in the old USSR was to view them as CIA or some other intelligence agency.” He continued, “But after some research we found out he was not good enough for the CIA. So we thought we could turn him into a Soviet agent eventually, but he was no good for that, either.” He concluded, “Oswald to us looked like a misfit, an unhappy man, a man who did not know what to do, a man who was looking for something, and he did not know himself what he was looking for.” Yuriy Nosenko, another KGB officer who researched Oswald at the time and later defected, agreed with Kalugin when he said, “The KGB didn’t want Oswald from day one.”

At the end of his visa, Oswald received word that his application for citizenship had been denied and slit his wrists. Rushed to a hospital and then briefly to a psychiatric ward, he was eventually declared a stateless person and allowed to live in Minsk as a metal worker. He married a Russia native in April of 1961, but soon grew disillusioned with the Soviet Union and in June, 1962, he and his new family returned to Dallas.

In January Oswald bought a hand gun, and then in March, a scoped rifle. People around him found him distant and increasing radical in his politics. He began to believe that he would have to kill someone important to show that he himself was important. On the night of April 10, 1963, Edwin Walker, a former Army general and fierce anti-Communist, was sitting at his desk in the family dining room when an explosion came from outside. “I heard a blast and crack right over my head” Walker said. “I thought possibly somebody had thrown a firecracker, that it exploded right over my head through window right behind me.” Oswald had stood just behind the fence a hundred feet away. Walker grabbed a gun and waited for more to happen. Several minutes later, he found that a bullet had gone into the wall an inch from where his head had been moments before. It had been deflected at the last second by some lattice work on the wall. Investigators later found that Oswald had cased the Walker house for a month.

Days after the shooting, Oswald took the family and moved to New Orleans, where he became involved in an organization critical of U.S. policy in Cuba and was arrested for fighting. His views made him somewhat of a local celebrityfor a short time and he gave a few interviews. In September, Oswald asked his wife to help him highjack a plane, an idea she quickly brushed off. On September 25, he drove to Mexico to talk to Cuban officials about moving there, but was turned down. In desperation, he went to the Soviet embassy and asked to return to Russia, but was again turned down.

In October, he returned to Dallas. By now, Oswald and his wife were living separate lives; after years of physical and mental abuse, she had finally moved in with friends. Oswald hated his new job at the Book Depository and found it demeaning. Then on November 19, a coworker shared a newspaper article reporting that Kennedy would be visiting Dallas and showed him on a map that the presidential motorcade would go right past their building.

As Kennedy read the newspaper on the morning of Nov. 22, he found several articles critical of his ongoing policies. One of them accused him of being soft on Communism. Another ran the headline, Wanted for Treason. Disgusted, Kennedy turned to his wife Jackie, who had accompanied him, and said, “We’re really in nut country now.” Dallas was seen as one of the most arch-conservative cities in the country. The month before, Adlai Stevenson had been hit and spit on after giving a speech, and Vice President Lyndon Johnson had once been chased into a hotel.

The Secret Service called to ask if the president wanted to put the bubble top on the roofless Lincoln Centennial limousine he would be riding in, as it was threatening to rain, but Kenneth O’ Donnell, a top aide, said no. Kennedy had mentioned several times that “the people came to see me not the Secret Service.”

Shortly after 8:00 a.m., Kennedy, accompanied by Vice President Johnson and Governor Connally, made his way through the Fort Worth hotel lobby and out onto a waiting platform truck to speak to amassed onlookers. He expressed his belief that America was stronger than at any time in history and focused on the role Fort Worth and Texas had played and would continue to play in the nation’s security and development. By 9:00 a.m., Kennedy and his entourage had moved into the main ballroom of the hotel to breakfast with the Chamber of Commerce. Again Kennedy spoke of the role Texas had played in national defense, but this time went even further, defending America’s role in South Vietnam, Asia and Europe. At 10:00 a.m., the Secret Service again called and said that it was a little rainy in Dallas and asked O'Donnell if he still wanted to leave Kennedy’s limousine open. O’Donnell said that unless it was raining when the president arrived at the Dallas airport, the top would stay off.

