Clint Hill: Dealing with guilt

Nobody knows when they are born what lies ahead in their lives. When we go through year after year of schooling, we don't know what fate has in store for us.

Most of us will lead average lives. We may experience the thrill of meeting a celebrity who capitalized on a particular skill or who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. However, for most of us, we will find satisfaction in getting married, having children, maintaining our health, having financial stability, having a roof over our head, food on our table, and taking the occasional vacation.

We will die and, over time, our gravestones will be one of millions that exist forgotten in cemeteries all across the world. A hundred years from now, someone might take a quick glance at our weathered tombstone as they walk their dog through a random cemetery.

They might try to make out the fading inscriptions on the tombstone and read the epitaph which summarizes your life in just a few words.

Here lies the devoted husband and father. Fly high, freebird.

The passerby may do the math in their head to calculate how old you were when you died. Maybe they'll wonder how you died or why you died when you did.

Oh, how sad. He died so young. I wonder if it was cancer, a heart attack, or a car accident. Maybe it was suicide. Or were they murdered?

They might look to see if you have family members buried alongside and how many years after you died did they die.

Wow. The wife lived another thirty years after her husband passed away. The son died so young, too, and so soon after the father. I wonder if he was overcome with grief from his father dying.

Then the visitor and their dog will move on to the next grave. Our gravesite will be just one in a long line of anonymous plots of land which contain people who came and went in this life and never really left an impact on the world.

There is no shame in that. We are under no obligation to leave an impact on the world. We don't need that added pressure. I know I don't.

We didn't ask to come into this world. However, sometimes fate (God? The universe?) has different plans for us.

Maybe your name is Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett, or Mark Bingham and you board a plane, United Airline Flight 93, on a beautiful, sunny September morning in Boston. Then there is a disturbance on the plane and you feel the plane reverse course. You find out other planes have been hijacked and that two planes have crashed into the World Trade Centers in New York and one crashed into the Pentagon. You and your fellow passengers – other complete strangers whose life paths just happen to have crossed with yours at this juncture in time – huddle together. You are faced with having to make a decision between two options – both of which would, likely, result in you and everyone else on board's death.

Maybe your name is Judith Manzo or Lisa Kelly. You are best friends and both single mothers who don't get to go very out much, if ever at all. On a cold February day in Rhode Island, a friend messages both of you to say he has two extra tickets for a concert at a rinky dink place in the middle of nowhere called The Station Nightclub. The band, Great White, is a rock band you both enjoyed when you were teenagers in the 80's. After some discussion and going back and forth about the idea, you both decide it will be good to go out together for one night.

When you get to the club, you are excited when the band comes running out onto the stage, but, almost immediately, the band's pyrotechnics sparks flames that shoot up the highly flammable soundproof foam that lines the wall behind the band. There is a stampede towards the only door which is being allowed to use for the 400-plus people inside the overcrowded building to exit. People begin falling and the exit becomes blocked. One hundred people die as a result. Years later, a beautiful memorial is built on the site of the fire and your names and faces are prominently displayed for all to see.

Maybe your name is Ron Goldman. You just finished working your shift as a waiter at Mezzaluna Trattoria in Brentwood, California. A woman, named Nicole, calls to say her mother forgot her glasses at the restaurant when they dined there earlier that evening. You finds the glasses and offer to bring them to her home. When you arrive at her home, you walk up the walkway to her door and are confronted by an angry, former NFL star athlete who is accusing you of sleeping with his ex-wife. He reveals a big knife and proceeds to stab you over fifteen times in the neck, chest, and abdomen.

These were ordinary people going about their lives, but whose names now will never be forgotten. They never intended to be household names – especially not by these means.

There are others, of course, who do set out to make a name for themselves.

One of my most memorable, humblest, and absolutely most surreal days was when I, finally, got to visit Arlington Cemetery when I was in my late 30s. It had always been a goal of mine to go there.

My main reason for wanting to visit Arlington before I died was to visit the grave of my idol, John F. Kennedy. I have read every biography about him and the Kennedy family. "Jack" was a man who was encouraged from an early age by his father to be a fierce competitor and a leader of men. The lofty expectation was that he might be President of the United States someday.

I remember the chills I got as I walked up the hill at Arlington and I got my first glimpse of the crowd surrounding a roped off area and I saw the flickering of the Eternal Flame marking his grave.

