Former Secret Service agent and North Dakota native Clint Hill has passed away at the age of 93.
Hill was assigned to protect former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. He was riding on a running board of a limousine in the Presidential motorcade on November 22, 1963 in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. When the President was wounded, Hill leapt over the rear bumper of the limousine carrying the President, First Lady and Governor John Connally and First Lady Nellie Connally of Texas.
"And she starts to get up on the back of the car; well, I'm trying to get up on the back from the rear, and I finally do, get a hold of her and put her back in her seat. And when I did that, the President fell to his left into her lap. I realized, it appeared to me, that he was dead for sure."
That quote by Clint Hill is provided by a KFYR report on the 60th anniversary of the assassination.
Hill stayed in the vehicle on its way to the hospital where the President was later declared dead.
He remained assigned to the First Lady’s security detail until Lyndon Johnson’s election in 1964. He retired from the Secret Service in 1975.
Clint Hill was born in Larimore and grew up in Washburn. He was the recipient of North Dakota’s Roughrider Award in 2018, the state’s top honor.