JFK artifacts: the eternal claim
11/23/2002
It could be just a nice geometric line drawing on an old envelope. Or it could be a part of history - if it was penned by Jack Ruby.
Dortha Good Harvey said she had forgotten all about the envelope until earlier this week, when she was going through a safety deposit box. It was the same day she read a newspaper story about artifacts being donated to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.
Ruby purportedly made the drawing while in jail after shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, who was accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.
"We hear about things like that all the time," said Ruth Ann Rugg, director of interpretation at the museum and one of those responsible for sorting through the many potential JFK-related artifacts submitted each year. "Sometimes it's nothing, and sometimes it is exactly what they say it is."
 Dortha Good Harvey said she had forgotten about the drawing created by Jack Ruby and given to her first husband. (JIM MAHONEY / DMN) |
Whenever the Kennedy assassination is in the news, as it has been this week with Friday's 39th anniversary, the museum's phones ring off the hook with calls from people wanting to know whether they might have a genuine piece of history.
Mrs. Harvey said the envelope was given to her first husband, J. Fred Good, more than 30 years ago.
"I just thought maybe this drawing would be of interest to someone," said the 85-year-old Mrs. Harvey.
And it just might.
"We break a lot of hearts because a lot of people think they have things that are very valuable and perhaps in some case might bring some kind of new light to the assassination," Ms. Rugg said. "But for every handful of people we have to send away, there is that someone who has something terrific for our collection."
Ms. Rugg said officials must first determine whether an item would fit into the museum's mission. If it does, they then try to determine its authenticity.
The most common submissions are photographs. Unfortunately, she said, entrepreneurs made a lot of copies of photographs shortly after the assassination. People come across them years later and assume they are originals.
Still, she said, one man recently brought in two original color photographs of the rifle thought to have been used by Oswald as a police officer carried it from the Texas Book Depository. They are now part of the museum's collection.
Ms. Rugg said the museum welcomes the opportunity to inspect items.
"That's one way our museum is different than any other," she said. "We really are looking for the kind of cultural history that was preserved in a grass-roots kind of way."
One thing the museum does not do is appraise artifacts for people, Ms. Rugg said.
Mrs. Harvey, who lives in Denton County, said she doesn't know what she will do with the envelope she has kept for so many years. She plans to consult her son.
She said a deputy who guarded Ruby in the county jail gave the envelope to her late husband in 1965, when he worked for the Sheriff's Department.
"I really haven't thought about it until now," she said. "I've just been keeping it in my safe deposit box with all the other stuff."
E-mail ftrejo@dallasnews.com
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/latestnews/stories/112302dnmetrubydrawing.7851c.html