Norman journalist is one of two reporters left who was there when JFK was assassinated. Here's what he remembers

For decades, Joe Carter Sr. would have nightmares about those three rifle shots fired from the Texas School Depository on Nov. 22, 1963.

“I would wake up a lot of times in the night hearing those shots,” said the 91-year-old Carter. “I don’t hear them now. When you get older you get kind of immune, or something, but I remember them.”

On the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Carter has been a man in demand.

The Norman resident is one of only two journalists still alive who were riding the press bus that followed Kennedy’s motorcade on that fateful day in Dallas when the president was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald.

'I could sure count three shots coming from the same place'

In recent weeks, Carter has returned a few times to the site of the former Texas School Book Depository where Oswald had set up a sniper’s nest at a window on the sixth floor. He had gone there to be interviewed for documentaries on the Kennedy assassination, including one being done by a Belgium film crew.

The former book depository is now the Sixth Floor Museum. Carter has been there many times over the years, taking grandchildren, great-grandchildren and other family and friends on tours, retelling the story of that day.

Carter, an Army veteran, was on the press bus when he heard the shots. The bus carrying mostly White House correspondents was about six cars behind the 1961 Lincoln Continental that carried the president, he said.

“I could sure count three shots coming from the same place, “Carter said. “I was in a good position to hear it.  I was just right below him (Oswald) on the street.”

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Kennedy was in Texas on a campaign trip. He had previously visited San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth and flew in that day to Love Field where he was giving a speech at a luncheon in Dallas.

At the time, Carter was the overnight editor for the southwest division of United Press International in Dallas. He edited UPI reports for afternoon newspapers and early morning broadcasts in seven states.

The UPI reporter who would have normally covered Kennedy’s visit to Dallas was on vacation, so Carter was asked by his editors to fill in. He went to Love Field in Dallas on the morning of Nov. 22 after working his overnight shift.

“I met Kennedy at Love Field, walked with him,” Carter said.

Carter’s assignment was to telephone UPI with reports throughout the day on the president’s activities and to take notes at the luncheon. He boarded the White House Correspondents bus at Love Field for the trip downtown.

“We got down to Dealy Plaza and we were making a hard left turn to get on the Stemmons Freeway, and the three shots rang out,” Carter said. “The bus then sped on.”

When the bus stopped at a trade mart minutes later, Carter got off and found a pay phone to call UPI. He told his boss that he had heard three shots and had seen a police officer run up a grassy knoll.

His boss then informed Carter that the president had been shot and told Carter to get to Parkland Hospital where Kennedy had been taken.

The press bus was in a traffic jam, so Carter recruited a limo driver to take him to the hospital.

Where the grassy knoll term originated following the JFK assassination

The bus of White House correspondents eventually arrived at the hospital where they were told the president was dead. Carter and the rest of the press corps got back on the bus for a return trip to Love Field where Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One.

By then, Carter had used all of his change on pay phones to call in reports, so he borrowed a dime from a woman in the Love Field lobby to file his last one.

“Everything I reported that day went out under the byline of Merriman Smith,” Carter said.

Smith was the chief white house correspondent for UPI who also was in Dallas that day. Smith returned to Washington, D.C., aboard Air Force One, and started writing in his stories on a typewriter on the plane, Carter said.

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In 1964, Smith received the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Kennedy assassination. He was the first to publicly use the term “grassy knoll” regarding the assassination.

Carter resumed his editing duties at UPI the next day. Reporters spent weeks chasing leads and conspiracy theories, but Carter said there was never solid evidence to suggest Oswald had co-conspirators.

Born in Enid and raised in Tulsa, Carter left UPI in 1968.

A member of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, Carter later was an aide to President Johnson and President Jimmy Carter. In the 1970s, he worked as the press secretary for Oklahoma Gov. David Hall. He also worked as the communications director for the Democratic National Committee in his career.

After retiring to Florida, Carter and his wife, Michelle Lefebvre, moved back to Oklahoma four years ago to live in Norman to be near grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Sixty years later, there are still conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination, but Carter dismisses them. He is “99.9 percent sure” that Oswald acted alone.

“Lee Harvey Oswald was just a thug,” Carter said. “We know he was an angry, mixed-up kid. He had been kicked out of the Marine Corps. He was just a failure in life.”

“We’ve spent 60 years digging through this thing. ... Lies are still being told, in my judgment.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma journalist recalls scene in Dallas when JFK was assassinated