U.S. Rep. Jim Wright, a Democrat from Fort Worth, flew from Washington to Texas with President Kennedy. He was about five cars back in the motorcade when Kennedy was shot. "I thought someone was trying to fire a 21-gun salute with a rifle," says Wright, a former House speaker who left politics in 1989. "Then the third one came and it was off cadence. "I knew when we passed the crowd waiting there on the grassy knoll they had seen something. I could see it in their faces. They were traumatized."