Parting Glances
Back in the mid-80s a group of friends gathered monthly for dinner and sharing at Detroit's historic artist venue, the Scarab Club. We called ourselves "The Friends of Dorothy Kilgallen".
Our campy title was a play on the old closet question, "Are you a friend of Dorothy?" Meaning, Are you gay? The title also referenced once-famous Ms Kilgallen, syndicated journalist, panelist for TV's 1960s popular What's My Line? guessing game show.
Two years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, Ms Kilgallen announced that she was going to "blow the lid" off who was really behind his murder with details divulged to her. On November 8, 1965, she was found dead from a supposed prescription drug OD. Her death was curious to say the least.
A new book, "Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination," by Richard Belzer and David Wayne (Skyhorse Publishing), offers startling documentation about Ms Kilgallen's mysterious death. And! the sudden, untimely deaths of 40 others who "knew a little too much" for their own good (and America's supposed good as well).
"Hit List" is one of many published on the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination. Two others in my collection are "Who Really Killed JFK?" and "They Killed Our President: 63 Proof Reasons," the latter by former Minnesota governor Jessie Ventura.
A consensus is that Lee Harvey Oswald, who claimed he was a "patsy," himself killed by Dallas night club owner and underworld associate Jack Ruby, was not the lone JFK assassin; if his assassin at all. Implicated are the CIA, anti-Castro Cuban exiles, the drug-dealing mafia cartel, the industrial/military complex, supporters of the Vietnam War, and, according to some, Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson and FBI head J. Edgar Hoover.
Among those "off'd" for their knowledge and/or participation was gay cargo pilot David Ferrie. Other gays suspected, but never proven, by investigating New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who believed there was a JFK murder conspiracy, include Clay Shaw and Guy Bannister. They happened to be friends of Lee Harvey.
I was 27 when Kennedy was assassinated and working at Wayne University. As media news coverage spread it was as though someone had taken a collective stun gun to America's pride, traditions, self-esteem. The shock, repeated with each news clip, each grim telecast, was numbing, disabling, unbelievable. We were participants in an unending walking dead theater.
America's beloved, charismatic, youthful, leader was no more. "Ask not what your country can do for you," he said in one of his many inspiring speeches. "Rather, ask what you can do for your country." Indeed.
Item for sharing: in 1965 I was sitting at the Woodward Bar next to an Army Sergeant on leave. He spent the night with me. When Larry got out of service, he moved in. Turns out, Larry was an Honor Guard in the Kennedy funeral at Arlington Cemetery. He witnessed the lighting of the Eternal Flame. Fired his rifle in farewell salute.
That flame still burns. Sadly, it also burned through the Bobby Kennedy assassination and that of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, five years after November 22, 1963. Lest we forget.
