W. G. “Bill” Lumpkin
Solo Motorcycle
Officer
Dallas Police Department
“We were going fast, very fast! I’m going to say we might have hit speeds up to 80–85 M.P.H. on Stemmons… I saw the limousine behind us, and I noticed this Secret Service man hanging on the back of it with his coat hanging, and I was amazed that he could hang on… When we got to Hines, there was a railroad track, and I know that I got airborne… I knew that if I went down I’d probably get run over…”
Born and raised in Avery, Texas, Bill Lumpkin worked at General Dynamics as an aircraft electrician after serving a hitch in the military. He joined the Dallas Police Department in 1953 and was assigned as one of the lead motorcycle officers in the Kennedy motorcade.
*****
I don’t know what time we went to work that day. I remember having a
detail with all the squads of the motor jockeys together, and we were all given
our assignments. We knew the route and where we were going and approximately how
long we were going to be. We were told what to do in case things happened, what
hospital to go to if an emergency came up. That would be the only time we would
use the siren.
I was one of the people that led the
parade along with Leon Gray, Ellis, and McBride. There were quite a few of us in
the parade, but some of the motor jockeys weren’t assigned to the parade. Some
of them were sent to stand-by stations. It wasn’t considered necessarily an
honor; you just did what they told you. I escorted a lot of parades, so it was
just an assignment. Probably if I hadn’t been in the parade, my feelings would
have been hurt. But we used to have a lot of parades in town and there had been
times when other jockeys had gone out of town on assignments, and I’d stayed
in to lead a parade because I had done it so many times. I was used to doing it.
There was nothing special about that
particular morning. We spit and polished our equipment and our uniforms and were
told to assemble at Love Field. There were a lot of folks there, a lot of folks!
We had no problems with the parade except
one time, I believe, the President got out of the car on Lemmon. The Secret
Service got on the back end and proceeded again. When you lead a parade, you
limit your speed to whatever speed they want to go. And so we really had to keep
our eye on his vehicle by turning around and looking because he was slowing
down.
My job in leading the parade was to make
sure the crowd was back out of the street in front, and then, of course, you
alert the officers up on the parade route that the parade is behind you. But the
main thing is, when you’re four abreast like that, you keep the street clear
for the parade. You look back and try to be sure that the parade is in a group,
that it hadn’t straggled out. And you can slow them down for that. But nothing
stands out. It was just a presidential motorcade.
We were in front of the President’s car
when the shooting took place. We were stopped on Elm Street between Houston
street and the Triple Underpass. There were only three of us at the time.
McBride had already gone over to Stemmons to notify them that we were getting
ready to come through since they were going to close Stemmons northbound.
Sergeant Ellis had asked him to go on up and notify them that we were en route.
But we had turned off of Main Street onto Houston for one block, then over to
Elm Street, then turned back left, and we were stopped at the time before we
heard the shots.
When the shots occurred, I thought it was
a motorcycle backfiring. The motors were running really hot because we had been
going slowly for so long. They would have a tendency to backfire when they were
running hot, and running slow for a long period would cause them to run hot.
I heard three distinct bangs with none of
them being together or anything like that. There’s been conflicting reports
where all the noise came from. From where I was it was behind me. I’ve heard
people say a lot of different things over the years, but when you have buildings
and other obstructions, you’re going to have an echo factor and different
opinions.
The shots came from behind where I was
and, as I mentioned, I thought it was a motorcycle backfiring at first, till I
turned back and saw the commotion in the President’s convertible. I wasn’t
sure at the time what it was, but it later turned out that it was his wife on
the back. There was no problem seeing the car, but at the time, I jut saw a
figure. Then Chaney rode up to Curry and probably told him that the President
had been shot.
We were still stopped at that time, and
then Chief Curry comes on and says, “Let’s go boys!” I’m not sure that
there was anything said other than that and, of course, we headed for Parkland
because we knew in case something happened, that was where we were supposed to
go.
We went under the Triple Underpass and
took the entrance ramp to Stemmons Freeway. At that time, Sergeant Ellis stopped
there at Stemmons. Leon Gray, Chaney, and myself escorted the parade on to
Parkland Hospital by way of Stemmons to Industrial, Industrial to Hines, Hines
to the entrance into the back of Parkland.
