JFK Shooting Eyewitness to Speak at Germanna

By Mike Zitz, Germanna Community College

When shots rang out at Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963, Jack McNairy was there.

The 18-year-old Dallas high-school student watched as President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade sped away.  A Secret Service agent asked McNairy to give him a ride to Parkland Memorial Hospital. Once there, McNairy stared in disbelief into the president’s blood-splattered limo moments before the Secret Service ordered it cleaned and sent it back to Washington. 

McNairy says what he saw in the limo “indicated the shots that hit the president came from behind--possibly from the School Book Depository Building,” where Lee Harvey Oswald was perched and not from the grassy knoll on the Northwest side of the plaza.

McNairy interviews played a key part in the Discovery Channel's 2008 investigative program, "Inside the Target Car."  

Germanna Community College (GCC) history instructor Dan Carter will moderate a discussion with McNairy and Jim Martin, who, on that fateful day, was a young newspaperman covering President Kennedy’s assassination from a Washington perspective. GCC Asst. Prof. Stuart Smith will explain the political climate that led to the president making his fateful trip to Dallas. A discussion with the audience will follow.

The event, which is open to public free of charge, will be held 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Nov. 5, at Sealy Auditorium in the Workforce Building at 10000 Germanna Point Dr, Fredericksburg.

An interactive video feed in room 114 at Germanna’s Locust Grove Campus, 2130 Germanna Hwy, and room 118 at GCC's Daniel Technology Center, 18121 Technology Dr, Culpeper, will enable students and area residents in those locations to watch and hear the event live and ask the panelists questions.

For more information, email dcarter@germanna.edu or call 540/846-5163.