At 11:00 a.m., a motorcade left the hotel and Kennedy made his way to Carswell Air Force Base. Air Force One and Air Force Two took off for the half hour flight to Dallas. Landing at Love Field at 11:40 a.m., Kennedy left the plane and, noticing a large crowd lining the fence of the airport, began to shake hands. His trip had already gone better than planned, and this cemented it. Sun had broken through, and his roofless car was ready.

Kennedy’s vehicle would be the second in a seven car convoy. From Love Field, they would drive through downtown Dallas, through Dealey Plaza, past the Book Depository and finally to the Trade Mart building. Altogether, the trip would take about 45 minutes. At that same time that Kennedy was landing at the airport, Oswald was pacing back and forth on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Minutes later, the twelve other men on the floor broke for lunch. Oswald did not join them. He was now alone.

As Kennedy left airport, Jackie was at his side in the back seat. Connally and his wife Nellie sat in front with two Secret Service agents. Small groups of citizens greeted the president outside the airport. A group of small boys had sign that asked him to stop and shake their hands; Kennedy ordered the car to stop and did just that. Moments later, he stopped again to greet a nun, and then allowed the car to continue. As the parade of vehicles moved through the city, more and more people lined the street until they were packed from the edge of the sidewalk to the buildings. At Dealey Plaza, crowds had begun to gather. One of the curious onlookers, Abraham Zapruder, climbed to a vantage point atop a concrete wall with an 8 millimeter motion camera. As the motorcade neared, Secret Service agents and motorcycle patrolmen were told to drop back, as they were going to slow down.

By now, Oswald had pulled his rifle from its hiding place in the parcel he’d brought with him that morning, and had positioned himself in a sniper’s nest made of several boxes next to the window overlooking Dealey Plaza. Several bystanders noticed the man on the sixth floor, but none alerted authorities.

Now the lead car in the motorcade was moving through the plaza. Next, the car carrying Kennedy appeared, moving down Houston Street toward the Book Depository.Sixteen year old Amos Lee Euins, standing opposite the Depository, looked up and wondered why a pipe was sticking out of one of the windows. Then the car turned left onto Elm. “Mr. President, you can’t say that Dallas doesn’t love you.” said Nellie Connally. “No, you certainly can’t.” Kennedy said.

A sharp sound echoed across the plaza. Many thought it was board dropping, fireworks, or a vehicle backfiring. Oswald’s first shot had missed to the right, deflected off the concrete and sprayed onlooker James Tague in the face. At that instant, Hank Norman, on the fifth floor of the Book Depository, heard the sound and thought, “Someone is firing from upstairs right over my head.” Another worker heard the sound of a shell casing hitting the floor. A second shot rang out. The bullet tore into Kennedy’s back between his shoulders, cut through his neck, and hit Governor Connally in the back, exiting out his rib cage, deflecting off his raised right wrist, and burying itself in his left thigh. A second shell casing was heard dropping on the sixth floor. Oswald took extra second for the last shot, then fired. It shattered Kennedy’s skull. Abraham Zapruder had recorded the entire sequence of events on his movie camera. It had all taken just eight seconds.

Now the crowd stampeded in every direction; there was no mistaking what was happening. The president’s limousine sped up as Jackie screamed and a Secret Service agent leapt onto the trunk. Connally, bleeding profusely, shouted, “My God they’ll kill us all!” The driver gunned the engine toward the nearest hospital.

On the sixth floor, Oswald raced through a maze of boxes. Minutes later, he was spotted in the lunch room by a police officer who had run into the building. The policeman, followed by the manager, asked who he was, was told by the manager that Oswald was a worker, and continued upstairs. Oswald quickly walked out of the building and boarded a bus a short distance away. On the bus was his former landlady, who recognized him immediately.  The bus turned back into Dealey Plaza, caught in a snarl of traffic, and a bystander jumped onboard to shout that the president had been shot. Oswald stood up and asked to get off. He walked two more blocks, got a cab and told the driver to go to the neighborhood of Oak Cliff, where he lived.

The line of cars was now racing to Parkland Hospital, and in the press car, UPI reporter Merriman Smith picked up a specially installed phone and said, “Three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas.”  The cars slid to a stop at the hospital, and Johnson rushed inside. Kennedy was alive, but just barely. Calls began going out for all available personnel to report to the emergency room. Stretchers quickly moved Kennedy and Connally into two of the rooms.

