thedrifter
11-23-08, 07:33 AM
Witness to history
By JOHN HUNNEMAN - Staff Writer
On a clear November day in 1963, a young man with a rifle slung over his shoulder walked briskly into a brick building in downtown Dallas.
A former U.S. Marine and an expert marksman, the man took the elevator to the sixth floor of the building, known as the Texas School Book Depository, and walked to an open window overlooking Dealey Plaza.
There, he used stacked boxes of books to steady the weapon and peered through the telescopic lens of the Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. His target would be less than 100 yards away.
Holding the rifle in position, he watched the cars drive by below, his finger on the trigger.
Lew Wood was on assignment.
A re-enactment
At the suggestion of CBS News colleague Dan Rather, on Nov. 23, 1963, the day after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Wood, a reporter, along with a cameraman and soundman, entered the building to film a re-enactment of the previous day's events.
The Secret Service had searched the building and found the rifle and shell casings believed used in the assassination, but had not sealed off the sixth floor, he said.
"We just walked right in," said Wood, now 80, who now lives in Temecula.
Wood stood at the identical spot where Lee Harvey Oswald, himself a former Marine, had fired three shots at the presidential motorcade a day earlier.
Wood had rented the rifle, the same model Oswald used, from a nearby pawn shop.
"That was easy to do in Texas in those days," he said.
Oswald could have shot the president from that spot with ease, he said.
"From there, through the scope, Kennedy's head would have looked as big as a melon," Wood said.
Wood reported on many of the epic news events of a generation and considers the JFK assassination, 45 years ago this weekend, the biggest story of his career.
He has, however, seldom shared his experience with others, until now.
"I've never really spoken much about that day," he said. "And I've never been back to Dallas to visit."
A storied career
The broadcasting bug first hit Wood while attending Purdue University.
"I grew up in the war years listening to (Edward R.) Murrow and all the other great broadcasters," he said. "Radio news became an obsession."
His first job was at WBAA, Purdue's college radio station.
"I got my foot in the door in radio," he said. "And I never really got it out."
Wood was in the Naval ROTC program at Purdue and after graduation, was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marines and given orders to report to Camp Pendleton.
It was spring of 1951, and from California he was soon ordered "to duties beyond the seas."
That meant Korea, where Wood served a year with the 1st Marine Division.
"I was very fortunate," he said. "I didn't get shot at much."
Back home in 1952 and with an urge to return to broadcasting, Wood resigned his officer's commission and took a radio job in Decatur, Ill.
From there, it was on to both television and newspaper jobs in South Bend, Ind., for about six years.
There, he found time to get a master's degree in political science from Notre Dame, and also marry his first wife and father three children.
In the late 1950s, the CBS Broadcasting Co. offered fellowships to Columbia University for younger broadcasters.
"They wanted to bring us in from the hinterlands, train us and then send us back from whence we came," Wood recalled. "It was a way for them to seed the industry."
Wood was among eight broadcasters selected by the fellowship committee, which included the great Murrow, to come to New York and attend school.
The fellowship lasted a year, and Wood made enough industry contacts to land a summer job on the news assignment desk at CBS in New York.
By summer's end, he had the job full time
After several years in New York as a producer, Wood was assigned to CBS News' Southern Bureau in New Orleans as a television reporter along with two other men, Nelson Benton and Dan Rather.
"Each reporter had his own crew," he said "From there, we covered 13 southern states."
History first-hand
The early 1960s were a time of great unrest in the South, as voices calling for civil rights clashed with Jim Crow laws and deep-seated segregation.
Wood was a witness to much of it.
The events Wood covered roll off his tongue like the turning pages of an American history book.
From civil rights marches, James Meredith being barred from entering the University of Mississippi and Alabama Gov. George Wallace blocking the doorway at the University of Alabama to black students, and other tumultuous events, Wood, his cameraman and soundman witnessed and reported it all.
"It was a very heady time," he recalled. "We were on the road all the time."
A trip to Dallas
Kennedy's trip to Texas in November 1963 was to be a whirlwind, political fence-mending affair with fundraisers and speeches planned over three days in four cities: Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio.
Wood called CBS headquarters in New York and advised them that all three Southern Bureau news crews, along with the reporters that normally covered the White House, would be needed in Texas to cover the president's trip.
