Aunt Elois and the Death of a President: A Witness' Story Told by a Relative

By Elizabeth O'Mara Anderson

My great aunt Elois usually didn't wear her glasses, and she was not wearing them that day in Dealey Plaza. For reading her Bible, she always used a magnifying glass, and she called it her "spy glass." She searched every day in her Bible for new scriptures to put into practice. Aunt Elois had her own car to drive, even in the 1950's.
Maxine worked as a volunteer at a local hospital gift shop. She always remembered her many relatives with beautiful cards and thoughtful gifts.
Maxine's father, Judge William Carey Graves, was a former Texas State Senator. He was a wonderful story teller and loved to smoke his special pipe. His huge collection of "National Geographic" magazines was started in the year 1911.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477134184

Elizabeth O'Mara Anderson

A former elementary school teacher, a cross country hiker and a quiltmaker. It took me 20 years to write my book. 10 years were spent walking from one library to the next to do background research for my book. I made it to over 432 libraries in that time. I also made a short presentation of my book to the Arkansas State Police HDQTRS here and it was a success.

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Copyright © 2012 by Elizabeth O’Mara Anderson. 113853-ANDE

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4771-3417-7

Ebook 9781469708485

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Contents

Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig

Moving To Dallas

November 22, 1963

Left In The Dark

Marriage And Work

Really Dark Clouds

United States Senator Russell Long

Hiking Near Civilization

Dinner!

432 Libraries

Stills, Shadows And A Tree

Fear Of Reprisals

Stronger Than Fiction

Post Script

Aunt Elois and the Death of a President

Elizabeth O’Mara Anderson

July 4, 2009

missing image file

My mother was named Elizabeth O’Mara when she attended LSU with Russell Long.

US Senator Russell Long spent most of his life as a public servant.

Introduction

Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig

Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig had won an award for meritorious service in Dallas. On November 22, 1963, he had been downtown and was one of two officers in the interrogation room where Lee Harvey Oswald was taken. Later, other police officers denied that he had even been there and told a different story about what Oswald had said. He was harassed in many other ways, especially over the telephone.

However, an amateur photographer took a photo of Oswald in the interrogation room and Roger Craig definitely was there, because the room had glass panels. Deputy Craig was harassed even more and his wife and three kids left him because they couldn’t take the pressure. Roger Craig committed suicide.

CHAPTER ONE

Moving to Dallas

I was born in a small town in Louisiana called Bogalusa. There was a Crown Zellerbach paper mill in Bogalusa and the air was always filled with its pungent smell. Mother, Dad and I lived with our grandparents in a small frame house. The whole yard was a garden filled with Grandpa O’Mara’s experimental plants. There were camellia bushes everywhere, papershell pecans and even firecracker vines on the porch. Grandfather also had a Tung tree by his machine shop, a tree imported from China whose oil was supposed to be wonderful for furniture refinishing. Grandpa Ed O’Mara was a 33rd Degree Mason.

Dad was a geologist who grew up on a farm in West Branch, Iowa with five brothers. West Branch was President Herbert Hoover’s birthplace. Dad worked with offshore oil crews in the Gulf. One day, Dad got us all together and told us we were moving to a big city called Dallas. Later that day, we packed the car; Dad’s 1947 green Packard convertible, and started driving toward Texas. I slept on the back seat, covered up with a blanket.

I woke up the next day to the loud sounds of a big city. We drove to a suburb of Dallas called Oak Cliff, where Dad had already purchased us a very small home. He immediately began planning additions to the house. Dad was a master carpenter, because if somebody’s barn burned down in the Quaker village of West Branch, everyone was there the next day to rebuild it.

My father had already gotten a job in North Dallas working for a geological services company. So he worked all day long and when he came home, too.

Oaks, not pine trees, were in the front yard. Our backyard was already full of weeds, but our next door neighbor had a beautiful backyard garden filled with poppies and sweetheart rosebushes. She also had a blonde, blue eyed granddaughter my age named Rosemary. Photographs of us together showed we were the closest of friends. Rosemary had pretty pink skin, while I always had a sun tan.

One time, mother drove both of us to downtown Dallas for a flower celebration parade. Rosemary and I stood on the Main and Houston Street corner in Dealey Plaza. We each caught one lavender Vanda orchid, as they were tossed to the crowd. Later, mother took a picture of the two of us with Dad’s German camera. The orchids looked beautiful with our frilly summer dresses.

The most wonderful part about living in Dallas was that many of mother’s relatives lived there, too. My great Aunt Elois was my grandmother O’Mara’s sister. She and Uncle Carey had a swimming pool they built themselves out of ravine, so we were over there whenever the sun was hot in the afternoon.

Aunt Elois looked enough like Mark Twain to be his sister, but she acted liked Tom Sawyer’s Aunt Polly. She loved to cook and sew and designed her own clothes; laying newspaper down on the floor to make a pattern. She even made her own little black dress for less than ten dollars.

She also made beautiful stylish hats. Aunt Elois often made a special trip to downtown Dallas, which was five minutes away, and would invite me to come along too. First, she parked her car in the parking lot of the Union Train Station, near the beautiful Dallas Morning News building. It had the words FOUNDED ON THE ROCK OF TRUTH carved above its doors. Then we would walk over to the old Dallas County Courthouse, to take Uncle Carey some fried chicken or a sandwich. Uncle Carey’s office was on the second floor, so we had to walk up the steps inside the building. I was always glad to see him, and I marveled at the beautiful view of Dealey Plaza from his large office windows.

Later we walked down the street to browse at the fabric shop of Sanger’s Department Store and then we walked over to Elm Street, to look around at the milliner’s supply store that had wooden floors. This beautiful shop was filled with wedding veils and stiff fabric flowers; like roses, forget-me-nots, and lilies of the valley, Mrs. Kennedy’s favorite flower.

People always called my Uncle Carey, Judge Graves, but I never knew what kind of judge he was. To me a judge was a serious person on a television court room drama. I don’t believe he handled criminal cases. A relative told me that when he was a Texas State Senator before he was a judge, he was the first person to arrive at his office and the last one to leave.

They lived in a beautiful old two story house on top of a wooded hill in Kessler Park, a five minute drive to Dealey Plaza. The second story of the house had a large sleeping porch on it, because there was no air conditioning back then; and the rooms were humid and hot even at night. I would listen to my beautiful aunt say her evening prayers, then she would get into the bed on the sleeping porch with me and we would look up at the stars.

Aunt Elois’ son in law worked for Jack Wrather Productions in Hollywood. They made children’s television programs like Lassie, The Lone Ranger, and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. When the Sergeant Preston show went off the air, King, the Alaskan malamute dog star of the show, was given to Uncle Carey. King went everywhere with my uncle, responding to hand signals his trainer had taught him. King didn’t bark, either.

In the 1960 election, Uncle Carey had held his position as a judge in Dallas for many years. But this election