Clint Hill (Secret Service)

Clinton J. Hill (born January 4, 1932) is a former U.S. Secret Service agent who served under five United States presidents, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Gerald Ford.

He attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, where he played football, basketball, and baseball, studied history, and graduated in 1954.

Shortly after graduating from college he was drafted into the US Army and sent to Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, for basic training.

After basic training he was assigned to the United States Army Intelligence Center in Dundalk, Maryland, where he was trained as a Counterintelligence (CI) Special Agent and served with Region IX, 113th Counterintelligence Corps Field Office in Denver, until 1957.

After his military service, Hill joined the Secret Service and was assigned to the Denver office.

In 1958, Hill served on the detail for President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

After John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States, Hill was assigned to protect the First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy.

Hill is best known for his act of bravery while in the presidential motorcade on November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

During the assassination, Hill ran from the Secret Service followup car, behind the presidential limousine, leaped onto the back of it and shielded Jacqueline Kennedy and the stricken president with his body as the car raced to Parkland Memorial Hospital.

His act is documented in film footage by Abraham Zapruder.

President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, during a motorcade through the city, en route to a luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart.

The president and Mrs. Kennedy were riding in an open limousine containing three rows of seats.

The Kennedys were in the rear seat of the car, the governor of Texas, John Connally, and his wife, Nellie Connally, were in the middle row, Secret Service agent William Greer was driving and the Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Roy Kellerman, was also in the front row.

Hill was riding on the left front running board of the Secret Service car immediately behind the presidential limousine.

After the second shot, Hill began running to overtake the moving car in front of him, but the third shot had hit Kennedy in the head by the time that he arrived at the limousine.

He climbed from the rear bumper, crawling over the trunk to the back seat where the president and First Lady were located.

In the moments immediately after the fatal shots, Mrs. Kennedy climbed out of the back seat toward the trunk.

Hill pushed her back into the car and covered her and the fatally wounded president with his body.

Hill, along with Secret Service agents Kellerman, Greer, and Rufus Youngblood, provided testimony to the Warren Commission in Washington, D.C., on March 9, 1964.

Hill grabbed a small handrail on the left rear of the trunk, normally used by bodyguards to stabilize themselves while standing on small platforms on the rear bumper.

According to the Warren Commission's findings, there were no bodyguards stationed on the bumper that day because:

"...the President had frequently stated that he did not want agents to ride on these steps during a motorcade except when necessary. He had repeated this wish only a few days before, during his visit to Tampa, Florida."

The notion that the president's instructions in Tampa jeopardized his security in Dallas has since been denied by Hill and other agents.

Regardless of the Warren Commission's findings, photos taken of the motorcade along earlier segments of the route show Hill riding on the step at the back of the car.

As an alternative explanation, fellow agent Gerald Blaine cites the location of the shooting:

"We were going into a freeway, and that's where you take the speeds up to 60 and 70 miles an hour. So we would not have had any agents there anyway."

Hill grabbed the handrail less than two seconds after the fatal shot to the President.

The driver then accelerated, causing the car to slip away from Hill, who was in the midst of trying to leap onto it.

He succeeded in regaining his footing and jumped onto the back of the quickly accelerating vehicle.

As he got on, Mrs. Kennedy, apparently in shock, was crawling onto the flat rear trunk of the moving limousine.

Hill later told the Warren Commission that he thought Mrs. Kennedy was reaching for a piece of the president's skull that had been blown off.

He crawled to her and guided her back into her seat.

Once back in the car, Hill placed his body above the president and Mrs. Kennedy.

Meanwhile, in the folding jump seats directly in front of them, Mrs. Connally had pulled her wounded husband, Governor John Connally, to a prone position on her lap.

Since the death of Nellie Connally in September 2006, Hill is the last surviving person who was in the presidential limousine that day.

Hill was born in Larimore, North Dakota, to a Norwegian mother, Alma Pettersen.

His birth parents homesteaded near Roseglen.

"At 17 days old his Mother, (separated from his Father), had him baptized and she then placed him in the North Dakota Children's Home in Fargo. After 3 months" he was adopted by another Norwegian family, Chris and Jennie Hill of Fargo.

Originally named Haugen, the family later changed its name to the English version of the name; Haugen means "the hill" in Norwegian.

Hill's new family took him to Washburn, where he eventually graduated from Washburn High School.