What if......?

[John Corbett]

The discussion about whether JBC could have continued to hold his hat after being shot in the wrist, triggered a strange thought in my head. What if JFK had chosen to wear the Stetson they gave him that morning at the Ft. Worth breakfast. Would that have confused Oswald? He would have seen two guys wearing cowboy hats in the limo. Would he have figured out which one was JFK. Could it have caused him to hesitate? All theoretical of course. One of a number of unanswerable questions regarding the JFKA.

JFK was very self-conscious about wearing hats, hence his reluctance to don it at the Ft. Worth breakfast. He was rarely photographed wearing one. He and Ike wore top hats to his inaugural. There's a small number of photos of him wearing a Fedora. I think most if not all of those were taken before he became POTUS.

[Sean Kneringer]

He was wearing a fedora when he had to skedaddle back to DC to deal with the Cuban crisis. Usually, he would hold one in his hands (while deplaning) instead of actually wearing it.

[Lance Payette]

Not a great look. Like me, JFK probably eschewed hats because he had excellent hair and knew his groupies didn't want to see it mussed (no, I don't have groupies, but all the women in the family do assure me that I have quite amazing hair; in fact, the head shot mostly likely would've just bounced off my hair).

[John Corbett]

He was wearing a fedora when he had to skedaddle back to DC to deal with the Cuban crisis. Usually, he would hold one in his hands (while deplaning) instead of actually wearing it.

Now that you mention it, I do remember seeing footage of that. He donned a trench coat too. I believe he did that to bolster the cover story that he was heading back to Washington because he had a cold. They were still trying to keep the CMC under wraps until they decided how they were going to respond, although a number of reporters were onto the story.

JFK had another quirk besides carrying his fedora. He would often deplane with a hand in his coat pocket. The real reason for this is he had a cigar that he had not finished smoking. When the pilot of AF1 was preparing for landing, he would instruct the passengers to extinguish all smoking materials, an instruction JFK would simply ignore.

"It's good to be the king".

[John Corbett]

Not a great look. Like me, JFK probably eschewed hats because he had excellent hair and knew his groupies didn't want to see it mussed (no, I don't have groupies, but all the women in the family do assure me that I have quite amazing hair; in fact, the head shot mostly likely would've just bounced off my hair).

That is one really bad hat. No wonder he quite wearing them.

[Jarrett Smith]

That is one really bad hat. No wonder he quite wearing them.

Could be worse

[Benjamin Cole]

JFK wanted to appear forward-looking, the new frontier and so on.

Fedoras, nearly required in the 1950s, suddenly dropped out of fashion in the 1960s.

To wear a fedora in 1963 would have signaled fuddi-duddiness.

JFK declined, even for a moment, to wear a Stetson, while in Dallas.

Having lived in Texas for a couple of years, I think a photo of JFK in a Stetson would have been a smart PR move.

I don't know why JFK did not doff the Stetson, at least for a photo shoot, in deference to Texas customs. JFK usually knew instinctively what was good PR. But perhaps Texas was terra incognita to JFK.