0:00

You're

0:02

listening to Radio Diaries and this is Nellie Gillis

0:04

with producers Alisa Escarce and Micah

0:06

Hazel. Hey! This is our producer

0:08

takeover. Sorry, Jo. Sorry, Jo. Before

0:11

we start today's show, we wanted to let you know that right

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now is Radiotopia's annual fundraiser. And

0:16

for the occasion, our team wanted to come and tell

0:19

you a few of the favorite things that we've heard from

0:21

the network recently. Micah, you go first. So

0:24

I recently listened to the Stoop episode,

0:26

Don't Call Me Auntie, which is basically

0:29

breaking down the word auntie. I use

0:31

it all the

0:31

time. A lot of people of color use it all the

0:33

time. It's like a very endearing

0:35

term. And this

0:38

episode really just kind of broke

0:40

down the ways in which it's actually

0:42

pretty problematic.

0:45

I think something this show just really does well is

0:47

it takes these just everyday things in

0:49

my life or everyday things in black culture and

0:51

it kind of like flips them on the head a little bit

0:54

while also just feeling like a very casual

0:57

conversation between friends. Awesome.

0:59

How many people in your life do you call auntie? Oh my

1:02

God. Like pretty

1:04

much anyone who's nice to me. How

1:08

about you, Alisa? So I recently

1:10

loved this episode. It was a collaboration

1:12

between two of my favorite Radiotopia shows,

1:14

Articles of Interest and Wait For It. They

1:17

did this story about plus size clothes

1:19

that was the perfect combo of personal

1:21

stories and really fascinating fashion history that

1:23

I had never thought about. I'll

1:25

never be able to look at those shoulder cutouts on T-shirts

1:27

the same way. I heard that

1:29

episode too and I definitely have shoulder cutout

1:31

shirts that I don't know whether I'll ever wear again. So

1:35

I just listened to this Ear Hustle episode about the largest women's prison

1:37

in the world. And

1:39

they interview like five women and one of them talks

1:41

about how before she was incarcerated she hopped

1:44

freight trains for years. But

1:46

then there's this beautiful moment where she

1:48

almost like longs for the sound of trains and

1:51

there's this freight train outside the prison

1:53

and she says she can still hear like the

1:55

engines from like a mile away. And I

1:57

just thought it was like one of those rare interviews that you want

1:59

to take.

1:59

tell everyone about. So

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if you want to support work like this from passionate

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creators, visit radiotopia.fm slash

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donate to give today. Our goal

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is to reach 1,000 donors. And if you

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donate, you'll get a link to a special Radiotopia

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mixtape.

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I've heard it, it's really good. That's

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radiotopia.fm slash donate.

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Thanks for supporting our stories. Nice

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to see all you guys so far. And thank you for

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watching.

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This episode of Radio Diaries is brought to you

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by Progressive Insurance. Whether you love

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3:05

From PRX. Heads

3:09

up, this episode includes

3:11

a description of violence. From

3:14

PRX's Radiotopia,

3:15

this is Radio Diaries. I'm Joe Richman. 60 years

3:18

ago on November 22nd, 1963, the

3:21

assassination of President John F. Kennedy shocked

3:24

the nation. There are many

3:26

photographs of that day, but

3:29

one image in particular captured people's attention,

3:31

appearing in newspapers all over the country. It

3:34

showed a Secret Service agent jumping

3:37

onto the back of the moving presidential limousine. Today

3:40

on the show, the story of the man in that photo.

3:44

It was 12 years ago. It was 12 years ago we first

3:47

saw this picture, Secret Service agent Clint Hill climbing

3:50

on the back of the presidential limousine that dreadful

3:52

November day in Dallas to try

3:54

to push Jacqueline Kennedy back to protect her life.

4:00

Clint Hill was a secret... Before Dallas, I

4:03

was Clint Hill. After

4:06

that, I've been known as the man

4:08

who climbed on the President's car. My

4:13

name is Clint Hill.

4:15

I was in the United States Secret Service.

4:18

I served five Presidents, Eisenhower,

4:21

Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and

4:23

Ford. President

4:26

Kennedy was different than the previous President. Eisenhower,

4:29

when he would refer to us, agents,

4:31

that was just, hey, agent! With

4:34

Kennedy, he knew your name,

4:36

your first name. He knew if

4:38

you were married. He knew if you had children.

4:42

And he would stop and he would talk to you. And

4:45

so we had the utmost respect for

4:47

him. Good

4:53

morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Bob Walker speaking from

4:55

Dallas Love Field. In

4:58

November of 1963, we arrive in Dallas. As

5:03

we're going through this crowd, I'm

5:05

in the follow-up car immediately

5:07

behind the presidential vehicle. I'm

5:13

on the running board, left-hand side, which

5:15

puts me closest to Mrs. Kennedy,

5:18

who is in the left rear of

5:21

the presidential vehicle. By

5:29

the time we got to Main Avenue,

5:31

the crowd was so large, they

5:34

could not be contained on the sidewalks.

5:37

People were hanging out of windows. They

5:39

were on top of buildings. They were on

5:41

fire escapes. Any place

5:44

that could be to cede the President

5:46

and the First Lady. Thousands

5:49

and

5:49

thousands of people who were crowding the streets here are

5:51

following the motorcade even further down

5:53

Main Street.

