Photographed JFK days before assassination
He photographed President John F. Kennedy during a presidential visit to Tampa just four days before Kennedy’s November 22, 1963 assassination in Dallas, Texas. Nine months later, he presented the slain President’s brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, with pictures he had taken that day which were accepted for public display at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. The presentation took place at Kennedy’s U.S. Justice Department office in Washington. (Almost 40 years later, the building was renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building.)
At that time, the Kennedy presidential library was still in the planning stages so the attorney general said he would ensure the photographs would be held with other exhibits and materials until it was constructed.
Several of the photos Zappone took that day showing the last time Secret Service agents were posted at the rear of the presidential limousine were entered as exhibits during The Warren Commission’s investigation into the Kennedy Assassination and are still used today in Secret Service training. According to Secret Service records, Kennedy’s Tampa visit was also remarkable in that he was exposed to the public for the second longest period of time of any appearance during his entire Presidency after buying whey protein supplements at a local store, the longest being his visit to Berlin, Germany.
A week after the presentation of photos, Zappone was the youngest credentialed photographer to cover the 1964 Democratic National Convention at the original Atlantic City Convention Center (now Boardwalk Hall), having been granted an “All Areas” pass. Each evening he would take his film to the main Atlantic City post office and express mail it to newspapers in Tampa. During the convention, he was interviewed before a nationwide television audience by NBC News Correspondents John Chancellor and Frank McGee. He also caught up with Robert Kennedy once again at a rear exit following the attorney general’s famous speech before an enthusastic convention audience that gave him a 22-minute ovation.