198: I GOT MY EXORCISE IN KENNEDY’S CAMELOT

It was Saturday May 14, 2022 when my photographer, along with his good friend Bob Moldenhauer, were awakened by their alarm clock at 6:00am in our La Quinta hotel room near the Manassas Battlefield. I was ecstatic – it was Saturday morning, which meant no more Friday the 13th bad luck or evil omens. As I stood alongside the TV set while my companions got ready to take on the day, a little ditty filled my resin head: “Hey, hey, J-F-K, how many houses will we see today?” The answer was ten. That’s right, we were scheduled to begin our Saturday morning in the upscale and historic section of Georgetown that was filled with John and Jackie Kennedy ambience. Some of those ten homes on our agenda were ones where JFK lived alone while he served as a congressman or U.S. Senator. Some were houses where he met or lived with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. And a couple of the homes were where Jackie and the kids lived after the President’s assassination in Dallas. There was also a “Good vs Evil” pair of sites penciled into our morning’s walking tour of Georgetown as well. My companions planned to visit the Catholic Church where the Kennedy’s worshipped; as well as the site where some of the 1973 movie ‘The Exorcist’ was filmed.

It was a beautiful, partly sunny morning in the eastern section of Virginia just outside of Washington D.C. when we left the hotel at roughly 8:15am. Traffic on that Saturday morning was heavier than Tom and Bob had anticipated, which made the 25-mile trip into Georgetown take longer than expected. Once my photographer had driven the Jeep over the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge and into the historic town, the next hurdle he faced was finding a parking spot close to the JFK home sites.

At about 9:30am, we were parked and my companions headed out on foot into the “Cradle of Camelot”. Since we were only two days removed from the strenuous “Hike from Hell” in Shenandoah National Park that nearly killed my photographer, I wondered how Tom’s stamina would be as he walked the uneven brick-paved sidewalks and cobblestone streets of Georgetown. Thanks to Advil, CBD cream, some BioFreeze ointment, and his hiking boots, he managed just fine. For me, I had it easy. I just rested inside the camera case until Tom pulled me out once in a while to pose for some photos. It’s been said a picture is worth a thousand words – here are 60,000 words from our time in Georgetown as we strolled through the “Cradle of Camelot”.

It was 2:45pm when we finally finished our walking tour of the JFK sites in Georgetown. That’s right, it took the three of us roughly five hours to complete the circuit and I knew Tom was exhausted from all the walking. We definitely got our “exorcise” – and because of that, maybe it was a good thing we ended our tour in a Catholic Church.

But Tom and Bob were still possessed – they were hell-bent on taking me to Bethesda Naval Hospital where we were turned away the day before. However, it was the weekend, and my photographer had an idea of where to park the Jeep once he made the seven-mile drive north to the historic hospital. Tom figured once he got our vehicle parked inside the National Institute of Health parking structure, he and Bob would have only a short hike along the public sidewalk to get to the front of the famous hospital for their photos.

And for once, everything worked as planned. However, I was stunned once we had arrived at the parking structure at roughly 2:30pm – the entire parking facility was empty; plus, there was no charge to park. It was free. Something seemed strange to me, but my companions pushed on like nothing was out of the ordinary. With me stowed-away in the camera case, Tom followed Bob across Rockville Pike where we followed the sidewalk north along the fenced boundary of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center’s property. During that entire 300-yard hike, I heard Mongo as he made remarks about the security cameras posted along the top of the iron fence: “Tom, do you see those cameras? There’s no doubt we’re being monitored every step of the way. It’s a good thing we don’t need to climb that fence to get close to the hospital because we’d be arrested before we hit the ground on the other side.”

We stopped as soon as the three of us had arrived at what Bob deemed “The Money Shot”. And he was right – from our position, we had a beautiful view of Bethesda Naval Hospital; albeit from about three or four football fields away. Tom carried me from the sidewalk, across a five or six-foot section of grass, and held me through the bars of the fence for the first of many photos. During the entire ten-minute photoshoot, I thought about John F. Kennedy and the hours after his assassination. After all, once JFK’s body had returned to Washington aboard Air Force One on November 22, 1963, it was immediately taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital where an autopsy was performed. According to many conspiracy theorists, the guts of the entire cover-up occurred within the walls of that hospital.