Already word was starting to leak out as Smith’s cable flashed across the wires. In CBS’s New York headquarters, men were scrambling to get Walter Cronkite ready for a newsflash. In Washington, NBC’s David Brinkley was fuming as he could not go immediately on the air. Other reporters had now reached the Trade Mart and an announcement was made to the waiting crowd. At the hospital, doctors filled Kennedy’s room and worked furiously, but he was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m.

Vice President Johnson was informed of Kennedy’s death; asked if he wanted to make the announcement, Johnson said no, he wanted to wait until he was out of the hospital. In New York, Cronkite was now on the air reporting that the president had been seriously wounded, but as he was making the announcement, word was already spreading that Kennedy had died. Finally, at 1:33 p.m., Kennedy’s press secretary announced that the president was dead. Cronkite, still on the air, paused, scanned the wires, and announced, “From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.” Biting down hard on his lip, Cronkite fought back tears.

Back at the Book Depository, sheriff’s deputies were on the sixth floor at 1:15 p.m., and in minutes had found the sniper’s nest hidden in the far corner and lifted a palm print that would be matched to Oswald. Minutes later, the rifle was found at the other end of the floor, a round still in the chamber and Oswald’s fingerprint on the trigger. At this point, however, police still did not know who they were searching for.

Oswald, dropped off a few steps from his room, rushed in, startling his current landlady, and was out the door again five minutes later. As he trudged down the road, apparently trying to get to a bus stop that would take him out of town, Dallas Police Officer J.D Tippit spotted him. A description had emerged of the man in the sixth floor window which matched this man walking down the road. Tippit stopped and called for Oswald to halt; Oswald walked to the hood of the police car and Tippit stepped out and circled the car to talk to him. Then Oswald pulled out a pistol and shot Tibbit three times in the chest, paused, stepped closer and stood over the officer, and put a final round in his head. He then ran into a nearby shoe store as police cars screamed down on the murder scene. Sneaking from the shoe store, he ducked into the Texas Theater, but was spotted by the ticket and concession stand clerks. The manager called the police, who announced that a man matching the description of the one at Dealey Plaza was at the theater. Officers converged on the theater building and Oswald fought and tried to pull his gun, but was quickly wrestled to the ground and arrested. By 2:00 p.m., he was charged with the murder of Tippit.

As Oswald was being arrested, Johnson was leaving Dallas. The Secret Service had taken Kennedy’s body from the hospital and placed it on Air Force One. On the plane, Johnson stood with Jackie, still wearing her blood stained suit, while he was administered the oath of office. They landed at Andrews Air Force Base that evening.

Oswald was questioned intensely by the Dallas police, FBI, and Secret Service for two days. He denied any role in either murder, but the eye witnesses, ballistics evidence and fingerprints were overwhelming and the district attorney was sure he could bring a conviction. Oswald’s older brother Robert visited him at this time. “There was no emotion that you could see,” he remembered.

On November 24, Oswald was to be transferred to the Dallas County Jail. He was being escorted through the basement, and large group of reporters was waiting. Among them was Jack Ruby, a local night club owner with some connections to the police and underworld.

Ruby, a fierce Kennedy supporter, had experienced an emotional breakdown upon hearing of Kennedy’s death, and closed his club. On November 24, he had been in his apartment when one of the girls who worked for him called to ask him to transfer money for her. Ruby had gone into the bank, leaving his pet dog in the car, and transferred the money. He then walked one block to the jail, arriving in the basement at 11:20 a.m. Oswald and his escort reached the basement a minute later. As Oswald walked toward the police wagon in front of national news cameras, Ruby suddenly stepped out of the crowd and shot him in the side. Oswald was immediately taken to Parkland Hospital, where he died two hours later.

In 1964, a Dallas jury found Jack Ruby guilty of murder and sentenced him to death.

Over the years, many people have claimed Ruby was part of larger plot. However, those who knew him doubt it. Hugh Aynesworth, an entertainment reporter, said, “Jack Ruby was a wannabe never was, but it’s really a joke if you think Jack Ruby could be involved in a conspiracy. This is a man who if he knew anything he would tell someone within one block. He wanted to be important.” This view was supported by Tony Zoppi, another reporter who knew Ruby, who said, “It is so ludicrous to believe Ruby was part of the mob.” He continued, “The conspiracy theorists want to believe all but those who really knew him.” He added, “People in Dallas, in those circles, knew Ruby was a snitch. The word on the street was you couldn’t trust him because he was telling the police everything.” Even the assistant district attorney who convicted him, said, “We knew who the criminals were in Dallas back then, to say Ruby was part of organized crime is just [hogwash].”

