Tales from the Morgue

1963: El Paso leaders stunned by assassination of President John F. Kennedy

November 23, 1963

Bill Birch
El Paso Times

El Paso’s leaders, civic and church, were stunned and shocked at the assassination of President John F. Kennedy Friday.

Most of them found it hard to believe that the assassination had taken place. El Paso Mayor Judson Williams said: “It is a hard thing to put into words. It is an indescribable tragedy, a shock to think that it could happen in the United States. The loss to the U.S. is irreparable, regardless of political differences. It is hard to phrase your feelings at a time like this.”

Retired U.S. District Judge R.E. Thomason, who sat next to Kennedy when he was a young congressman was sworn into the House for the first time, said he was shocked and stunned and “I do not know what to say.” “He was a most able man and great leader. It is not only a national tragedy, but a world one. He was a great friend of the people I do not have words to express my shock.” Judge Thomason recently received an autographed picture from the President.

County Judge Glen Woodard said, “To my way of thinking. John F. Kennedy was one of the greatest presidents in history.” “I worked with him, and I worked for him. I had the pleasure to meet him personally.

GREAT LOSS – “This cowardly murder caused a great loss to the world, to the nation and to millions of us as individuals. Those who personally attacked President, verbally and now physically, confused the man with the great office of President of the United States,” Woodard said.

County Democratic Chairman Richard C. White was en route to Austin for a dinner honoring the President Friday night when the assassination took place. Mrs. White said she hoped to hear from her husband soon.

“I am so proud of El Paso because of the humanity shown by scheduling church services for the President. It shows the warmness of the hearts of El Pasoans. “I have been sitting in front of the television set crying all morning since this happened,” Mrs. White said.

Alan Rash, El Paso County Republican Chairman said: “As any American citizen, this is shocking and incomprehensible to me. All Republicans in this County join with the family of President Kennedy and the rest of the nation in showing their sorrow.

“He was our President, too, and in such capacity we would have followed his leadership even though we disagreed with his politics,” Rash said.

State Sen. Frank Owen III, who had to cancel a dinner engagement in which President Kennedy spoke, said “I am personally grieved,” “My words are inadequate compared to those that others in the nation and the world have already said.

“It is something that is most unfortunate and insane thing. I learned about the President’s death through a service station attendant who was delivering my wife’s car,” he said and sick and in bed for a week, said Owen. “I would not call myself a close friend of his, but I met him and talked with him many times, I respected him a great deal. It is a terrible tragedy for the whole world.” Sen. Owen expressed he was concerned about Gov. John Conally, “who is a personal and very close friend of mine.”

DEEPLY GRIEVED – State Rep. Maud Isacks said, “I am deeply grieved. I am shocked and grieved. Words can not express my feelings.”

The most Rev. S.M. Metzger bishop of El Paso Diocese said: “President Kennedy was felled Friday by the bullet of an assassin. This is a tragedy which will shock the world and is a deep sorrow for all Americans, even for those who did not agree with the President’s political philosophy. We pray for the President who is gone, and also pray for President Johnson, in order that God may lighten his heavy burdens.

Charles Gibson, district committeeman for the Republican Party, expressed “shock at the great tragedy. He was my President. I may have differed with his political views, but he was still a fellow American. People differ, but they still have great respect for each other. I think it is a great tragedy that our president met death in that way,” he said.

Justin Ormsby, of Northeast El Paso Democratic Club, issued this statement: “The world, and especially the United States, has lost, one of the most dynamic and dedicated of its citizens by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. History books of the future will reveal the greatness and the untimely end of this great figure.”

State Rep. John F. Ned Blaine, was in Austin to attend the dinner that had been scheduled in honor of Kennedy.

County Commissioner Tom May said: “This is the most awful thing that has happened in American life. It is the same thing as spitting on the American flog. I am concerned with how we can explain to the younger generation why and how this happened. “It is a most horrible experience any person believing in America and the American flag can have in a lifetime.”