Kennedy flew first to San Antonio and then to Houston, where he spoke at Rice University and then attended a fundraising dinner for a Texas congressman.
"After the dinner, the president and his wife made a brief appearance at a gathering of La Raza, a Hispanic organization, where Jacqueline Kennedy addressed the crowd in Spanish," wrote Wood in his as-yet-unfinished memoirs.
Little did he know the days of Camelot and the Kennedys were in their final hours.
"I and my camera crew were positioned on the floor just 20 feet from JFK and Jackie," Wood wrote. "She was truly a ravishing beauty!"
On the morning of Nov. 22, Kennedy spoke at a fundraising breakfast in Fort Worth and was then driven to nearby Carswell Air Force Base for the short flight to Love Field in Dallas.
While his cameraman captured the president on film shaking hands with well-wishers, Wood took out his own still camera to record the event.
"I wish I'd taken more pictures that day," he said.
The presidential entourage then boarded Air Force One for the short trip to Dallas. Wood and his crew drove the short distance.
It was Rather's job to cover the motorcade in Dallas. Benton's assignment was to report on Kennedy's speech that afternoon at the Dallas Trade Mart.
Wood and his crew's assignment was to report on Kennedy's departure from the airport.
"We knew we had plenty of time before they'd be ready to leave," Wood said.
While his colleagues ate, Wood called Rather to get an update on events. The two spoke for several moments and then Rather asked Wood to hold the line.
"(Rather) came back on and said, 'The president's been shot, get to Parkland Hospital as fast as you can,'" Wood said.
Media members were shuffled into a nurse's classroom at the hospital, where they waited for news.
Eventually, assistant White House press secretary Malcolm "Mac" Kilduff came in and told them Kennedy had died at 1 p.m. from a gunshot wound to the head.
Later that day, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in a movie theater after shooting and killing a Dallas police officer. That night, Wood went to the rooming house in Dallas where Oswald lived and interviewed his landlady.
Wood also went to Dallas police headquarters, where Oswald was put on display for the media in a conference room and denied shooting Kennedy.
In that room, Wood said, he spotted Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
The next day, Wood and his camera crew went to the Texas School Book Depository to film a re-enactment of the shooting.
That film, Wood believes, never aired.
"I don't think it was even shown on television, and I don't know why," he said. "I've always meant to ask Dan Rather about that."
On Sunday, Nov. 24, Ruby once again was at the Dallas police station. Oswald was to be transferred from there to the county jail. In front of a live audience on NBC television, Ruby shot Oswald point-blank.
Wood and his cameraman, Dick Perez, raced just behind the ambulance that carried Oswald to Parkland Hospital where Kennedy's accused assassin also died.
For several weeks, as the nation mourned the death of the young president, Wood stayed in Dallas doing follow-up reporting.
In 1964, Wood covered the trial of Jack Ruby for CBS. Ruby was convicted of killing Oswald, eventually had that conviction overturned because of a technicality and died of cancer in January 1967 ---- ironically also at Parkland Hospital ---- before a new trial could begin.
A distinguished career
Wood left CBS in 1965 and anchored the news for the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia for a year before volunteering to cover the war in Vietnam, which he did in 1966 and 1967.
Returning home, Wood became a news anchor at WNBC in New York.
In 1975, he replaced Frank Blair as the newscaster on NBC's national "Today" show, hosted then by Barbara Walters and Jim Hartz.
When Walters left the show, Wood worked with two relatively unknown hosts, Jane Pauley and Tom Brokaw.
Wood left "Today" after four years. The official reason given, he said, was illness and fatigue.
"In truth, it was because the show's executive producer got sick and tired of me," he said with a laugh.
Wood would spend seven years in his hometown of Indianapolis as the director of national public relations for the American Legion before retiring and moving to California with his present wife of 32 years, Monique, to be closer to the couple's daughter.
They moved to the Paloma del Sol area of Temecula in 2001.
Despite all the conspiracy theories that have surfaced since that fateful day in Dallas, Wood firmly believes Oswald acted alone in the shooting death of JFK.
"I've read all the books, but I've never wavered in my view," he said. "From where he stood, it was an easy shot, an easy shot."
