Clint Hill, Secret Service agent who jumped onto JFK’s automotive after the president was shot, dies at 93

Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who leaped onto the again of President John F. Kennedy’s limousine after the president was shot, then was pressured to retire early as a result of he remained haunted by reminiscences of the assassination, died Friday. He was 93.

Hill died at residence in Belvedere, California, his writer mentioned. A reason behind loss of life was not given.

Though few could acknowledge his identify, the footage of Hill, captured on Abraham Zapruder’s chilling residence film of the taking pictures, offered a number of the most indelible photographs of Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

Hill obtained Secret Service awards and was promoted for his actions that day however for many years blamed himself for Kennedy’s loss of life, saying he did not react shortly sufficient and would gladly have given his life to save lots of the president.

“If I had reacted just a bit bit faster. And I might have, I suppose,” a weeping Hill instructed Mike Wallace on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in 1975, shortly after he retired at age 43 on the urging of his medical doctors. “And I will dwell with that to my grave.”

It was solely in recent times that Hill mentioned he was in a position to lastly begin placing the assassination behind him and settle for what occurred. Final 12 months, CBS Information correspondent Seth Doane requested Hill if he nonetheless blames himself. 

“Effectively, possibly there was one thing I might have carried out,” Hill mentioned. “I do not know anymore.”

Hill mentioned he nonetheless hasn’t utterly forgiven himself. 

“My dad drilled into me that once you’re given an project to do, you do it ‘until it is totally completed,” Hill instructed Doane. “I had an project to maintain the president and Mrs. Kennedy alive. I solely saved one among them alive. One died on my watch.”

First woman Jacqueline Kennedy was using on the left operating board of the follow-up automotive immediately behind the presidential limousine because it made its method by means of Dealey Plaza.

Hill instructed the Warren Fee that he reacted after listening to a shot and seeing the president hunch down in his seat. The president was struck by a deadly headshot earlier than Hill was in a position to make it to the limousine.

Zapruder’s movie captured Hill as he leaped from the Secret Service automotive, grabbed a deal with on the limousine’s trunk and pulled himself onto it as the driving force accelerated. He pressured Mrs. Kennedy, who had crawled onto the trunk, again into her seat because the limousine sped off.

Hill later turned the agent accountable for the White Home protecting element and ultimately an assistant director of the Secret Service, retiring due to what he characterised as deep despair and recurring reminiscences of the assassination.

The 1993 Clint Eastwood thriller “Within the Line of Hearth,” a few former Secret Service agent scarred by the JFK assassination, was impressed partly by Hill.

Hill was born in 1932 and grew up in Washburn, North Dakota. He attended Concordia Faculty in Moorhead, Minnesota, served within the Military and labored as a railroad agent earlier than becoming a member of the Secret Service in 1958. He labored within the company’s Denver workplace for a few 12 months, earlier than becoming a member of the elite group of brokers assigned to guard the president and first household.

Since his retirement, Hill has spoken publicly in regards to the assassination solely a handful of occasions however probably the most poignant was his 1975 interview with Wallace, throughout which Hill broke down a number of occasions.

“If I had reacted about five-tenths of a second quicker, possibly a second quicker, I would not be right here immediately,” Hill mentioned.

“You imply you’d have gotten there and you’d have taken the shot?” Wallace requested.

“The third shot, sure, sir,” Hill mentioned.

“And that may have been all proper with you?”

“That will have been nice with me,” Hill responded.

Hill known as “60 Minutes” interview a “cathartic expertise”

Hill was 43 and not too long ago retired when he did his 1975 interview with Wallace. Twenty years after that, Wallace wrote to Hill and requested for an additional interview. Hill wrote a letter again to Wallace. 

“My interview with you on ’60 Minutes’ in 1975 was way more of an emotional expertise than I believed potential,” Hill wrote on the time. “It did develop into a cathartic expertise for me and helped me launch emotions that had been pent up for a very long time.”

In his 2005 memoir, “Between You and Me,” Wallace recalled his interview with Hill as one of the transferring of his profession.

In 2006, Wallace and Hill reunited on CNN’s “Larry King Dwell,” the place Hill credited that first “60 Minutes” interview with serving to him lastly begin the therapeutic course of.

“I’ve to thank Mike for asking me to do this interview after which thank him extra as a result of he is what precipitated me to lastly come to phrases with issues and convey the feelings out the place they surfaced,” he mentioned. “It was due to his questions and the issues he requested that I began to get well.”

Many years after the assassination, Hill co-authored a number of books about his Secret Service years with Lisa McCubbin Hill, whom he married in 2021.

“We had that once-in-a-lifetime love that everybody hopes for,” McCubbin Hill mentioned in an announcement. “We had been soulmates.”

Clint Hill additionally turned a speaker and gave interviews about his expertise in Dallas. In 2018, he was given the state of North Dakota’s highest civilian honor, the Theodore Roosevelt Tough Rider Award. A portrait of Hill adorns a Capitol gallery of fellow honorees.

A non-public funeral service shall be held in Washington, D.C., on a future date.