Ronald Jones was a 30-year-old resident when he got the assignment of a lifetime.
DALLAS — Ronald Jones had just sat down to lunch in the cafeteria at Parkland Memorial Hospital when the loudspeaker began calling doctors to the emergency room — stat.
He dialed the hospital operator from a wall phone and was one of the first to hear: President Kennedy had been shot and was en route to Parkland. He and a few other doctors dashed down a flight of stairs to the emergency room.
That day — Nov. 22, 1963 — is seared in the collective memory of Americans, young and old, as the day Kennedy was assassinated. It holds particular prominence for Jones, then a 30-year-old chief resident and one of a handful of doctors who feverishly worked to revive the president.
"Has it impacted those of us who were there? It certainly has," said Jones, now 80, who went on to become chief of surgery at nearby Baylor Medical Center. "You realize what happened and the role you played. ... It's significant."
Other aspects of the assassination — the Texas School Book Depository, Dealey Plaza, the grassy knoll — often get more attention. But Parkland holds a weighty place in the history of that event. It's where not only Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally, who was seriously injured in the shooting, were rushed after the motorcade attack but where gunman Lee Harvey Oswald was brought in two days later after being shot.
50 YEARS LATER: Dallas landmarks still echo JFK killing
Next month, the film Parkland opens in theaters and will tell the story of the Kennedy assassination from inside the hospital. For Jones, it's a vivid memory, even 50 years later.
That day, Jones arrived in Trauma Room 1 just as the president was being wheeled in. The 15-square-foot room, which usually saw victims of car accidents or bar brawls, was quickly filling up with Secret Service agents, presidential handlers, doctors and nurses, he said. First lady Jacqueline Kennedy stood in a corner of the room, not crying but looking grim, her husband's blood still fresh on her pink wool outfit, Jones said. Earlier, when she first arrived at the hospital, she had handed another doctor a section of skull and some brain matter belonging to her husband that she had gathered from the limousine they were riding in, he said.
Jones looked at the president: His eyes were open but had little or no life in them, he said. "I never saw them move," he said. "It was a stare, straight ahead."
The team of doctors performed a tracheotomy through Kennedy's neck, pumped IV fluids through an incision in the upper left arm and tried massaging his chest back to life. Nothing worked. When the doctors saw how one of the bullets had shattered the back of Kennedy's skull, they sensed the effort was fruitless, Jones said. An EKG machine showed no heart activity.
The president was pronounced dead 12 minutes after being wheeled into Trauma Room 1, he said.
As Jones left the trauma room, he was immediately confronted by two men flashing large badges. One of them identified himself as an FBI agent and said he needed to inform his boss, J. Edgar Hoover, of the president's condition. The other said he was with the Secret Service and needed to tell Joseph Kennedy, the president's father, whether his son was alive or dead.
Not wanting to be the first to declare the president dead, Jones said simply, "He's not doing very well."
"That's when it really hit home," he said. "Joseph Kennedy was about to find out his son was dead as president of the United States."
Two days after the shooting, Jones was called back to the hospital: Oswald had been shot while being transported by police and was headed to Parkland. Jones assisted with the 1½ -hour-long operation as doctors tried to save the man who killed Kennedy. They got the same result: Oswald was pronounced dead during surgery, his insides mangled by a .38-caliber slug delivered point-blank by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
For months after the shooting, Jones relived in his mind each day the 12 minutes spent inside Trauma Room 1. Five decades have grayed the story some. But details of the event remain vivid: the way Kennedy's arms were stiffly outstretched by his side by nurses; the back brace he encountered when removing the president's clothes; Jacqueline Kennedy's vacant, tearless eyes.
He obliges when asked to recount his role at dinner parties or during anniversaries of the assassination. But the memories are taxing.
"It's sometimes exhausting," Jones said. "And when you finish with it, you feel sort of washed out. It takes its toll."
He dialed the hospital operator from a wall phone and was one of the first to hear: President Kennedy had been shot and was en route to Parkland. He and a few other doctors dashed down a flight of stairs to the emergency room.
That day — Nov. 22, 1963 — is seared in the collective memory of Americans, young and old, as the day Kennedy was assassinated. It holds particular prominence for Jones, then a 30-year-old chief resident and one of a handful of doctors who feverishly worked to revive the president.
"Has it impacted those of us who were there? It certainly has," said Jones, now 80, who went on to become chief of surgery at nearby Baylor Medical Center. "You realize what happened and the role you played. ... It's significant."
Other aspects of the assassination — the Texas School Book Depository, Dealey Plaza, the grassy knoll — often get more attention. But Parkland holds a weighty place in the history of that event. It's where not only Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally, who was seriously injured in the shooting, were rushed after the motorcade attack but where gunman Lee Harvey Oswald was brought in two days later after being shot.
50 YEARS LATER: Dallas landmarks still echo JFK killing
Next month, the film Parkland opens in theaters and will tell the story of the Kennedy assassination from inside the hospital. For Jones, it's a vivid memory, even 50 years later.
That day, Jones arrived in Trauma Room 1 just as the president was being wheeled in. The 15-square-foot room, which usually saw victims of car accidents or bar brawls, was quickly filling up with Secret Service agents, presidential handlers, doctors and nurses, he said. First lady Jacqueline Kennedy stood in a corner of the room, not crying but looking grim, her husband's blood still fresh on her pink wool outfit, Jones said. Earlier, when she first arrived at the hospital, she had handed another doctor a section of skull and some brain matter belonging to her husband that she had gathered from the limousine they were riding in, he said.
