WASHINGTON — In the six a long time since President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, the United States has had 11 presidents. If any of them visited Dealey Plaza and even drove via the triple underpass, there’s no document of it.
For no matter causes — be it superstition or coincidence — each presidential motorcade since Nov. 22, 1963, has steered away from the location the place a sniper ended Kennedy’s life.
Presidents have made dozens of visits to Dallas prior to now 60 years. Many acquired very near Dealey Plaza with out driving via it.
“It seems to me it would have gotten some attention,” mentioned Dallas historian Darwin Payne.
No such headlines exist.
Gerald Ford led a parade in an open-top automotive barely a quarter-mile away, flanked by nervous Secret Service brokers.
Barack Obama got here inside 1,000 toes, heading for the Omni resort the evening earlier than the George W. Bush library opened in 2013. That motorcade exited the freeway onto Commerce St. however turned proper and circled across the Hyatt Reunion quite than persevering with via the triple underpass.
Bill Clinton watched a basketball recreation at Reunion Arena, and Ronald Reagan addressed a prayer breakfast there. Donald Trump held a marketing campaign rally on the American Airlines Center. He, Reagan and others appeared on the Municipal Auditorium close to City Hall.
There’s no document of any of them driving previous the assassination website.
“I don’t know of any taboo per se unless it’s among the presidents themselves,” Payne mentioned. But he’s almost sure “no president has gone through Dealey Plaza since then.”
The Secret Service and Dallas Police Department didn’t reply to inquiries about any post-1963 insurance policies associated to dignitaries and Dealey Plaza.
No thanks
Kennedy’s successors haven’t lacked the chance to go to.
Just in time for the thirtieth anniversary on Nov. 22, 1993, Dealey Plaza was designated a nationwide historic landmark.
Dallas officers invited the present president to attend the dedication.
Instead, Clinton held a White House information convention with the president of the Philippines and brokered an finish to a strike by American Airlines flight attendants.
Clinton stayed a number of occasions on the Mansion on Turtle Creek, about 2 miles from Dealey Plaza.
On Oct. 16, 1995, he addressed a $1,000-a-plate luncheon solely a mile away at Le Meridien resort, the place the Dallas Marriott Downtown now stands.
In March 1994, he served as greatest man at his brother Roger Clinton’s marriage ceremony on the Dallas Arboretum.
Even the three Texans who served as commander in chief since Kennedy — Lyndon Johnson, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, a present Dallas resident — apparently saved away from Dealey Plaza.
Johnson’s solely go to
Johnson, Kennedy’s vp, wouldn’t set foot in Dallas for over 4 years after taking the oath of workplace aboard Air Force One at Love Field after the taking pictures.
It was Feb. 27, 1968.
The secrecy was extraordinary.
The Secret Service gave Dallas police just one hour’s discover earlier than LBJ’s 707 landed at Love Field.
“The man’s coming,” the agent-in-charge in Dallas, Forrest V. Sorrels, instructed police Chief Charles Batchelor, The Dallas Morning News reported the subsequent day.
Johnson left his Hill Country ranch early that morning for a shock look earlier than 7,000 delegates to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association convention. Thousands of attendees, caught unawares, missed the speech.
The five-car motorcade sped previous Dealey Plaza at 50 mph, exiting at Cadiz Street.
“On his Stemmons Freeway route from Love Field to Memorial Auditorium and back, President Johnson passed within easy sight of the Texas School Book Depository Building,” The News’ Kent Biffle reported.
That is to say, Johnson didn’t drive via the triple underpass.
Unbroken precedent
The precedent hasn’t been damaged.
President Joe Biden campaigned in Dallas forward of the Texas main in 2020. Nearly three years into his time period, he has but to go to.
The others since Kennedy got here dozens of occasions. Dallas is a significant donor base for each events and hosts enormous conventions of the type presidents like to handle.
In July 2016, after a gunman ambushed 5 Dallas officers at a peaceable downtown protest march, Obama addressed the memorial service on the Meyerson Symphony Center.
That’s a couple of mile from Dealey Plaza.
Lots of presidents have come that shut and no nearer.
‘Disturbing … idea’
Reagan spent three days in Dallas in August 1984 throughout the Republican National Convention.
He shuttled between the Loews Anatole, the place he spent three nights, and the Dallas Convention Center, the place he accepted the GOP nomination for a second time period on Aug. 23. He spoke at a prayer breakfast at Reunion Arena that morning.
