Don Grisham Collection
Donald Hugh Grisham was born on July 26, 1960, in Waco, Texas. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in History from Tarleton State University and worked as a filing clerk at the Attorney General's Office in Austin, Texas. Grisham’s interest in the John F. Kennedy assassination stems from a memory in which he and his father watched as Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963. Grisham has had a strong interest in the JFK assassination but is not a self-ascribed researcher on the subject. The materials in this collection were accumulated by Grisham in 1982, during his time in the state Attorney General's office. The office offered transfer of three copies of the materials to the Texas State Archive who declined because they already possessed copies. Grisham later gifted these copies to the Poage Legislative Library in 2007.
The Collection
The materials in the Don Grisham collection have an inclusive date range of 1947-1964, with the bulk spanning 1963-1964, in the days and months following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The items in this collection are significant, because they contain information collected in the aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy including transcriptions of police radio transmissions from the day of the assassination and first-person statements from each officer involved in the hunt for Oswald as compiled by Dallas Police Sheriff J.E. Bill Decker. Content also includes information about Lee Harvey Oswald and court cases his family were involved in prior to the JFK assassination. Originally bound in notebooks and binders, the collection consists of photocopies of material held in the Texas State Archives. As such, the materials are in excellent condition.
The collection consists of 2 document boxes.