JFK Anniversary

A bit late with posting as usual.

While reading a few articles on the JFK assasination anniversary, I thought about the fact that we Hunts have a rather fascinating connection to the whole business, the Lawsons.

To this day, I have only the vaguest notion of the relationship between the Lawsons and the Hammonds, (Mother, would you please post a comment and fill me in on the exact story?)

About all I can recall of the few visits I made to that little house in Portland was that there was a gooseberry bush in the back yard, and I vaguely remember seeing a letter signed by President Nixon(?) on top of the piano concerning someone named Winston. Winston's name came up in conversation occasionally, and I do recall hearing that he was a government guy and had been in Dallas that day.

Well, as it turns out, Winston G. Lawson was a vey important player in the Kennedy assasination. He was the "advance man" for that trip to Dallas, responsible for checking into all the details of Kennedy's trip, and for meeting with Dallas police and arranging security for the motorcade ( Dallas police chief Jesse Curry always insisted that Lawson was the person who made all the major decisions). Lawson drove the lead car in the motorcade, and after the assasination, helped to load Kennedy onto a strecher and pushed him into the emergency room.

Here is more on Lawson:

Winston Lawson was born in 1929. After studying history at the University of Buffalo he worked as a wholesale carpet salesman. In December 1951, he became a sales representative for Carnation, a company manufacturing milk products.
Lawson joined the US Army in 1953 and after basic training was sent to the CIC Counterintelligence School in Holabird, Maryland. Based at Lexington, during the Korean War he took part in the interviewing of prisoners.
In 1955 Lawson returned to the Carnation Milk Company and had various sales or public relations jobs with them in Poughkeepsie. He applied to enter the Secret Service in 1956 but was not accepted until October 1959. He did general investigative work in the Syracuse area, until being transferred to Washington in March, 1961. Soon afterwards he was given responsibility for organizing the security for trips being made by President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.
On 4th November Lawson was asked to prepare for the presidential trip to Dallas, Texas. This involved discussions with Kenneth O'Donnell (special assistant to Kennedy), Roy Kellerman and Jesse Curry (chief of police in Dallas). However, Curry always insisted that Winston G. Lawson was the person who made all the major decisions. This included the order that the proposed side escorts for the motorcade were to be redeployed to the rear of the cars.

Lawson drove the presidential motorcade's lead car. In a statement he made later, Lawson commented: "As the lead car was passing under this bridge I heard the first loud, sharp report and in more rapid succession two more sounds like gunfire. I could see persons to the left of the motorcade vehicles running away. I noticed Agent Hickey standing up in the follow-up car with the automatic weapon and first thought he had fired at someone. Both the President's car and our lead car rapidly accelerated almost simultaneously."
Lawson remained a member of the Secret Service until he retired. He still works as a consultant on security issues. On the 40th anniversary of the assassination he gave an interview to Michael Granberry of the Dallas Morning News.: I must have thought a million times, what could I have done to prevent it?... From Love Field to Dealey Plaza, there were 20,000 windows. How could we possibly check them all?"
Granberry's article goes on to say: "When the president's day began at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, a persistent drizzle had forced the Secret Service to consider covering the motorcade's cars in Dallas with protective bubbletops. (Hours later, Dallas would end up sunny.) Though the bubbletops were not bulletproof, the metal and the contour of the covering, says Lawson, would have made it difficult for a bullet to do much damage, and might have kept a gunman from even firing in the first place. So he's asked himself a million times: Why couldn't it keep raining?"


From Winston Lawson's Warren Commission statement:

"At the corner of Houston and Elm Streets I verified with Chief Curry that we were about five minutes from the Trade Mart and gave this signal over my portable White House Communications radio. We were just approaching a railroad overpass and I checked to see if a police officer was in position there and that no one was directly over our path. I noticed a police officer but also noticed a few persons on the bridge and made motions to have these persons removed from over our path. As the lead car was passing under this bridge I heard the first loud, sharp report and in more rapid succession two more sounds like gunfire. I could see persons to the left of the motorcade vehicles running away. I noticed Agent Hickey standing up in the follow-up car with the automatic weapon and first thought he had fired at someone. Both the President's car and our lead car rapidly accelerated almost simultaneously. I heard a report over the two-way radio that we should proceed to the nearest hospital. I noticed Agent Hill hanging on to the rear of the President's vehicle. A motorcycle escort officer pulled alongside our lead car and said the President had been shot. Chief Curry gave a signal over his radio for police to converge on the area of the incident. I requested Chief Curry to have the hospital contacted that we were on the way. Our lead car assisted the motorcycles in escorting the President's vehicle to Parkland Hospital.

Upon our arrival there at approximately 12:34 pm, I rushed into the emergency entrance, met persons coming with two stretchers and helped rush them outside. Governor Connally was being removed from the car when the stretchers arrived and he was placed on the first one. Mr. Powers, myself and one or two others placed President Kennedy on a stretcher and we ran pushing the stretcher into the emergency area which hospital personnel directed us to. I remained outside the door where the President was being treated and requested a nurse to find someone who would know hospital personnel who should be admitted to the President's room ..."



Lots more here:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKlawsonW.htm