What I, foolishly, hadn't braced for was the realization that there laid Jackie Kennedy right next to him. As I looked off a few feet further I could see the crosses marking the graves of Robert and Edward Kennedy. A few steps away was Robert McNamara, Kennedy's Secretary of Defense. There were other Kennedy cabinet members and speechwriters that I recognized buried nearby.

After spending a ton of time in this area of Arlington Cemetery, I took my Kennedy blinders off and explored the rest of the cemetery. I was surrounded by history. For a history buff like myself, I was overwhelmed. It was sensory overload.

This was not like being at a specific museum with momentos honoring one person or one time period. This was American history. All of it. This wasn't artifacts. These were the actual bodies of the people that shaped American history.

There was President William Howard Taft. There was Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln. There was Thurgood Marshall and Medgar Evers. There was boxing great, Joe Louis.

Oh, there were the remains of the space shuttle, Challenger, astronauts.

Seeing the memorial and finding out that the cremated remains of all of the seven astronauts were right here before me brought out strong emotions in me. I remember being in school, like so many others that day, and watching as a school teacher, Christa McAuliffe, and her crew lost their lives when the shuttle exploded only 93 seconds after take off. It is one of those moments you will never forget where you were when it happened. And here they were.

Everywhere I looked, I recognized a historical figure. Their bodies, their corporal remains, lay before me.

Equally awe inspiring were the rows of crosses of countless soldiers that had sacrificed their lives so I could sit here, today, in the comfort, warmth, and security of my home writing this article in English, free from any worries of censorship or wrongful imprisonment. Those graves were every bit as important as those of any of the presidents, politicians, singers, actors, activists, or astronauts that were buried here.

I returned two other days to Arlington Cemetery during that one week stay I had in Washington, D.C. It was just something about being there. I felt like I was part of something bigger while I was there. I felt like I was in a time machine when I was there.

On one of those other visits, I couldn't believe my good fortune. No one was at the Kennedy grave. I had it all to myself.

My loving (and very, very patient) life partner, Erin, told me later that while she was giving me my time and space with the Kennedys, she observed a cardinal patrolling the area. Sometimes it would land a few feet away from me and just stare at me. Might it have been the spirit of JFK acknowledging my presence? I like to think so.

My alone time with JFK and Jackie on that overcast day will always be one of my most treasured times of my life.

What got me thinking about JFK and history was the news of the death of Clint Hill, at the age of 93, this week. What a man. What a life.

He served in the Secret Service under five different presidents, starting with Dwight Eisenhower, and including John F. Kennedy.

He is most famous for being the man in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, wearing a black suit and sunglasses who ran and jumped on the back of the presidential limo mere moments after a gunman had fatally shot the president in the head. Mrs. Kennedy had crawled onto the back of the limo and Hill pushed her back into the backseat and shielded the president and the First Lady as the vehicle raced to Parkland Hospital, but it was too late for the president.

Hill refused to talk about that day for years after, until he did an interview with Mike Wallace for 60 Minutes in 1975. It was a heart-wrenching interview in which Hill revealed that he feels enormous guilt, every moment of every day, for not having responded faster to the first gunshot. He, firmly, believed if he responded faster to the first gunshot that he would have made it to the limo in time to protect Kennedy from the third fatal head shot which happened about six seconds later.

Mike Wallace told Hill: "You got there in less than two seconds, Clint. You, surely, don't have any guilt about that?"

"Yes, I certainly do have a great deal of guilt. Had I turned in a different direction, I'd have made it. That was my fault," Hill responded as tears welled up in his eyes and he looked at the floor.

"If I had reacted just a little bit quicker then I could have [taken the third bullet]. I'll have to live with that to my grave."

It was such a poignant moment. Hill always knew that his job entailed the possibility that one day he may have to sacrifice his life to protect the president. That day, in his eyes, should have been November 22, 1963. It sounds strange to say that had Clint Hill succeeded in doing his job that day, he would have died that day and Kennedy would have been alive to do this interview with Mike Wallace in 1975.

The truth of the matter is there is nothing Hill could have done. The shots were too close together. Many thought the first gunshot could have been a firecracker or a police motorcycle's engine backfiring. Anyone's natural reaction would have been to turn back to the Texas School Book Depository to see where the noise originated.