Ellie
By JOHN HUNNEMAN - Staff Writer
On a clear November day in 1963, a young man with a rifle slung over his shoulder walked briskly into a brick building in downtown Dallas.
A former U.S. Marine and an expert marksman, the man took the elevator to the sixth floor of the building, known as the Texas School Book Depository, and walked to an open window overlooking Dealey Plaza.
There, he used stacked boxes of books to steady the weapon and peered through the telescopic lens of the Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. His target would be less than 100 yards away.
Holding the rifle in position, he watched the cars drive by below, his finger on the trigger.
Lew Wood was on assignment.
A re-enactment
At the suggestion of CBS News colleague Dan Rather, on Nov. 23, 1963, the day after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Wood, a reporter, along with a cameraman and soundman, entered the building to film a re-enactment of the previous day's events.
The Secret Service had searched the building and found the rifle and shell casings believed used in the assassination, but had not sealed off the sixth floor, he said.
"We just walked right in," said Wood, now 80, who now lives in Temecula.
Wood stood at the identical spot where Lee Harvey Oswald, himself a former Marine, had fired three shots at the presidential motorcade a day earlier.
Wood had rented the rifle, the same model Oswald used, from a nearby pawn shop.
"That was easy to do in Texas in those days," he said.
Oswald could have shot the president from that spot with ease, he said.
"From there, through the scope, Kennedy's head would have looked as big as a melon," Wood said.
Wood reported on many of the epic news events of a generation and considers the JFK assassination, 45 years ago this weekend, the biggest story of his career.
He has, however, seldom shared his experience with others, until now.
"I've never really spoken much about that day," he said. "And I've never been back to Dallas to visit."
A storied career
The broadcasting bug first hit Wood while attending Purdue University.
"I grew up in the war years listening to (Edward R.) Murrow and all the other great broadcasters," he said. "Radio news became an obsession."
His first job was at WBAA, Purdue's college radio station.
"I got my foot in the door in radio," he said. "And I never really got it out."
Wood was in the Naval ROTC program at Purdue and after graduation, was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marines and given orders to report to Camp Pendleton.
It was spring of 1951, and from California he was soon ordered "to duties beyond the seas."
That meant Korea, where Wood served a year with the 1st Marine Division.
"I was very fortunate," he said. "I didn't get shot at much."
Back home in 1952 and with an urge to return to broadcasting, Wood resigned his officer's commission and took a radio job in Decatur, Ill.
From there, it was on to both television and newspaper jobs in South Bend, Ind., for about six years.
There, he found time to get a master's degree in political science from Notre Dame, and also marry his first wife and father three children.
In the late 1950s, the CBS Broadcasting Co. offered fellowships to Columbia University for younger broadcasters.
"They wanted to bring us in from the hinterlands, train us and then send us back from whence we came," Wood recalled. "It was a way for them to seed the industry."
Wood was among eight broadcasters selected by the fellowship committee, which included the great Murrow, to come to New York and attend school.
The fellowship lasted a year, and Wood made enough industry contacts to land a summer job on the news assignment desk at CBS in New York.
By summer's end, he had the job full time
After several years in New York as a producer, Wood was assigned to CBS News' Southern Bureau in New Orleans as a television reporter along with two other men, Nelson Benton and Dan Rather.
"Each reporter had his own crew," he said "From there, we covered 13 southern states."
History first-hand
The early 1960s were a time of great unrest in the South, as voices calling for civil rights clashed with Jim Crow laws and deep-seated segregation.
Wood was a witness to much of it.
The events Wood covered roll off his tongue like the turning pages of an American history book.
From civil rights marches, James Meredith being barred from entering the University of Mississippi and Alabama Gov. George Wallace blocking the doorway at the University of Alabama to black students, and other tumultuous events, Wood, his cameraman and soundman witnessed and reported it all.
"It was a very heady time," he recalled. "We were on the road all the time."
A trip to Dallas
Kennedy's trip to Texas in November 1963 was to be a whirlwind, political fence-mending affair with fundraisers and speeches planned over three days in four cities: Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio.
Wood called CBS headquarters in New York and advised them that all three Southern Bureau news crews, along with the reporters that normally covered the White House, would be needed in Texas to cover the president's trip.
