Army vet, SS agent in ’63, Clint Hill dies
For some of a certain age, this photo is burned into our souls.
Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who famously leapt onto the trunk of John F. Kennedy’s Lincoln limo in Dallas in 1963, died Friday February 21 at the age of 93.
Hill’s heroic scramble to protect Jackie Kennedy in the moments after the president was shot became an indelible image of the 1963 assassination – a Secret Service agent leaping across the back of a limousine, pushing the first lady down from the trunk of the car into her seat to cover her and the fatally wounded president.
Hill was assigned to the first lady’s detail that day and was riding in the car directly behind the president as the motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza. As shots rang out, Hill said that he kept his eyes trained on Kennedy as he jumped atop the dashboard and, as the car sped away, gave other Secret Service agents a thumbs down.
Mr. Hill maintained through his whole life that had he been faster getting to the limo, he could have saved Kennedy’s life.
“I was the only one who had a chance to do anything,” he said. “The way everything developed, the way all the other agents were positioned, I was the only one who had a chance to get to the car and do anything. And I couldn’t get there fast enough.”
With all due respect, sir, you had no chance.
Code-named Dazzle, Mr. Hill also served Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford.
He was eventually forced to retire at 43 because of his post-traumatic stress disorder from the Kennedy assassination. The Hill family said in a statement Monday that his service at the White House spanned the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, the assassinations of JFK and his brother Robert F. Kennedy, as well as Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, and Watergate. CNN
Mr. Hill was prior service Army.
Shortly after graduating from college he was drafted into the US Army and sent to Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, for basic training. After basic training he was assigned to the United States Army Intelligence Center in Dundalk, Maryland, where he was trained as a Counterintelligence (CI) Special Agent and served with Region IX, 113th Counterintelligence Corps Field Office in Denver, until 1957.
After his military service, Hill joined the Secret Service and was assigned to the Denver office. In 1958, Hill served on the detail for President Dwight D. Eisenhower.[6] After John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States, Hill was assigned to protect the First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy .Wiki
Here’s hoping you find peace at last, sir.
Category: We Remember
“If I had only…” is a terrible thought to keep.
“I did my best…” is better.
I hope he made peace with his survivors guilt. It only took me ten years because I spent the first five year projecting.
He absolutely did his best. The supersonic bullets would have already struck the President by the time he heard the shots. Even if he were faster than sound there is no way he could have done more.
Godspeed, Fare Well, and Rest Easy, Good Sir. It is better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all. There were forces beyond your knowledge of events at work that day. Mr. Hill was probably the last one left that had a direct connection to the murder of President Kennedy. Yes, those of us of “a certain age” do have the pictures and memories of that day burned in our memory banks. Will we ever know the true truth of it all? I doubt it. Those that were involved are mostly dead and any “true” records have long been destroyed.
A good and extremely brave man. I hope he rests in peace in the arms of God, free of his regrets he did not and should not have to endure.
Rest In Peace in the arms of God and Jesus, good sir.
And may the “should’a, would’a, could’a” guilt that was too heavy to bear, be cleansed from your soul. You never deserved to have to carry that burden.
(slow salute)
Pass the kleenex. It’s dusty over here.