City Makes a Date With JFK History

The old underground garage is filled with SUVs and Camrys, late-model cars belonging to the lawyers and judges who work in the courtrooms above.

But on a November morning in 1963, the parking bay -- then under the dominion of the Dallas Police Department -- was packed with reporters jostling for position to glimpse President Kennedy’s suspected assassin.

As Lee Harvey Oswald, who was handcuffed to a police detective, stepped into the glare of television lights, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and fired a single bullet into Oswald’s stomach. It was a moment frozen in time with the click of a camera, one of the most unforgettable images of the 20th century.

Now this site -- long closed to the public -- may become a Dallas tourist destination as part of a plan to revitalize a rundown section of downtown.

“It’s a part of history and should be preserved,” said Assistant City Manager Ryan Evans. “A lot of people have expressed interest in seeing it. If opening it to the public increases pedestrian traffic to a part of downtown that sorely needs redeveloping, we’ll do it.”

The city that once tried to forget its connection to the assassination of a president has long since accepted that it cannot.

In 1970, Dallas erected a Kennedy memorial, a white cenotaph designed by architect Philip Johnson. In 1989, the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza -- a somber look at Kennedy’s death and legacy -- opened in the former Texas School Book Depository, where a sniper’s nest and rifle were found after Kennedy was shot. The Texas Theater, where Oswald was arrested, is being refurbished.

The infamous garage under the old police station would join those and other assassination-related sites, which draw thousands of visitors to Dallas each year, Evans said.

The idea became possible after the Police Department moved to a new building about a year ago. Before that, “it wouldn’t have been safe to let the public wander around down there,” Evans said. The Dallas Municipal Building now is vacant, except for some Municipal Court operations.

Because plans for the entire building must be drawn before the garage can be opened to tourists, Evans said, the project is at least three years away. The fifth-floor jail cell that held Oswald -- and later Ruby -- could also be opened to the public some day.

Mahesh Shah, the building’s climate control operator, sometimes takes visitors to see the old fifth-floor cellblock. It is empty and dark, but when Shah flips on the lights, it is easy to imagine the scene 41 years ago.

“Nothing has changed in there,” said Shah, 44, his voice echoing in the hallway. The institutional green bars on what was Oswald’s 12-by-12-foot cell, in a high-security area apart from the general prison population, are badly chipped. There are four bunk beds inside -- the upper two made of metal, the lower two of wood -- and a stainless steel sink, toilet and water fountain. Bars that cross overhead form a cage-like ceiling.

On the third floor, Shah unlocked the door to what was the detectives’ room, now a jumble of scratched metal desks stacked on worn green linoleum. This is where Oswald was questioned by authorities.

Surveying the room, Shah recalled that as a third-grader in India, a teacher asked students to write about their heroes. Shah said his subject was Kennedy. “What he said about America and freedom and what you can do for your country, that stayed with me,” said Shah, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1991. Now he is an unofficial custodian of part of Kennedy history, and he takes the responsibility seriously.

Back in the garage, Shah ducked into his office to grab a copy of the famous photo of Ruby shooting Oswald. Using it as a guide, he pointed to a spot where two glass doors now stand. That was where police escorts entered the garage to transport Oswald to the larger Dallas County Jail. Then he pointed to where Oswald was when Ruby fired. “Sometimes now when the garage doors open, I see tourists waiting with their cameras to take a picture of the inside of here,” Shah said. “It’s just something people want to see for themselves.”

That’s as good an explanation as any for the enduring fascination with the Kennedy assassination, said Jim Leavelle, the square-jawed detective who was handcuffed to Oswald that day in the garage. Leavelle, now 84, is perplexed by the continuing interest, but is gracious about recounting the events of that day -- down to the conversation he had with Oswald as he snapped on the handcuffs.

“I said: ‘Lee, if anybody shoots at you, I hope they’re as good a shot as you are,’ meaning I didn’t want them to hit me,” he said. Oswald “kind of laughed, the only time I saw him smile when he was in custody. He said: ‘Aw, ain’t nobody going to shoot at me. You’re just being overdramatic.’ ”

Leavelle said that when he saw Ruby stepping out from the crowd, he knew what was happening: “I thought: ‘He’s going to be shot, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ ” Leavelle said that he tried to jerk Oswald out of the line of fire, but there wasn’t time. “Ruby took two small steps and -- pow,” he said. “Oswald groaned and crumpled to the floor.” Leavelle shoved Ruby back and as another officer grabbed for the .38-caliber gun, Leavelle saw Ruby’s fingers twitching on the trigger. “He was trying to get another shot off,” he said.

Leavelle rode in the ambulance with Oswald to Parkland Memorial Hospital -- where two days earlier the president had been pronounced dead. In the trauma room, the detective told the doctors that he wanted the bullet. “They pinched the skin and the bullet just popped out in a tray, like a grape seed,” he said. Leavelle said he gave a nurse his pocket knife and asked her to scratch her initial into the bullet for identification purposes.

The next day, Nov. 25, 1963, Leavelle escorted Ruby from the police holding cell to the garage for an uneventful trip to county jail. “This time, we didn’t alert the media,” he said. Ruby, afraid of being shot, “crawled in the backseat on his hands and knees and got down on the floorboard,” Leavelle said. “That’s where he wanted to stay. I had my feet on his back as we drove to the jail.”

Retired and living in the Dallas suburb of Garland, Leavelle said he received three to four letters a week about the assassination. He sets aside Fridays to answer every one.

“I think the city should have opened the garage to the public a long time ago,” he said. “For whatever reason, people want to see it. If you asked me in 1963, I would have said it would all blow over by 1964,” he said. “Now, I don’t think it will ever be over with.”