Image of the Kennedys greeting the crowd at Dallas Love Field
The smiling brunette extending her hand in the right-center area of this photograph is W.W. Samuell High School student Rose Marie Simmons. Along with her twin sister Sherry, not seen in this picture, Rose Marie missed school on November 22, 1963, to see the Kennedys at Dallas Love Field. As Rose Marie explained in her Museum oral history, her U.S. history teacher, Rose Callahan, encouraged her to ask the president for an autograph, jokingly saying that it was needed to properly excuse her from missing class.
Seconds after this photograph was taken, Rose Marie indeed asked President Kennedy for an autograph while shaking his hand. The president told the young high school student to write to his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, for a picture. After the assassination, Rose Marie wrote to Ms. Lincoln and received a poignant personal reply and a photograph of the late president. Unaware that she was captured in a photograph at Dallas Love Field, Rose Marie found herself in this image while researching at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in 2003. Until her death in February 2012, Rose Marie Simmons was a frequent program participant, while both she and her twin sister Sherry recorded one-on-one videotaped oral history interviews. Shortly after Rose Marie's passing, her family donated to the Museum her Evelyn Lincoln letter and Kennedy photograph. - Stephen Fagin, Curator
