The Rev. Luther Holcomb; met JFK at Dallas airport
Hyfler/Rosner
DATELINE: DALLAS
The Rev. Luther Holcomb, the religious and civic leader who met President
John F. Kennedy at the Dallas Love Field Airport on Nov. 22, 1963, and later
announced to the crowd waiting to hear him speak that Kennedy had been shot,
died late Wednesday after a two-week bout with pneumonia. He was 91.
Forty years ago, Holcomb led the stunned audience in the Dallas Trade Mart
in a moving prayer, opening with a verse from Psalms in the Bible, "Lord
lead us to a rock ..."
Holcomb died at an assisted-living center near Cedar Creek Lake in Henderson
County, where he had lived since 2000. The funeral will be at 2 p.m. Monday
in the Memorial Chapel of Restland Funeral Home in Dallas.
Holcomb's public and behind-the-scenes work in Dallas during the 1950s and
early 1960s helped Dallas achieve peaceful racial integration of its public
schools, restaurants and hotels and remove barriers to employment
opportunities.
"My father worked with retailer Stanley Marcus, Mayor R.L. Thornton,
businessman John Stemmons, utility executive C.A. Tatum and advertising
expert Sam R. Bloom, all now deceased, and others to achieve profound and
peaceful change at a time when other cities were being scarred by bigotry
and riots. They created a coalition of business, professional and labor
leaders that laid the foundation for the vitality Dallas enjoys today," said
his son, Henry J. Holcomb, a staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Citing his work in Dallas, Kennedy had appointed Holcomb to represent Texas
on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in 1961. In 1965, President Lyndon B.
Johnson named Holcomb vice chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Commission,
then a new regulatory agency created to enforce the employment opportunity
provisions of the Civil Right Act of 1964. In 1970, President Richard M.
Nixon reappointed him to a second term.
Holcomb began his clergy career as a traveling evangelist, preaching at
weeklong meetings called "youth revivals" in scores of cities throughout
Texas and the south. He later held three pastorates - the First Baptist
Church of Durant, Okla.; the Luther Rice Memorial Baptist Church in
Washington and the Lakewood Baptist Church in Dallas.
Holcomb was born in Yazoo City, Miss., on Dec. 19, 1911. His father, the
late Rev. T.L. Holcomb, was a well-known Baptist clergyman who held high
positions in the Southern Baptist Convention - most notably as chief
executive of both the Baptist General Convention of Texas in Dallas and the
Baptist Sunday School Board in Nashville, Tenn.
Other survivors include his wife of 65 years, Elaine Parks Holcomb;
daughter, Jan Flowers, a special education diagnostician for the Mabank
Independent School District in East Texas; and sister, Louise Layden of
Tucson, Ariz.; three grandchildren; and four great grandchildren.
Erik L.
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Erik L.