If you’re of a certain age, you remember where you were when something big and historical happened. For my parents, it was Pearl Harbor. For my children, it was the Challenger explosion.
For me, it was the John F Kennedy assassination, on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.
We all know what happened. John and Jackie Kennedy arrived in Dallas for a early campaign visit. They drove to Dealey Plaza, rounded the corner, and Lee Harvey Oswald fired shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building.
The rest is history.
But in the intervening decades, members of the president’s Secret Service detail rarely spoke about that day, even among themselves. That changed in 2010, when Gerald Blaine, a senior member of the detail, wrote a book about their common experience.
Among the agents whose story is told in the book is Clint Hill, the agent seen in a million photos and videos of that day, sprinting forward to the First Couple’s limousine after the shots were fired. You’ve seen him in photos, spread-eagled across the Kennedys.
I met Gerald Lane and Clint Hill in 2010, when they came to Washington to talk about their book.
So here now, from 2010, Gerald Lane and Clint Hill.
Gerald Blaine is 88 now. He lives in Colorado.
Clint Hill is also 88. He lives in California.