Photographs

Funeral

Photographer

Casket

Oswald funeral

Newspapers

Oswald, Lee Harvey

Oswald, Marina

Oswald, June

Oswald, Rachel

Oswald, Marguerite

Oswald, Robert

Oswald Family

Gordon, Gene

Fort Worth Press

Rose Hill Cemetery

Fort Worth

Film

15/16 × 1 7/16 in. (2.4 × 3.7 cm)

Gene Gordon Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

Gene Henderson Gordon (1929 - 2023) got his first job as a professional photographer at the age of 19 in 1948 at the Fort Worth Press, a Scripps-Howard newspaper launched in 1921. Less than five years later, Gordon was promoted to chief photographer, a position that he still held at the time of the Kennedy assassination in 1963. Gordon covered the Kennedys' arrival at Carswell Air Force Base on the night on November 21st and, a few hours later, President Kennedy's parking lot speech at the Hotel Texas and the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce breakfast in the hotel's ballroom. Following the assassination, he covered the funeral of Lee Harvey Oswald at Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth on November 25th. Gene Gordon remained at the Fort Worth Press until the paper ceased publication in 1975, after which he became a staff photographer, later chief photographer, at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He retired in 1997 after half a century as a professional photographer in Fort Worth. We were honored to record oral history interviews with Gene in 2003 and 2015. He also participated in two programs at The Sixth Floor Museum, including this Living History educational program in 2017: Living History with Gene Gordon (youtube.com). The Museum acquired his collection of Kennedy-related negatives and prints in 2014 and 2016. Gene Gordon passed away on March 16, 2023. - Stephen Fagin, Curator

Reporters at Lee Harvey Oswald's funeral were kept back from the Oswald family by Fort Worth police officers to respect their privacy. Seeing how close the family's chairs were to the gravesite, United Press International reporter Preston McGraw was inspired to volunteer as a pallbearer specifically to get closer to the family. "Frankly, what I had in mind," he recalled in a Museum oral history, "was to get up close to the family so I could ask Oswald's wife a couple of questions." McGraw, however, never had the chance. "No sooner had we sat the [casket] down then the cops pushed us back, and they formed a line between us and the [family]." Another pallbearer, Associated Press reporter Mike Cochran remembered that he initially had no intention of serving as a pallbearer until he saw his chief UPI rival, Preston McGraw, volunteer. Cochran, a young and relatively inexperienced AP writer at the time, reluctantly volunteered after McGraw, not wanting UPI to look better than the AP. When I told Cochran during a 2013 oral history that McGraw volunteered only so that he could get close to the Oswald family, Cochran smiled and said, "And that's the difference between an experienced reporter and a young inexperienced reporter." -- Stephen Fagin, Curator