KILGORE, Texas (KLTV) – Many people consider Nov. 22, 1963, to be the day television news grew up. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy marked the dawn of a new era, as TV stations and networks brought their viewing audience live continuing coverage of one of the darkest days in U.S. history.
Two pieces of broadcast equipment used to cover the assassination and the events that followed are now on display at the Texas Broadcast Museum in Kilgore.
“Just kind of by accident, this all landed right here in Kilgore,” said Chuck Conrad, museum curator. “I never intended for it to happen this way. It just did.”
Among the items in Conrad’s museum, a GE black and white camera known as the “Lee Harvey Oswald camera.” It was there when Jack Ruby shot Oswald in the basement of Dallas police headquarters. Conrad acquired the camera, which belonged to KRLD-TV, following the closure of another museum many years ago.
“The KRLD camera came out of a museum in Dallas that closed. And I didn’t know anything about it closing until Monday morning when some people came in my shop and said, ‘did you to go the big sale this weekend?’ I said, ‘what do you mean big sale?’ He told me the radio-TV museum closed and they sold a bunch of stuff cheap. So, I went running over there at noon time and there it was. It said, ‘take me home.’ And so, I did.”
Joining the KRLD camera in the broadcast museum is another piece of history from Nov. 1963. The telecruiser used by WFAA-TV and ABC to cover the funeral of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit, who Oswald shot while being questioned by the young officer.
Conrad rescued the rusty cruiser from a vacant lot in Dallas by way of a conversation his wife had with the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum.
“My wife was talking with the curator and said, ‘I think Chuck would like to find an old mobile TV unit.’ Just off the cuff,” said Conrad. “He (curator) said, ‘ you mean like this one?’ And took us over to this picture on the wall. And we both went, ‘yeah, that’d be pretty cool. And then one thing led to another and here it is.”
Both the “Oswald camera” and the telecruiser are among the museum’s top attractions, according to Conrad. The museum is open Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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