From an AP story by Jamie Stengle headlined “Julian Reed. who briefed press after JFK assassination, dies”:
Julian Read, whose long career in public relations included briefing the press after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, has died in Texas. He was 93….
Read, working for Texas Gov. John Connally, was in a media bus several vehicles behind the limousine carrying Kennedy, Connally and their wives when shots rang out on Nov. 22, 1963.
“When I saw the limousine speed away, I knew that something terrible had happened. We didn’t know what,” Read said in 1998.
He followed the victims to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he provided reports on the condition of the wounded Connally, coordinated a news conference for Connally’s wife, Nellie, and answered questions from reporters….
Longtime friend Larry Temple said Read was “a throwback to an era long since gone by.”
“He knew how to be a gentleman, he knew how to treat people with kindness. He knew how to treat people with decency. He was collegial, he was collaborative with people,” said Temple, an attorney who worked for Connally and later served as special counsel to President Lyndon B. Johnson.
“John Connally did not have a closer or better adviser, strategist, than Julian,” Temple said.
Read also worked on presidential campaigns. His first was for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, and he went on to do work for presidents Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
“All of those people wanted his counsel, his advice, his judgment, his assistance. And that’s probably the ultimate validation about who he was,” Temple said.
Read’s book, “JFK’s Final Hours in Texas: An Eyewitness Remembers the Tragedy and Its Aftermath,” was published in 2013, the 50th anniversary of the assassination.
“Every anniversary year, people would call him,” his daughter Courtney Hoffman said.
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