by Allen Childs
About 11:30, we were getting pretty close to getting through with our clinic, and we got a call from the emergency room saying that there were three patients down there to be evaluated for admission. This was not President Kennedy. This would be for three patients who had come to Parkland for care. And one of our service needed to go down there and start seeing those patients and evaluating them. We also had scheduled a special x-ray where a patient, you know, had blood clots in his lungs, and somebody had to go down and participate in doing that x-ray study. The x-ray study sounded like a lot more fun than working up three patients, so Jerry Gustafson, who was a year ahead of me in the program, and I flipped. And he won the coin flip. He had the privilege of going to do the X-ray study, and I went down to the emergency room to start evaluating the patients that we were going to end up admitting. So, that’s how I got down in the emergency room.
Dallas really did have a sophisticated system for the time, but it consisted of some of the ambulances having radios which connect with the police dispatcher and the police dispatcher would then call the hospital and say, you know, “x” patients are coming. There was frequently some confusion in all that communication with several people. So, a lot of times, we got a call from a police dispatcher which turned out to be a false alarm or overstated. So, that leads up to what happened then. We . . . one of the nurses came out and told Dick Delaney, Richard Delaney, who was actually in charge of the emergency room that day, that she just got a call from the police dispatcher, and the president had been shot and was on his way to the hospital.
That’s all. That’s the message I remember. The president’s been shot and is on his way to the hospital. [smiling] The obvious question is: what do you do? Well, the first thing you do is . . . you don’t want to believe it. You know, and with all the misinformation that happened in a situation like that, it was easy to say, “Nah. It must be wrong. I mean, it can’t be right.” But the other thing you do is . . . you start to get ready. So, we had the nurses page the appropriate people to come help take care of an injured patient. They paged the chief surgery team, the emergency team, the rest of the emergency team on call, the chief resident who was Ron Jones, who is now the Chief of Surgery at Baylor Hospital.
We hoped very much that it was a false alarm. [laughing] Right? Of course, there’s always the risk that you would get called in on a false alarm. Anyway, it seemed like two or three minutes after we got the message that the door to the emergency room came open and a patient was rolled in. And that was Governor Connally, as a matter of fact, and the reason Governor Connally was brought in first is because he was sitting in the jump seat. Right, so they had to get the governor out of the way, and they brought him in first. So, we looked at Governor Connally, and he had a large wound in the front of his chest and was actually unconscious from the abnormal breathing that results from that large wound. We knew he was hurt badly. We figured we could treat him, if that was all that was wrong. And we also knew that that wasn’t the president. It didn’t occur to either Delaney or I who it was. We were only interested in who it wasn’t. And it was not the president, so we kind of heaved this great sigh of relief and said, “Maybe it’s a Secret Service man, but we’ll take care of him.” So, we wheeled him into Trauma Room 2, which is really the biggest trauma room.
But basically, Delaney and I both went in the room with him. We knew the rest of the support was on the way. The way you treat a wound like that is you plug the hole. Basically, when you breathe, air normally goes in here. If you got a hole this big [holding area under his right armpit], air goes in there. So, you plug that hole. Then, the air starts going in the right way, and the governor started waking up. So, about that time, another patient was rolled into Trauma Room 1, and Delaney and I kind of looked at each other and I’m not sure how we decided, but basically, we decided that Delaney would stay with the governor and I’d go see the patient in the other room. And that’s how I ended up being in the president’s room.
Robert McClelland, MD
(excerpted from D Magazine, November 2008)
He begins the narrative he’s told so many times. “I heard a knock at the door.” McClelland says. At the door was Dr. Charles Crenshaw. He asked McClelland to step into the hall for a moment. When he returned, McClelland turned off the projector and left the students. The two doctors moved immediately to the elevator.
In the elevator, McClelland tried to reassure Crenshaw. He mentioned that there had been a lot of alarming stories from the emergency room recently, and most cases turned out not to be too bad.
When the elevator doors opened, they turned right and saw a wall of dark suits and hats. (“Everyone wore hats in those days,” he tells the students. Their conceptions of that time come mostly from a film made in 1991.)
The open area at the center of the emergency room was called “the pit.” Neither doctor had ever seen the pit so jammed with people: Secret Service men, nurses, medical students, residents, reporters, photographers, and curious bystanders.
In the shuffle, the dark suits parted. About 50 feet away, McClelland could see Jackie Kennedy seated outside Trauma Room One. Her pink dress was covered in blood.
“This is really what they said it was,” he said quietly to Crenshaw.
McClelland thought for a moment that he might be the most senior faculty member on site. His boss, Dr. Tom Shires, chair of the department of surgery, was in Galveston at a meeting of the Western Surgical Association. Because it was near lunch, he worried the other doctors might be off the premises. (“The food was so bad at the hospital,” he tells the students, “we often went out to the hamburger place across the street.”)
His instincts were to move the other direction, but he forced himself to keep walking toward Trauma Room One, fighting through the crowd. A large woman named Doris Nelson stood in front of the doors, directing traffic, her voice bellowing above the bedlam. She was the nurse director of the emergency room. She told the Secret Service men who was allowed in and whom to keep out. When McClelland and Crenshaw arrived, she waved them in.
