History worth reclaiming

I’m slowly working my way through Vincent Bugliosi’s book on the Kennedy assassination. He starts the book with a gripping narrative of the events of 11/22/63. It is rich in detail and filled with vignettes that perfectly capture a long lost era in America.

One of my favorite is the story of Ted Callaway. He was the manager of a used car dealership in Oak Cliffs. On the afternoon of 22 November, he heard the shots that killed officer JD Tippit. He left his office and saw Oswald trot past his business carrying a gun. Callaway ran to the scene of the shooting and arrived before the police could get their.

After he helped load the dying policeman into an ambulance, he noticed the officer’s service revolver lying in the street. Callaway, a Marine veteran of World War Two and Korea, picked it up and went to taxi driver William Scoggins. Here's Bugliosi on what happened:

Callaway tucks the gun in his belt and turns to the cabdriver, Scoggins.

“You saw the guy, didn’t you?” the former marine asks.

Scoggins admits he had.

“If he is going up Jefferson, he can’t be too far. Let’s go get the son of a bitch who’s responsible for this.”

In his blue suit and white shirt, Callaway looks like some kind of policeman, or Secret Service agent. Scoggins doesn’t find out until later that he’s simply a used-car manager. They go back to Scoggins’s cab and set off to cruise along Jefferson, the last place Callaway saw the gunman.

I know that I’m supposed to harrumph and say something about the outrageousness of this act of attempted vigilantism. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. So help me, I admire the guy.

The spirit of our desiccated age begs us to cower behind locked doors when crime happens nearby. Ted Callaway was made of sterner stuff. The world would be a better place if we had more people like him.