Initially, Ruby claimed that he had attacked alone. Later he claimed to be part of vast conspiracy that went all the way to the top. While many people use this to point to a plot, the truth is Ruby had always had a volatile temper and was known to be a little crazy. His brother and sister were shocked at his mental decline by the mid 1960s. He often thought he heard screaming when there was only silence, and even claimed he had killed Kennedy. Ruby died of cancer in 1967. He claimed to have been injected with it. 

Both Kennedy and Oswald were buried on the same day. In the months that followed, thousands insisted there had been a plot. Johnson wanted to put an end to the rumors and tapped Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren to lead a commission on the assassination, but asked it to be done before he faced the presidential election. After ten months, the Warren Commission found that Oswald had acted alone. Still, many doubted the findings and a second commission, the House on Assassinations, was created in 1976 to reexamine the entire case. For three years, they interviewed witnesses and reviewed evidence. Finally, they were ready to release their report that would state that the original findings had been correct. Then audio experts came forward and claimed they had evidence of four shots on a forgotten recording from a police motorcycle present at the scene. The committee concluded there was the possibility of a conspiracy. However, this evidence, their cornerstone, was later proven to be inaccurate as the policeman who had the radio proved he had been too far away to hear the shots.

In the end, despite all the rumors, stories, witnesses, books, and movies, there has never been any concrete evidence of a conspiracy. Robert Oswald may have put it best: “After all these years, I think more than anything else, if I had the opportunity, had the facts that said Lee was innocent, I would be out there shouting it loud and clear.” He concluded, “It is my belief, my conviction that no one but Lee was involved. Period.”  

The Armistice Day Storm

As 1940 drew to close, the news was almost universally depressing. The Nazis had roared into France on May 10, and entered Paris just over a month later. Belgium,Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Holland and Norway had also fallen. Meanwhile, Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who had already taken Ethiopia, looked to continue to recreate the Roman Empire, first by invading Egypt in September, and then Greece on October 28. Only England, under the leadership of new Prime Minister Winston Churchill, had managed to throw back the German air force in savage air battles over Britain. In Asia, Japan continued its march through China and moved south into Indochina, occupying the city of Hanoi in September. That same busy month, Japan, Italy and Germany had agreed to be military allies and now stood against the world as the major Axis powers.

While all this was bad, Minnesotans on Monday, November 11, 1940, still had a few reasons to feel good. The University of Minnesota’s Golden Gophers football team had just beaten Michigan and seemed on their way to another national title. Democrats in the state were still gloating over the unprecedented third term President Franklin Roosevelt had just won. But most of all, residents looked forward to the Armistice Day celebrations to be held honoring Great War veterans. Thousands awoke that morning and checked their newspapers and radios for the day’s weather reports. A light rain continued to fall from the day before and there had been predictions of “snow flurries.” There was no real worry as temperatures for the morning were in the 50s. Longtime residents had lived through many cold winters which were almost a state trademark. What was not mentioned in the weather reports was that the U.S. Weather Bureau in Chicago, which was responsible for predicting weather in five states including Minnesota, had closed its doors for the night after making these predictions, and did not follow the low pressure system which moved up through Texas and Oklahoma overnight. This new system would bring more than a few flurries.

Minnesota had been blessed with an unusually mild winter. Only 22.91 inches of snow had fallen for the entire year, and temperatures had, for the most part, managed to stay in the 40s. Even so, many welcomed the chance for snow. Hundreds of men who wanted to enjoy duck hunting season were glad the weather forced their prey to begin their natural migration south, offering plenty of targets. They got in their cars and trucks and headed to the Mississippi River and the state’s many lakes. Most other residents went to work for the day. The weather was warm, so there was no need to bring heavy coats.

