This congressman was one of many final individuals to see JFK alive. 60 years later, he seems again.

Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas, has shaken the hand of each U.S. president since Harry Truman. However there’s one handshake that stands out above the others.

On a drizzly fall morning in Fort Price, a 14-year-old Williams and his mom had been escorted by Secret Service members from the ballroom to a holding room contained in the Lodge Texas. First girl Jacqueline Kennedy entered first, greeted them and stood proper subsequent to him. Moments later, President John F. Kennedy got here across the nook, took a puff from his cigar, then put it out.

Williams was stunned by Kennedy’s reddish hair, which couldn’t be seen on black-and-white tv, and he needed to get an excellent have a look at the president’s sneakers: black cap-toe costume sneakers.

The president shook his mom’s hand, then shook Williams’ hand. Kennedy didn’t instantly let go, turned again to Williams’ mom and instructed her: “You’ve received a handsome younger man right here.”

Roughly two hours later, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

The date was Nov. 22, 1963. There are not any images of his encounter with the president precisely 60 years in the past however for Williams, now 74, each element of that day is etched in his reminiscence. The six-term congressman shared a few of these recollections with NBC Information in an interview in his workplace within the Capitol.

So how did the younger Williams come to face face-to-face with the president of america?

Williams’ father, who owned Jack Williams Chevrolet in Fort Price, was well-connected on the town. He was private buddies with the congressman who represented the realm, Democrat Jim Wright, who upon studying that Kennedy can be making a go to to their metropolis had requested the automotive supplier if he would provide some automobiles for the motorcade to take the president from Carswell Air Pressure Base to the Lodge Texas and again.

The elder Williams agreed however had a request: Might his spouse and son meet the president? Completely, Wright, the long run speaker of the U.S. Home of Representatives, instructed Williams’ father.

“The phrase received out in Fort Definitely worth the president’s coming,” Williams recalled. “Everyone was so excited that he was going to be coming right here, particularly to Fort Price, as a result of Fort Price had all the time performed backseat to Dallas.”

‘Be a frontrunner’

On the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, Williams and his mom arrived on the resort to see Kennedy’s speech on the Fort Price Chamber of Commerce breakfast. Williams’ father, a former soccer participant, had arrived hours earlier to assist present safety on the request of his shut pal, I.B. Hale, a former FBI agent and the top of safety at aerospace firm Convair’s Fort Price manufacturing unit.

Listening to Kennedy contained in the ballroom earlier than shaking the president’s hand planted a seed. All of the younger Williams cared about again then was baseball, however as he listened to the 46-year-old Kennedy, defining America as “the keystone in the arch of freedom,” he was impressed and thought to himself he, too, may “be a frontrunner.”

“He didn’t appear that a lot older than me. And I assumed to myself, as one particular person, I can possibly do what he’s doing,” the conservative congressman stated of the Democratic president. “He did contact individuals and younger individuals associated to him.”

Later that day, at Arlington Heights Excessive College, the principal entered Williams’ Latin class and whispered into the ear of his instructor, Mr. Henning, who put his head down on his desk and commenced to weep.

“I used to be in a trance,” Williams stated of that second he discovered Kennedy had been assassinated. “I used to be attempting to course of … after which I see Lee Harvey Oswald get shot and killed. And it started to make the world so much totally different … a complete lack of innocence.”

It seems Oswald, the first suspect, had briefly attended Arlington Heights years earlier. After they introduced Oswald’s physique to Fort Price, the place his mom lived, Williams and a pal drove all the way down to Miller Funeral Residence and peeked within the window to see if they might see Oswald’s casket. They had been unsuccessful.

“So that every one occurred in a interval of about 48 hours. The world modified,” Williams stated.

14 presidents

Surprisingly, Kennedy wasn’t the primary president Williams had met. At a Kansas Metropolis A’s recreation in 1955, Williams stated he shook arms with former President Harry Truman, who was readily available to throw out the primary pitch. He met President Dwight Eisenhower years later on the similar venue, Municipal Stadium.

Williams stated he met fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson, who served as Senate majority chief and vice chairman earlier than changing into president, on a number of events, together with as soon as in his dad’s workplace.

A star baseball participant for Texas Christian College, Williams can be drafted by the Atlanta Braves group in 1971. At spring coaching in West Palm Seashore, Florida, the subsequent yr, President Richard Nixon got here by the clubhouse in hopes of getting his image with Hank Aaron, who was chasing Babe Ruth’s house run document. Williams met Nixon there.

“He instructed us the one job he would slightly have than being president of america was being commissioner of baseball,” Williams stated.

Requested if he actually performed baseball with Aaron, Williams replied: “That is an entire ‘nother story.”

Williams performed golf with former President Gerald Ford in Solar Valley, Idaho, at a golf event organized by baseball Corridor of Famer Harmon Killebrew to lift cash to combat leukemia. Ford “completely hit it sideways,” Williams stated.

Whereas jogging shirtless on the TCU campus, Williams stated he randomly bumped into President Jimmy Carter on the steps of the college’s chapel and shook arms. He met Ronald Reagan throughout a marketing campaign cease in Fort Price throughout the California governor’s second unsuccessful bid for president, in 1976. Williams’ father introduced Reagan with a jackalope taxidermy, which was later displayed at Reagan’s ranch.

Via Texas political circles, Williams got here to know each George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush. The Williams household frolicked with the Bushes at their summer season compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, and he flew on Air Pressure One with W.

Years after taking on his father’s auto dealership, Williams stated he met President Invoice Clinton throughout a small enterprise occasion in downtown Fort Price; as we speak, Williams is chairman of the Home Small Enterprise Committee.

Shortly after he was elected to Congress, Williams met President Barack Obama throughout a 2013 assembly with Home Republicans within the basement of the Capitol. He’s taken quite a few pictures with President Donald Trump, a few of that are displayed in his workplace. And he met President Joe Biden when the Democrat visited the GOP dugout throughout the 2021 Congressional Baseball Sport at Nationals Park.

Williams is the GOP crew supervisor. He survived one other politically motivated taking pictures, in 2017, when a gunman opened fire on Republican lawmakers and staffers throughout their morning baseball observe in Alexandria, Virginia.

“I’ve shook the hand of each president since Harry Truman,” Williams stated, “and folks will let you know there’s not many individuals on the market that may say that.”

CORRECTION: (Nov. 22, 2023, 9:46 a.m. ET): An earlier model of this text misstated Rep. Roger Williams’ age. He’s 74, not 73.

This text was initially printed on NBCNews.com