Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [19]
Parr was practicing at the Secret Service’s firing range in the basement of the Old Post Office, just a few blocks from the White House. It was about nine a.m., and he was taking the monthly shooting exam that all agents on the presidential and vice presidential details had to pass in order to keep their jobs. In about fifteen minutes, Parr fired thirty rounds at targets as close as nine feet and as far away as forty-five feet. Using a two-handed grip, the agent fired first with his right hand and then with his left. Always, he pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession, a technique designed to reduce the gun’s recoil and help agents stay on target. And throughout the test, Parr stood rigid and tall. Police officers, FBI agents, and soldiers all crouch when shooting. Agents on the presidential detail stand tall because they are supposed to take bullets, not avoid them.
The monthly exam was part of the Secret Service’s efforts to keep its agents sharp. Originally formed in 1865 to investigate counterfeiting, the agency had started as a single small unit in the Treasury Department. By the time Jerry Parr joined, in 1962, the service had a $4.8 million budget and about 325 agents scattered across the country in fifty-five field offices. Its mission had evolved as well: though its agents still devoted considerable time to fighting counterfeiting and investigating forgeries of government checks, the service’s top priority had shifted to presidential protection. Training, however, was minimal. On Parr’s first day, he arrived at the twenty-member New York field office and was immediately taken to a firing range. He passed the test and was given a gun. Before he got his badge, though, the field office’s top agent handed Parr the keys to a government car and ordered the rookie to take him on a drive to see if he could handle New York traffic. Parr did just fine until he hit a deep pothole, knocking his boss into the ceiling and wrecking his nice felt hat.
Parr began his job as an agent the next day. He spent much of his time investigating a range of financial crimes, but he also helped protect President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson when they visited the city. Mostly, he learned how to do his job by watching experienced agents investigate counterfeiting rings and stand guard over the president. After six months, he was sent to the Treasury Department’s six-week law enforcement course, where all agents in the department’s various branches learned the basics of criminal law, self-defense, and arrest techniques. Back in New York, he continued his investigations and stood post outside restaurants, hotels, and airports whenever the president or the first lady came to the city. Once Jackie Kennedy apparently ran out of money: she asked him if she could borrow $800. Parr, who at the time made less than $6,000 a year, restrained himself from laughing and politely told the first lady that he didn’t have that kind of cash on him. By this time, the Parrs had two young daughters; in their small Queens apartment, husband and wife slept on a pull-out couch while their children shared the single bedroom.
In the fall of 1963, Parr was transferred to Nashville; a few days later, on November 22, President Kennedy was assassinated. Almost immediately, Parr was sent to Dallas to guard the wife and mother of Kennedy’s killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was himself slain just two days after the president. Parr would never forget standing in a small kitchen just feet from the assassin’s mother, Marguerite Oswald, listening in amazement as she boasted about becoming “a mother of history.”
The next summer, Parr was sent to the Secret Service academy in Washington, where he received another few weeks of rudimentary training. He took courses in covering and evacuating the president, protecting the president in a parade and at a rope line, and investigating threats to the president—all essential training for a job he had