Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [36]
“There’s been a lot of talk in the last several weeks here in Washington about communication and the need to communicate,” the president began. His first months in office, he said, had brought to mind an old story “about some of the basic rules of communication.”
The president then told his audience about a young baseball player and his wife who invited a well-known sports announcer named Danny Villaneuva to dinner. While his wife prepared the meal, the player talked with his guest about sports. Then the couple’s baby began to cry.
Warming to his story, Reagan continued: “And over her shoulder, the wife said to her husband, ‘Change the baby.’ And this young ballplayer was embarrassed in front of Danny and he said to his wife, ‘What do you mean, change the baby? I’m a ballplayer. That’s not my line of work.’
“And she turned around, put her hands on her hips”—here Reagan paused for the briefest moment—“and she communicated. She said, ‘Look, buster, you lay the diaper out like a diamond, you put second base on home plate, put the baby’s bottom on the pitcher’s mound, hook up first and third, slide home underneath, and if it starts to rain, the game ain’t called—you start all over again.’”
The room burst into hard laughter. “So,” Reagan said, “I’m going to try to communicate a little bit today.”
* * *
OUTSIDE THE HILTON, Drew Unrue repositioned the president’s limousine, parking it about twenty-five or thirty feet from the VIP entrance with its front end aimed at T Street and its trunk close to the rope line that held back the spectators on the Hilton’s sidewalk. The car’s position would require the president to walk from the VIP entrance to the waiting limousine while moving roughly parallel to the rope; during this brief period, he would be fifteen to twenty feet from the spectators.
Unrue parked the limousine this way because of the somewhat peculiar design of the Hilton. The hotel sat on the northeast corner of Connecticut Avenue and T Street, and circular driveways from each street led to the hotel’s entrances. Connecting the two driveways was a lane that ran past the VIP entrance. Unrue had used the T Street driveway and dropped Reagan off directly in front of the VIP entrance; if he picked up the president in the same spot and continued on, he would follow the lane out toward Connecticut Avenue. But the connecting lane was narrow and curving, and the Secret Service worried that the hulking limousine might get stuck on a curb or become trapped while trying to negotiate the sharp turn onto Connecticut Avenue. Moreover, a police car was always stationed at the top of the lane, sealing off the area to prevent attackers and protesters from driving straight toward the presidential departure area. If the officer responsible for that car didn’t get it out of the way quickly during an emergency, the limousine would smash right into it.
To solve the problem, the service instructed agents driving the limousine to drop off the president, back away from the VIP entrance, and then park the car with its nose pointing toward T Street. From this position, the drivers could make a quick getaway in case of an incident. But the service’s solution did have a downside: the president had to walk in the open for a few seconds until he reached the safety of the limousine’s right rear door. This degree of exposure was not uncommon, and the service believed that the risks associated with negotiating the narrow lane were greater than those attending a short walk past some spectators. Besides, during the past decade the service had handled more than one hundred presidential visits to the Hilton and there had never been any reason to question this trade-off.
After watching Unrue park the Lincoln in its usual spot, Sergeant Herbert Granger decided that the rope line seemed a little too close to the president’s limousine. Granger directed his officers to