Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [107]
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PRESS SECRETARY JAMES Brady survived his terrible wound, but he never fully recovered. He spent 239 days at George Washington University Hospital; during that time, he underwent three additional operations to prevent blood clots from reaching his lungs and heart and to stop leakage of spinal fluid. He suffered from pneumonia, fevers, and other infections. Partially paralyzed, he endured hundreds of hours of excruciating physical therapy so he could learn to walk again; nevertheless, he was largely confined to a wheelchair for the next three decades. Despite the damage to his brain, however, he never lost his trademark wit. “When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade,” he told a reporter in 2006. “I have several stands around here.”
In the wake of the shooting—and after spotting her five-year-old son holding a loaded handgun at a friend’s house four years after the assassination attempt—Sarah Brady became a major proponent of stiffer gun-control laws. After Reagan left office, Jim Brady joined his wife in that effort, which culminated in the passage of the Brady Law in 1993. The law requires background checks of anyone buying a firearm from a licensed dealer.
Officer Thomas K. Delahanty, an eighteen-year veteran of the Washington police force, retired on full disability in November 1981; the bullet that struck him in the back caused nerve damage too severe to allow him to return to duty. Though doctors had at first decided not to operate because the round lay so close to his spine, they changed their minds after learning that the bullet was a Devastator: it retained the potential to explode or leach toxins within the officer’s body even after the shooting. Surgeons wearing bulletproof vests successfully removed the bullet three days after the assassination attempt. FBI agents would later determine that only one of the Devastator rounds actually exploded. That one struck Jim Brady.
Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy was the first of the wounded men to be discharged from the hospital. Before leaving GW on April 7, he paid a visit to the president, who had asked to see him so that he could thank the agent for saving his life. “Hey, Tim,” Reagan said, his eyes twinkling. “You know—Brady, Delahanty, McCarthy, and Reagan. What did this guy have against the Irish?” McCarthy laughed, and later realized that the joke was really a lesson: if the president could put the shooting behind him, he could, too.
The first lady, however, had a difficult time in the aftermath of the assassination. A natural worrier, Nancy Reagan found herself sobbing uncontrollably at times. She lost weight and became panicky whenever her husband left the White House gates. She finally gained solace from an unconventional quarter: an astrologer who claimed that she could have warned Reagan not to leave the White House on March 30. In her autobiography, the former first lady wrote that she came to rely on the astrologer as much for her “personal concern and support” as for her interpretation of the stars. To this day, friends say, Mrs. Reagan has trouble discussing the shooting and chokes up when she is forced to relive those first terrible moments at the hospital when she didn’t know whether her husband would live or die.
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AFTER THE ASSASSINATION attempt, Jerry Parr was indeed hailed as a hero. As law enforcement officials reviewed the tapes of the shooting, it became clear that the agent’s quick actions saved the president’s life. If Parr had been a split second slower, Reagan would have been struck in the head by the ricocheting bullet; if Parr had frozen, even for a second, Hinckley would have been presented with a stationary target standing well within his effective shooting range.
In 1985, after twenty-three years on the job, Jerry Parr retired from the Secret Service. Before leaving, he paid a final visit to Reagan in the Oval Office. When the president saw him, he said, “You’re not going to throw me