Mesquite Woman Helps Solve Part of JFK Photo Mystery

DALLAS. An almost 60-year-old Polaroid photograph of President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade passing through Dallas on that fateful day ended up in a thrift store in Ferris, Texas, about 30 miles south of Dealey Plaza. And while we’re still looking for whoever took this photo, we know that there was a 24-year-old blonde from Mesquite in that crowd who likes to believe that the President was looking right at her that day.

“I was shocked. And that’s putting it mildly,” George Rebels told me after buying a music CD from Souls Harbor second-hand store in Ferris, only to find a black-and-white photo of JFK’s motorcade inside. The date “11-22-63” was handwritten on the back.

“It’s sort of an interpretation of the antiques roadshow,” JFK expert and former FBI analyst Farris Rookstool III told WFAA. “The assessment is that if you have a beautiful photograph, it is a good keepsake, it is a good family heirloom. It’s something that meant something to someone in someone’s family.”

And one of those families was the Baird family in Mesquite.

“Anyway, here I am,” Jackie Baird told us, identifying herself as the blonde in the center of the photo and looking to her right, while the president appeared to be looking exactly in her direction.

She confirmed, as Rookstoel had suspected, that the photograph had been taken on Lemmon Avenue as the cortege was leaving Love Field. Baird was the secretary of Texas Instruments, which had offices on Lemmon in the 1960s. She said several employees ran outside to watch the motorcade drive by. Another TI employee, armed with one of the latest Polaroid instant cameras, took a picture and ordered several copies for other employees. Byrd and her family members have kept copies of this photo for all these years.

“The President came to Dallas and we were all excited,” she said.

Jackie said that her nephew, who has one of these copies, saw our original story and called her right away.

“He saw it, jumped up and called you,” Baird laughed. “And he said, ‘Hey, I know the girl in that picture!’

Jackie said she didn’t remember who took the picture or why it ended up in a second-hand box with a Bachman Turner Overdrive CD. But she keeps her copy as a memento of that day, as a treasured family memento, and in honor of the popular president whose life was cut short just a few miles later.

“Oh, everyone was just devastated. I mean, it was very sad in our country,” she said. “It was just devastating. We just couldn’t believe it.”

As for the mystery of the Ferris, Texas thrift store and who left the photo there, George Rebels would still like to know.

“The way this ended up in a CD case in a small town thrift store fascinates me,” he said.

This part of the story is still a mystery.