Jones looked at the president: His eyes were open but had little or no life in them, he said. "I never saw them move," he said. "It was a stare, straight ahead."
The team of doctors performed a tracheotomy through Kennedy's neck, pumped IV fluids through an incision in the upper left arm and tried massaging his chest back to life. Nothing worked. When the doctors saw how one of the bullets had shattered the back of Kennedy's skull, they sensed the effort was fruitless, Jones said. An EKG machine showed no heart activity.
The president was pronounced dead 12 minutes after being wheeled into Trauma Room 1, he said.
As Jones left the trauma room, he was immediately confronted by two men flashing large badges. One of them identified himself as an FBI agent and said he needed to inform his boss, J. Edgar Hoover, of the president's condition. The other said he was with the Secret Service and needed to tell Joseph Kennedy, the president's father, whether his son was alive or dead.
Not wanting to be the first to declare the president dead, Jones said simply, "He's not doing very well."
"That's when it really hit home," he said. "Joseph Kennedy was about to find out his son was dead as president of the United States."
Two days after the shooting, Jones was called back to the hospital: Oswald had been shot while being transported by police and was headed to Parkland. Jones assisted with the 1½ -hour-long operation as doctors tried to save the man who killed Kennedy. They got the same result: Oswald was pronounced dead during surgery, his insides mangled by a .38-caliber slug delivered point-blank by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
For months after the shooting, Jones relived in his mind each day the 12 minutes spent inside Trauma Room 1. Five decades have grayed the story some. But details of the event remain vivid: the way Kennedy's arms were stiffly outstretched by his side by nurses; the back brace he encountered when removing the president's clothes; Jacqueline Kennedy's vacant, tearless eyes.
He obliges when asked to recount his role at dinner parties or during anniversaries of the assassination. But the memories are taxing.
"It's sometimes exhausting," Jones said. "And when you finish with it, you feel sort of washed out. It takes its toll."
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A new documentary alleges that a Secret Service agent was the second (and accidental) shooter in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
At the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles on Sunday, producers and investigators behind Reelz Channel's new documentary "JFK: The Smoking Gun" made the claim that George Hickey, a Secret Service agent riding in the car behind Kennedy, accidentally shot the president on November 22, 1963. The film follows veteran police detective Colin McLaren in his four-year investigation of the assassination and points at Hickey, who died two years ago.
McLaren's research built on the work of Howard Donahue, who spent 20 years studying the assassination and had his findings documented in Bonar Menninger’s book Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK. McLaren and Menninger were on hand Sunday to take questions about their film, which the network billed in press notes as a "docudrama."
Addressing the crowd, McLaren claimed that Hickey and other Secret Service agents were out partying the night before Kennedy's fatal motorcade drive through Dallas. Based on his painstaking investigation, McLaren said, evidence suggests Hickey was not qualified to use the weapon he was holding the morning of the shooting.
"It was his first time in the follow car, his first time holding the assault weapon he was using," McLaren said. Producers said the film's theory is that shots rang out, and Hickey grabbed his weapon to return fire. When his car stopped suddenly, Hickey accidentally discharged his weapon -- making him the second shooter, the film's investigators and producers alleged.
McLaren said he believes that Hickey's weapon had hollow-point rounds -- different from the ammunition for the weapon used by Lee Harvey Oswald, whom the Warren Commission declared in 1964 was the lone gunman in the case. Menninger and McLaren said that based on their review of the forensics in the case, they believe that Kennedy was also struck by a hollow-point round.
Oswald was killed before he could stand trial, but the case has continued to inspire various theories around just how the tragedy occurred. Books and films have advanced different ideas -- including a second shooter theory.
"We're not saying this was intentional," Menninger said Sunday. "This was a tragic accident in the heat of the moment."
"We don't suggest he was in any way involved in a conspiracy," Menninger added.
Donahue wrote about his theory decades ago, but McLaren said it's taken decades -- and the release of thousands of JFK-related documents during the Clinton administration -- for a proper review of all the evidence and information related to the case. The authors acknowledged Sunday that there are many other books and films on the assassination, but said theirs is unique because it is based on a new review of the documents released during the 1990s.
McLaren and Menninger also alleged that the government -- including Robert F. Kennedy -- covered up the involvement of the Secret Service and Hickey.
The producers were pressed on how the alleged involvement of the Secret Service could be covered up for 50 years.
"Nobody was going to gain" from having this out there, Menninger said.
"We're not here to blacken the name" of Hickey or any other individual, or the modern-day Secret Service, McLaren said.
Menninger discussed the fact that he was sued by Hickey in the 1990s, but noted that despite a settlement, his publisher never removed his book from the shelves.
"I'm sure that [Hickey] suffered greatly from this," Menninger said. "The fact that he passed on -- maybe it's time to talk about it."
"Our documentary is going to be the only one that has opened the case forensically and looked at the evidence from the beginning and examined everything that happened that day in Dealey Plaza," Michael Prupas, the film's executive director, said.
Reelz Channel gained notice two years ago for airing the miniseries "The Kennedys," which some historical experts criticized as an unflattering portrayal of the family.
"No other network will touch these things," Reelz's CEO Stanley S. Hubbard said Sunday.
The documentary is set to air on November 3, 2013, according to a press release.