It was in this early atmosphere that Ruth Kincaid, wearing only a light coat, gloves and hat, along with regular shoes, headed to work in Minneapolis. The rain continued, but as the hours passed, temperatures began to plunge and what fell from the sky was no longer watery mist. “We began to see people coming in covered with snow,” she recalled. By 10:00 a.m., “We could see outside that the snow was getting heavier, and by noon it was blowing almost parallel to the street and piling up at an amazing rate.”  Winds had indeed picked up, reaching a steady 32 miles an hour with gusts as high as 60. Soon word reached Kincaid that the store would close at 3:00 p.m. Leaving work, she remembered, “I walked into a much changed world. Huge drifts of snow lined the streets and sidewalks were buried under many feet of wet packed snow.” Several automobiles were abandoned on the side of the road, but so far the street remained open. Kincaid decided to go to a nearby restaurant and wait for a trolley to pick her up. Hours passed, but the car never arrived at her stop. Finally, two other trolleys were spotted at stops a short distance away. Kincaid and others climbed aboard, but the cars proved no match for rails, which had frozen solid and were buried under layers of snow. After a short time, the motor stopped. But luck was with the passengers. After a chilly hour stranded on the immovable trolley, a city bus pulled up alongside and welcomed the grateful passengers. By 9:00 p.m., Kincaid was home. But the snow was still falling.             

Kermit Carlson was a 26 year old machinist’s apprentice working in Minneapolis. He remembered, “The weather was getting bad when I left for work that afternoon, but I didn’t think much of it.” As it got worse, Carlson heard that the upstairs cafeteria in his building was offering free sandwiches and coffee for those stuck in the growing downtown traffic jam. Still, he continued to work until his shift ended at midnight. Finding the streets impassible for vehicles, Carson said, “I decided to walk home, which was approximately two miles.”  However, as Carlson made his way on foot through the storm, he “found it necessary to go through drifts and to zigzag into doorways of closed shops.” After considerable time in the freezing wind, Carlson was growing extremely tired but still believed he could make it, so he pressed on. “When I reached Cedar [Street] there was a drift so high it seemed to be only four or five feet from the trolley wires,” he remembers. He was within two blocks of his home when he became disorientated and had an overpowering urge to go to sleep, the initial stages of hypothermia. Carlson lay down in the middle of the street and was about to drift off when he noticed a house that looked familiar. With his last ounce of strength, he trudged to the porch, rang the doorbell, pounded on the door and collapsed. He felt himself being pulled inside, and discovered he’d reached the home of his neighbors. His friends gave him coffee and his parents walked the block from his home to get him. “If I had not been heard by those people that night, it might have been the end of me.” Carson said.      

Bob Enersen had a similar experience. Enersen was scheduled to work until 4:00 a.m. on the morning of the Nov. 12 at Honeywell in Minneapolis.  At first all went well. Enersen had heard about the bad weather throughout the day, and grabbed heavy clothing, including mittens, hat and thick scarf. As he drove into work, Enersen noticed a number of cars and even a trolley abandoned along the road, but he managed to make it to work without incident. Once at work, he and other men in his building were told that due to the weather, the company would allow them to sleep there for the night. Enersen decided instead to head home early. As he drove back, trouble began. A policeman pulled him over and told him that there was no way he would make it home in a car with the current road conditions. Enersen pushed on, but within moments he was stuck and had to abandon his car. As the wind roared around him, he found himself crawling on all fours over piles of snow and slick ice in the relentless blizzard. “My legs felt like lead. There was ice around my nose and mouth and my breath came in quick gasps,” Enersen remembered. With still blocks to go, “I actually thought about how nice it would be to lie in the soft snow and go to sleep.” But, “the thought of my beautiful wife and two-year old son depending on me kept me from ever considering it.” After six slow, agonizing blocks of struggle through impossible freezing conditions, Enersen finally made it safely home at 3:00 a.m.

As the storm ranged through the afternoon and into the night, many people decided to stay where they were. Norma Burton remembers her mother taking her and her younger brother to a hotel to stay the night; her father rode out the storm in a plumbing store. John Heryla made it to his job at the Great Northern Pacific Railroad, only to discover that almost no one else was there. As a result, he worked for the next 32 hours with only a brief stop, just to keep all of the equipment moving. Others who could not make it home were taken in by friends or even strangers. One woman remembered how her boyfriend became stranded at her house and had to sleep in the baby’s crib. Mildred Foss, who worked in the Hennepin County Courthouse, found a bed downstairs in the jail hospital. Still, others somehow managed to drive home. Betty Johnson said her stepfather, who had one good eye, drove from Minneapolis to Shakopee, a distance of twenty miles, with one hand on the wheel and the other holding open the car door in order to see outside. Even some trolley drivers reached their destinations, albeit several hours late.

