An Evening in Dallas

I have long wanted to visit Dallas, Texas.  Although our company has a few offices in Texas, all of them are situated well outside of the city.  Thus, in the few times I had been in the area, I was not able to drive into Dallas to visit a particular site that I have long wanted to see.  The site I’m referring to is Dealey Plaza where on November 22, 1963, US President John F. Kennedy (JFK) was assassinated by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald.

But this past Monday, an American friend at work who is a long-time Dallas resident, volunteered to give me a tour of the city.  Since summer days are quite long here, we decided to do the tour after the project team’s dinner.  He knew that I’ve long wanted to visit Dealey Plaza and that’s where he immediately took me.

It was around 7:30 p.m. when we got to the place.  There was still a fair amount of sunlight left.  The following  shows the picture I took as soon as I got off my friend’s car:

The red brick, seven-story building in the center of the picture above is called the Dallas County Administration Building.  However, back in 1963, this building was known as the Texas School Book Depository.  At the time, the building was named for a private business that used it as a multi-story warehouse for school textbooks.  For the purposes of this blog entry, I will refer to this building by its former name.  It was by this building’s sixth floor corner window where Lee Harvey Oswald took his position as he waited for the presidential motorcade to pass by.  The building is on Elm Street which intersects with Houston Street, the street I was on when I took the picture.

But before I proceed any further with the other photos in this entry, let me first share with you the following video clip from the Discovery Channel that detailed the moments leading to JFK’s assassination.  It also shows the building above and its immediate surroundings.

The building below is called the Old Red Courthouse.  It is now a museum but back in 1963, the building served as the Dallas County Courthouse.  I took the picture from Dealey Plaza.  The street in the foreground is Houston Street while the street at the side of the Old Red Courthouse is called Main Street.

The building above is shown about 12 seconds into the video.  The video showed President Kennedy’s open limousine driving down Main Street and then making a right into Houston Street, or to my left from where I stood above.  The courthouse’s stone arches can be clearly seen on film as the presidential limousine made its way past them.  This building is only a block away from the Texas School Book Depository. 

I walked a block closer to the Depository and took the following shot: 

President Kennedy was in an open car and waving to supporters when his car passed in front of this building.  I was standing on Elm Street when I took the picture below of part of the building’s facade:

From the picture above, you will see a black plaque or marker and a green sign below it at the lower right corner of the building’s facade.  Also note the corner window on the sixth floor that is in a half-open position.  The following picture shows both marker and sign up close:

As mentioned earlier, the building now houses Dallas County’s administrative offices.  However, the building’s sixth floor is now a museum dedicated to the JFK Assassination.  The museum’s logo shows seven horizontal bars to signify the number of floors in the building.  Except for the white bar that is second from the top, the rest of the bars are in the same color as the building’s bricks. 

The following is a close up shot of the marker.  Note how one vandal carved a line under the word “ALLEGEDLY” in the last paragraph of the inscription:

The following is a picture I took of the Sixth Floor Window.  It was from this window where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shot that fatally wounded President Kennedy.  The window is in a simulated half-open position to show the way it looked on the day of the assassination.  There is actually a pane of glass within it to keep the entire window closed.

After taking the picture above, I turned to my left and took the following picture of a part of Elm Street on the left and the infamous Grassy Knoll on the right:

Another shot of the Grassy Knoll.  My friend told me that regardless of the time of day, there are always small groups of people present here, be they tourists or history buffs. 

The following is a shot of Elm Street and a triple underpass in the background.  President Kennedy’s limousine was on this stretch of Elm Street when he was fatally shot.  It is to be noted that at this particular point, Mr. Kennedy’s car was only two or three seconds away from entering the freeway that would have taken him to his next scheduled event for that day. 

Below was the last shot I took of both Elm Street and the Grassy Knoll.  Again, one can see from it how close JFK’s car was to the underpass and the freeway that could have saved his life. 

Just a few other things about this site. 

My photos failed to capture it but aside from the sad event that took place here many years ago, this part of Dallas’s West End District is also a rather lonely place to visit especially in the evenings.  There are quite a number of old warehouses and office buildings in the area; a number of them date back to the 19th Century; a number of them have  long been abandoned and unused; and a number are in a state of decay and/or disrepair. 

