How an assassination attempt changed Ronald Reagan's

presidency -- and history

March 30, 1981 began as a typical day for Ronald Wilson Reagan, who was just settling into the
routine of being president of the United States. He had been on the job for merely two months.
The day had included morning briefings followed by the usual meetings, messages, and perfunctory
announcements. That day, he had nominated an assistant secretary here and there--one to the
Department of Agriculture, two to the Department of Interior, two to the Department of Health and
Human Services. Ho-hum.
Also on the president's schedule was a speech, listed unremarkably as "Remarks at the National
Conference of the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO."
It didn't sound like a place to expect any fireworks. It was to be a short set of remarks in the
ballroom of the Washington Hilton, a hop, skip, and jump from the White House, a few minutes away
via presidential limousine.
Ronald Reagan would see his survival as nothing short of divine intervention. He told this to his
children Maureen and Michael, and also shared it with sources as diverse as Billy Graham, Mother
Teresa, Michael Deaver, Cardinal Terence Cooke, and the Rev. Louis Evans, his pastor at the
National Presbyterian Church.
But what began as routine became anything but. What would soon happen would forever, in a flash,
change the trajectory of Ronald Reagan's presidency, life, and rendezvous with destiny.
The speech went well. This conservative Republican president had been a lifetime union guy, and
these Reagan Democrats appreciated that. At 2:25, he made his exit, leaving the hotel through a side
door. Surrounded by staff, Secret Service, and curious onlookers, Reagan smiled as he strolled to his
car. One unsmiling face in the crowd was an individual named John Hinckley.
Hinckley came carrying no grandiose ideological or political vision. He was, however, carrying a
gun. He was also harboring a heavy heart for a young actress named Jodie Foster, whom he had
been stalking. The addled young man had a singular personal goal: to gain the attention of Foster.
He would succeed.
A nearby reporter yapped out a question as Reagan headed toward the awaiting car door. The new
president raised his left arm. Suddenly he heard what sounded like firecrackers, followed by chaos-people screaming, scurrying, falling. In an instant, one of them, Press Secretary James Brady, was
lying face down on the pavement in his suit, bleeding from his skull.
Instinctively, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy turned himself into a human shield, placing his
body between the president and shooter. He took a bullet for Ronald Reagan.
Another agent, Jerry Parr, thrust Reagan into the backseat of the limo, landing atop the 70-year-old
president's frame as he barked directions to the driver to escape. "Jerry, get off," pleaded Reagan, "I
think you've broken one of my ribs." The president would later recall that the feeling in his upper
back was "unbelievably painful."

Reagan did not yet know it, but he had been shot. Parr soon figured as much. He noticed frothy
blood bubbles coming from the president's lips. He ordered the driver to head straight to George
Washington University Hospital.
To Reagan's great fortune, the best and brightest happened to be on hand for a hospital-wide
meeting of department heads. The chief thoracic surgeon and chief brain surgeon were both
present. Reagan would joke to the superb surgical team: "I hope you're Republicans."
Though it was typical of Reagan to react with humor and grace, he was scared. "My fear was
growing because no matter how hard I tried to breathe," he later wrote in his diary, "it seemed I was
getting less & less air."
Reagan also reacted with prayer. "I focused on that tiled ceiling and prayed," he later said. "But I
realized I couldn't ask for God's help while at the same time I felt hatred for the mixed up young man
who had shot me. Isn't that the meaning of the lost sheep? We are all God's children and therefore
equally beloved by him. I began to pray for his soul and that he would find his way back into the
fold."
Reagan needed all the prayer he could get. Spread out on the table, the surgeons discerned the
frightening extent of Hinckley's action.
The "mixed up young man" had little confusion about his choice of weaponry. He had employed .22
Devastator bullets, manufactured to explode on impact.
One bullet stopped mere property management fees centimeters from Reagan's heart. If the wound
was not stitched soon, and if Reagan was not given a lot of blood, he would bleed to death.
They stitched him up, and the 40th president got the blood he needed.
Ronald Reagan would see his survival as nothing short of divine intervention. He told this to his
children Maureen and Michael, and also shared it with sources as diverse as Billy Graham, Mother
Teresa, Michael Deaver, Cardinal Terence Cooke, and the Rev. Louis Evans, his pastor at the
National Presbyterian Church.
When he got back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Reagan recorded that sentiment in his diary.
"Whatever happens now I owe my life to God and will try to serve him in every way I can," he wrote.

For Reagan, that service had Cold War

contours. He was convinced that the Soviet
Union was an evil entity that needed to be
consigned to the ash-heap of history. It was a
principal reason why he had sought the
White House. Now, he made victory in the
Cold War his overriding priority.
Incidentally, a year later he would share that
sense with someone else who felt the same
call, Pope John Paul II--who, amazingly, also
barely survived an assassination attempt

near the same time, in May 1981. The two

would meet alone for 50 minutes in the Vatican Library on June 7, 1982, where they shared their
mutual conviction that their lives had been spared for a special purpose--to defeat atheistic Soviet
communism.
And that was precisely what they went on to do.
That was the historical-spiritual force that John Hinckley's revolver unwittingly let loose on March
30, 1981.
It was one of numerous ways that Ronald Reagan's presidency--a consequential one of numerous
accomplishments, foreign and domestic--would impact America and the world.
It was a bullet that changed not only Ronald Reagan's life but his history and the world's history.

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The
Center for Vision & Values. His latest book is 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative. His other
books include, "The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor"
(Mercury Ink (July 17, 2012). He is a biographer of Ronald Reagan whose books include "The
Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism."