Mr. Griffith's book is not an easy read, with a lot of parenthetical thoughts and long—but grammatically correct sentences. But it is a great literary improvement over the book I just finished, Holmes, Marple and Poe—the first (and surely last) I ever read by James Patterson and his sidekick of the moment. Compared to anything else, Patterson's book is only a slight advancement over Dick and Jane. It should be on the first grade best seller list.
Mr. Griffith takes many strolls through the Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum as he is writing a book (fiction) about a dead obituary writer. He takes in the names, dates and inscriptions, if any, on the headstones. He's not looking for anyone in particular, but does find a lot of people, people who he of course never met when they were alive.
The advantage to being dead and buried is that when someone comes looking for you you're always in the same place. Your spot may not always be easy to find, but sure as hell if someone comes to visit again the deceased will not have moved. Guaranteed.
A well written obituary will always tell you something you didn't know. And even a book about obituaries will tell you something you didn't know.
Take the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, a date Mr. Griffith readily admits he wasn't alive for. (I was 14 them.) Because of Mr. Griffith's ties to Cincinnati he is able to tell us of how the limousine the Kennedy party was riding in was delivered to Hess and Eisenhardt, an armored car company, after the assassination to be redesigned and refurbished. The car lived on to carry Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford before being retired in 1977.
Mr. Griffith tells of a cluster of mourners at Hess and Eisenhardt "gazing forlornly at the company's Plexiglas bubble top—a safety feature designed and manufactured, but not used that day in Dallas—which sat under a tarp behind the company's offices."
Something always happens because something else didn't happen. Would the outcome of the shots being fired that day be the same if there was a bullet-proof bubble installed over the top down convertible? I never knew there might have been a bubble used to shield the car's occupants. I never remember seeing one used, before or after.
Are there any more JFK references in the book? There is an index. Yes.
Within a chapter titled Death's Taxicab there is a highly detailed narrative of the construction of the limousine that was put into service in 1961. Talk about military grade. There was a committee of 30 that included members of the military that had input into the specifications that would be used to build the car, including, but not limited to a rear seat that could be raised nearly 11" so that Kennedy could be more visible; a balustrade that he could hold onto if he wanted to stand and wave to the crowd more visibly.
As Mr. Griffith points out, all these touches, and more, were not meant to provide extra safety, they were meant to provide greater visibility. The potential target was being made easier to see.
As with anything good or bad that happens, there are a lot of "ifs" that could have changed things, but didn't.
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