Commissioner Rogelio Sanchez said the assassination of President Kennedy was a big blow to the American people and to the world. “I am terribly ashamed that it happened in this great state, after the President and Mrs. Kennedy traveled to Europe, Latin America and other countries without incident. I am deeply, deeply hurt over the President’s death,” he said.

Read more articles from November 23, 1963:

Downtown El Paso Shocked

Border Closed After JFK Death

Bases Plan Memorial Services; Biggs AFB Denies Alert Status

All Faiths Say Prayers For Kennedy

President’s death stills Nation Stills Nation’s Athletics

1940: General Brees Dedicates Cavalry Statue

March 29, 1940

A letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who asserted that “it should inspire all who view it with a determination to preserve the heritage which is theirs through the sacrifices of their forebears,” featured dedication of “The Cavalryman,” a huge black granite statue, here Thursday afternoon.

The monument, made possible through the will of the late Percival Henderson, was dedicated by Major Gen. Herbert J. Brees, commander of the Eight Corps Area, himself a cavalryman. It is located in the small triangle in front of Scottish Rite Temple.

Mr. Henderson, in his will, provided that a fund be set up to erect a monument to the memory of his friend, the late William C. Harvie, and to the memory of those pioneer settlers and soldiers who pushed through the Southwest and held it.

A second provision of the will made possible a baby clinic for underprivileged residents of the city. It is located in South El Paso.

SPEAKER KNOWS CAVALRY LIFE

“Being a cavalryman and feeling that I have something in common with the individual whom this monument commemorates, I appreciate the honor of being invited to speak at this dedication,” General Brees said.

He recited the history of the cavalryman and of his coming to the Southwest.

“The real story always has seemed to me to lie in the fact that for 150 years, settlement on our east coast was hemmed in by a mountain wall that extended from Maine to Alabama; that when the land was taken up in the plains and the new man and the poor man could find no place to settle, he turned to the West and Southwest, traveling by boat and by horse, with ox team or on foot, accompanied by his family and all his worldly possessions, while preceding him and following him was the cavalryman. Meeting and overcoming hardships and privations which are hardly conceivable today, giving little thought to the material gain, he has played his part in the advance of our frontier.

“Today we are dedication a monument to the ‘trooper’ – the man and the horse – exemplified in our history not only by great names of Doniphan and Kearney, Stuart and Sheridan, Harbord and Pershing and all the rest, but by the man and the boy who left the comparative comfort and safety of home and fireside to brave the rigors of a great and rugged country that his fellowman might benefit. It is my privilege to pay homage to the memory of the character symbolized by this statue – ‘The Cavalryman’ of the frontier. May his accomplishments and his fortitude be an inspiration always.

FORMER MAYOR LEA ACCEPTS MONUMENT

Tom Lea, a friend of donor Percival Henderson and a former mayor of El Paso, accepted the monument on behalf of the city. In his acceptance speech he praised the work of the sculptor, Ruiz de Rivera. Of it he said:

“As a technical performance in one of the most difficult of artistic mediums, it is superbly done, and as citizens we shall take pride in possessing here an authentic work of art. But beyond all terms of aesthetic significance, it seems to me there is a transcendent meaning for us in the figure here. It is a symbol to take to our hearts. It is the man who faced a wilderness, a New World, and conquered it. Fittingly it is the figure of a horseman. Any symbol of significance in our western heritage must include that partner of man’s enterprise here – his horse –

“The story of the western conquest will forever be the story of the horseman. The saddle seat was the throne of the frontier. My friends, may we make the stalwart figure her a symbol of our remembrance of the old West, a reminder of the bright courage, the tenacious will, the unflagging force of men who can conquer new horizons.

“There is something in my heart which reaches far beyond the monument we dedicated here today. It represents not only a monument to the cavalryman, but also a monument to a friendship which, next to a wife and family, is what makes life worth living.

