45 Years Ago, Another Shooting at the Washington Hilton

I’ve never been to the Washington Hilton Hotel, but it inhabits a dark place in my memory. 45 years ago, on a gray drizzly Spring day, my father gave a speech in the ballroom, walked outside, and was shot by John Hinckley, who had been patiently waiting and who shot 3 people out of the way in order to assassinate the President of the United States. Something haunting and sickening moved in on me Saturday evening when the news broke that a shooter had stormed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, had fired a few shots and was in custody. 

I’ve been peripherally aware that a mythology has grown up around the Washington Hilton. It’s been called the Hinckley Hilton, the Reagan Curse…As prone as I am to superstition and eerie connections, I’m not quite on board with that one. If Saturday night’s event had been held elsewhere, it’s likely that the same thing might have happened.

Where my thoughts did go in the wake of this latest shooting was to the Secret Service agents whose job it is to get between bullets and their protectees. Rather than duck when shots ring out, they are trained to stand taller, make themselves bigger, and literally stop bullets with their own bodies. They’re taught to defy basic human nature, which is to duck and cover when shots ring out. 

On that March day 45 years ago, Timothy McCarthy, a Secret Service agent, was shot in the chest. Thomas Delahanty was shot in the neck. Delahanty was not actually a Secret Service agent; he was a police officer who was normally on a canine unit. But on that day, his dog was ill, so he had signed on to help protect my father. His injuries were so severe that he was never able to return to work. 

In past years, I have written numerous pieces advocating against John Hinckley’s bids for freedom, which ultimately were successful. Each time, I tried to contact Thomas Delahanty but with no success. Timothy McCarthy told me he had become pretty inaccessible. His life was changed permanently and tragically when John Hinckley raised his gun and fired six shots, one of those shots hitting him.

Saturday night, a Secret Service agent was shot. Fortunately, he was wearing a bullet proof vest, which isn’t absolute protection—the velocity of bullets can still cause injury—but we are told he isn’t badly injured and will recover. 

There are so many facets to this nation of gun violence. Whether it’s school shootings, church shootings, massacres at music festivals, or shootings at political events, the sad reality that we have more shootings than other countries is never far from anyone’s mind. 

Perhaps in the aftermath of this latest event, we can linger on this: The people who commit themselves to protecting elected officials, who train to rise up, make themselves as big a target as possible when shots are fired, now live with the fact that it’s even more likely that they will find themselves in a situation where they will have to take the bullets meant for someone else. It’s not a distant scenario, it’s a very real possibility. I don’t understand that kind of courage or commitment; my guess is that many people don’t. But we need to try and grasp it—that in America, where gun violence is now so common, there are men and women who, when faced with that violence, call on courage that most of us can’t even fathom.

Patti Davis is an author of many books, including The Long Goodbye, in which she explored the experience of losing her father to Alzheimer's. The lessons she learned from the ten years of her father's illness inspired her to create a support group program for caregivers of people with dementia called Beyond Alzheimer's. Her most recent book is Dear Mom and Dad: A Letter about Family, Memory, and the America We Once Knew.