Faye Chism - President Kennedy Declared Dead in The Emergency Room | President Kennedy Declared Dead Emergency Room

President Kennedy Declared Dead in The Emergency Room

Further information: Timeline of the John F. Kennedy assassination

The staff at Parkland Hospital's Trauma Room 1 who treated President Kennedy observed that his condition was "moribund", meaning that he had no chance of survival upon arriving at the hospital. Dr. George Burkley, the President's personal physician, stated that a gunshot wound to the skull was the cause of death. Dr. Burkley signed President Kennedy's death certificate.

At 1:00 p.m., CST (19:00 UTC), after all heart activity had ceased and after Father Oscar Huber had administered the last rites, the President was pronounced dead. "We never had any hope of saving his life," one doctor said. Father Huber told The New York Times that the President was already dead by the time he arrived at the hospital, and he had to draw back a sheet covering the President's face to administer the sacrament of Extreme Unction. President Kennedy's death was officially announced by White House Acting Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff at 1:33 p.m. CST (19:33 UTC). Kilduff was acting press secretary on the trip because Pierre Salinger was traveling to Japan with half the Cabinet, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Governor Connally, meanwhile, was taken to emergency surgery, where he underwent two operations that day.

A few minutes after 2:00 p.m. CST (20:00 UTC), President Kennedy's body was placed in a casket and taken from Parkland Hospital and driven to Air Force One. The casket was then loaded aboard the airplane through the rear door, where it remained at the rear of the passenger compartment, in place of a removed row of seats. The body was removed before a forensic examination could be conducted by the Dallas County Coroner, who had jurisdiction. At that time, it was not a federal offense to kill the President of the United States, although it was a federal crime to conspire to injure a federal officer while he was acting in the line of duty. Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who became President upon President Kennedy's death, and had been riding two cars behind President Kennedy in the motorcade, refused to leave for Washington without President Kennedy and his widow.

At 2:38 p.m. CST (20:38 UTC), Vice-President Johnson took the oath of office on board Air Force One just before it departed from Love Field, with Jacqueline Kennedy at his side.

Famous quotes containing the words president kennedy, president, kennedy, declared, dead, emergency and/or room:

“President Kennedy had a wholesome, widely discussed, and largely deserved reputation for his interest in women.... But no President, however young and energetic, could possibly have gotten around to all the ladies in Washington, New York, and Hollywood who made claim to his affections after he died.... Such was the force of Jack Kennedy and the manner of his death that anyone associated with him, even the pretenders, assumed added glamour and interest.”
—Barbara Howar (b. 1934)

“I see the first lady as another means to keep a president from becoming isolated.”
—Nancy Reagan (b. 1923)

“The moment when she crawled out onto the back of the open limousine in which her husband had been murdered was the first and last time the American people would see Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis crawl.... She was the last great private public figure in this country. In a time of gilt and glitz and perpetual revelation, she was perpetually associated with that thing so difficult to describe yet so simple to recognize, the apotheosis of dignity.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)

“You can never betray the people who are dead, so you go on being a public Jew; the dead can’t answer slurs, but I’m here. I would love to think that Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, but he doesn’t.”
—Anita Brookner (b. 1938)

“War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view “realistically”; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In all-out war, expenditure is all-out, unprudent—war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

“Our chaotic economic situation has convinced so many of our young people that there is no room for them. They become uncertain and restless and morbid; they grab at false promises, embrace false gods and judge things by treacherous values. Their insecurity makes them believe that tomorrow doesn’t matter and the ineffectualness of their lives makes them deny the ideals which we of an older generation acknowledged.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)