We were going very, very fast! I’m going
to say we might have hit speeds up to 80–85 M.P.H. on Stemmons. We were going
just as fast as we could get the car to go. I saw the limousine behind us, and I
noticed this Secret Service man hanging on the back of it with his coat hanging,
and I was amazed that he could hang on. When we got to Hines, there was a
railroad track, and I know that I got airborne. I’m sure that I was out front
and Gray and Chaney behind me. More than likely they got airborne, too. You
didn’t have a lot of space over on the other end, and when you land to turn, I
knew that if I went down I’d probably get run over. But you train and you know
that you can drag your footstand without going over as long as you don’t go
over too far. Oh, you’re going to get some sparks and some noise when you go
over that far, but unless you get on some oil or sand or something like that,
you can stay up. But it was a fast ride!
Nothing much goes through your mind at a
time like that. You know that you’ve got a job to do, and you want to do your
job well. When we came off of Stemmons, we were supposed to turn into Market
Hall. Sergeant Striegel and some other officers were there, including some other
jockeys, and he came out into the street waving because we were going too fast
and that we were supposed to pull in there. I guess he hadn’t heard that the
President had been shot, and you have to worry about him not getting too far out
into the street. But you’re concerned with just doing your job when something
like this happens. After it’s over, then you have time to think about it.
When we turned into the hospital, there
was only a certain amount of parking space back there. Since I was in the lead,
I stopped to get off my motor to make sure that cars that didn’t belong there
didn’t come in because I was in a better position to react. So I stopped
probably a couple hundred feet from the emergency entrance. When the last cars
that I knew and the last jockeys came in, I stopped traffic. We had to get all
that secured. I was the only one right then. Later some people came up to help
me, but it wasn’t any big problem then. You just stepped out and stopped them.
That was the main thing you wanted to do was to just get more cars in there so
you could maneuver the other vehicles.
I was probably still in the process of
just getting off my motor when the limousine came by. I saw the President
slumped down, and I saw Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was like a ghost; I thought he
was shot. He came by after the President riding in a different vehicle, if I
remember right. His face was familiar to me because I had had some problems with
him in the past back when he was running the year Kennedy got the nomination.
Leon Gray, at that time, was my partner.
Our assignment was that we were to ride on each side of his vehicle for his
protection to keep people from rushing it. On this occasion, it was already past
our time to get off, but we had to go ahead and finish the escort. Johnson
didn’t have any good things to say about motor jockeys, and he told his driver
to force Gray back to the side of his car, which he did. He forced Gray into the
curb on a bridge on Zang and nearly caused him to wreck. I had some words with
his driver, so I guess that’s why I knew Johnson pretty well.
Anyway, I didn’t see much of the
President other than he was just slumped down and that he had been shot, and
that his brains had been blown out. I must have seen that somewhere along the
way. I know they kept wanting to know whether Kennedy was going to make his
speech at the Market Hall, and finally this three-wheel officer came on and told
them that his brains were blown out, and he wasn’t going to be there, and this
kept coming over the radio: “Well, is he going to be able to make the
speech?” We knew that he was dead.
We stayed out at Parkland for a long time,
and then they sent us downtown to guard Oswald. We were on the third floor where
they had him. There were quite a few of us up there and, of course, there were
newspaper reporters and cameramen from all over.
The scene up there was wild! Absolutely
wild! Forcefully, you had to keep them back. It was hysteria! Just asking them
to stay back wouldn’t do. They weren’t responding! I can remember the
cameras back then had big battery packs that looked like they weighted eighty or
ninety pounds. I imagine they probably weighed a lot less than that, but they
were big things, and their TV cameras were monstrous. Anyway, I can remember
this guy that must have weighed over four hundred pounds who wouldn’t stay
back, and finally, I just had to put my fist into his stomach because I weighed
only abut 160. Manners were a thing of the past, or courtesy. You could ask our
own people to do something and they would try to cooperate with you. In fact, we
knew quite a few of them personally. But the national people, a lot of them just
didn’t want to do what you asked them to do. They decided that they knew how
close they could get a lot better than you did. But there was such a rush and, I
guess, everybody wanted a story. I’ve been involved in escorts for Elvis
Presley and the Beatles, and those were wild. But the crowds were young. These
were adult people that you expect more out of.
I saw Oswald a few times. He was screaming
and hollering and all this. He was like a wild man claiming his innocence. I
don’t remember what all he was saying, but I think he was talking about
conspiracy. They didn’t move him any more than they had to, I’m sure, but
they brought him out of Captain Fritz’s office, Homicide Division, and down a
private elevator where I think they took him down to the lineups or details.
I think I got home around midnight that
night as we stayed fairly late till they got some of the photographers out. I
was off duty the next day because I had Saturdays and Sundays off then.
