Was A Kennedy Motorcade Lincoln Once Ben Hogan's?

There has been extensive coverage of the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination and while the ties to golf are slim, there are still a couple of items worth checking out.

Art Spander, who has covered a little of everything including a whole bunch of golf, recalls his duties that day for Santa Monica's Evening Outlook.

And Bob Ray Sanders of the Star-Telegram attempts to figure out the mystery of the 1963 white Lincoln that proved to be President Kennedy's final safe ride in Fort Worth earlier that horrible day: it was a borrowed vehicle that may have once belonged to Ben Hogan.

Dallas resident Don Bressman, in charge of the pre-delivery inspection for Trinity Lincoln-Mercury dealership, explains how the car became part of history.

Bressman, 23 at the time, said he pulled a new Lincoln from the dealership’s stock, placed that car and the loaner vehicle on adjacent lifts and swapped the tires. When the agents returned they swarmed the car, using wands and probes to search underneath and inside to make sure it was safe before taking it away.

That was the last time Bressman saw it, he said. But he remembers hearing that when the vehicle was returned to Golightly, the sheet metal above the two front wheel wells had marks from the thumbscrews that had been used to fasten an American flag and one bearing the presidential seal.

Because of the president’s death, he said, Golightly never had the marks removed. He sold the car, which stayed in private hands for years.

The question I had was, why was a new 1963 Lincoln Continental on a used car lot? Barker, with the help of a friend, reminded me that the new Lincolns came out in September of the preceding year. And Bressman says his dealership every year gave a brand-new loaner car to Ben Hogan for his use.

Could this be the Hogan connection? And did the new car dealership divest of the car so quickly because it already had been driven for a year?

That mystery remains.