Mary Woodward said there were 3 shots and the 1st shot missed everything

[Tom Graves]

Mary is a certified dingbat. Here is the 1993 panel that Milicent Cranor mentioned. Mary appears at 1:20. As in the 2015 interview, she says they had planned to watch the motorcade from Houston but, because it was crowded, they walked across Houston and stationed themselves "just down from" the TSBD; absolutely nothing about the grassy knoll, except that she repeats making the comment to her coworker that the grassy knoll looked like a dangerous spot and there must be lots of security up there. She thought the "first shot" sounded like a firecracker and turned to her coworker and asked what it was. The third shot came "very, very quickly on top of" the second. Her big schtick is that the limo almost came to a stop after the first shot (?) and she has been forever haunted by the thought that JFK might have lived if the Secret Service had reacted more quickly after the "first shot" (which she herself thinks missed and didn't recognize as a shot?).

To make things worse, she typed up her story within minutes of getting back to the office. She reread it just before this appearance, and "the only thing [she] got wrong" was saying that the shots seemed to come from behind and to her right - which she then explains by her hearing issue. Well, no, Mary, you got wrong where the hell you WERE. You specifically said you and your coworkers and your lunches "decided to wait" on the grassy knoll and had been "waiting" about a half hour before the first motorcycles appeared. The Newmans were about ten feet from you and covered their child because "Apparently, the bullets had whizzed directly over their heads."

The only plausible conclusions are that Mary is a Grade A dingbat or someone got to her as Milicent Cranor suspected. I can't believe the assorted interviews allowed her to get away with the "hearing problem" explanation when it simply doesn't touch the blatant discrepancies in an article typed IMMEDIATELY after the JFKA. Something drastically doesn't add up. No one is THAT confused.

https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/journalists-remember-jfk-assassination/121449

Dear Macho-Genius FPR,

Dan Rather and Gloria Calvery's colleague, Karen Westbrook, screwed up a lot, too.

Were they "dingbats"?

If you had been standing where Mary Woodward was standing at 12:30 on 11/22/63, would you have been able to write down correctly, a couple of hours later, everything you had witnessed?

And 20, 30, 40 years later, too?

Macho genius that you are?

-- Tom

[Lance Payette]

Dear Macho-Genius FPR,

Dan Rather and Gloria Calvery's colleague, Karen Westbrook, screwed up a lot, too.

Were they "dingbats"?

If you had been standing where Mary Woodward was standing at 12:30 on 11/22/63, would you have been able to write down correctly, a couple of hours later, everything you had witnessed?

And 20, 30, 40 years later, too?

Macho genius that you are?

-- Tom

Oh, dear, TG doesn't react well when caught with his pants down and egg on his weenie, does he?

With your kind permission, I will repeat what I just posted on your other OCD-driven Mary Woodward thread, to wit:

Mary was so "traumatized" when writing her article literally minutes after the assassination (according to her on C-SPAN in 1993) that she FORGOT WHERE SHE WAS. She and her coworkers had planned to watch on Houston, but because of the crowds they crossed to Elm and stationed themselves "just down" from the TSBD. Writing her article minutes later, she thought she'd spent the entire time on the grassy knoll, the shots came from behind and to her right, the Newmans were ten feet away, and the Newmans covered their child because "Apparently, the bullets had whizzed directly over their heads."

Now THAT, by God, is "traumatized!" 

Give it up. You're just digging yourself deeper in a hole. At best - AT BEST - Mary was a dingbat. At worst - well, I'm not sure what to make of her.

To repeat: She wrote her article IMMEDIATELY after returning to her office. And, yes, I am confident that if I had been standing along Elm the entire time I would not have thought I'd been sitting on the grassy knoll the entire time. If she was that traumatized, NOTHING she ever said is of any significance whatsoever.

[Tom Graves]

Oh, dear, TG doesn't react well when caught with his pants down and egg on his weenie, does he?

With your kind permission, I will repeat what I just posted on your other OCD-driven Mary Woodward thread, to wit:

Mary was so "traumatized" when writing her article literally minutes after the assassination (according to her on C-SPAN in 1993) that she FORGOT WHERE SHE WAS. She and her coworkers had planned to watch on Houston, but because of the crowds they crossed to Elm and stationed themselves "just down" from the TSBD. Writing her article minutes later, she thought she'd spent the entire time on the grassy knoll, the shots came from behind and to her right, the Newmans were ten feet away, and the Newmans covered their child because "Apparently, the bullets had whizzed directly over their heads."

Now THAT, by God, is "traumatized!" 

Give it up. You're just digging yourself deeper in a hole. At best - AT BEST - Mary was a dingbat. At worst - well, I'm not sure what to make of her.

To repeat: She wrote her article IMMEDIATELY after returning to her office. And, yes, I am confident that if I had been standing along Elm the entire time I would not have thought I'd been sitting on the grassy knoll the entire time. If she was that traumatized, NOTHING she ever said is of any significance whatsoever.

