![]() ![]() It is safe to say, however, that practically every first‐time visitor to Dallas does at least that.įor five or six years I couldn't pass by without experiencing the frustration of personal loss. The Texas State Travel and Information Bureau says that approximately two million people visit Dal las every year, but it does not know how many make a point of passing the plaza and looking across to the Depository. A very conservative guess would be at least 50 a day.” A spokes man for the Dallas Police Department was unable to give figures on how many actually stop to read the plaque or meditate, but said, “There are always peo ple there, especially on weekends and during the sum mer. Though there is no official count, a business woman in the neighborhood estimates that as many as 500 people a day visit the assassination point. One day he noticed her crying, something he hadn't seen before. A friend of mine, a Dallas banker, made daily lunch‐hour visits to the assassination site for months after publication of the Warren Report (he read all 27 volumes), checking measurements and preparing private calculations which led nowhere but made him feel better for the effort. Of course, different people weep for different reasons. Occasionally some of the visitors pray, singly or in groups, kneeling or standing self‐consciously with their eyes cast down, and those who are easily moved to tears shed them for a lost leader-or for something his memory evokes. (A small sign indicates that fresh flowers will be removed when they wilt and that plastic flowers will be taken away after two weeks.) On occasions like the anniversary of the murder, visitors place dozens of wreaths near the plaque solemn private ceremonies. Invariably they point to the sixth‐floor window where Oswald stood and inevitably they take snapshots of a tersely worded bronze memorial plaque set in an ornamental wall in Dealey Plaza, across the street from the De pository. They keep coming-often whole families traveling hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles from other states or nations to view for themselves the site of the most shocking single event of our time, the murder of President John F. In the weeks and months and years since that fateful moment, a steady procession of visitors has been drawn to the building and the area that surrounds it-official and unofficial investigators, historians, Boy Scout troops, witch hunters, pilgrims and, for the most part, ordinary Americans. In my mind, whenever I pass it, the Hertz clock flashes 12:30, the minute that Lee Harvey Oswald squeezed off his first shot. It is the infamous Texas School Book Depository. This one has scarcely changed at all over the half century during which it served as a warehouse first for groceries, then farm machinery and later school books. It is a building ordinary that its near replica can be found alongside the railroad yard of any major city. ![]() ![]() DALLAS-Whenever I approach this city from the west and reach the point where the Dallas‐ Fort Worth Turnpike spills into the Stemmons Freeway, my eyes automatically fasten on a seven‐story red brick warehouse with a clock adver tising Hertz rental cars on top. ![]()
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