“The friendship between William Harvie and Percival Henderson, who admired and loved each other and were inseparable in life, was the kind of friendship which exists between strong men, a friendship which never falters and is broken only by death.”

NEPHEW OF DONOR MAKES PRESENTATION

The monument was presented to the city by Richard Eurich, nephew of the late Mr. Henderson and executor of Mr. Henderson’s estate.

The president’s letter was sent to Irving Schwartz, member of the Scottish Rite Masonic bodies committee appointed to help select a memorial fitting to the Southwest and to the friendship of one pioneer for another.

Two troops of cavalry were drawn up about the plaza and the Seventh Cavalry Band played.

The monument was unveiled by Mrs. M.P. Schuster.

1980: Steve McQueen dies in Juarez

November 8, 1980

By Ramon Renteria
Times staff writer

Dr. Cesar Santos Vargas felt sympathetic toward the ailing man who called himself Sam Sheppard.

“He was a man sure of himself and very sincere,” Santos said.

Santos, a Juarez surgeon and kidney specialist, earned a medical reputation years ago in Juarez for treating injured bullfighters.

He gained national attention when the man called Sheppard suddenly died in his Juarez clinic at 2:50 a.m. Friday.

Sheppard, alias actor Steve McQueen, went to Santos’ Clinca de Santa Rosa looking for reprieve from the painful cancer that was killing him.

McQueen spent time in El Paso in 1972 during the filming here of “The Getaway.”

Santos said McQueen checked into the clinic at about 5 p.m. Wednesday after he had signed an agreement for an operation.

Santos and an assistant, Dr. Guillermo Bermudez, operated on McQueen Thursday to remove advanced cancerous tumors of the neck and stomach.

The operation was performed from 8 to 11 a.m. Thursday.

Santos said McQueen’s condition seemed to stabilize after the operation. But late Thursday he developed respiratory problems and died of heart failure a few hours later.

He was 50.

Santos said the actor knew the surgery would be risky.

“If it hadn’t been for the heart failure, I believe something could have been done to make his remaining days more pleasant,” Santos said.

Santos said McQueen might have lived another two or three months if he had not undergone an operation. The Juarez doctors removed a 5-pound tumor from the ailing actor’s abdomen.

“The cancer caused him serious pains. Unfortunately, the disease was too advanced in this case,” the surgeon said.

Santos accommodated a horde of reporters in his tiny office Friday afternoon and discussed why McQueen might have come to Mexico for treatment.

“He and his wife asked for the surgery because he suffered intolerable pain,” Santos said. He was under constant sedatives.”

Santos said McQueen lived about 13 hours after the operation. He was conscious and able to talk. For a while, the actor was able to eat small chunks of ice.

“He had a desire to live when he knew the race (against death) was at a short distance.” Santos said.

The actor was still in pain after the operation. But Santos said the actor told him the pain was not as severe as before the surgery.

Santos said the abdominal tumor was so large that it would have been only a matter of time before it would have choked him to death.

The surgeon said two friends of the family were at McQueen’s bedside when he died. Santos said McQueen’s wife, Barbara, and two children by a previous marriage, son Chad, 21, and daughter Terri, 20, had just left the clinic when he died.

Santos said he believes McQueen might have been referred to his clinic by other patients that he has treated for malignant cancer. The family did not want o subject the actor to publicity, he said.

“The press bothered him a lot when he was in Tijuana. He had a bad impression of journalist,” he said.

Santos said McQueen checked in using the pseudonym Samuel Sheppard, a Cleveland osteopath who was the defendant in tow sensational trials in the 1950’s and 1960’s allegedly for killing his wife. He eventually was acquitted.

McQueen was asleep when his heart failed and the doctor said he died without saying anything.

Related articles:

El Pasoans remember McQueen on, off the set
Actor's death turns attention on El Paso, Juarez