No doubt many of you reading this are asking "Just who is Clinton Hill?" If you are in your late sixtes or older, you might be saying "The name rings a distant bell, but I just can't place it."
Clint Hill, who died this week at the age of 93, is pictured below in two of the most iconic news photographs of the 1960's, specifically, from November 22, 1963:
Hill was the Secret Service Agent, whose main assignment was to provide protection the First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, who leapt upon the back of the Presidential limousine seconds after the shots were fired at President Kennedy that day in an effort to save and protect the President and the First Lady.
Hill's obituary in the Washington Post outlines how Hill spent most of the rest of his life racked by guilt over his "failure" on that day. He retired from the Secret Service in 1975 at age 43, serving through the Ford Administration. He remained friends with Mrs. Kennedy, but his experiences from that day in Dallas drove him to a suicide attempt and psychiatric care. He became reclusive for much of the rest of his life.
It wasn't until 1990 that Hill came to some sense of closure. He revisited Dallas for the first time since the assassination, walked through Dealey Plaza, and visited the Texas School Book Depository, now a museum, and stood in the spot where Lee Harvey Oswald fired his deadly shots.
From the Post's obituary:
"That really helped me understand that I had done everything that day that I could have done," he said. "There wasn't anything else that I could have done. And so that gave me some sense of relief. Even so, I still had that sense of guilt for failing to fulfill my responsibility."
RIP Agent Clinton Hill.
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