On the 70th day of the Reagan presidency, "a 25-year-old man in a trench coat flexed his knees and raised his hands in a marksman's stance. With a revolver he had purchased at a Dallas pawnshop, John W. Hinckley Jr. fired six shots."
Before Dallas Morning News writer Alan Peppard's 2015 story, "Tested Under Fire," Vice President George H.W. Bush's reaction to the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan had been largely unexplored. But as Peppard wrote, "the steady hand he showed after the assassination attempt would linger in the minds of his admirers as one of the defining moments of his public career."
Bush, a war hero, father of a president and founder of the modern Texas Republican Party who presided over momentous global changes, died Friday at 94.
Peppard's story contains Bush's comments, along with hours of tapes from inside the White House Situation Room, never seen photographs taken aboard Air Force Two and interviews with participants in the crisis. They shed new light on the day Reagan became the fifth sitting president to be shot and the only one who lived.
"I recall thinking about Nancy and the president when I first heard how bad the situation really was," Bush told The News. "Even though it was still early in the administration, I didn't think about them as president and first lady, but rather as friends."
