DescriptionVideotaped oral history interview with Margaret Turner. On the morning of November 22, 1963, nine-year-old Turner was a featured dancer on the Dallas children’s program, "Officer Friendly," which aired on CBS affiliate KRLD-TV.
Interview conducted at First Christian Church of Plano in Plano, Texas on May 14, 2018 by Stephen Fagin. The interview is eight minutes long.
Curatorial Commentary
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
During this outreach visit to First Christian Church in Plano, I recorded interviews with eight individuals. - Stephen Fagin, Curator
According to the television listings in The Dallas Morning News on Friday, November 22, 1963, the local children's program, Officer Friendly, aired from 7:30AM to 8AM Central Standard Time, followed by the nationally broadcast CBS children's show, Captain Kangaroo. At 9AM, the station was scheduled to broadcast President Kennedy's speech live from the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth.
The locally-produced Officer Friendly show described in this oral history was a separate production from the national program of the same name that was later established by the Chicago Police Department in 1966 and sponsored for many years by the Sears-Roebuck Foundation. For the Dallas KRLD-TV program, the character of "Officer Friendly" was portrayed by local actor and singer Dean Allen. Allen also provided the voice of his puppet sidekick, Jimmy Duck, who bore a striking resemblance to the more famous Disney character Donald Duck. - Stephen Fagin, Curator
