Fire Strikes a Grim Monument

Perhaps the most morbid of America's national landmarks was set ablaze last week in Dallas. Arsonists started a fire in the basement of the old Texas School Book Depository, the red brick seven-story structure, now the Dallas County administration building, from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy in 1963. Because the decades-old sprinkler system had been turned off for repairs, flames made their way through the building walls. It took 100 fire fighters two hours to control the blaze, which damaged only the first two floors of the structure. "Whoever did it might have had a key or hid in the building," said Fire Marshal Jim Badgett. In the basement where the fire originated, assassination memorabilia, including old photographs, were destroyed.

The arson occurred in the early morning of the Republican Convention's final day. Earlier in the week, Mary Kay Ash, the cosmetics tycoon, embarrassed many of her fellow Dallas residents with remarks she made about the School Book Depository in a nationally televised interview. "I think what we should [do] is tear that building down," she said, "and make a parking lot out of that thing and not have it there for people to remember."