Image of a woman outside Parkland Hospital the day of the assassination

Wilda Atkinson and twelve-year-old daughter Kathey saw President and Mrs. Kennedy arrive at Dallas Love Field. As they were leaving the airport later that morning, the Atkinsons learned that the president had been shot. Wilda decided to drive straight to the hospital. On the way she told her daughter, as Kathey recalled in her oral history, "We're going to stand outside his window and wave at him and let him know that Dallas cares--and that we love him."  In this photograph, and the subsequent image in this series which shows Kathey in tearful prayer, the Atkinsons are reacting to word they received from a Catholic priest that the president had died. - Stephen Fagin, Curator