Fortunately I wasn’t there when Oswald was killed.
That was an hellacious mistake! It should
never have happened even though I can see how it did happen. To me, that was a
lot worse to Dallas than the President being killed.
I knew Jack Ruby, and I know that a lot of
officers knew him. He owned nightclubs, and if you were in his place you
didn’t have to worry about the establishment. If you wanted to arrest
somebody, you did not fight the establishment; you only had to worry about the
person you were arresting. I had made some arrests up in his places and knew
that you didn’t have to worry about him if you were given a hard time by his
enticing the crowd of people in his club not to let them arrest this person; in
other words, trying to turn the crowd against you. He liked officers. I think he
appreciated the job that they did, so I can see how he could have gotten down
there and shot Oswald.
But I didn’t know him that well and
didn’t know that much about him. I’d been in the Vegas Club out on Oak Lawn
and the Carousel downtown, but I didn’t drink, so I didn’t go into those
type places other than to make arrests or on some police matter.
Like I’ve said, City Hall was a mess
that weekend, which definitely contributed to what happened to Oswald. Jesse
Curry probably was responsible for that, but he had bosses, too, and any chief
has a certain amount of politics to play. I’m just speculating, though,
because I was just a patrolman. They gave me a job to do and I did it. But City
Hall belonged to the public, and I guess they were trying to let the public have
as much freedom as they could.
Personally, I’d like to have seen the
press cleared out, but I do know that you have to let the press know. It would
have been a whole lot easier if we could have just stood at the door and not let
anybody in and had all the fighting there instead of having this whole hallway
full of people pushing and shoving and trying to get room for more.
I think the Dallas Police Department
handled it about as well as any department would have. Regardless of where it
happened, you’re going to have to let the press have access, and then you have
to let more in than you really like. But I think Dallas did as well as anybody
would have and maybe better than a lot.
Looking back, the motorcycle patrolmen
were an independent bunch back then. When I went into the Motorcycle Division,
you were voted on before you got in. If the other jockeys thought you had an
attitude that they thought was going to create problems, you wouldn’t get on
motors. That way the people knew you. You had to have a vote of confidence for
you to get on. And you had good and bad motor jockeys just like you have in
anything else. But it was like a club, and we were real close. I don’t think
that closeness prevailed in Radio Patrol. I know we had some jockeys that would
kind of brag to the Radio Patrol about how great it was, and I chewed a lot of
them out for that because, if you’ve got something good going, if you’re
going pretty smooth, don’t rock the boat and brag to somebody else that
you’ve got it made a whole lot better than them. But we’re like kinfolks.
Some of the new motor jockeys I don’t know, but I still have coffee with some
of the older ones today.
A couple of asides… Officer J.D. Tippit
and I were from the same Red River County up in Northwest Texas. I knew him, but
I never worked with him. Tippit was in Radio Patrol, and since I stayed on Radio
Patrol only about nine months and then went to Traffic Division, I never worked
with him. I went on a three-wheeler then, from there to solo, and I knew a lot
of these people because we didn’t have substations back then when I went to
work, so we all met at the same place. But you’d just speak to them and that
was it. Some of them you knew better than others. Some of us were loudmouths,
and some were pretty quiet. Tippit was fairly quiet. When I heard that Tippit
had been shot, we had a traffic hit and run investigator named Tippitt, and I
thought that’s who it was that got shot. But you just wonder how he got shot
because he was a pretty strong guy.
I also knew Mary Moorman. She and McBride
went to school together, I believe it was. That’s how I met her, and she was
down there with another lady named Jean Hill, so I knew them both. Mary took a
picture of me sitting on my motorcycle there in front of the Triple Underpass
just before Kennedy arrived. Then she took a picture of Kennedy and received a
cash settlement for quite a bit of money. I’ve seen her a number of times
since then. She gave me the Polaroid picture of me straddling this motorcycle,
but I don’t know where it is now. I knew where it was for a long time, and
some years ago, somebody wanted to look at it, and now it’s misplaced. I’ve
been asked about that picture a number of times, but I just remember it had me
being on a motorcycle. It didn’t show anything suspicious that I recall. I
didn’t pay that much attention to it since I don’t care much about getting
my picture taken.
I retired in 1981 after twenty-seven and a
half years on the department. When I retired, another man and I had a business
selling and repairing lawn mowers, chain saws, garden tractors, and tillers. We
sold that business, and now I’m helping raise grandchildren.
Bill Lumpkin now works on a part-time basis as a bailiff for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department and lives with his wife in Mesquite, Texas.