Original Itinerary For JFK's Texas Trip --- Houston To Fort Worth To Dallas To San Antonio To Austin

[David Von Pein]

Here's an intriguing tidbit of information regarding JFK's 1963 trip to Texas that I found today at the Sixth Floor Museum website:

-----------------

"Interestingly, the visit to San Antonio was initially scheduled to be after Dallas on Friday, November 22. Trip planning documents at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston outline a different proposed itinerary (dated November 7, 1963) in which the Kennedys began their trip to Texas in the late afternoon of November 21 with a 4:00PM arrival in Houston and an overnight stay in Houston's Rice Hotel. Friday, November 22, would have then started with an early morning flight to Fort Worth for a Chamber of Commerce breakfast at the Rice Hotel [sic], followed by a Dallas motorcade and luncheon at Fair Park (where the annual State Fair of Texas is hosted). From Dallas, the Kennedys would have then traveled to San Antonio on the afternoon of November 22 for the dedication of the aerospace medicine school at Brooks before heading to Austin for a fundraising dinner. As initially planned, the Kennedys would have returned to Washington, D.C. on the night of November 22 rather than spend the weekend at the Johnson Ranch. This early itinerary continued to evolve throughout November until the trip details were finalized." -- Stephen Fagin, Curator, Sixth Floor Museum At Dealey Plaza

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The above info is attached to this Sixth Floor Museum webpage, which includes one of the very few amateur home movies taken during President Kennedy's brief visit to San Antonio, Texas, on November 21, 1963.

The original Houston to Fort Worth to Dallas to San Antonio to Austin itinerary for the Texas trip can be seen in this document [also pictured below], which is part of this JFK Library folder.

 

Also note in this early unused itinerary that the Dallas luncheon is scheduled to be at the Women's Building at the State Fairgrounds, instead of the Trade Mart.


 

 

 

Edited September 5 by David Von Pein

[Greg Wagner]

Great find! Nice work, David. 

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, Greg Wagner said:

Great find! Nice work, David. 

Congratulations on being here 20 years Greg.

Edited September 5 by Ron Bulman

[Greg Wagner]

9 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Congratulations on being here 20 years Greg.

Hey Ron. Thanks for that. I hope you are doing well. This site has a rich history and has provided immense value to the case over the years, if one is willing to put up with the dramas and sort through the agendas. I'm more of a lurker these days, but I certainly enjoy keeping up with developments and opinions. For all its flaws and dramas, I still love this forum. Thank you to all who contribute their time, thoughts and ideas here. And thank you to those who pay out of their own pocket to keep us up and running.

Cheers, 

Greg

Edited September 5 by Greg Wagner

[Robert Morrow]

50 years ago: Austin was ‘all agog’ to greet JFK by Patrick Beach 11-22-13, Austin-American Statesman

https://www.statesman.com/news/20131122/50-years-ago-austin-was-all-agog-to-greet-jfk

LBJ was going to open (or was it conclude?) his speech with a reference to Dallas. (Asking a question.)

[“50 Years ago: Austin was ‘all agog’ to greet JFK,” Patrick Beach, Austin-American Statesman, 11-21-2013]

QUOTE

Johnson, in his remarks at the Austin dinner, intended to mention the pockets of antipathy directed at Kennedy from political extremists in Dallas and elsewhere. He was to conclude: “And thank God, Mr. President, that you came out of Dallas alive.” The line was sure to get a great reception.

UNQUOTE

“And, thank God, Mr. President, you came out of Dallas alive.” - prepared remarks for Lyndon Johnson for a presidential fundraiser in Austin the night of November 22, 1963

https://www.washingtonian.com/projects/JFK-AF1/layout1.html

Internet Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20131019000939/https://www.washingtonian.com/projects/JFK-AF1/layout1.html

Angel is Airborne

Aboard Air Force One—during one of America’s most searing, perilous moments—a government was formed and a presidency begun.

By Garrett M. Graff

 QUOTE

And thank God, Mr. President, you came out of Dallas alive.”

The joke was prepared, the words typed, ready to place on the Vice President’s lectern in Austin, Texas, later that evening. Lyndon Johnson was planning to close his speech on November 22, 1963, with a punch line about how John F. Kennedy had survived the city of hate.

Fears for Kennedy in Dallas had been widespread. The place was filled with extremists who thought JFK was soft on Communism and the United Nations was a red front. Just a few weeks earlier, Adlai Stevenson had been physically assaulted during a speech there; in 1961, one of Bobby Kennedy’s speeches in Dallas had been interrupted by circling cars full of noisy protesters; and in 1960, images of a crowd jostling and jeering Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson as they crossed a Dallas street had horrified the nation.

