'Boys aided city's rise from assassination

DALLAS - John Hutton was standing a few feet from the corner window on the sixth floor of what used to be called the Texas School Book Depository, and the memories of that awful day more than 47 years ago came flooding back. As he looked out over Elm Street, his eyes welled up as he recalled hearing the news in Mrs. O'Connor's third-grade class at Belcher Elementary School in Chicopee, Mass.

"My teacher from second grade, Miss Walsh, was walking through the door between the two classrooms and was telling Mrs. O'Connor that the president had been shot," said Hutton, 55. "It was so surreal, so strange, seeing the teachers' reactions like that when you're a little kid. You don't really know how to react."

With the benefit of hindsight, Hutton and his wife, Debbie, then a first-grader, know the enormity of John F. Kennedy's assassination on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963. Walking through the Dealey Plaza museum that is Dallas' No. 1 tourist attraction, they said they felt that they needed to be here a few days before their trip to nearby Arlington for Sunday's Super Bowl XLV.

"My memories are of my parents' reactions, and they were a mess," said Debbie Hutton, who grew up in Naugatuck, Conn.

"We were one of those New England families who had a picture of the Pope and the Kennedys in our living room. I remember [Kennedy] drove through our small town when he was campaigning, and I still remember my father putting me on his shoulders just to get a look. It was a time in our country that was filled with so much hope."

But the traumatic event plunged the nation into mourning and dragged Dallas into a dark place that few American cities have ever experienced. Not long after Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot and killed Kennedy from the corner window on the sixth floor, Dallas was dubbed "the city of hate."

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Staubach the hero

At the time, who could have imagined that it would be a football team to help deliver the city from the hopelessness that once surrounded it. Least of all Roger Staubach, who was awarded the Heisman Trophy at Manhattan's Downtown Athletic Club the day after JFK's funeral. Staubach came to Dallas six weeks after the assassination to play in the Cotton Bowl, then helped lift Dallas from its misery many years later.

Even though it was long ago, Staubach remembers it as if it had just happened - both the assassination and the rebirth he helped spawn as the Cowboys' star quarterback.

"I was going to my thermodynamics class at the Naval Academy, and I was out in the hall and they were yelling that the president has been shot," said Staubach, 68, who lives in Dallas. "When we got to class, our teacher there said he died."

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Staubach was preparing for the Army-Navy game, which was to be played Nov. 30 but was postponed until Dec. 7.

"All the pep rallies were canceled, so all the emotion came out on game day," he said. "We won, 21-15, and that set up the national championship game against Texas at the Cotton Bowl."

Navy lost to the Longhorns, 28-6, leaving Staubach despondent about the missed opportunity for a national title. He would reconnect to Dallas when the Cowboys drafted him in the 10th round in 1964. He wouldn't report to the Cowboys until 1969 because of his naval commitment, but once he arrived and started winning, the effect on the city was palpable.

"When I came to Dallas, that stigma of the JFK assassination was there," Staubach said. "So I think the Cowboys really did have an impact on people having a greater understanding. Dallas is a great city, and I think the Cowboys helped. Somebody did name us 'America's Team.'"

How 'bout them Cowboys?

"The Cowboys did more than any amount of money you could ever spend to negate the bad publicity for the shooting of the president," said Gil Brandt, the team's former personnel director, who drafted and signed Staubach.

"It became a situation where people used to come to Dallas to see where the president was shot. Now they come to Dallas to see the Cowboys. It completely erased the stigma of what kind of town this was."

Jim Dent, who covered the Cowboys for the Dallas Times-Herald, said the team's effect on the city shouldn't be underestimated.

"There's no question that a seminal moment in Dallas history was the Cowboys winning Super Bowl VI," said Dent, referring to the 24-3 victory over the Dolphins in January 1972. It was their first Super Bowl championship, and Staubach was the game's Most Valuable Player.

"There was a black cloud that hung over Dallas,'' Dent added. "This was a city that was a sad place. Dallas was a dark city back in the early 1960s, and there were a lot of funny characters running around. The Cowboys started to clean up that image, and when they became 'America's Team,' that helped immensely. "

Those positive feelings are heightened by the Dallas area's hosting the Super Bowl for the first time. Nearly 50 years after one of the biggest tragedies in American history, the world's eyes will be on the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex for an uplifting reason.

Ghosts won't ever leave

But the memory of the Kennedy assassination will never go away, even for those who didn't live through it.

Sean and Stephanie Miller were with their three children, standing a few feet from the "X" that designates where the fatal shot hit Kennedy. Everyone in the family was born after the assassination, but they still thought it was important to visit the area as part of their trip to watch their beloved Steelers on Sunday at Cowboys Stadium.

"To be standing here where it happened, it's strange," Sean said. "I felt it was important that we see this. My parents always say they knew where they were on that day. 9/11 was ours. We knew where we were. But here, this was the first place we had to see."

It's the same for Staubach's friends and family members who come to visit.

"Everybody wants to see where it happened," Staubach said. "It's still such an important place to remember in our history. I don't know if that will ever go away."