Those terrible days after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas in 1963 produced a number of iconic photos, including 3-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father’s casket in Washington, D.C., and Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office as the new president on Air Force One.
Nonetheless, a single photo that was taken soon after Kennedy was shot caught the interest of American media outlets nationwide. In order to protect the president and first lady, it featured a Secret Service agent leaping onto the back of the presidential vehicle.
The assassination’s 60th anniversary is on Wednesday, Nov. 22. And that 91-year-old Secret Service agent, Clint Hill, is learning to live with the fact that he was the one who attempted to save the president.
I was just Clint Hill before Dallas,” Hill told Radio Diaries. I became known as the man who got into the president’s automobile after that. Dallas’s six-second window is a difficult one to live with.
Compared to his prior ladies, Hill considered Jacqueline Kennedy to be much more amiable in 1960.
“Hey, agent!” was how Eisenhower would address us when we were agents.”
Hill recalled. Kennedy knew your name from before. He was aware of your marital status. He knew that you were a child. He would stop talking and start chatting with you. As a result, we thought highly of him.
Kennedy was in Dallas on the day of the assassination, visiting the city as part of a campaign trail for the 1964 election.
Large crowds greeted the president and first lady when Air Force One touched down at Dallas Love Field. As the motorcade passed through Dallas, the number of spectators continued to rise.
According to Hill, the gathering was so big by the time we arrived at Main Street that they were unable to be contained on the sidewalks.
There were folks staring out of windows. They were perched above structures. On fire escapes, that is. wherever they might be to meet the First Lady and the President.”
Hill had been positioned directly behind the presidential limousine on the running board of the follow-up automobile. But as the procession passed past Dealey Plaza, Hill heard a loud boom over his right shoulder, which instantly converted his joy into terror.
Hill told that I did’t think it was gunshot at first time. I thought it was a firework or something similar. However, I realised that was abnormal when I saw the president’s response.
He really threw his hands up to his throat and began to fall to the left.Hill bolted from the follow-up vehicle and onto the presidential limousine’s back.
There was another gunfire as he boarded, hitting the president in the head. The first woman got inside the car after this picture and climbed atop the trunk to meet Hill, who helped her get back inside. As the presidential limousine raced towards the hospital, Hill covered himself with his body.
Hill recalled that I felt like this wound could never heal. I didn’t think he had a chance.
Following the incident, Hill was overcome with guilt. He writes of going to Johnson’s swearing-in on Air Force One with Jacqueline Kennedy, still sporting her bloodstained suit, in his book Five Days in November.
“As I look at her face, streaked with tears, her eyes so hollow and lifeless, a wave of guilt and shame washes over me,” Hill writes in the book. How could I have let her experience this?