The Day Bob Schieffer Got a Phone Call from Lee Harvey Oswald’s Mother Asking for a Ride

By Chris Ariens 

CBS News’ Bob Schieffer was working an overnight shift at the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram and was asleep when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, 50 years ago next month. But, once he heard the news, he rushed into the newsroom to help out.

“Every phone was ringing and I picked up the phone and a woman said, ‘Is there anybody there who can give me a ride to Dallas?,'” Schieffer recalled on “CBS This Morning.”

“I said, ‘lady, we don’t run a taxi here, and besides the president’s been shot.’ And she said, ‘Yes, I think he’s my son, the one that was arrested.'” Shieffer almost hung up on her, but then turned it over to the city editor. The two of them went and picked her up and brought her to Dallas. It was Schieffer’s first big national story which led to coverage, and payment, from the two big newsmagazines at the time: “Newsweek paid me, I think, $60 and TIME paid me $50,” Schieffer says.

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WATCH:

Schieffer was on to promote a CBS Sunday Morning piece on Abraham Zapruder, the man who shot the famous home movie of the JFK assassination.

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