Danny Farrell, out of St. Paul’s Place in Flatbush, had been on this flatbed truck with the other photographers, shooting pictures of the Kennedy family as the coffin carrying the body of President John F. Kennedy was brought out of the Capitol building. This was the day of Kennedy’s funeral, Nov. 25, 1963, the Monday after he had been shot in Dallas.
Walter Ranzini, the photo assignment editor of the Daily News, handed Farrell an old Hasselblad 1000 F camera with a 300 mm. lens, told him to get down to the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, where the funeral Mass for the 35th President of the United States would be offered, and see what he could get there.
“I ran,” Farrell said. “It was a couple of miles, but I was 32. I still had the legs.
”
He had started with The News in 1950, running copy. But all he ever wanted to do was take pictures. He had finally become a staff photographer in 1955.
The previous Friday, he got a call from the paper telling him that President Kennedy had been shot, and to get down to Washington as soon as he could.
He started taking pictures as soon as he got off the plane and didn’t stop all weekend. Now, on Monday, he ran to the cathedral with the Hasselblad 1000 F in his hands, worrying a little bit about the camera as he ran, already practicing getting his pinky underneath it, trying to get comfortable with the shape of the thing, the feel of it, not knowing when he might have to squeeze it and make the shutter go.
“I knew enough to know they could be hard to trip sometimes,” Farrell said.
There was a photo stand outside the cathedral, maybe half-a-block away from where the family would come out of the church. There was another photographer set up there when Farrell of The News arrived, carrying his old Hasselblad with its surplus lens. Forty years later, Farrell remembers the other photographer, also from New York, as a “nervous Nellie.
” Sam, his name was.
Farrell said to him, “Sam, I don’t know what’s going to happen when they come out of the church. But if you push me, or shove me, I am going to beat the —- out of you.
”
The other guy said, “You can’t talk to me like that.
”
Flatbush Danny Farrell said, “I just did.
”
The door opened and out came the coffin. The old pictures still flash before his eyes. The coffin being carried down the cathedral steps, toward the old-fashioned caisson. Robert Kennedy standing at the top of the steps. Edward Kennedy. Peter Lawford, the actor who had married Patricia Kennedy.
Danny Farrell’s camera didn’t leave the mother and the children. Jacqueline Kennedy. Her daughter, Caroline. And her son, known to the world then, and for such a long time after that, as John John.
Farrell will tell you, all this time later, that he remembers the black veil over Jacqueline Kennedy’s face, and still being able to read her lips through it.
When it was over, Farrell’s wife would ask, “How could you read her lips through that veil?
”
“Because I could,” he said.
“John,” the mother said, “salute.
”
At first, the little boy didn’t do anything.
“John John,” she said. “Salute.
”
The little boy put his hand up in salute.
Farrell took the picture.
“One shot,” he said. “One frame. And it was all over.
”
The News had a darkroom at the New Senate Office Building. It was developed there. Farrell saw the negative there before they made a print, before his photograph of John John Kennedy saluting his dead father, the most famous image of all from that weekend 40 years ago, was sent up to New York on a wire-transfer machine, before The Associated Press would send it all over the world. There would be a variation of the same photograph from United Press International. A good picture. Just not Farrell’s.
“I got the shot I wanted,” he said.
A man named Tex James was an executive at The News in those days. He came down to the city room when it was time to put the next day’s paper together. Farrell would hear about that later, all the best pictures from the day spread out on a huge desk. Tex James’ eyes went to the picture of John John Kennedy saluting and could not leave it.
“Look at this picture,” James said to his editors. “That’s our front page.
”
By then it had gone around the world as an Associated Press Photo. That was the way it worked. Farrell knew he wasn’t going to get famous off it, or rich. He laughed the other day and said, “They didn’t share.
” He wouldn’t have turned some extra money down, but he hadn’t run from the Capitol that day thinking about making money. Just getting in on the biggest story of his life.
Just making the shot.
He still takes pictures for The News, using the modern camera equipment, doing it with his old-school flair. In his early 70s, he still works the big horse races at Belmont Park. All this weekend, he will see the picture of the little boy, gone now the way so many of the Kennedys are gone. It will never be the same as it was the day it happened. One shot. One frame.
“I knew as soon as I saw it on the front page,” Farrell said, “that this one was going to be forever.
”
E-mail: mike@lupica.
com
