The guy with the dark glasses is named Jerry Boyer. Out of the Marines, he joined the state highway patrol back when the interstate was a new thing and people having a hard time staying alive on it.
Also new, was the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) which included the Oahe Dam (in Pierre, South Dakota) the largest producer of electricity on the Missouri River.
In June 1963, there was a ribbon cutting, and Jerry’s picture made the newspapers. In the backseat on the lefthand side is then South Dakota Governor, Archie Gubbrud.
And the man sitting next to him is just who you think it might be, President John F. Kennedy.
Jerry’s job was crowd control.
There was a wild-haired man who desperately wanted to give the president a memento—but his name was not on the list—so Jerry was not going let him through. When he turned his back, the man charged through anyway. His name was Korczak Ziolkowski, and his memento was a miniature representation of the Crazy Horse Memorial® he was carving.
Oh well.
Not too many months later JFK was in the back of a similar limousine sitting next to his wife in Dallas, Texas. The eerie foreshadowing in this picture is unmistakable.
I’m told that Jerry, upon hearing the grim assassination news said, “It didn’t happen on my watch.”
I heard this story from the two daughters of his wife, Betty Moyer, who survived a just a few years longer than Jerry.
This picture was in a frame that sat in the Boyer home. Not many other others know the story.
But now you do.
It’s possible you have an older relative who has a similar and somewhat astonishing story that you have never heard.
That’s why I’m telling you this.
That’s why I Like That Story.