5:55

We got down through the end of Main, turned

5:58

right, entering into a

5:59

area called Dealey Plaza and

6:02

all of a sudden I hear this explosive noise over

6:05

my right shoulder. I

6:07

didn't think at first it was a gunshot. I

6:09

thought it was a firecracker or something but

6:11

when I saw the president's reaction I

6:15

knew that was not normal. I mean

6:17

he threw his hands to his throat and

6:20

started to fall to his left. I

6:23

jumped off of the car I was on

6:26

running

6:27

as fast as I could run so

6:30

I could provide some protection

6:32

for both president and business Kennedy.

6:35

That was what I was trying to do.

6:38

But as I approached the vehicle

6:41

there was a gunshot. The

6:44

shot hit him somewhere in the lower

6:46

portion of the head in the rear and

6:48

exploded out just above the ear

6:52

and it was just a mass of blood

6:55

all over me, all

6:58

over Mrs. Kennedy. Mrs.

7:00

Kennedy had come up on the trunk. I

7:02

got up there and they helped her get back into the backseat.

7:06

She was in shock. There's

7:08

no question about that. She was in absolute

7:11

shock. And I'm

7:13

up there on the back of the car so I

7:16

turned and I gave a thumbs down to the follow-up

7:18

car crew. Shook my

7:20

head no and I hollered

7:22

at the driver and get us to a hospital. We

7:26

pulled up at the emergency

7:29

room. They had five or six

7:31

doctors at one time working,

7:33

one on heart, one on the lungs. They

7:36

did everything they could. So

7:39

I asked the nursing staff,

7:42

get me a phone. I wanted to talk to people

7:44

at the White House and the operator got in. He

7:47

said the attorney general wants to talk to you. Well

7:50

the attorney general was Robert Kennedy, the

7:52

president's brother. He

7:54

said, well how bad is it? I

7:58

did not want to tell Robert Kennedy.

7:59

Kennedy

8:01

that his older brother Jack

8:05

was dead. So

8:07

I simply said it's

8:09

as bad as it can get. With

8:12

that he hung up.

8:15

We interrupt this program for a CBS radio

8:18

Net Alert Bulletin. The Associated

8:20

President's first report says the President Kennedy

8:23

was shot just as his motorcade left downtown

8:25

Dallas. Clint Hill, a

8:27

Secret Service agent assigned to Mrs. Kennedy,

8:30

escorted the President into

8:32

the hospital.

8:38

When I was a kid my father

8:40

taught me that when you're given a job to do you do

8:44

it completely all the way through until

8:46

it's totally done correctly and

8:49

I had failed in this case because

8:52

the President was dead. I

8:57

then went into an extreme depressed

9:00

state at my home in Virginia.

9:04

I lived on two packs of cigarettes

9:06

a day and a bottle of scotch.

9:09

That's how I slept. I just

9:13

refused to talk to anybody. Not

9:15

the agents, not the family. Nobody. The

9:18

only time I ever talked about it was that I

9:20

talked to the Warren Commission in 1964 and

9:24

I talked to 60 minutes

9:27

in 1975. Clint Hill

9:29

was a Secret Service agent for 17 years.

9:32

He was chief of the White House detail but

9:34

Clint retired from the Secret Service four

9:36

months ago at the age of 43. In the

9:39

first public statement he has made I

9:41

was really emotional and much more than I had

9:43

anticipated. Was there anything

9:48

that the Secret Service or

9:51

that Clint Hill could have done to

9:53

keep that from happening?

9:54

Clint

9:56

Hill yes. Clint

9:59

Hill yes. What do you mean? If

10:01

he had reacted about five

10:05

tenths of a second faster

10:07

or maybe a second faster,

10:11

I wouldn't be here

10:11

today. You mean you

10:13

would have gotten there and you would have taken the shot. Yes,

10:16

sir. And

10:20

that would have been all right with you. That

10:25

would have been fine with me. You

10:29

couldn't have gotten there. You

10:31

surely don't have any sense of guilt about that.

10:33

Yes, I certainly do.

10:35

I have a great deal

10:37

of guilt about that. Had

10:40

I turned in a different direction,

10:44

I'd have made it. It's

10:46

my fault. Over

10:50

the years, a

10:52

lot of agents have said they're

10:55

agents now because they

10:58

saw what I did in 1963. It

11:01

was heroic, but I

11:03

don't take any comfort in

11:06

being considered a hero. That

11:13

assassination is like a movie.

11:15

It goes around in my brain all

11:18

the time. The

11:21

total elapsed time, they say,

11:24

from the time of the first shot until the last

11:26

shot

11:27

was six seconds.

11:29

That six-second period in

11:31

Dallas, it's not

11:33

an easy thing to live with. It's

11:38

got a weird, you think, that six seconds

11:41

can last for a lifetime.

11:50

by

12:00

Micah Hazel. The editors were Deborah

12:02

George, Ben Shapiro, and myself, sound

12:04

mixing by Nellie Gillis. The Radio

12:06

Diaries team also includes Alisa Scarsay

12:09

and Lena Englestein. We are proud

12:11

members of Radiotopia from PRX, a

12:13

network of independent, creator-owned,

12:15

listener-supported podcasts. You can check

12:18

out all the other shows at radiotopia.fm.

12:21

And Radio Diaries has support from the National Endowment

12:23

for the Humanities, NSCA, New York

12:25

City's Department of Cultural Affairs, and

12:27

from listeners like you. I'm

12:29

Joe Richmond of Radio Diaries. Thanks for listening.