Image of President Kennedy speaking at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio
Of all the cities on the two-day trip to Texas in November 1963, the first stop - San Antonio - was the shortest. From arrival to departure, the Kennedys were only in San Antonio a total of approximately two and a half hours. The presidential party arrived at San Antonio International Airport at 1:30PM and then proceeded fifteen miles by motorcade through downtown San Antonio to Brooks Air Force Base, where President Kennedy dedicated the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine. He and Mrs. Kennedy also took time at Brooks to briefly interact with student journalists from the San Antonio ISD. They then departed Brooks for nearby Kelly Air Force Base where Air Force One waited to take the Kennedys to Houston that afternoon.
Interestingly, the visit to San Antonio was initially scheduled to be after Dallas on Friday, November 22. Trip planning documents at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston outline a different itinerary (dated November 7, 1963) in which the Kennedys began their trip to Texas in the late afternoon of November 21 with a 4:00PM arrival in Houston and an overnight stay in Houston's Rice Hotel. Friday, November 22, would have then started with an early morning flight to Fort Worth for a Chamber of Commerce breakfast at the Hotel Texas, followed by a Dallas motorcade and luncheon at Fair Park (where the annual State Fair of Texas is hosted). From Dallas, the Kennedys would have then traveled to San Antonio on the afternoon of November 22 for the dedicated of the aerospace medicine school at Brooks before heading to Austin for a fundraising dinner. As initially planned, the Kennedys would have returned to Washington, D.C. on the night of November 22 rather than spend the weekend at the Johnson Ranch. This early itinerary continued to evolve throughout November until the trip details were finalized. - Stephen Fagin, Curator
