"You know, a thing like this is never quite over." - William Whaley

I found an interesting article on William Whaley, the cab driver who took someone to the 500 block of N. Beckley.  This is from the Denton Record Chronicle, Denton, Texas, Friday December 6, 1963. Lewisville, is just north of Dallas.

William Wayne Whaley, the cab driver who drove Lee Harvey Oswald on his often retraced flight from the Texas School Depository in Dallas has this reaction to the incident:

"If I had known what I know now when he got into the cab I would have gotten out and just walked away from the cab and let him have it."

"When I first saw him, " Whaley said after a (?) comment (?) of the FBI was finally lifted, "I didn't know something or hadn't seen anything of the assassination.

"I was on the cab stand at the Greyhound terminal.  He asked if he could get the cab, and of course, I told him yes."

"He said he wanted to go to 500 N. Beckley."  

Whaley's trip sheet, a record of assignments and times required of all cabs by a Dallas ordinance showed 12:30 p.m. when the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy got in the cab.

Oswald had walked to Pacific Avenue from the depository building where he caught a bus for two blocks to Lamar when police stopped all traffic, Oswald got off the bus and walked over to the Greyhound station.

All that time the police sirens were blowing all over the place," Whaley recalls.

"I asked, 'What was the commotion about? But, he didn't say anything and I just figured he was anther fellow who didn't want to talk.'"

In Whaley's rear view mirror Oswald looked like an "ordinary workman on the way to go home.  He didn't appear nervous or in a hurry," Whaley said.

Then Whaley pulled up to 500 Beckley the trip sheet showed 12:45 p.m.

"There wasn't a house or anything," the Lewisville resident said.  He just got out at the corner of the block.  The fare was 95 cents.  He gave me a dollar and left.

It was the next morning before Whaley knew he had carried Oswald.

The police had somehow traced Oswald to the Greyhound station," Whaley said, and they checked the trip  tickets and called me in.

"I lost half a day of work at the City Hall that Saturday," he said.  I identified Oswald as the man who rode in my cab not as the assassin of President Kennedy."

Whaley, who's no stranger to ( security? ) and danger, served in the Naval Air Corp for three years and nine months during World War II.  He won the Navy Cross on Iwo Jima for reasons he cannot disclose.  He has been with the Naval service since 1945.

The 37 year veteran of Dallas cab driving for the City Transportation Co. and top man on the cab seniority list also rebuked the idea that Oswald was anywhere near the biggest celebrity carried in his cab.

'I carried them all," he said in his deep, soft voice, "Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey-there's very few movie stars that I've missed except maybe some of the young ones that ride around in limousine instead of cabs."

Whaley brought his family to Lewisville nearly three years ago because he figured we could find better schools facilities at a small town like Lewisville for our son.

Whaley and his wife, Nellie Fay, have a son, John Houston, and two daughters, who are also Lewisville residents, Mrs. Bob McCoy, and Mrs.Jackie (Red?).

The family requested that no pictures be taken of Whaley because a certain amount of danger is involved when so many people still have so many varied kinds of feelings.

Someone might try to handicap the Senate hearing which is still pending, Whaley said, by eliminating  some of the witnesses.

"You know," he concluded, "a thing like this is never quite over."