Kennedy flew first to San Antonio and then to Houston, where he spoke at Rice University and then attended a fundraising dinner for a Texas congressman.
"After the dinner, the president and his wife made a brief appearance at a gathering of La Raza, a Hispanic organization, where Jacqueline Kennedy addressed the crowd in Spanish," wrote Wood in his as-yet-unfinished memoirs.
Little did he know the days of Camelot and the Kennedys were in their final hours.
"I and my camera crew were positioned on the floor just 20 feet from JFK and Jackie," Wood wrote. "She was truly a ravishing beauty!"
On the morning of Nov. 22, Kennedy spoke at a fundraising breakfast in Fort Worth and was then driven to nearby Carswell Air Force Base for the short flight to Love Field in Dallas.
While his cameraman captured the president on film shaking hands with well-wishers, Wood took out his own still camera to record the event.
"I wish I'd taken more pictures that day," he said.
The presidential entourage then boarded Air Force One for the short trip to Dallas. Wood and his crew drove the short distance.
It was Rather's job to cover the motorcade in Dallas. Benton's assignment was to report on Kennedy's speech that afternoon at the Dallas Trade Mart.
Wood and his crew's assignment was to report on Kennedy's departure from the airport.
"We knew we had plenty of time before they'd be ready to leave," Wood said.
While his colleagues ate, Wood called Rather to get an update on events. The two spoke for several moments and then Rather asked Wood to hold the line.
"(Rather) came back on and said, 'The president's been shot, get to Parkland Hospital as fast as you can,'" Wood said.
Media members were shuffled into a nurse's classroom at the hospital, where they waited for news.
Eventually, assistant White House press secretary Malcolm "Mac" Kilduff came in and told them Kennedy had died at 1 p.m. from a gunshot wound to the head.
Later that day, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in a movie theater after shooting and killing a Dallas police officer. That night, Wood went to the rooming house in Dallas where Oswald lived and interviewed his landlady.
Wood also went to Dallas police headquarters, where Oswald was put on display for the media in a conference room and denied shooting Kennedy.
In that room, Wood said, he spotted Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
The next day, Wood and his camera crew went to the Texas School Book Depository to film a re-enactment of the shooting.
That film, Wood believes, never aired.
"I don't think it was even shown on television, and I don't know why," he said. "I've always meant to ask Dan Rather about that."
On Sunday, Nov. 24, Ruby once again was at the Dallas police station. Oswald was to be transferred from there to the county jail. In front of a live audience on NBC television, Ruby shot Oswald point-blank.
Wood and his cameraman, Dick Perez, raced just behind the ambulance that carried Oswald to Parkland Hospital where Kennedy's accused assassin also died.
For several weeks, as the nation mourned the death of the young president, Wood stayed in Dallas doing follow-up reporting.
In 1964, Wood covered the trial of Jack Ruby for CBS. Ruby was convicted of killing Oswald, eventually had that conviction overturned because of a technicality and died of cancer in January 1967 ---- ironically also at Parkland Hospital ---- before a new trial could begin.
A distinguished career
Wood left CBS in 1965 and anchored the news for the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia for a year before volunteering to cover the war in Vietnam, which he did in 1966 and 1967.
Returning home, Wood became a news anchor at WNBC in New York.
In 1975, he replaced Frank Blair as the newscaster on NBC's national "Today" show, hosted then by Barbara Walters and Jim Hartz.
When Walters left the show, Wood worked with two relatively unknown hosts, Jane Pauley and Tom Brokaw.
Wood left "Today" after four years. The official reason given, he said, was illness and fatigue.
"In truth, it was because the show's executive producer got sick and tired of me," he said with a laugh.
Wood would spend seven years in his hometown of Indianapolis as the director of national public relations for the American Legion before retiring and moving to California with his present wife of 32 years, Monique, to be closer to the couple's daughter.
They moved to the Paloma del Sol area of Temecula in 2001.
Despite all the conspiracy theories that have surfaced since that fateful day in Dallas, Wood firmly believes Oswald acted alone in the shooting death of JFK.
"I've read all the books, but I've never wavered in my view," he said. "From where he stood, it was an easy shot, an easy shot."
Ellie