Chapter 5
GOVERNOR CONNALLY
Texas Governor John Connally was seated in front of JFK when the assassin’s bullet ripped through the president and pierced the Governor’s chest, shattering his wrist on exit. The sucking chest wound could have proven fatal in the first few minutes after arrival at the Parkland ER, as all the attention was on the president in Trauma Room 1.
Senior med student Bill Scroggie came upon Connally momentarily unattended and, noting his respiratory distress, quickly found James “Red” Duke, the senior resident in chest surgery. Duke told Scroggie to find a nurse and some chest tubes, which Duke promptly inserted. This relieved the pneumothorax, which had collapsed his lung, and saved the Governor’s life. Connally’s letter of gratitude to the Parkland staff is reproduced from the Parkland Papers, November 30, 1963.
Governor Connally was to return to Parkland and Southwestern in the spring, when he addressed the graduating class of 1964. Leslie Moore remembers, “We all commented, amongst ourselves, how strong his grip was in shaking our hands in spite of having had a splintered radius from the attack.”
James “Red” Duke, MD
I was a senior resident, on the thoracic surgery service in November 1963. After being informed of the circumstances, I went immediately to the ER As I entered Trauma Room 1 and put on a pair of gloves, I noticed three faculty members dealing with the wound in the president’s throat. As I walked around the head of the table, I saw the devastating wound in his head. I do not remember what I said, but I was told that there was a man across the hall that needed some help. I did not know who he was until later, but he did have a life threatening chest wound. I initiated the measures necessary to stabilize him and prepare him for surgery. I spent the next forty-eight hours with him.
James Carrico, MD
(oral history courtesy of the Sixth Floor Museum)
After I left Governor Connally’s room, his treatment was
rapidly taken over by the thoracic surgery service, by Dr. Robert Shaw and the resident on his team. They took Governor Connally up and operated on him. Dr. Shires, who had been in Galveston, was notified what was going on, and the story is that he was back in Texas . . . back in Dallas, excuse me, within about thirty minutes. Went on a helicopter from Galveston to Houston, and a military jet from Houston to Dallas. So, he was actually involved in checking the wound in Governor Connally’s leg. But then he was in the hospital, I think, for about a week to ten days. The major problem was getting his chest wall closed and giving his lung a chance to get well. So, I really was not involved in his care but was aware of what was going on.
Norman Borge, MD
Governor Connally was unattended for several minutes, gasping for breath with a collapsed lung, until a resident inadvertently walked into the room and saw what was going on.
William Scroggie, MD
I was in scrubs and told the Secret Service agent who I was and he let me go in. I ran to the hallway that led to the Trauma Room, and there was such a crowd I couldn’t get near the place. I went back toward where I came in and there was this large area sectioned off with drapes and containing gurneys. There was a man on one of them completely unattended. I went over to take a look and recognized him right away. It was Governor Connally with a sucking chest wound. About that time, “Red” Duke comes around the corner, and I yelled at him to come quick: he did. He told me to get a nurse and chest tubes. I did and he put the chest tubes in while I watched and helped a little. I am sure this saved the Governor’s life. He was in severe distress and cyanotic [his skin had a bluish cast due to lack of oxygen] before the chest tubes. The Governor was very appreciative and gave the commencement address at our graduation.
William Zedlitz, MD
I left her [Mrs. Kennedy] and went across the hall to where Governor John Connally was lying on a gurney. He had an IV in place and a chest tube had been inserted and was being treated by Dr. James “Red” Duke who was the surgery resident rotating through the Chest Surgery service at that time. I asked him how he was feeling and if I could get him some pain medication and he answered that he was uncomfortable but didn’t need anything at the present. I then turned and went back to the emergency room proper to see if anyone else had been injured and could not find any other casualties.
Leslie Moore, MD
Governor John Connally was also severely wounded during the assassination of the president and he was attended to by thoracic surgeon, Robert Shaw, MD. Dr. Shaw was a friend of my family and he recounted that in his years in the Korean War as a frontline surgeon and in several years of thoracic surgery in Afghanistan he had never seen so severe a chest wound!
Governor Connally recovered and was at our medical school graduation to hand us our diplomas. We all commented, amongst ourselves, how strong his grip was in shaking our hands in spite of having had a splintered right radius from the attack.
George Mekker, MD
Awhile later, in the anesthesia lounge, I was instructed to get anesthesia ready in Room 9, the neurosurgery operating room. After that, Governor John Connally was brought up to the hallway outside the thoracic operating room. I was instructed to stand by with him. At the time, he had chest tubes and a right forearm splint. The thoracic surgical team arrived shortly and I turned Governor John Connally over to Dr. William Taylor, MD, the senior thoracic surgery resident who made preparations with the team for Dr. Shaw, a thoracic surgery professor who shortly arrived. They did a thoracotomy and repaired his right lung. I was through after the transfer of the governor to the operating room.
