Shooting tested the stamina, spirit of new president
Positive attitude helped, but assassination attempt triggered a slow decline
By Jim O'Connell
Scripps Howard News Service
Struck: Wounds from the 1981 shooting collapsed Reagan's lung and left him minutes from death. In the emergency room, Reagan told Nancy, "Honey, I forgot to duck."
WASHINGTON - On March 30, 1981, just 70 days into his presidency, Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr., a deranged drifter who had also briefly stalked President Jimmy Carter.
Reagan's positive attitude throughout the ordeal helped establish his most enduring public image: that of a man with a sunny disposition and an unquenchable can-do spirit.
Pale and bloody, in the emergency room after the shooting, Reagan is said to have sheepishly told first lady Nancy Reagan, "Honey, I forgot to duck."
Later, as he was being wheeled into the operating room, he said to doctors "Please tell me you're all Republicans."
The quips masked devastating wounds that drained nearly half of Reagan's blood, collapsed his lung and left him minutes from death, his personal physician said.
Although Reagan eventually recovered from his life-threatening wounds, the incident triggered a "very, very slow and steady mental and physical decline," according to his official biographer.
Reagan had just finished speaking to a sullen crowd of 3,500 labor union activists at the Hilton Hotel a few miles from the White House, when he emerged onto the street and waved to a small group of well-wishers and reporters.
Hinckley, who was estranged from his family, had a vague plan to attempt to assassinate a president to impress actress Jodie Foster. Hinckley also had appeared, apparently armed, previously at two of President Carter's campaign stops without incident.
After staying overnight in Washington, Hinckley read about Reagan's daily schedule in a newspaper item, armed himself and joined the crowd outside the hotel.
As Reagan appeared outside the hotel, Hinckley fired six shots from a .22-caliber pistol, with Devastator bullets, hitting Reagan press secretary James Brady, police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy. Reagan was hit by a shot that ricocheted off his limousine.
The Devastator bullets were designed to explode on impact, but only the one that hit Brady in the head erupted.
The shot that hit Reagan flattened against the limousine and struck Reagan under the left armpit, leaving a puncture wound so small that neither Reagan nor his doctors knew he had been hit until his clothes were cut off in the emergency room.
Reagan initially believed he had been injured when a Secret Service agent, Jerry Parr, pushed him roughly into the limousine and then jumped on top of him as the car sped away.
When the president began coughing up blood, they detoured to the nearby George Washington University Hospital, which now houses the Ronald Reagan Institute of Emergency Medicine.
Although the wound was small, the internal damage was significant. The bullet glanced off a rib, collapsed Reagan's left lung and lodged an inch from his heart. The surgery to remove the bullet was a success and Reagan left the hospital after a 13-day stay.
Edmund Morris, Reagan's official biographer who was given extraordinary access to Reagan and his family, concluded that Reagan never fully recovered from the shooting.
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a Washington, D.C., mental hospital, where he remains.
Brady, permanently impaired by the bullet that struck him in the head, has become an advocate of gun control. He was the namesake of the Brady bill, which temporarily imposed a five-day waiting period for gun purchases.
Delahanty recovered from the gunshot wound in the neck and retired from the police department.
McCarthy recovered from his wounds and became a police chief in suburban Chicago. He ran for Illinois secretary of state, using the shooting incident in his campaign commercials, but lost in the Democratic primary.
Parr retired and became a counseling pastor at an inner-city Washington, D.C., church.
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