There are some nice government buildings like the Old Red Courthouse but a majority of the buildings in this area are all either for office or commercial use.  I didn’t see any condominium buildings or residential apartments in the immediate vicinity of the Depository.  In the evening hour that I was there, I saw very few people on the streets.  It is even a safe bet for me to say that  the ones I caught in my photos above made up the majority of the people who were present in the area during that time.  Thus, this section of Dallas literally becomes a ghost town after people leave their offices for home at the end of the workday.

The Philippines also figured briefly in Lee Harvey Oswald’s troubled personal history.  He joined the US Marines when he was 18 and was a trained sniper.  His Marine unit was stationed in the Philippines from late November 1957 to about March 1958.   He spent time in both Subic Bay in Olongapo and Corregidor during those months.   (Source:  “The Missing Chapter:  Lee Harvey Oswald in the Far East” by Jack R. Swike)

But even if I didn’t end up staying long, I’m glad that I was finally able to make this trip.  On a personal level, this is a place I had wanted to visit ever since I was child.  I learned about the JFK assassination from my parents and through a book they gave me as a gift.  Like many people of their generation, they spoke highly of JFK.  They admired his intelligence, charisma and idealism.  Thus, in a sentimental way, I also made this trip for them.  Aside from those, the history buff in me wanted to be there because it was a site where history was made.  It was a place where an assassination profoundly changed our world and maybe sadly, not for the better.

Corazon Aquino (1933-2009)

This blog takes pause to mark the passing of a former Filipino President, the Seventh President of the Philippine Republic, the lady in yellow, the unexpected heroine who brought down a corrupt, overstaying, and much hated dictatorship.  She came to power on a wave of massive popular support goodwill, domestic and international.  She had the mandate to reform a system that had grown hopelessly corrupt, dysfunctional, and worse, criminal.

I wish I could say more positive things about her but in good conscience I can’t.  23 years after our people kicked the Marcoses out, we all can certainly say that things haven’t turned out for the better.  The country remains polarized, the political system and government bureaucracy remain highly corrupt, brain drain has gotten much worse, economic opportunities remain limited or non-existent for millions of Filipinos, and millions of lives remain mired in poverty.

I did not agree with her on a number of issues such as the ineffectual agrarian reform law she and her Congress passed; the decision to junk the 1935 Constitution that led to a multi-party political system that has become mired in endless gridlock; , the way she let her closeness to the Church influence some of her political decisions; and to scrap any program that was associated with her predecessor without regard to the benefits it bore.  I also did not agree with the very weak hand she displayed towards elements of both the extreme left and extreme right.

Although she led a revolution, Cory Aquino was no revolutionary.  She came from a family of oligarchs and she pretty much preserved the system that fed and sustained such oligarchy.  By bringing the Marcos dictatorship down, she simply destroyed a new, crony and military-supported oligarchy to reinstate the old landowner-dominated form that enriched and empowered her clan and others like hers.  A lot of the faces and family names of people in her administration reflected the return of the old order.

Like millions of Filipinos, I had high hopes that February day in 1986 when Mrs. Aquino took her oath of office.  I had hoped then that with Marcos out of the way, the Philippines could get back on the road to economic development.  I had hoped that the people who had plundered the country for 20 years will be brought to justice.  I had hoped that in spite of my country’s imperfections, there were enough very good men and women among us who could help lift the nation out of its economic misery.   But as I found out later on, intelligence, good intentions, and a willingness to serve are not enough.

My idealistic and naive mind didn’t realize then that there was a much bigger hurdle to overcome in order for the country to gain a place among the world’s prosperous nations.  That hurdle was, and still is, the inability of Filipinos to unite and set aside their differences in order to achieve a higher and greater good.  A lot of cause-oriented groups and political parties sprung out of the new political system created by the 1987 Constitution.  All these groups had noble goals and were led and supported by smart and gifted people with a genuine concern for the country’s future.  I do not question their patriotism and I do not question their sincerity.   And I will not go into any more details as to what happened or did not happen.  But our system has failed to deliver because of the failure of these groups and parties to reach a middle ground somewhere, to compromise some of their faction’s ideals for the sake of a higher, more unifying national goal.

Mrs. Aquino had, for a brief shining moment, the opportunity to unite a tired, frustrated and weary nation.  But in my humble opinion, the inability to think and rise above her oligarchic comfort zone, coupled with her own failure to compromise with both pro-administration and opposition groups in order to foster a more united nation made her miss out on such a golden opportunity.

The King of Pop Passes On

This blog takes pause to honor the memory of a music legend, the great Michael Jackson, who was reported to have died from cardiac arrest earlier today.  In his honor, I’m posting a personal favorite.

