Under an umbrella in the November rain, Marie Tippit got her first look Friday at a replica of the squad car driven by her husband the day he died.

LARA SOLT/DMN

Curtis Tippit, with wife Betty, keeps his mother, Marie Tippit, dry in front of a replica of his dad's patrol car.

She tilted her head toward a relative standing next to her.

"I have mixed feelings," she said.

Officer J.D. Tippit's original squad car was scrapped. The 1963 Ford Galaxie that on Friday sat on a flatbed in the parking lot of the Dallas Police Association headquarters in South Dallas was a television movie prop found in an Arlington salvage yard.

It was restored by the Texas Fire Museum after 340 hours of work, which continued up until hours before the presentation. The last piece, a replica of Texas exempt license plate 46601, was attached Thursday night.

Friday's rain postponed a brief ceremony in which the car was to be symbolically returned to the corner of Patton Avenue and 10th Street in Oak Cliff. It was there, on Nov. 22, 1963, that Tippit confronted Lee Harvey Oswald less than an hour after the shooting of President John F. Kennedy. Oswald shot the officer seconds after Tippit emerged from the car.

"It's beautiful, and it's an honor that they would do this," Marie Tippit, 81, said at an informal reception at DPA headquarters Friday.

In an interview a few minutes later, she recalled that she had last seen her husband's squad car when he returned home for lunch that day.

"I made him a tuna sandwich, and then he went back to work and drove away," she said. "And that's the last time I saw him."

After 46 years, she said, she is used to recounting the events of that day. But the memories still hurt.

"There's nothing you can do but live every day, because you have to," she said. "But it never goes away. You miss them and there are days when you just wish you can see them again."

Her son Alan, 59, said the replica looked exactly like the original in the family home movies.

"Although I don't think the original was ever this clean," he said.

Roderick Janich, DPA spokesman, said the car would be placed on permanent exhibit at the association's headquarters, though exact arrangements are still pending.

"We see it as a tribute to Officer Tippit and other police officers who have given their lives," he said.