Kurt Deion Oral History
Object number2025.001.0047
Date06/06/2025
ClassificationsOral Histories
Oral history interview subject
Kurt Deion
Oral history interviewer
Stephen Fagin
ObjectOral history
Credit LineOral History Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza
MediumBorn digital (.mp4 file), Born digital (.vtt file), Born digital (.m4a file)
DimensionsDuration: 49 Minutes
Terms
- Oral histories
- Oswald grave
- U.S. presidents
- Graveside
- 1960s
- Dealey Plaza
- Interviews
- Detectives
- Literature
- Downtown Dallas
- Poems
- Adams, John Quincy
- Oswald, Lee Harvey
- Zapruder, Abraham
- Tippit, J.D.
- Hughes, Sarah T.
- Leavelle, Jim
- Ruby, Jack
- Arlington National Cemetery
- Rose Hill Cemetery
- Washington, D.C.
- Providence
- Non-Rememberers (OHC)
- Authors, Filmmakers, and Researchers (OHC)
- Dallas and 1960s History and Culture (OHC)
Collections
- All Online Objects
- Oral History Collection
DescriptionVideotaped oral history interview with Kurt Deion. Beginning at the age of nine in 2003, Deion set out with his father to visit every presidential gravesite. In addition to Arlington National Cemetery, they visited other Kennedy-related sites and met retired police detective Jim Leavelle. Deion is the author of "Presidential Grave Hunter" (2023).
Interview conducted via Zoom on June 6, 2025 by Stephen Fagin. The interview is forty-nine minutes long.
Curatorial CommentaryIn this interview, Kurt Deion details how he and his father got retired police detective Jim Leavelle to recreate the famous Bob Jackson photograph of the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963. An example of that photograph can be found on the front page of the Dallas Times Herald from November 25, 1963: Dallas Times Herald newspaper with a cover story about the Ruby-Oswald shooting – Works – The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Photographer Bob Jackson donated the original negative of this Pulitzer Prize-winning image to the Museum in 2025. - Riley Harris, Collections Cataloger
Kurt Deion's website, which includes more information about his book and the gravesites that he and his father visited, may be found here: Kurt's Historic Sites – Grave Hunting and Hands-on History. His father, Paul Deion, recorded an oral history with the Museum on April 30, 2026. - Stephen Fagin, Curator