In the days leading up to the Kennedy visit, homemade posters bearing the President’s face circulated with the headline “Wanted for Treason.” That morning at their hotel suite in Fort Worth, after seeing a full-page ad in the Dallas Morning News accusing him of being a Communist lover, JFK said to his wife, Jackie, “We’re heading into nut country today.”

UNQUOTE

Edited September 5 by Robert Morrow

[Greg Doudna]

21 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

[“50 Years ago: Austin was ‘all agog’ to greet JFK,” Patrick Beach, Austin-American Statesman, 11-21-2013]

QUOTE

Johnson, in his remarks at the Austin dinner, intended to mention the pockets of antipathy directed at Kennedy from political extremists in Dallas and elsewhere. He was to conclude: “And thank God, Mr. President, that you came out of Dallas alive.” The line was sure to get a great reception.

UNQUOTE

(…)

And thank God, Mr. President, you came out of Dallas alive.”

The joke was prepared, the words typed, ready to place on the Vice President’s lectern in Austin, Texas

[SATIRE ALERT in the below—gd]
 

”And thank God, Mr. president, you came out of Dallas alive.” (Followed by anticipated laughter from sympathetic audience in Austin.) 

LBJ was just a real card wasn’t he? 

Like six months earlier in May 1963 in Dallas, LBJ saying the president is like the pilot on a flight over the Atlantic. If you don’t like the way he’s flying the plane, you wait “until November” to “shoot him down” (LBJ’s words). 

These both have defensible innocent explanations, for any suspicious small minds who might imagine dog whistles that aren’t there. 

Yes LBJ could turn a phrase. 

It was just coincidental that those two good-natured remarks came from a man who had the most personal motive of anyone to see JFK not finish his term in office; whose mutual animosity with the Kennedy brothers was legendary; who had allegations of involvement in murder hits on his way up politically; who was directly involved in inviting and arranging jfk to visit Texas; who let it be known after the assassination that JFK had it coming and morally brought his own assassination upon himself because of JFK’s involvement in U.S. assassinations of others; and creepily tried to court the widow, Jackie, and offered to her to be a new Daddy to her kids.

Jackie, one of those irrationally suspicious minds, though she can be forgiven due to her grief, believed LBJ had had her husband killed, and declined the kind and solicitous offer of the man she believed had widowed her to become a new “Daddy to her kids”.

Another of the irrationally suspicious of LBJ was Jack Ruby who had the irritating habit to his jailers of repeatedly trying to smuggle out notes desperately insisting LBJ did it, in between when he was acting crazy or really crazy. No need to pay any attention to him. When Ruby pleaded with earl warren that his life was in danger and to give him federal protection and get him out of Dallas and he would talk, Warren, not fooled for a moment, saw through Ruby’s ploy and turned that down flat. Warren knew Ruby would have nothing to say that he couldn’t say perfectly well under the watchful eyes of the Dallas criminal justice system in which he was in custody charged with the murder of another person who had been equally safe in the custody of the Dallas criminal justice system. 

LBJ privately claimed to believe Castro killed JFK. LBJ wasn’t one of those so gullible to believe the finding of his own Commission that Oswald acted alone, no more than a majority of the seven members of the Commission privately believed their own unanimous published conclusion on that point. As Sen Russell put it, if it had been up to them, a majority of the members of the Commission, they would have found differently than they unanimously found on that point. 

LBJ claimed privately in confidence to people like Walter Cronkite, CBS news anchor, that Castro had killed JFK. But LBJ dialed down, if not called off altogether, the programs designed to topple Castro. Castro got along fine alongside LBJ. Even if LBJ did believe Castro had offed a US President and gotten away with it, LBJ was big enough and man enough and statesman enough not to harbor hard feelings simply over something like that.

Some irrational and unreasonable, conspiracist-oriented minds at the time, such as the intelligence services of nearly every other nation on earth, were uncharitably seeing the JFK assassination as if the USA had become like one in Third World banana republics where one faction offs another via assassination. 

It took real statesmanship to navigate America and the investigation of the assassination of JFK through the brickbats of these marginal naysayers. 
 

[THE ABOVE IS SATIRE, my attempt at writing like an “Onion” piece]

Edited Friday at 06:28 PM by Greg Doudna

[Ron Bulman]

14 hours ago, Greg Wagner said:

Hey Ron. Thanks for that. I hope you are doing well. This site has a rich history and has provided immense value to the case over the years, if one is willing to put up with the dramas and sort through the agendas. I'm more of a lurker these days, but I certainly enjoy keeping up with developments and opinions. For all its flaws and dramas, I still love this forum. Thank you to all who contribute their time, thoughts and ideas here. And thank you to those who pay out of their own pocket to keep us up and running.