News media from all over the world lined the conference. Reporters spent copious time on the assassination website interviewing GOP delegates and native residents.
If Reagan had gone to Dealey Plaza or via it, somebody would have seen.
Both the Anatole and the conference heart have hosted quite a few presidential visits.
Jimmy Carter addressed the National Association of Broadcasters on the conference heart on March 25, 1979.
Trump spoke there to the National Rifle Association on May 4, 2018. His motorcades to and from the venue didn’t cross via Dealey Plaza, both, mentioned Tristan Hallman, who rode in a press van behind the president’s armored automobile that day as a reporter for The News.
“I am pretty sure I would have remembered something like that,” mentioned Hallman, former chief of workers to Mayor Eric Johnson. “There is something disturbing about even the idea of driving in a presidential motorcade right past the old Texas Schoolbook Depository building and that ghoulish X on the street.”
Trump was a couple of mile away throughout two different visits: a rally of 20,000 folks Oct. 17, 2019, at American Airlines Center and a $4 million fundraising cease on the Belo Mansion on Oct. 25, 2017, within the Arts District downtown.
Kennedy’s sister
Many assume that Kennedy’s kin have prevented Dealey Plaza, however his sister Eunice Shriver stopped by solely 9 years later.
It was Oct. 25, 1972. She’d simply attended a marketing campaign rally in Denton with husband Sargent Shriver, the Democratic nominee for vp.
“Dallas has been very generous,” she instructed a throng of reporters, affirming she held no animosity towards the town. She mentioned she appreciated “the support the people of Dallas have shown for my brother.”
Ford’s open-air parade
Gerald Ford made one of the vital exceptional presidential visits when he led the State Fair of Texas parade in an open-top limousine — as unprotected by bulletproof glass as Kennedy had been.
Thousands of individuals lined downtown streets 10-deep that Saturday morning, Oct. 9, 1976.
The route took Ford inside a quarter-mile of Dealey Plaza because it turned from Griffin onto Commerce.
The president’s media staff used footage in a 4-minute marketing campaign advert meant for prime time TV.
“When a limousine can parade openly through the streets of Dallas, after a decade of tension, the people and their president are back together again,” the narrator says.
Ford’s marketing campaign supervisor, Texan James Baker, rejected the advert as “nutty,” historian Michael Beschloss recounted years later, and it by no means aired.
The subsequent day, Ford attended a service at First Baptist Church, the place the Rev. W.A. Criswell gave him a lift.
Ford had by then spent an excessive amount of time in Dallas. That April, he’d crisscrossed the state making an attempt to fend off Reagan within the primaries, stumping in Dallas throughout 4 days.
That included April 9, when Ford dedicated one of the vital well-known fake pas in marketing campaign historical past throughout a tour of the Alamo in San Antonio: He tried to eat a tamale with out eradicating the corn husk.
In Dallas that afternoon, he gave an financial speech to 1,700 folks on the Fairmont Hotel downtown and mingled with “250 business leaders and their wives” at a $250-per-person fundraising reception, as The News reported.
That evening, he headed to Arlington and threw out the primary pitch on the Texas Rangers’ residence opener. He left early to handle the Irving Bar Association; Dallas Cowboys Ed “Too Tall” Jones and Harvey Martin offered a staff jersey.
Then it was again to the Fairmont for the evening.
His presidential diary doesn’t point out the route of any of the motorcades. But media masking the journey discovered nothing newsworthy sufficient to say.
Ford was again three weeks later for a rally at NorthPark Center and a speech to the Dallas Chamber of Commerce — all removed from downtown alongside North Central Expressway.
Typical visits and coincidences
That’s typical of many presidential visits — nowhere close to Dealey Plaza.
On Oct. 28, 1970, as an example, Richard Nixon headlined a rally at Dallas Market Hall for Houston congressman George Bush, a future president who was about to lose a U.S. Senate race.
The News’ Washington Bureau chief on the time, Robert Baskin, flew in with Nixon from Florida that day and was within the motorcades. He’d been in Kennedy’s motorcade, too, and will surely have talked about one other presidential drive via Dealey Plaza.
In considered one of historical past’s nice coincidences, Nixon was in Dallas the day of Kennedy’s assassination. As a lawyer for Pepsi-Cola Corp., the previous vp had attended a conference of the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages.
He flew out of Love Field an hour earlier than Air Force One arrived from Fort Worth.
©2023 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”