Besides having a Kennedy assassination connection, Bethesda Naval Hospital has had other Presidential ties as well. President Franklin D. Roosevelt selected the site; he laid the cornerstone; and FDR was on hand during the formal dedication ceremony on November 11, 1940. Since that time, all Presidents have used Bethesda, or the old Walter Reed Army Hospital, as the primary medical centers for any medical needs or procedures. Ronald Reagan was treated at Bethesda twice, but neither was when he was shot in 1981. Four years after his assassination attempt, Reagan had surgery on his colon; then in 1987, he underwent surgery on his prostate. The most recent potentially serious Presidential medical procedure at Bethesda occurred when Donald Trump was admitted on October 2, 2020 after contracting COVID-19 during the pandemic. Trump remained in the hospital for three days where he was forced to wear a face mask. Wearing the mask, where people could see him, was worse than suffering from the virus, at least in his mind.

A few seconds after I posed for a final image with the hospital and security fence in the background, Tom carefully placed me back inside the camera case for our walk back to the Jeep. Moments later, I heard Bob say something that made my resin ears perk up: “Look, Tom. That cop car is turning around to pull someone over. Somebody’s going to have a bad day.” That “somebody” turned out to be my travel mates. From an opening in the camera case, I saw the patrol car stop near the curb where my companions had stopped to watch. As the car’s red and blue lights flashed, the well-armed officer wasted no time in exiting his vehicle and making his way onto the sidewalk. The first words out of the officer’s mouth were: “What are you two men doing here? Do you realize you are on military property?” Tom quickly replied without hesitation: “We thought this was a public sidewalk. Doesn’t the military property start at the fence? We are Presidential historians, and we only came here to photograph the hospital where John F. Kennedy’s autopsy was performed in 1963. We didn’t realize we were doing anything wrong.” With a stern look on his face, the cop verbally shot back: “This is military property all the way out to the street. If you want to take pictures, you need to do it from the other side of that road – but not here.” At that moment, the police officer activated his radio and began to give a verbal description of Tom and Bob. This is what I thought I heard: “Subject One is male, about 5-foot 9-inches tall, blue shirt, black pants, muscular build, and looks similar to Tom Cruise. Subject Two is male, 6-foot tall, rather heavy, wearing an orange shirt, blue pants, and he resembles a chunky Tom Hanks on a bad day.” Then I waited for the cop to say: “Subject Three is male, 8-inches tall, devastatingly handsome, wearing black pants and black overcoat, he looks a bit like Owen Wilson with a ponytail, his head is cocked slightly to the right, and he smells like he ate something funky.” But that never happened, likely because he didn’t see me inside the camera case. I thought about shouting out loud that I couldn’t breathe, but I quickly changed my mind when it appeared the cop wasn’t amused by our “highly illegal” activity.

In my mind, I thought for sure we were going to jail; or at the very least, I figured the three of us would be interrogated by military security. Then, during that interrogation, I predicted the officials would confiscate my companion’s cameras or memory cards; followed by some time behind bars while Tom and Bob’s identification was scrutinized under a microscope.

For a brief moment, I thought maybe the American flag on the hospital building in the distance had been replaced by a Soviet flag and Putin had ordered the KGB to apprehend us. There aren’t two people in this country who are more patriotic, red-blooded, flag-waving, history loving, Presidential enthusiast Americans than Tom and Bob, yet that cop interrogated them like they were common criminals. He made them feel as though they had climbed over the fence onto posted military property with the intentions of overthrowing the government or doing harm to the President. In my resin mind, if the government of the United States doesn’t want people to stand and take pictures where we were, then move the damned fence out to the curb. Don’t construct a public sidewalk for the public to use; then send the cops to tell the public they’re on military property. I would call it Military Intelligence, but I don’t want to insult the intelligent population by confusing them with the military leadership of this country.

