60 years ago, 6 men carried Lee Harvey Oswald to his grave. But we only know 4 names
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JFK in Fort Worth
It’s been 60 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. In new interviews with the Star-Telegram, three reporters who covered Kennedy in Fort Worth and Dallas say the assassination will forever be “The Story” that changed their lives.
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Originally published Nov. 15, 2019.
Six journalists stepped in to carry accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to his Fort Worth grave.
But even after six decades of retellings, we still don’t know all six names.
It’s one of the tiny mysteries remaining from President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, followed by Oswald’s funeral and burial Nov. 25, 1963, in what is now Shannon Rose Hill Cemetery.
This mystery is growing more complicated, not less.
With no mourners on hand but Oswald’s family, funeral director Paul Groody drafted six men — all reporters, or so we thought — to help carry the coffin.
It’s a great story.
But only a few of the reporters ever retold it.
Two remain unidentified.
Nobody has ever known the name of one of the men.
Now, we are not even so sure about a second of the “Oswald pallbearers.”
Four of the six men asked by police to help lift Oswald’s casket always retold the story of that gray day. Two were from the Star-Telegram: reporter Jerry Flemmons and the late columnist Jon McConal. The other two are late Associated Press reporter Mike Cochran and United Press International reporter Preston McGraw.
But I’ve tried for years to identify a tall pallbearer lifting the middle of the casket in photos from the funeral, three days after the Kennedy assassination and the day after the former Fort Worth hometown schoolboy-turned-Soviet defector was shot at close range by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
At least one Washington reporter once claimed he was a Oswald pallbearer. But his photo did not match the burial scene, although he may have helped unload the casket earlier.
In recent years, new questions arose about the other middle pallbearer.
Reporters from the Star-Telegram and Dallas Morning News always identified that man as Ed Horn, a Star-Telegram reporter from 1962 to 1964.
But family members of fomer WBAP/820 AM news director Bob Dickson say they believe Dickson is on that side.
“My father has told us since the day he came home from the funeral,” wrote Kevin Dickson.
“There are those shiny black wing-tips [shoes]. ... Dad overshined his shoes like he was still in the service. ... He is the spitting image of my youngest son.”
In 1976, Dickson was identified as a pallbearer in a 1976 San Antonio Light column, but he was never named in Fort Worth or Dallas newspapers.
He went on to work in San Antonio and South Texas until his death in 1996, Kevin Dickson said.
The Light also listed former KTVT/Channel 11 news anchor Jim Thomas as a pallbearer. But Thomas does not appear to be in the burial photos.
Horn went on to become a Central Texas newspaper executive. His photo closely matches that of the pallbearer, but it also could be Dickson.
Cochran’s retelling of the story remains online in these pages and on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“Horn is the only name I’ve ever heard, in all our conversations,” Cochran said.
Oswald’s popularity that day was “at an all-time low,” Cochran has joked. When Groody asked him to help, he first said, “Not only no, but hell no.”
But when McGraw volunteered from archcompetitor United Press International, Cochran jumped in too.
That produced 50 years of headlines like in the New York Daily News: “I Was a Pallbearer For Lee Harvey Oswald.”
He and the other reporters were asked by Fort Worth Police Chief Cato Hightower and Miller Funeral Home workers to help lift the casket.
“I thought — sure,” McConal said in 2013. “It’s just a casket.”
In journalism school, you’re taught to stay out of the story.
The late Fort Worth Press reporter Jack Moseley started to help.
But then he stepped away, leaving an empty handle on one side of the casket.
“I grabbed the casket and I took several steps, and I said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’” Moseley said in a 2013 Arkansas interview.
“‘I don’t want to carry the casket of a man that’s accused of killing the president.’”
Dallas Morning News reporter Eddie Hughes also took a handle but dropped out.
He said he feared the archconservative Morning News editors “wouldn’t like me carrying a Communist.”
Hughes said he believes it was Horn carrying the casket, not Dickson. He knew both men.
Hughes’ place was taken by the tall “mystery pallbearer,” who may have been a law officer or federal agent.
A Disciples of Christ pastor said a few words — the family’s Lutheran pastor didn’t show up — and the family and more than 100 police officers dispersed.
KFJZ-AM reporter Jerome “Richard” Davis, now living in Colleyville, also covered the funeral along with deejay Mark Stevens. Davis said he was around the group but was “more of a tag-along.”
The late WRR/101.1 FM host Dan Bates was a Star-Telegram reporter that day and vaguely looks like one of those unidentified, but both Cochran and McConal said he was not a pallbearer.
Years ago, former Washington Post reporter and Washington Times columnist Jeremiah O’Leary has written and told how he was one of Oswald’s pallbearers.
However, O’Leary does not look like anyone in the photos.
In 1993, when reporters gathered at Southern Methodist University for a forum about one of the most filmed and photographed weekends in history, they could not even agree how many pallbearers there were.
Obviously there is much more we don’t know.
This story was originally published November 20, 2023 at 7:26 PM with the headline "60 years ago, 6 men carried Lee Harvey Oswald to his grave. But we only know 4 names."
