My column for the San Francisco Chronicle on Secret Service Agent Clint Hill

He was the last survivor in the Kennedy limousine on Nov. 22, 1963. R.I.P.

Clint Hill may have been the most tormented man in America. Here’s why

By Jack Ohman

Feb 24, 2025

On Nov. 22, 1963, 31-year-old U.S. Secret Service agent Clint Hill was riding on the left front running board of a Secret Service follow-up Cadillac called the “Queen Mary” through the streets of Dallas.

As the Queen Mary turned left onto Elm Street from Houston Street, Hill was watching President John F. Kennedy and his protectee, first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, in the limo immediately ahead, drift slowly down toward an underpass in a Works Progress Administration-era park called Dealey Plaza.

In the sunny back seat of the 1961 Lincoln Continental, Mrs. Kennedy thought, “It will be cool there under in the shade.”

Suddenly, a rifle shot fired above them shook Dealey Plaza, and President Kennedy stopped smiling and quickly turned to his left. Likely thinking it was a firecracker, Kennedy then turned back to the right, waved and smiled one last time.

Hill was staring directly at the first couple as the next shot hit the president in the back and passed through his throat.

The motorcade was going about 11 mph and Hill jumped off the running board to dash to the Lincoln, which had a rear platform for agents to stand on and two large handles mounted on the trunk.

By the time Hill got to the car, about five seconds after that shot, it was already too late. A third bullet had blown apart the president’s head.

Five seconds.

For the rest of his life, Hill was likely the most tormented man in America.

Five seconds is an eye blink, and probably no Olympic sprinter could have reacted faster, really.

As Hill grabbed the right handle on the trunk of the limousine, he could see Mrs. Kennedy leaping out of the back seat, trying to recover a piece of the president’s skull. She did and clutched it in her hand until the car got to Parkland Hospital, where she handed it to the emergency room doctors.

Hill didn’t push Mrs. Kennedy back into the car. He nearly tripped getting there, and his legs were losing traction as the car accelerated. Both he and Mrs. Kennedy could have been killed if he had fallen.

He did not fall.

He waved at her and she retreated, in shock. He pounded his fist on the trunk as they sped under the shade of the railroad overpass.

Hill saved her life, without question, but he instantly knew that President Kennedy was gone. (In 1964, he testified to the Warren Commission that the president’s “brain was exposed. There was blood and bits of brain all over the entire rear portion of the car. Mrs. Kennedy was completely covered with blood.”)

Four minutes later, Hill, awkwardly kneeling in the gore in the back of the limousine between Kennedy and the first lady, his foot akimbo out of the vehicle as it arrived at the ambulance bay at the Parkland Hospital emergency room.

Mrs. Kennedy would not let anyone move her husband out of the car for two minutes. Hill pleaded with her to let them put the president on the stretcher.

“No, Mr. Hill. You know he’s dead.”

Finally, Hill took his suit jacket off and placed it over Kennedy’s shattered head.

UPI White House reporter Merriman Smith asked Hill what Kennedy’s condition was.

“He’s dead, Smitty.”

Kennedy was pronounced dead 25 minutes later at Parkland.

Hill then flew back with the Kennedy party to Washington, D.C., and continued to protect Mrs. Kennedy until 6:30 the following morning — he had not slept since before his shift on Nov. 22. He went home and changed clothes, then came back to the White House to resume his duties.

Now, it is easy to understand why Hill then almost drank and smoked himself to death for a decade, finally appearing on “60 Minutes” with Mike Wallace in 1975, 12 years after the assassination.

Hill, nearly in tears, said, “If I had reacted about five-tenths of a second faster, maybe a second faster, I wouldn’t be here today,”

“You mean you would have gotten there and you would have taken the shot?” Wallace asked.

“The third shot, yes, sir.”

“And that would have been all right with you?”

“That would have been fine with me.”

Five-tenths of a second faster.

Fine with me

.

From any reasonable vantage point, it wasn’t Hill who was ultimately responsible for those five-tenths of a second.

It was John F. Kennedy, who told Secret Service agent Floyd Boring to keep agents off the rear running boards on the limousine because he wanted citizens to see him. However, in Dallas, Hill did jump back and forth off and on the presidential limo when the crowds thickened.

As the car turned into Dealey Plaza, Hill noticed open windows in the Texas School Book Depository.

The White House Secret Service detail was badly understaffed and overextended, to be sure. There were 12 agents in Dallas on that trip in two cars alone.

Hill was not in charge of keeping the presidential protection detail staffed up. Congress was. It didn’t.

Hill spent his later years telling his story. He lived in Point Tiburon, where he died Friday at 93. He was married to Lisa McCubbin, who made sure that Hill wrote books, and carefully managed his public persona. Hill was always clear: Lee Harvey Oswald did it.

Hill told the Warren Commission that he only heard two shots. There were three. The first shot, likely a ricochet off an overhead tree branch, didn’t register with him.

Who would have the presence of mind to immediately fill in those blanks in those six seconds Oswald fired into the car, let alone jump into the line of fire?

No one.

Not even Clint Hill, a true hero.

Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist who also writes at https://substack.com/@jackohman

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Hi, Folks: This was a poignant and difficult column to write. I was a bit emotional while I was writing it, thinking about the nightmare Clint Hill had to endure for decades. More content later today. Have a great afternoon.—J.