Michael Ellsasser, MD
Texas Governor John Connally had been wounded during the attack and was in Parkland for a time. The hospital was pretty much locked down: one had to be identified by a staff member to get in.
Lewis Raney, MD
On Monday I went to the OR for my scheduled surgery. I was greeted by someone who identified me. I don’t remember identification badges, but we had names on our white coats. I was told that Governor Connally was or had been in surgery. This occurred for several days.
William Mays Osborne, MD
I was in surgery when we heard on the radio that John F. Kennedy had been shot while riding in a motorcade. When I finished surgery I went to the resident’s call room to lie down. Soon after I lay down the phone rang and the operator said that Dr. Charles F. Gregory, under whom I was training in orthopedic surgery, needed me in surgery. I went to surgery and the room where Governor John Connally was. Dr. Shaw was already operating on the governor’s chest. Dr. Gregory told me we were to operate on Connally’s right wrist. After scrub and drape of the operative field, we started debriding the edges of the wound. The bullet had pierced his cashmere black coat and carried in a lot of small hairs. The distal radius was fractured, but didn’t need any internal fixation. The wound on the volar side of the wrist was debrided and sutured. The dorsal wound was left open for drainage, and closed several days later when there was no evidence of infection. Skin traction to the right thumb was applied with elastic bands which were secured to a halo which was then secured to a cast. The bullet fragment that pierced his wrist had traveled on and gone into his left thigh.
Connally had been riding in the jump seat in front of Kennedy, so a single bullet could have pierced Kennedy’s head and glazed Connally’s axilla and chest then traveled through his wrist and lodged in his thigh.
These are the facts as I remember them.
Ron Jones, MD
(oral history courtesy of the Sixth Floor Museum)
I didn’t see him [Connally] at any time or had the opportunity to even see his wounds, but he had a serious injury. There’s no question that he had a major defect in his left chest and major injury to his left lung, and I think Dr. Shaw did a magnificent job in getting him to the operating room and repairing that. The injury to the wrist was somewhat disabling but not life-threatening, and as I recall, he had no significant injury to the leg that was explored. So, his main injury was to the chest, and once that was handled, then I think everybody thought he—short of any unseen sudden death problem—was going to survive. There was concern, I think, for security [nodding], for his security, and as I recall, there were metal sheets put over the windows in two or three rooms so that he could be moved from one room to the other. And they were concerned that somebody might try to shoot him from the outside because at that point, over that weekend, most of us didn’t know what had triggered all of this and whether this was much broader . . . and what was the cause . . . what was the reason for the assassination? Was this some type of overthrow of the government? I mean, everything was considered at that point, and when Oswald was shot, it really got everybody’s attention because we were seeming to relive the whole thing again.
Chapter 6
TRAUMA ROOM 1
As with much of history, a very big event occurred in a very small space.
Green tile covered the walls of Trauma Rooms 1 and 2, to a height of seven feet. This was necessary due to the tendency of many trauma victims to spurt blood all over the place like Jackson Pollock paintings. The twenty-by-twenty-foot Trauma Room 1 was one of four emergency operating theaters of the Parkland ER, and every medical student who graduated from Southwestern had some kind of hands-on experience in these trauma rooms. Two senior medical students had the most unforgettable experience of their lives that November day.
Joe D. Goldstrich had operated with Kemp Clark that morning, as he related in chapter four of Bill Sloan’s JFK: Breaking the Silence, one of the plethora of conspiracy books. An early arrival in Trauma Room 1, he remained in the room until Kemp Clark pronounced the president dead. Goldstrich told me recently that he still believes the neck wound was a nickel-sized entry wound. Another senior in the room was Larry Klein, who observed the rescue effort from the feet of the dying president.
Staff anesthesiologists, Adolph “Buddy” Giesecke and Gene Aikin, attached the heart monitor, brought in by cardiac f
ellow, Riyad Taha, who also wheeled in the closet-sized pacemaker machine. No heartbeats were recorded.
Urology chairman, Paul Peters, arrived at the same time as Kemp Clark, and Clark began external cardiac massage. Moments later Peters inserted the right chest tube. Senior surgery resident Ron Jones arrived and, in less than a minute, achieved venous access by cutting down on the left cephalic vein. He then inserted the left chest tube.
Then Kemp Clark told them all to stop. How he told them requires its own chapter.
It is difficult to imagine how much of history was compressed into such a small space as Trauma Room 1. All the equipment used in the resuscitation effort was purchased by the National Archives at the request of the Kennedy family. Lenexa, Kansas, is home to the 300 square-foot, underground space—about the size of Trauma Room 1—where the artifacts are permanently secured.
James Carrico, MD
(excerpted from The Texas State Journal of Medicine, January 1964)
Editor’s note: This is how The Texas State Journal of Medicine reported the actions and observations of second year surgery resident, Jim Carrico, MD Dr. Carrico’s more personal reflections were recorded on videotape by the Sixth Floor Museum. Highlights of that fascinating interview appear below, courtesy of the Sixth Floor Museum.
