Family's spot in Dealey Plaza during JFK's assassination is secure in collective memory of nation

By Mark Wrolstad / The Dallas Morning News

08/12/99

Pictures of the Pain; UPI The gunshots in Dealey Plaza left Bill and Gayle Newman shielding their sons, Billy and Clayton.

The little boys are long grown. They have kids of their own - about the ages of the Newman boys when the famous photos with their protective parents reflected a nation's horror and bewilderment. The black-and-white photographs captured an anonymous young family in Dallas moments after a president's assassination.
 Standing curbside along Dealey Plaza's Elm Street in the noon hour on Nov. 22, 1963, Bill and Gayle Newman and sons Billy and Clayton became unwitting witnesses to tragedy - and the closest spectators to John F. Kennedy as he was struck by the fatal gunshot.
 The images show a terror-stricken couple on the ground, clutching two small boys and shielding them with their bodies, recoiling from what they'd just seen and fearing what might come next.
 The scene slipped into the country's collective memory of that dark weekend, as indelible in its way as John-John saluting his father's coffin, the Zapruder home movies or the live TV murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.
 For all the emotion and symbolism frozen within those frames - parents guarding their children, uncertainty over the future, shock that the country failed to protect its leader - the experience had little lasting effect on the Newmans.
 Nearly 36 years later, they seldom talk about the day's grisly events, the national turning point that resulted or the murder mystery that endures.
 "This has not controlled our lives, not like some people," Mrs. Newman said. "We were only 22, and we had two small children to raise. We just got on with life."
 And a good life it has been for the Newmans, now 58. They work together at their electrical consulting company in Mesquite, where they moved from Oak Cliff in 1971.
 The boys are 37 and 39. Clayton, the younger, is an electrical design engineer in Austin. Billy, who sells computer services in the Dallas area, said he was barely old enough - at 4 - to retain some memories.
 "I remember lying on the ground and seeing people run past us," he said. "I don't think the whole thing had much effect on the two of us because it never affected my parents' life."
 It has given him a singular trump card whenever people talk about where they were when Kennedy was shot, as they did last month when JFK Jr. died in a plane crash.
 "I'm the big man in that conversation," said Billy Newman jokingly. "I tell them I was 16 to 20 feet from the president." He is often doubted.
 His parents shied away from telling their story for a long time. But over the years, they've talked to reporters and TV producers, conspiracy buffs and school kids.
 In their unassuming manner, they haven't wavered about perceptions they know were in error - or probably so - acknowledging that witnesses can be unreliable. "Eyewitness testimony is some of the worst evidence," Mr. Newman said.
 In the blur of events, Mr. Newman thought JFK "sort of stood up" after being shot and that the presidential limo then stopped briefly.
 Mrs. Newman thought she saw guns in cars in the motorcade.
 And before they hit the ground, both were certain that the shots came from directly behind them, although most theories put the origin to the left or right of that.
 The Newmans are not revisionists. "I want to try to be as factual as I can," Mr. Newman said.

The Dallas Morning News: Huy Nguyen Bill and Gayle Newman seldom talk about that day in 1963. Their son Billy (front) was 4 at the time; grandson Clayton Newman's father, Clayton, was 2.

 One of the biggest punch lines in the family's story comes at the start. That morning, the Newmans put their 8 mm camera on the bedroom dresser - then left the house without it.
 Mr. Newman arched his eyebrows at the implication of the spectacular home movies that might have been. Then again, he said, the camera might have made him a target - if a government agent mistook it for a weapon, or if a co-conspirator was in the crowd.
 "Maybe it was our good fortune that we didn't take it," he said.
 Mr. Newman was an out-of-work electrician with no immediate prospects and, although he hadn't supported JFK in the 1960 election, the chance to see a president was rare.
 Dressed in their Sunday best, the family drove first to Love Field for the arrival of JFK and first lady Jackie. But Mrs. Newman, holding Billy, couldn't see past the crush of curiosity-seekers.
 Guided by the route published the previous day, they headed for Dealey Plaza to get ahead of the motorcade. They got there with minutes to spare, walking down Elm to where the crowd tapered off.
 The cheers let them know the president was coming. JFK's car came into view. It was in the center lane of three."Boom!" Mr. Newman recalled the sound. "Boom!"
 He and his wife thought it was firecrackers. They saw the president's arms fly upward.
In the instant before the third shot, Mrs. Newman thought the president was kidding. The firecrackers were in poor taste, but it occurred to her that JFK showed "a pretty good sense of humor" reacting like that.
 Mr. Newman noticed Texas Gov. John Connally, seated in front of the president, with his arms extended forward and blood on his shirt.
 The president was directly in front of them, they said, for the fatal shot and gruesome aftermath.
 That's when "Bill looked at me and said, ‘That's it. Hit the ground,' " Mrs. Newman said.
 They lay there for perhaps two or three minutes, thinking they had been directly in the line of fire.
 Mrs. Newman remembers her husband pounding the ground and yelling, "Some son of a bitch just shot the president!" He does not.
 Photographers, who didn't know the president had been hit, clamored around.
 Just after the family members got to their feet, two WFAA-TV staffers rushed up and asked what they'd seen. The group flagged down a car to the station, where the Newmans did a long interview on live television.
 Then a deputy took them to the sheriff's office, where they gave separate statements. A relative picked up the kids, but the couple didn't get home until 9:30 p.m.
 Fear accompanied them. They'd seen the president murdered, they'd talked about it on television and no one knew who was responsible.
 The boys slept on the floor in their parents' room for several nights. Mr. Newman kept the shotgun at hand. Two FBI agents soon stopped by to ask if they had anything to add to their statements.
 "Did you see all that blood?" Billy later asked. "Why did they shoot that man?" There were no answers.
 About a decade passed before the Newmans returned to Dealey Plaza.
 They rarely go back. The family's unique bond to that day has played out in one curious way. The foursome hasn't had a picture taken together since the moment when they lay huddled on a low grassy slope.
 "I think those pictures are something that will live on in history," Mrs. Newman said, "long after we're gone."

The Road to 2000, a page devoted to coverage of the turning century and the new millennium, will appear every Thursday in the Metropolitan section throughout 1999.