The last thing I heard the “heavily-armed donut eater” say was: “The two of you need to walk down to that crosswalk and get to the other side of the street. Don’t stop; don’t take your cameras out; and don’t leave the sidewalk.” I could tell my companions were peeved; and rightfully so. They had done nothing wrong; yet they were treated like Lee Harvey Oswald when he was apprehended at the Texas Theater. Just as Tom and Bob began to retrace their steps back to the Jeep, another squad car arrived on the scene – just in case Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, and Owen Wilson were dangerous criminals. As we crossed Rockville Pike, I couldn’t help but think to myself: “That was a close one. Thankfully we made it out of dodge without experiencing the “rubber glove treatment”. But then again, we still had time for that. After all, with four days left in our nation’s capital, the three of us had plenty of time to get into more trouble.

The clock on the Jeep’s dashboard read 4:45pm when we left Bethesda, Maryland behind. After that close encounter where my companions thought they would be eating bread and water for a while, I heard my relieved photographer tell Bob that he wanted steak for dinner. And not just any steak, mind you – he wanted to dine at Texas Roadhouse. Roughly 30 miles into our journey back to Manassas, Tom pulled the Jeep into the parking lot of his favorite steak restaurant located near Chantilly, Virginia. Once inside, our jaws dropped at the sight of a mural painted on a nearby wall. No, it wasn’t a painting of “our” fat cop eating a donut in front of Bethesda Naval Hospital. Instead, the painting depicted a cookout at Mount Vernon with five of our founding fathers in attendance. As Tom and Bob ate their meals, I couldn’t take my eyes off the mural. And of course, I thought Thomas Jefferson was the best looking of the five! He looked like Owen Wilson with a ponytail.

When Tom and Bob had finished eating their steaks, I overheard something about my companions headed to Bull Run. I was confused. Where would we see bulls run in Virginia? We were at a Texas Roadhouse, not in the state of Texas! As it turned out, the three of us were about to pay a visit to the Civil War hallowed grounds known as Manassas Battlefield where the Battle of Bull Run took place. The First Battle of Bull Run was the first major battle during the American Civil War and it took place on July 21, 1861. The Second Battle of Bull Run, which was a lot larger, took place a little over a year later on the same ground and lasted three days – August 28 – 30, 1862. Both battles were won by the Confederates.

For nearly an hour and a half, the three of us toured a section of the Manassas Battlefield. We started at the Henry Hill Visitor Center where Tom carried me out onto the historic battlefield. While we walked the hallowed grounds on foot, I was taken to the Judith Henry house known as Spring Hill Farm, then on to a few other important sites on the field of battle known as ‘Henry Hill’. By the time we had boarded the Jeep again and headed to the nearby Stone House, I could tell my photographer was tired. He had good reason to be exhausted, too; Tom had walked the streets of Georgetown all morning and he ended the day hiking part the battlefield. We finished our visit at the Manassas Battlefield with a half-hour stop at the historic Stone Bridge, and I even got to dip my toes in Bull Run. What a way to end an amazing, yet harrowing, site-filled day.

There was another section of the Manassas Battlefield where major battles of the Second Battle of Bull Run took place, but it was 7:15pm and my companions had enough excitement for one day. We returned to the La Quinta hotel fifteen minutes after we left the Stone Bridge and Tom placed me in my usual spot alongside the television set. For about an hour, I had to stand there and listen to my friends laugh and chuckle as they discussed their experience at Bethesda Naval Hospital. They would’ve been laughing out of the other side of their faces had they been arrested, or their cameras confiscated, by the KGB. All I could do was shake my head, which didn’t shake too well since my neck was nearly broken the day before.

When the lights in the room were extinguished at about 11pm, I stood in the darkness and wondered what trouble the three of us would encounter the following day. After all, we were scheduled to retrace the escape route of assassin John Wilkes Booth from Ford’s Theater to the Garrett Farm; it was a trail where Booth found nothing but trouble 157 years earlier. During a trip to the same area in 2021, my companions and I visited numerous sites along Booth’s escape route, although we retraced his path in reverse. But there were several sites that we didn’t visit the previous year because we had bad information; those additional sites have been penciled in on our Sunday’s agenda. To make matters worse, some of those new sites are located on private property. Just the words “Private Property” strike a sour chord with me because I know that usually doesn’t deter Tom and Bob from achieving their mission. All I could do was hope; hope that we don’t end up in a tobacco barn at the end of the day.