When Jerry Parr was a boy in rural Florida, he went everywhere with his father, Oliver, an unemployed labourer. The two hunted together to put food on the family table. They visited bars. They also went to the cinema. It was at a showing of the film Code of the Secret Service, in the summer of 1939, that a link was established between Parr and the future president Ronald Reagan that would have profound consequences for both men.
Reagan described Code of the Secret Service, telling the tale of Brass Bancroft, an undercover agent pursuing counterfeiters in Mexico, as “the worst picture I ever made”. Young Jerry disagreed. He watched it again and again and decided that when he grew up he would join the Secret Service.
Forty-two years later, with Reagan not yet three months into his first term as president, John Hinckley Jr, a deranged 25-year-old fantasist hoping to impress the actress Jodie Foster by changing the course of American history, shot the former actor in an assassination attempt outside the Washington Hilton Hotel.
Standing between Reagan and the gunman was Parr, by then, at age 50, one of the oldest protection officers in the Secret Service. Hearing shots being fired, he reacted immediately, pushing the president — known by the codename “Rawhide” — forward and bundling him head-first into his bullet-proof limousine. Another agent, Ray Shaddick, slammed the door shut, slapping his hand on the roof to signal to the driver it was time to go.
“Rawhide is OK . . .we’re going to Crown (the White House),” Parr told his service colleagues via radio. When the car sped away in the direction of Pennsylvania Avenue, the president complained of chest pains and Parr knew something was wrong. It was later discovered that one bullet, a ricochet, had entered his boss’s chest beneath his armpit, puncturing his lung close to his heart. Reagan, bleeding from his mouth, said he was okay. Parr, realising that the frothy blood was hyper-oxygenated, made a split-second decision, shouting to the driver to make all possible speed to the George Washington Hospital, where he half-supported, half-carried the stricken president into the emergency room to undergo life-saving surgery.
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Had it not been for Parr’s resolute action, it is possible that Reagan would have died that day. As it was, he went on to serve two terms as one of the most radical, and controversial occupants of the White House since Franklin D Roosevelt. First lady Nancy Reagan was in no doubt who to thank: “If Jerry hadn’t made the change [from the White House to the hospital], I wouldn’t have a husband today.” In a later statement lamenting his death, she called Parr one of her true heroes. “Jerry was not only one of the finest Secret Service agents to ever serve this country,” she said, “but one of the most decent human beings I’ve ever known. He was humble but strong, reserved but confident, and blessed with a great sense of humour. It is no wonder that he and my husband got along so well.”
Jerry Studstill Parr was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1930. His parents were among the millions of victims of the Depression, ending up in the outer suburbs of Miami, where Oliver hoped to find work. Young Jerry knew poverty throughout his childhood, but never felt unloved or disadvantaged. He got through high school and, after service in the air force, was hired by the Florida Power and Light Company, installing and repairing power lines.
It was during this time that he met his future wife, Carolyn, then a college student, (eventually to be a judge) who persuaded him to complete his education — which he did, graduating at the age of 32 and then, as if now ready for the challenge, applying to the Secret Service.
In the years that followed, he proved his mettle, providing protection not only for Reagan, but for Pope John Paul II during his visit to America, and the Emperor Hirohito.
After his retirement from the service in 1985, he became an ordained minister, acting as co-pastor of the ecumenical Festival Church in the Adams Morgan district in Washington. He also appeared on television as an authority on national security and wrote a memoir, In the Secret Service — The True Story of the Man who Saved President Reagan’s Life. Over the years, he advised on at least two documentaries and was also a consultant to Clint Eastwood in the making of the 1993 film In the Line of Fire, in which an agent who feels he failed to protect President John F Kennedy from assassination works night and day to redeem himself.
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Parr is survived by his wife and their three daughters: Kim, the director of public relations for an advertising agency in Syracuse, New York; Jennifer, who works in a boutique in Annapolis, Maryland; and Patricia, a human resources professional for the federal government.
Looking back to the incident for which he will be best remembered, he told the Washington Post in 2006: “There’s a couple of times where truth and training converge, where history and destiny converge. I’ve thought about that for a long time. It’s that moment — either you do it or you don’t, either you save him or you don’t.”
Jerry Parr, Secret Service agent, was born on September 16, 1930. He died of heart failure on October 9, 2015, aged 85