“Rock With You” (Off The Wall, 1979)

I heard the news from the radio this evening while I was driving home from work.  As a kid of the 1970s, I practically grew up with the man and his music.  From the time when he was the boy lead singer of the Jackson 5 where he was joined by his brothers Tito, Marlon, Jermaine, and Jackie to the time he decided to go solo as a young man in the late 1970s, there was always a Michael Jackson song to be heard either on the radio or at a dance party that I attended.  As some disc jockeys love to say, his music was, at least to members of my generation, part of the “soundtrack of our lives”.

Although he increasingly grew eccentric as the years passed, my fondness for his music never waned.  And although the weird behavior that marked his later years made him an abundant source of jokes for late night tv comedians, we all knew that he was profoundly unhappy.

I had remarked to some friends years ago that it was hard for me to imagine how Michael Jackson, given all the stresses and pressures he constantly had to bear from a very unhappy and troubled life, could hold out for long.  Any person’s heart could only take so much.  Thus, even if I was saddened by the news of his death, I was hardly surprised by it.

A lot of tributes will be given Mr. Jackson in the days, months and years to come.  Many will come from friends who truly cared and looked out for him. But sadly, many will also come from people who took advantage of him, his talents, and his kindness for their personal gain.

Michael Jackson is in a much better place now.  Though we often reserve and utter such hopeful words for people who endured much pain, suffering and sadness during their days on earth, I sincerely hope, for his sake, that they’re true.

Rest in peace, Michael.

John Lennon Lived Here

Took a few days away from work a few weeks ago in order to get a much needed break.  The past couple of months at work were hell for me in terms of workload.  I had to spend long hours at work just to be able to get rid of all the “pending” stuff on my desk.  Anyway, enough words said about work.

Some of you know by now that I’m a huge John Lennon fan.   So what I did one morning was to take a trip up to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, to visit the place where he once lived and where he, unfortunately, also died.   I’ve long thought about making the trip but except for a quick “drive by” or two to the place through the kindness of cousins, I have not had the chance to really visit the place in all the many years I’ve lived here.

For me, a “real” visit to a place involves getting off a vehicle in order to spend a few moments walking around a particular spot or monument, to get a chance to internalize and appreciate an area’s atmosphere and surroundings, and to reflect on the event(s) that took place there.  Thus, within an hour after I left my place, I was finally at the spot I’ve long wanted to be, standing in front of the building where a rock legend once lived, the Dakota.

Standing at the northwest corner of Central Park West and West 72nd Street, the Dakota opened its doors in 1884 as an apartment building that catered to New York’s wealthy.  It served as John Lennon’s residence from 1973 to 1980.  John Lennon moved to the United States from England in 1971.  He fell in love with  New York City because it was a place where people generally respected his privacy.   In fact, his widow, Yoko Ono, and son, Sean, still live in the Dakota.

The Lennons reportedly bought the entire 7th floor of the building.  In the photo above, the 7th floor is marked with the long metal balcony.

The photo above shows the infamous entrance to the driveway leading into the Dakota’s courtyard.  I say this entrance is “infamous” because it was by those gates where John Lennon was fatally shot by Marc David Chapman after he (Lennon) had gotten off his car to greet some fans that fateful night of December 8, 1980.

Across the street from the Dakota is Central Park.  And within a stone’s throw from the Dakota is a section of the park called Strawberry Fields.  The main attraction at Strawberry Fields is this mural shown above that’s lying on the ground.  In its very center is the word “Imagine”, named after a song John Lennon wrote and issued in 1971 that longed for a world where men live in peace and harmony.

It was said that Ms. Ono wanted the mural to be placed on the ground rather than on a raised monument so as to be in keeping with Mr. Lennon’s ideals that no man should be above any other, that we are all equal in this world.

(By the way, those painted nails weren’t mine.  Hehehe)

Above is a photo of the Dakota as it appears through the trees of Strawberry Fields in Central Park.  This photo was taken a few steps away from the “Imagine” mural.

The photo above was taken as I was about to leave the area.  It shows West 72nd Street with the Dakota on the left and all the other residential and commercial buildings on it.

Although my visit was brief, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.  There are still a lot of places around Manhattan that I’ve always wanted to visit but never really took the time to.  I’m starting to think that having spent decades of my life focused on work, that it’s about time that I get off the fast lane every now and then to admire and learn more about the world around me.

Photo credits:  M