Take a good look at this picture. You know the moment it has recorded.
Standing behind the grieving Jacqueline Kennedy, just over her right shoulder is a fellow I used to know pretty well. He is U.S. Rep. Jack Brooks, a Democrat from Beaumont, Texas, and arguably the crustiest, most partisan member of the Texas congressional delegation at that time … or perhaps any time.
Brooks died just a few years ago. He was one of the Democrats who lost his re-election bid in that historic Republican “Contract With America” tide that swept over Congress in 1994.
The previous year, I sat down with Brooks to interview him about the events that occurred in Dallas 30 years earlier. I sought to get into the man’s soul, into his heart. I wanted him to share with his constituents — through this interview to be published in the Beaumont Enterprise — what he felt that day.
Jack was riding in the motorcade that beautiful day in Dallas. It was Nov. 22, 1963. He was riding several vehicles behind the presidential limo that was carrying the Kennedys and Texas Gov. John Connally and his wife, Nellie.
Rifle shots exploded from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building, hitting the president and Gov. Connally. Their car took off at full speed for Parkland Hospital. The world held its breath when news broke that “shots were fired” at the motorcade.
Then the terrible result flashed around the globe: The president was dead.
I sought to plumb deep into Rep. Brooks’ heart and soul that day.
But I learned something that day about Brooks that I knew intuitively all along. He wasn’t prone to thinking like that. I recall being disappointed at the seeming lack of pathos this man.
Brooks wasn’t the most gracious fellow I’ve ever met. He could be as mean as they come. Perhaps he wasn’t comfortable talking to a media representative about that terrible day.
Surely he knew, I speculated to him out loud, about the immense burden that his mentor and friend — President Lyndon Johnson — was carrying at that moment. Did he sense it? Did he grasp in the moment that the world was watching everyone’s move that day? Brooks didn’t confide much to me during our visit that day.
That interview stands perhaps as the most glaring missed opportunity I experienced during nearly four decades in daily journalism.
Oh, how I sought far more than I got from a veteran Texas politician.