Cheers, 

Greg

Cheers Greg, amid the bold and blue, a little blue and lonesome during the pandemic.

 

[W. Niederhut]

14 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

“And thank God, Mr. president, you came out of Dallas alive.” (Followed by anticipated laughter from sympathetic audience in Austin.) 

LBJ was just a real card wasn’t he? 

Like six months earlier in May 1963 in Dallas, LBJ saying the president is like the pilot on a flight over the Atlantic. If you don’t like the way he’s flying the plane, you wait “until November” to “shoot him down” (LBJ’s words). 

These both have defensible innocent explanations, for any suspicious small minds who might imagine dog whistles that aren’t there. 

Yes LBJ could turn a phrase. 

It was just coincidental that those two good-natured remarks came from a man who had the most personal motive of anyone to see JFK not finish his term in office; whose mutual animosity with the Kennedy brothers was legendary; who had allegations of involvement in murder hits on his way up politically; who was directly involved in inviting and arranging jfk to visit Texas; who let it be known after the assassination that JFK had it coming and morally brought his own assassination upon himself because of JFK’s involvement in U.S. assassinations of others; and creepily tried to court the widow, Jackie, and offered to her to be a new Daddy to her kids.

Jackie, one of those irrationally suspicious minds, though she can be forgiven due to her grief, believed LBJ had had her husband killed, and declined the kind and solicitous offer of the man she believed had widowed her to become a new “Daddy to her kids”.

Another of the irrationally suspicious of LBJ was Jack Ruby who had the irritating habit to his jailers of repeatedly trying to smuggle out notes desperately insisting LBJ did it, in between when he was acting crazy or really crazy. No need to pay any attention to him. When Ruby pleaded with earl warren that his life was in danger and to give him federal protection and get him out of Dallas and he would talk, Warren, not fooled for a moment, saw through Ruby’s ploy and turned that down flat. Warren knew Ruby would have nothing to say that he couldn’t say perfectly well under the watchful eyes of the Dallas criminal justice system in which he was in custody charged with the murder of another person who had been equally safe in the custody of the Dallas criminal justice system. 

LBJ privately claimed to believe Castro killed JFK. LBJ wasn’t one of those so gullible to believe the finding of his own Commission that Oswald acted alone, no more than a majority of the seven members of the Commission privately believed their own unanimous published conclusion on that point. As Sen Russell put it, if it had been up to them, a majority of the members of the Commission, they would have found differently than they unanimously found on that point. 

LBJ claimed privately in confidence to people like Walter Cronkite, CBS news anchor, that Castro had killed JFK. But LBJ dialed down, if not called off altogether, the programs designed to topple Castro. Castro got along fine alongside LBJ. Even if LBJ did believe Castro had offed a US President and gotten away with it, LBJ was big enough and man enough and statesman enough not to harbor hard feelings simply over something like that.

Some irrational and unreasonable, conspiracist-oriented minds at the time, such as the intelligence services of nearly every other nation on earth, were uncharitably seeing the JFK assassination as if the USA had become like one in Third World banana republics where one faction offs another via assassination. 

It took real statesmanship to navigate America and the investigation of the assassination of JFK through the brickbats of these marginal naysayers. 

 

Greg,

      Just to clarify.

      When you describe LBJ as a "good natured" statesman who "navigated" America and the JFKA investigation "through the brickbats of marginal naysayers," you are being facetious, correct?

[Kevin Balch]

13 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Cheers Greg, amid the bold and blue, a little blue and lonesome during the pandemic.

 

If that microphone support were just a little bit further down, it would almost exactly trace the path necessary for the single bullet theory. But exit from the chest rather than the throat.

[Denny Zartman]

43 minutes ago, Kevin Balch said:

If that microphone support were just a little bit further down, it would almost exactly trace the path necessary for the single bullet theory. But exit from the chest rather than the throat.

I shouted out "who killed the Kennedy's?"

When after all, it was you and me

[Greg Doudna]

5 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Greg,

      Just to clarify.

      When you describe LBJ as a "good natured" statesman who "navigated" America and the JFKA investigation "through the brickbats of marginal naysayers," you are being facetious, correct?

Yes I was being facetious W.! I was writing like an “Onion” piece, satire. I’m going to add a “satire” label on that.