Eyewitnesses: the Newmans

On Nov. 22, 1963, they were just a struggling young couple eager to let their two children steal a glimpse of President John F. Kennedy.

But history reserved a special seat for Bill and Gayle Newman: They were the closest civilian eyewitnesses to the assassination of JFK in downtown Dallas.

About 15 minutes after the president was shot, the Newmans were interviewed live on TV. Their 15 minutes of fame, however, has endured for 49 years, permanently etched in the annals of history.

Both 71 now, the Sachse couple still vividly recall excruciating details of that fateful day, especially the gunshots that rang around the world.

They shared their recollections again Friday at the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, where they’ve interacted with many audiences in recent years.

“I was terrified because of my children,” Gayle Newman said in an interview a day before the “Meet the Museum” presentation.

“I had never been around gunfire, so it was quite a shock to see someone shot in the head. … And it was the president of the United States.”

The Newmans actually drove to Love Field that morning to watch the Kennedys disembark from Air Force One. They then rushed to downtown to see the motorcade wind its way past the old Texas School Book Depository.

They were on the north side of Dealey Plaza less than five minutes when the gunfire — which both said sounded like “firecrackers” at first — burst through the air as the president’s motorcade drew closer.

“When the third shot rang out … I turned to Gayle and said, ‘That’s it. Get down,’” Bill Newman told the audience of about 250 people.

They dropped to the ground and shielded their two boys — Clayton, 2, and Bill, 4 — a frightening moment captured in a compelling photograph that still stirs public passion.

“The picture of us covering the kids on the ground — I suspect that’s why there’s so much interest in our story,” Gayle Newman said before the event. “Some people have embellished their story. We try to keep it straight and pure.”

They don’t delve into the conspiracy theories.

“Two questions always come up,” Bill Newman said in an interview. “Do you think it’s a conspiracy? If I’m talking to school kids, I say, ‘If by conspiracy you mean there could have been more than one person involved, yes, it’s possible. But I don’t know.’

“The other question is, ‘Mr. Newman, do you think our government had anything to do with it?’ I say it’s possible some individual could have been involved, but I don’t think any government agency had anything to do with it.”

Program moderator Stephen Fagin, the museum’s associate curator and oral historian, grew up near the Newmans when they lived in Mesquite. His relationship with them sparked a lifelong curiosity about the JFK assassination.

Fagin homed in on how some researchers and authors selectively interpret the Newmans’ descriptions of what they heard. The third shot that the Newmans said came from “behind” them, he pointed out, has been used “as evidence that you heard a shot from the grassy knoll.”

And that’s simply not the case, said Bill Newman.

“It was the visual impact [of the fatal shot] that made me think the shot came down over our head,” he said. “In all honesty, I have no idea where the shot came from.”

When an audience member asked if they thought Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or was part of a conspiracy, the Newmans leaned on 49 years of hindsight.

“I think you could take either position,” Bill Newman said. “I tend to think there was only one shooter, but I really don’t know.”

Gayle Newman said she initially thought “it would be hard for one person to plan this and carry it out.”

But if someone else was involved, she figured, they’d eventually “blab it out.” Since no one ever did, she said, “I think there was just the one shooter.”

The Newmans have settled into their place in history, even if they’re still coming to grips with what it all means.

“People ask, ‘How has it affected you?’ And that’s almost impossible to answer,” said Bill Newman, a former Mesquite City Council member and retired electrician.

The Newmans have been interviewed countless times. They’ve received letters from people seeking their autographs or pleading for a signed copy of the famous picture taken of them the day JFK was slain.

Filmmakers have flown them to places as far away as England to work on JFK-related projects.

“Early on, the first two to four years, we were bombarded when people could find us,” said Bill Newman. “Then it started dying off.”

But when the 25th anniversary approached, he said, “it picked back up and it hasn’t let up since.”

The couple celebrated their 54th wedding anniversary earlier this month. They spend most of their time on their 1.7-acre homestead in Sachse. Both of their sons, now in their 50s, are married with kids.

“The youngest didn’t recall much” about the assassination, Bill Newman said before the presentation.

The older son, however, remembers seeing the fatally wounded president.

“A day or so later,” Newman said, “he asked his mother, ‘Mama, did you see that blood? Why did they shoot that man?’”