In some locations, a party atmosphere prevailed. Olive Earley, who worked at Dayton’s Department Store, remembered that the management got rooms for the employees at a nearby hotel and allowed the customers and passersby to stay in the store. At the hotel, the employees found a room full of food and drink. “It was a glorious, hilarious night for everyone,” Early recalled. Robert Hayes, at a fraternity at the University of Minnesota, said years later, “Beer and booze had magically come out of the woodwork and there was plenty of food in the kitchen.” His fraternity brothers felt so good that Hayes and five others piled into a car and drove to a packed bar. They came home to an overcrowded fraternity house. By the early evening, temperatures were in the single digits, all car traffic in Minneapolis and St. Paul had stopped. Vehicles were stranded for miles around, including all major highways. Snowdrifts covered storefronts, and cars had been transformed into huge white mounds. Power and telephone lines, which had been straining under the weight of the accruing snow all day finally snapped, causing power outages across the state.

But as bad as things were in the cities, they were even worse for people who lived outside of them. At many farms without power, people burned firewood around the clock. When wood ran out, they burned boxes. Cows and turkeys not corralled by farmers began dropping dead from the cold, and roosters froze perched on fence posts. A conductor on a train to Minneapolis had asked to stop the train in the town of Watkins in the central part of Minnesota and was told he could, since no other trains were coming. Dorothy Taylor, who was onboard the train, said that suddenly “I was thrown from my seat and piece of luggage from the overhead rack hit me on the head.” A freight train had collided with the Minneapolis train, head on. Many residents in the town, who would still remember the sound of the collision decades later, formed a line and got the passengers off. Taylor was badly shaken up, but otherwise unharmed. Amazingly, no one was killed.   

Hunters in the rural forests were the most unfortunate. Many, who had left that morning as well as the day before thought the warm weather would hold through weekend and were wearing only light clothing. One was E.A Anderson, who, along with three others, had gone duck hunting on the Vermillion River in northern Minnesota on the morning of November 10. Soon after they awoke on the morning of the storm, Anderson and another man found the river frozen, making it almost impossible to use their boat. The four decided to pack up and leave. At first only a few flakes fell, but soon the dense flakes made it hard to see. The men had to stop often and push the car through the slippery snow. They reached a small resort in Elephant Lake six miles from their camp at 4:00 p.m., but there was no phone and they didn’t want their families to worry, so they continued on. After more trouble navigating the buildup of snow on the roads, they left the car, their packs and rifles, and started to walk home, taking only their knives. “The howling wind drove biting snow into our faces. Walking became extremely difficult because we were battling drifts waist deep interspersed with stretches of road blown clear by the fierce wind.” Anderson said. The four tried several times to make a fire, but wind blew so hard that the weakened flames failed to give off enough heat to make a difference. The men were still walking at 4:00 a.m. when Anderson collapsed. Two men repeatedly slapped him to revive him, but it did nothing. “I was beyond resuscitation and even when angry and determined, my body refused to respond. I simply caved in again.” The men built another fire next to a large fallen tree, which blocked the wind and allowed the fire to blaze enough for warmth. Anderson and other man fell asleep while a third spent the night keeping the fire going. The fourth man, named Art, decided he needed to get help and began to crawl toward a Civil Conservation Corps (CCC) work camp two miles away. At 10:00 a.m. the next morning, Anderson heard footsteps. Art had made it to the camp, and several workers who happened to know them, had gone out to find them.  Another duck hunter named Neil Beebe found himself stuck on a tiny island on Blackduck Lake. Beebe recalled, “Hundreds of ducks tried to land on the slush, and with the spray from the waves and the snow their feathers froze, dispelling any chance of flight again.”  Stranded, he and his brother in law survived the night by eating one of the ducks. On Tuesday, November 12, ice on the lake cleared just enough to allow the men to make it to the shore. There they found a cabin owner who gave them food and coffee, and they got home later that night. It would be thirteen days before they could bring their supplies out. All across the state, shocked hunters came stumbling out of the forests, seeking shelter at nearby farms and cabins. One hunter survived for three days in a Packard. Still, for all they had been through, these were the lucky ones.

