Fifty years ago today, they embarked on a trip to pay respects to the slain president in Washington, D.C.
Ron Wynkoop stands in his modest living room, the same spot where 50 years ago today the phone rang on the eve of President John F. Kennedy’s funeral.
About four hours earlier, on Nov. 24, 1963, Jack Ruby thrust a handgun toward Lee Harvey Oswald in a Dallas police station basement, killing Kennedy’s assassin.
Wynkoop, a Phillipsburg police detective, had just gotten home from work when he answered the call from town funeral director Jim Finegan about 4:30 p.m.
Finegan and his father-in-law, Frank “Chico” Manasseri, who owned Chico’s Pizza on South Main Street, decided they would drive to Washington, D.C., to witness the funeral for one of the nation’s most beloved leaders.
Did Wynkoop want to go? If so, he had to be ready quickly.
Finegan’s black Cadillac — the one he drove in funerals — was southbound on the pilgrimage by 5:30 p.m.
His call sparked a 30-hour odyssey in which a four-man contingent from Phillipsburg drove to the nation’s capital, filed solemnly past Kennedy’s flag-draped casket with thousands of others at the U.S. Capitol and watched on a crowded Washington street as a procession of mourners followed Kennedy’s horse-drawn caisson to St. Matthew’s Cathedral.
Wynkoop, who will turn 82 later this year, remembers it vividly.
“I got so many things out of it,” said Wynkoop, a Phillipsburg and Titanic historian who served in Korea with the U.S. Marine Corps. “It gave me something to look back on all my life. I was so taken up with Kennedy’s war experiences. At that time, it was quite a thing with me because I had been in Korea, so we had a little something in common in that respect.
“I just always admired the man.”
Pilgrimage to D.C.
View full sizeRon Wynkoop took this photo of the others who traveled with him along the procession route. They are Jim Finegan (in hat at left), Reinhold Radke (holding camera) and Frank "Chico" Manasseri (right of Radke). Wynkoop’s friend, Reinhold Radke, a young photographer for the old Phillipsburg Free Press who had recently been naturalized as a U.S. citizen, was the fourth in the group to go.
Wynkoop had always embraced history; his Chambers Street home is filled with souvenirs and mementos of his brushes with fame. As a teenager, he climbed into a slowly moving vehicle in Easton to shake hands with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“I don’t know where I got the guts to do what I did,” he said.
But the rush to get on the road for Kennedy’s funeral caught Wynkoop ill-prepared. He had no film for his camera, so he borrowed the camera of his brother-in-law for the journey.
The group sailed into Washington that night, puncturing an air of excitement and grief. It seemed as if every window of every building held a picture of the slain president, Wynkoop said.
“You had all this sorrow around you,” he recalled. “You had people with kids sleeping on their shoulders. They wanted their kids to be with them, to say they were there.”
The men made their way to the Capitol, where they waited all night in a line more than two miles long to enter the rotunda and pay respects in the same room as Kennedy’s coffin. It was about 5:45 a.m. Monday when they got inside.
View full sizeCaptured in Wynkoop's photo during the JFK funeral procession are German President Heinrich Lubke (white hair, at left), French President Charles de Gaulle, Queen Frederika of the Helenes, King Baudouin of Belgium, Ethiopia Emperor Haile Selassie and Philippines President Diosdado Macapagal. Getting into position
Later in the morning, as the president was carried by caisson to the cathedral, the four took up positions on 17th Street for the procession.
Wynkoop has prints of the pageantry, his prized shot being a line of world leaders that had walked in unison behind the Kennedy family.
As the somber procession made its way toward the church, Wynkoop jockeyed into a front-line position with a clear line of sight. While shooting the caisson as it moved away from him, he said, he missed getting a picture of Jacqueline Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson and the Kennedy brothers as they passed in front of him.
The world dignitaries were a different story. Plain in his photo are French President Charles de Gaulle, German President Heinrich Lubke, German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, Queen Frederika of the Helenes and Ethiopia Emperor Haile Selassie.
The concentration of power, he said, still gives him chills.
“De Gaulle looked at me for the longest while,” said Wynkoop, who said he kept both hands in front of him on his camera so as not to attract attention or risk becoming a threat. “I really think I unintentionally had him rattled. The air was tense. You didn’t know when the next shot might ring out.
“I think, under the circumstances, I got a pretty good shake on the whole thing just in that moment alone. I had no idea I was moving myself into a worldwide picture. There was not one person who tried to stop me.”
Wynkoop can be seen within reaching distance of the leaders in photos that were later published in National Geographic Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post.
Stories of a lifetime
View full sizeWynkoop took this photo of Kennedy's flag-draped casket at the U.S. Capitol rotunda. He waited in a line with mourners for more than six hours to file past the casket. Jim Finegan, who led the group, died in 1993. But he carried memories and stories from that day for the rest of his life, according to his family.
“I was a year old but we grew up fascinated by the whole story,” said his son, John Finegan, who with brother Jeff runs Finegan Funeral Homes Inc. “My dad gave us his recollections. I remember him telling me they were up all night waiting to go through the line. We grew up knowing that they were there and it was pretty incredible stuff.”
Radke, who was 21 at the time, is now 71 and living in a retirement community in Allen Township. He worked 15 years off and on as a newsman and then spent 15 years as a supervisor for Browne Printing in Secaucus, N.J.
He remains grateful for Wynkoop’s invitation and says he can still see the sharpshooters stationed atop buildings along the procession route.
“It was the first time I was there,” he said of the capital. “It was so eerie and quiet. It was a hushed feeling. It exposed me to the outer world.”
Rather than go to the church following the procession, the men went back to the Capitol. Wynkoop gathered a small white chrysanthemum from the rotunda floor and placed it in his jacket pocket.
Mostly quiet, they headed back to Phillipsburg listening to the radio the whole way, Wynkoop said.
“We were crying. Tears were coming down our cheeks,” he said. “It was really a tearful thing when the adrenaline stopped and you took time to reflect on what it was all about.”
Wynkoop said he is thankful for Finegan’s call that day — 50 years ago this afternoon — that put him in a place in history that never can be taken away.
“Every time I walk through that door, you don’t know what’s going to come next in life,” he said. “I don’t know how much time I have left but if I live to be 120, I’ll still be fascinated by people and what they do.”