Hill disclosed in another interview that he began drinking heavily after Kennedy's assassination. One day, after consuming several drinks at a bar, Hill decided he couldn't live with the guilt anymore. He walked onto a beach and kept walking into the ocean with the intention of drowning himself. Fortunately, another one of his Secret Service friends had followed him and pulled him out of the water, thus saving his life.

No one can even begin to imagine the horror that Hill witnessed that day in November, 1963. When you factor in that it was his job to protect the president's life and the president was now dead, it is easy to think that a man as proud as Hill would feel enormous guilt. There was nothing Mike Wallace, nor anyone else, could say which could make him feel otherwise.

Hill believed he had let the president down. He had let Mrs. Kennedy down. He had let Caroline and little John John down. He had let a nation down. That's a lot of guilt to carry.

I am sure Secret Service agents are trained to react quickly. So while ordinary people like you and I can say and believe there is no way Hill could have gotten to the Kennedys in time, in a Secret Service agent's mind, there was time. They are trained to not hesitate. Act first. Ask questions and seek answers later. Don't wonder what that sound was or where it came from, but get to the president and the First Lady right away.

I, recently, wrote an article about actor/director Kevin Smith titled, "Trauma is trauma." Smith explains that he learned from a therapist that people fall into the trap of comparing their trauma to other people's trauma. He called it the "Trauma Olympics." He said that he felt guilty when he spent time at a mental hospital, recently, because he would hear some people talk about serving in the military and seeing their friends get shot and killed in battle.

Meanwhile, Smith would feel like an impostor and an idiot because his biggest gripe was that someone had called him fat twenty years ago. He explained that he had to learn that the human body views all trauma, equally, and that the body doesn't delineate or understand degrees of trauma.

In Clint Hill's case, I have to question that logic. I think it may be safe to say that what Hill experienced that day in Dallas, no other human in history has experienced. A world leader that he was responsible for protecting was killed right in front of him.

I'd rather be called "fat" than have to experience that.

And what about Jackie Kennedy? Let's not forget about her. My goodness – the absolute horror she witnessed. Often I think about how it goes overlooked that this beautiful, graceful woman was clutching her husband at the moment a bullet whizzed inches to the right of her head and exploded (sorry for the disturbing image, but it was the reality of it) the head of the man she loved, covering her with his brain matter. She then had to hold his bloody, lifeless body in her lap as the limo raced the five to ten minutes to Parkland Hospital.

I'm sorry, but that is a different level of trauma and one, hopefully, none of us will ever endure. I have a world of respect for Jackie persevering for her kids, and for herself, for so many years after. Many people don't realize or appreciate that she was only 34 years old when she became a widow and a single mother of two on that awful day.

Similar admiration and sympathy should be bestowed on Clint Hill. He was an amazing man thrust onto history's stage. His job, as a Secret Service agent, was to always remain anonymous. Simply put, just like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in the movie, Hill should have been just one of the "men in black." No one should have known his name.

I often say that the 1960's was the most amazing decade in recent American history. It began with the promise of the inauguration of a young, attractive, eloquent, vibrant John F. Kennedy as president and ended with Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon. In between, there were the assassinations of both Kennedy brothers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. There was Elvis, Beatlemania, and Woodstock. There was the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War.

Clint Hill had a front row seat to all of it. He was a real life Forrest Gump. I am sure when Hill was growing up in North Dakota and going to college in Minnesota that he had no idea what history would have in store for him in Dallas, Texas.

I don't know if his intentions were always to lead a simple, ordinary life, but fate would have other plans.

Hill told Mike Wallace – almost fifty years ago – that he would carry the guilt of the Kennedy assassination to his grave. Fifty years is a long, long time to carry that kind of guilt. It never got easier for him to talk about that fateful day.

In his later years, he would write three books: Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012), Five Days in November (2013), and Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford (2016). Hopefully, that helped unburden himself of some of the nightmares that were stored away in the depths of his conscience.

History will prove grateful for these memoirs.

Hill's life was, indeed, an "extraordinary journey." He is an unsung hero of our generation. He deserves a State Funeral and deserves to be buried in Arlington Cemetery along with our other great historical figures. His deserves to be a tombstone to be remembered and honored for centuries to come. He loved his country enough to die for it. May you no longer carry any guilt, Agent 9. Rest in peace and godspeed.