Snow finally stopped falling on the morning of November 12 as the storm system made its way east. In the coming days, as search parties went into the woods, bodies began to be discovered. A picture soon reached the papers of two hunters who were found frozen still wearing their gear. Two others were found when the snow was removed from the top of their car.  W.P. Arndt remembered two brothers who stopped in his town and later became lost and were found dead the next morning. In all, sixteen inches of snow fell in the Twin Cities area during the day, and an additional twelve fell in the countryside. Nearly every part of the state had been hit. 49 people had died; half were hunters who had been unable to find their way back to shelter. Roughly another hundred died in the Great Lakes region. For the next three days, thousands of cars remained stuck on the country roads, city streets, and highways. When they were finally removed, car repair shops were overwhelmed.  A million turkeys were dead, and thousands of other livestock were frozen as well. One man remembered that on a farm where he lived, “The women canned 200 jars of breasts and thighs in two-quart jars.” Herbert Kortz, who worked at Hide and Tallow, a company that picked up meat scraps, said in the days after the storm, “turkey growers picked up their frozen turkeys and brought them to Minneapolis to sell but were stopped by the health department. Then they brought them to our rendering plant where we had at least 500,000 dead turkeys.” The turkey industry had lost as much as $1,000,000 which would be $16,000,000 today. While Kortz and others disposed of the dead livestock, city and town residents dug their way to neighborhood buildings. One man would later remember how his friends a dug a path for three miles to get cigarettes. Others dug out department stores and houses. Then 17 year old Don Robinette recalled, “At the time I was living in Isle, a rural town in the northern part of the state.” He continued, “After the storm, the roads in town were completely impassible for weeks afterwards. The state had to bring in rotary plows from outside using flatbed train cars to finally clear them.” Later, it was estimated that the storm had caused $6 million in damage as it went through the Midwest and to the East Coast. Just to clear the roads would cost Minnesotans half a million dollars.  

In the wake of the storm, Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen wrote angrily to several government officials complaining of the inadequate warning from the Chicago Weather Bureau. As a result, a forecasting center was set up in Minneapolis and given enough staff to run around the clock and technology was vastly improved. Still, the storm was forever imprinted on the minds of those who lived through it. Decades later, people could still remember where they were when it happened and would always hold it up as one of the worst natural disasters in the state’s history.  

Onion-Style Humor

NJ Gov. Chris Christi “Upset” cast of Jersey Shore still standing after Hurricane Irene

New Jersey - Augus 28, 2011 - In a morning press conference on Hurricane Irene, which went over the Jersey coast over the weekend, Governor Chris Christi (R) said he wanted to assure residents that he will continue his efforts to get rid of the cast of Jersey Shore. “I know that everyone is upset. I‘m upset. I really thought we had a good shot at this.”

In the hours leading up to the storm, Christi had addressed New Jersey residents, “I want everyone to know that I have been fielding calls all day. The full resources of the state’s National Guard are at my disposal; police have been informed and the neighbors are watching. We are to making sure the cast of Jersey shore stays on that beach.” Later, Christi added, “The National Guard is outside the house now, and I have given them shoot to kill orders if those kids leave that house.”

Neighbor Al D'agostino explained, “Initially, some of us tried to enlighten [the cast members] about what was going on and get them to evacuate, but Snooki was so wasted that she kept hitting on anything that moved and The Situation just kept showing off his abs, even after we begged him to stop.” He added, “We finally decided we didn’t care if they were washed away.”

Troops watched the house all day, and the cast members stayed put. One soldier said “It was raining and the water was coming in and they didn’t seem to care, from what we could see, they just kept partying.” The National Guard entered the house this morning to waste-deep water and the sight of cast members passed out on a floating couch and pool chairs. Another Soldier said of the scene, “I drank a lot as a kid, but dear God, never this much.”

Upon hearing the news of the rowdy group’s survival, Christi and his wife were said to have burst into tears. “Buildings can be repaired, power lines fixed. But nothing seems to alleviate this problem. We will continue to look for solutions and hopefully find way to make them depart our fair state; but it’s going to be hard not to lose hope.”

When The Situation was finally awakened, he gazed blearily at the still cloudy sky and said, “Man we need to start working on our tans.”