DescriptionVideotaped oral history interview with Carol Miller. A conservative Dallas housewife, Miller was advised not to go downtown to see the Kennedy motorcade because she was pregnant at the time. Her late husband, a Dallas attorney, observed the presidential parade on his lunch hour.
Interview conducted at C.C. Young retirement community in Dallas on July 1, 2010 by Stephen Fagin. The interview is fourteen minutes long.
Curatorial Commentary
In 2010, I was invited by the Center of Vital Longevity at the University of Texas at Dallas to speak to three groups of senior citizens who were participating in a cognitive vitality study. After each presentation (April, July and November), I invited seniors to record brief one-on-one oral histories about their memories of President Kennedy and the assassination. This was the first time that the Museum had conducted short, on-the-spot interviews as part of community outreach. These 2010 sessions, during which twenty-five seniors recorded brief interviews, proved to be so successful that the Museum has actively pursued oral history community outreach ever since.
Carol Miller was interviewed as part of the second group of seniors in the UTD study. All interviews were recorded at C.C. Young retirement community in Dallas. - Stephen Fagin, Curator
Carol Miller passed away on March 21, 2018. - Stephen Fagin, Curator
Since 2010, The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza has actively engaged in community outreach to grow the institution's ongoing Oral History Project. Unlike the one-on-one interviews recorded onsite at the Museum or via Zoom or telephone, community outreach recordings are typically brief, on-the-spot reflections of President Kennedy and the weekend of the assassination that, on average, run between five to fifteen minutes. During a typical outreach visit to a retirement home, church or community center, I give a half-hour presentation about the assassination and the Museum's project and encourage those in attendance to add their voices to this tapestry of living memory. Following the program, somewhat like a doctor's office, I call on volunteers to sit down with me one-on-one, one after another to briefly share their memories. These impromptu recordings have, over the years, uncovered a wealth of untold stories and hidden gems. Among the dozens of everyday memories of hearing about the Kennedy assassination at work, in a restaurant or at school, are a number of Kennedy motorcade spectators, Parkland Hospital personnel, attendees of the Fort Worth breakfast or Dallas Trade Mart luncheon, acquaintances of Jack Ruby, Peace Corps volunteers, civil rights activists and even one local FBI agent, long since retired from the Bureau. It has been an honor to record these and other unique stories related to the life, death and legacy of President Kennedy and the broader history and culture of the 1960s. If you live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and are interested in scheduling an oral history outreach visit for your retirement community or organization, please contact oralhistory@jfk.org. - Stephen Fagin, Curator