Dear Miles Scull I mean Macho Genius Fancy Pants Rants,

Where do you get off?

It's an expression from the 1940s, IIRC. As in, "When are you getting off this bus/train? You're so full of beans, you're stinking the place up."

-- Tom

[Lance Payette]

We have failed to mention wacky Mary's FBI interview of 12/7/63. It's clear she crossed from Houston to Elm. Nothing about the grassy knoll. It conveniently omits the timing of the second and third shots. Now she first thought the shots had come from "above and possibly behind" her. Then she thought they might have come from the overpass. All she can really say is that the shots came from above her head. She had seen five or six people on the overpass, and this may be why her "first reaction" (what?) was to look there. However, she never saw anything in the hands of those people.

She's worthless.

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/html/WH_Vol24_0269b.htm

[Tom Graves]

We have failed to mention wacky Mary's FBI interview of 12/7/63. It's clear she crossed from Houston to Elm. Nothing about the grassy knoll. It conveniently omits the timing of the second and third shots. Now she first thought the shots had come from "above and possibly behind" her. Then she thought they might have come from the overpass. All she can really say is that the shots came from above her head. She had seen five or six people on the overpass, and this may be why her "first reaction" (what?) was to look there. However, she never saw anything in the hands of those people.

She's worthless.

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/html/WH_Vol24_0269b.htm

Dear MGFPR,

What happens to traumatized peoples' memories over time regarding what it was that traumatized them, especially if it occurred over about 10.2 seconds (the length of time from "Z-124" to Z-313), occurred close to them, affected them viscerally, and occurred in a confusing, chaotic context?

More clarification with time?

In Mary Woodward's case, traumatized though she was, she managed to write down correctly, a couple of hours after the assassination, the fact that the first of three shots sounded like a backfire to her, that it missed everyone, that JFK and Jackie turned their heads in response to it, and at some point JFK and Jackie waved to her and her colleagues.

Question:

When's the last time you saw, from fifty feet away, or so, the head of a friendly acquaintance of yours -- maybe even the most powerful person in the world -- get blown off by a high-powered rifle shot?

Did it traumatize you, MGFPR?

If that's never happened to you, do you think it might traumatize you if it did -- or would you just "suck it up" and go drink some more bortsch?

-- Tom

[Tom Graves]

Oh, dear, TG doesn't react well when caught with his pants down and egg on his weenie, does he?

Dear MGFPR,

Do you often find yourself thinking of weenies?

-- Tom

[Lance Payette]

I will have to confess to finding my Mary Woodward factoid-hunt way more fun than I perhaps should.

1. As a journalism major who worked in that field for seven years before law school, I find it fascinating in the extreme that a 23-year-old reporter for a major newspaper would so blatantly fill her article with whoppers on a story of the magnitude of the JFKA. I am amazed that (1) Mary was able to continue to work in the field and (2) she was allowed for 54 years to get away with attributing the most insignificant of her whoppers to a "hearing problem" with NO ONE pointing out, "Uh, Mary, that doesn't begin to account for the whoppers in your article." You have to admit, claiming that she had thought "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" would be a serious BBC documentary is also "just a bit" out there. Maybe I'm morphing into Milicent Cranor (would that be good?), but there is something disturbing about all this that I can't quite put my finger on.

2. Exposing someone like Mary just always sort of makes my day. It's what we factoid-busters live for, like finding a previously unknown butterfly or something. Sorry that Mary was a seemingly pleasant and likeable dingbat, but she was indeed a dingbat.

3. Exponentially adding to the mirth is when someone such as TG digs in his heels and tries to preserve a character like Mary as supportive of his JFKA views. This is one of the most comical aspects of the JFKA - the inability of virtually everyone, CTer and LNer alike, to simply say "Oops, got that wrong, never mind." NO, WE CAN NEVER ADMIT WE HAVE MADE FOOLS OF OURSELVES on even the most insignificant issue because ... because ... well, I'm not sure why, but we can't. Early on at the Ed Forum, I made two rather large and comical mistakes, and a longtime CTer who became one of my biggest supporters congratulated me for having the honesty to say "Oops, got that wrong, never mind." Try it sometime.

4. And, of course, even more exponentially ratcheting up the mirth is when the heel-digger is TG, who inevitably ends up throwing a name-calling hissy fit and reveals who really is - i.e., fundamentally nuttier than almost anyone here. Indeed, fundamentally nuttier than almost anyone I've ever encountered on any internet forum. Indeed, fundamentally nuttier than ... oh, well, let's not overdo it.

RIP, dingbat Mary. You were a hoot, as are TG's efforts to prop you up. (Speaking of propping up, how many people know that English philosopher Jeremy Bentham specified in his will that his corpse would be preserved, appropriately clad, and occasionally wheeled out to preside at university meetings - and it was! Just one of those little tidbits of weirdness that fill approximately 2/3 of my brain.)