Officer J.D. Tippit

Tippit's years before the badge were a string of tries. Born in Clarksville in 1924, he left school after the tenth grade and volunteered for the Army's Seventeenth Airborne Division in 1944. After marrying Marie Gasaway in 1946 he moved to Dallas and worked for a stove company and then Sears. In 1950 he left for a farm near Lone Star and took veterans' vocational training at Bogata. Back in Dallas, he worked as a carpenter's helper, then joined the police department on July 28, 1952, walking day patrol in Oak Cliff. He was cited for bravery in 1956.

What the plaque says

Officer J.D. Tippit On November 22, 1963, at this intersection, Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit was murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald, 45 minutes after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza. After the assassination, Oswald fled to his rooming house in Oak Cliff, in a neighborhood where Officer Tippit was assigned. While on patrol and traveling east on 10th St., having just crossed Patton St., Tippit stopped Oswald, who was walking on the sidewalk. After a brief conversation with him though the passenger window, Tippit exited his police car, at which time Oswald fired three shots across the hood, striking Tippit as he pulled his gun. Oswald then came around the rear of the car and fired a fourth shot. Oswald left the area. Temple Bowley, a citizen, stopped and used Tippit's radio to call for help. Officer Tippit was taken to Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Oswald appeared at Hardy's Shoe Store shortly after manager Johnny C. Brewer heard a radio broadcast that a police officer had been shot and killed nearby. Brewer followed Oswald to the Texas Theater, where employee Julia Postal called police due to Brewer's suspicion. There, Oswald attempted to shoot arresting officer M.N. McDonald. Tippit, who left behind a wife and three children, is buried at Laurel Land Memorial Park. In 1964, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Valor from the National Police Hall of Fame, the Police Medal of Honor, the Police Cross, and the Citizens Traffic Commission Award of Heroism. Although the intersection of 10th and Patton streets has changed, Officer Tippit's actions and subsquent murder at this site are remembered for setting into motion a series of events that led directly to Oswald's arrest. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 2.3 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 2.6 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 3.0 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 3.8 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• W. H. Adamson High School — 0.2 mi
• Colonel William G. Cooke — 0.5 mi
• Dallas Zoo — 0.5 mi
• Frank Reagh — 0.5 mi