Photographs

Speeches

Parking lot speech

Photographer

Newspapers

Kennedy, John F.

Connally, John

Gordon, Gene

Hotel Texas

Fort Worth Press

Fort Worth

Film

1 3/8 × 1 1/2 in. (3.5 × 3.8 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

A crowd of approximately 5,000 people gathered in the parking lot of the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth on the morning of November 22, 1963; many of them waiting more than three hours in drizzling rain for an opportunity to see the president. Shortly before 9:00AM, President Kennedy, accompanied by Vice President Johnson, Governor Connally, Senator Ralph Yarborough, Congressman Jim Wright and several Fort Worth officials, exited the hotel and approached a flatbed truck that had been set up with a podium. In his brief, impromptu remarks, President Kennedy proclaimed, "There are no faint hearts in Fort Worth," before apologizing that Mrs. Kennedy was still getting ready upstairs in the hotel. The president took time to shake a few hands before, around 9:10AM, heading back inside the hotel for the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce breakfast in the hotel's ballroom. - Stephen Fagin, Curator