J. D. Tippit

A Dallas patrolman for eleven years, badge 848, and before that a paratrooper.

He was born near Annona in Red River County, the eldest of seven. The initials were his whole name - people took them for Jefferson Davis, but they stood for nothing. He left school after the tenth grade and was raised Baptist and stayed one.

He went into the Army in July 1944 and volunteered for the airborne. He reached the 513th Parachute Infantry in January 1945, not long after the regiment had been cut to pieces in the Ardennes, and in March he jumped the Rhine in Operation Varsity. He was given the Bronze Star.

Afterwards he sold stoves, fitted for Sears, tried to farm and raise cattle at Lone Star and could not make it pay. He joined the Dallas Police in July 1952. He was cited twice for bravery: in 1956 a man he had stopped put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger, and the safety was on.

He was earning four hundred and ninety dollars a month and working two other jobs - a barbecue place on Friday and Saturday nights, a cinema on Sundays. He had a wife, Marie, and three children.

On the twenty-second of November he was working beat 78, his own patch in south Oak Cliff. At a quarter to one he was sent toward the centre of the city with everyone else. At about ten past one he pulled alongside a man walking on East Tenth Street who answered the description going out over the radio, and got out of his car. He was shot four times and died where he fell. He was thirty-nine.

His funeral was held on the same day as the president's. Two thousand people came, eight hundred of them police. The nation sent his family six hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars; the man who had filmed the assassination from Elm Street sent twenty-five thousand of it.

Officer J.D. Tippit was shot and killed while questioning the assassin of President John F. Kennedy at Tenth and Patton Streets. At approximately 1:14 pm, 45 minutes after President Kennedy was shot, Officer Tippit stopped the suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was on foot and fit the general description of the assassin that was being broadcast by the Dallas police radio. After being summoned by Officer Tippit, Oswald came over to the passenger side of the patrol car, where they spoke through an open window. After a brief conversation, Officer Tippit got out of his car, and as he was walking toward the front of his patrol car, Oswald suddenly shot him three times at point-blank range with a .38 caliber revolver. After Officer Tippit fell, he was shot in the head by Oswald, which proved to be the fatal shot. A citizen who witnessed the shooting used the police radio in Officer Tippit's patrol car to alert other officers of the shooting. Oswald was apprehended hiding in a movie theater after he was seen by an alert citizen who witnessed the shooting of Officer Tippit. Oswald was shot and killed two days later by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby while in police custody. Officer Tippit was a United States Army WWII veteran and bronze star recipient and served with the Dallas Police Department for 11 years. He is survived by his wife, daughter, two sons, parents, four brothers, two sisters, and his grandmother. In January 1964, Officer Tippit was posthumously awarded the Medal of Valor from the National Police Hall of Fame and also received the Police Medal of Honor, the Police Cross, and the Citizen's Traffic Commission Award of Heroism. He is buried in Laurel Land Memorial Park in Dallas, Texas.

His wife Marie and their children Charles, Brenda and Curtis.