The girl in blue

[Tom Graves]

Don't be too hard on Gary Mack. He only showed one or two videos before getting to the Bell film, and both showed the corner of Elm and Houston. I went to the museum in 1995, chickened out, and left. Came back again in 1999 before I got my PhD and moved to Pennsylvania. That's when I spent time with Gary. Bob ? (I don't know his last name) did the first "oral history."

I found some differences between my first oral history and the latest interview. First oral history "I could only see grey burst from his head. I couldn't see blood, but it sparkled in the sunshine."
Last interview. "I could only see grey blast out of his head. I couldn't see red blood or any sparkles." I'm sure there are many more. To that problem I say, "memory is a As I was walking a' alane, I heard twa corbies makin' a mane. The tane untae the tither did say, Whaur sail we gang and dine the day, O. Whaur sail we gang and dine the day?  It's in ahint yon auld fail dyke I wot there lies a new slain knight; And naebody kens that he lies there But his hawk and his hound, and his lady fair, O. But his hawk and his hound, and his lady fair.  His hound is to the hunting gane His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame, His lady ta'en anither mate, So we may mak' our dinner swate, O. So we may mak' our dinner swate.  Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane, And I'll pike oot his bonny blue e'en Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair We'll theek oor nest when it grows bare, O. We'll theek oor nest when it grows bare.  There's mony a ane for him maks mane But nane sail ken whaur he is gane O'er his white banes when they are bare The wind sail blaw for evermair, O. The wind sail blaw for evermair.'." It comes and goes. The human brain just doesn't work like a computer.

My favorite description of memory comes from Mary Carr.
"Memory is a pin ball in a machine.
It ricochets between image, idea,
fragments of scenes, stories you’ve heard.
Then the machine goes tilt
and everything stops."

So forgive witnesses whose 'story' changes from time to time. We do the best we can. It was 62 years ago.

A prime example of a fading memory is that of Karen Scranton ne Westbrook, who was standing on Elm Street with three of her TSBD / South-West Publishing Company colleagues, all of whom were wearing headscarves that day (hers was light blue). Of the four young women in her group in the Zapruder film, she is standing nearest the TSBD. She is tall and thin and wearing a dark-blue dress or coat. She is hard to make out in the film because she is partly obscured and because her dark clothing blends in with that of the woman standing to her left. During an interview with Stephen Fagin in 2017, she mistook medium-blue-headscarf-wearing Sharon Simmons (who was standing nearest the Stemmons Freeway sign in Zapruder -- some fifteen feet from Westbrook) for herself, and she mistook strawberry-blond Gloria Holt for Westbrook's own colleague and friend, large, tall, red-haired Gloria Calvery (who happened to be wearing a black headscarf that day).