Flashback : Dallas

by Paula Bosse

What more can be said about this subject? The city of Dallas and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy will, sadly, be tied together forever. I wonder how the city’s evolution would have been different had this horrible event never happened?

*

A few related Flashback Dallas posts from the past decade:

• “Kennedy Memorial and the County Courthouses — Early 1970s” (2020)
• “Jack Ruby, Boxing Fan — 1958” (2019)
• “The JFK Assassination and Television Firsts — 1963” (2018)
• “Newly Discovered Footage of Jack Ruby — 1960” (2017)
• “Aerial View of the JFK Memorial — 1970” (2017)
• “November 22, 1963: Will Fritz and the JFK Investigation” (2016)
• “The Official Government Reenactment of the Kennedy Assassination — Nov. 27, 1963” (2016)
• “HR Meeting at the Carousel Club” (2015)
• “The First JFK Assassination Reenactment — 1963” (2015)
• “Dealey Plaza, From Above — 1960s” (2015)
• “The Southern Rock Island Plow Company” (AKA the Texas Schoolbook Depository) (2015)
• “Old Red Goes Hollywood (sort of…) — 1964” (2014) (includes a link to “The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald,” the full made-in-Dallas film by Larry Buchanan)
• “JFK Aftermath: Chaos at the City Desk — 1963” (2014)
• “JFK’s ‘Last Hour In Dallas’ — 1963” (2014)
• “The Sexton Foods Building and the Former Life of the School Book Depository” (2014)
• “Nardis of Dallas: The Fashion Connection Between ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ and the Kennedy Assassination” (2014)
• “Dear JFK: Welcome to Big “D” — Love, DP” (2014)
• “Where to Put That JFK Memorial? — 1964” (2014)

***

Sources & Notes

Postcard sent to me many years ago by someone known only as “Amy from Dallas.” (Thank you, Amy!) The text from the back of the card is here.

This postcard — which carries the title “President Kennedy’s Assassination and Memorial Site, Dallas, Texas/Collector’s Photo,” ©1964, Joe C. Melton, Publisher, Dallas — comes in more than one version. A later version has the same image, but with a couple of exceptions: the later version has an inset of a Kennedy half-dollar coin in the upper left corner, and the three guys standing behind the “Men of St. Bernard’s Church” memorial wreath have been completely erased from postcard history (as have the words “Men of St. Bernard’s Church”). Unless I’ve stumbled upon new conspiracy fodder, the photographer probably failed to get the men to sign a release form.

Side note: regarding that wreath, this sentence appeared in a Dallas Morning News article the day after Oswald was killed (“‘Oh, My God — He’s Dead'” by Joe Thornton, Nov. 25, 1963): “People took pictures of their families standing behind the white-flowered cross erected in memory of President Kennedy by the Men of St. Bernard’s Catholic Church.” St. Bernard of Clairvaux Catholic Church is in East Dallas, at 1404 Old Gate Lane.

*

Copyright © 2023 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.