White House Press cloth banner from bus in the Dallas motorcade

Continental Trailways bus driver Joe Savage saved this cloth banner following the assassination. He drove what was officially designated White House Press bus #1, the seventeenth vehicle in the Dallas motorcade on November 22, 1963. His bus was followed by eight additional vehicles, including White House Press bus #2 and the Official Party bus. Among the journalists aboard bus #1 were Robert Pierpoint of CBS, Robert MacNeil of NBC, Charles Roberts of Newsweek and Hugh Sidey of Time. As soon as shots were fired in Dealey Plaza, Robert MacNeil was the only journalist from bus #1 who insisted that he be let off in the plaza (where he would go on to make a report to NBC from a telephone inside the Texas School Book Depository, after possibly encountering Lee Harvey Oswald exiting the building). Unlike White House Press bus #2, which traveled to the Dallas Trade Mart as scheduled, Joe Savage closely followed the leading cars and drove White House Press bus #1 directly to Parkland Memorial Hospital. This put the journalists aboard bus #2 at a disadvantage, forcing many of them to hitch rides, such as Sid Davis of Westinghouse Broadcasting, or make other immediate transportation arrangements to get to the nearby hospital where the breaking news of the assassination was rapidly unfolding. According to Savage, recalling his activities almost exactly forty years later in 2003, White House Press bus #1 remained at Parkland for at least an hour before heading back to Dallas Love Field. When his shift concluded, Savage decided to save this cloth banner from the driver's side of the bus. It was rolled up and stored in his garage for four decades until it was donated to the Museum on November 18, 2003. - Stephen Fagin, Curator