He's Dead, All Right!

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy has sparked a remarkable number of historical controversies, particularly surrounding the Warren Commission's official findings of a lone gunman and its so-called magic bullet theory. One of the lesser-known controversies, however, involves Father Oscar L. Huber, C.M. (1893-1975), the Roman Catholic priest who administered last rites, on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, to the mortally wounded president. The Vincentian priest's ministrations unexpectedly thrust him into the national spotlight when the New York Times, the Dallas Morning News, and other major newspapers interviewed him about his moments with the slain president. But the modest, soft-spoken priest found neither glory nor honor in his service that day, because several reporters, including Time magazine correspondent Hugh Sidey, claimed that Father Huber had leaked the news of the president's death a few minutes before the official White House announcement, a charge the priest vehemently denied. What began as Father Huber's proverbial "fifteen minutes of fame" evolved, for him, into a decade-long crusade to correct the historical record, as he saw it, and to restore what he believed was his tarnished reputation. The story of Father Huber's role in Dallas that day and the subsequent controversy that came to consume him is the subject of this commemorative book published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination.