Parkland Trauma Room One Reunion

thank you I am I I want to start out by by pointing out to something up quite obviously we're not going to be able to solve the assassination this evening but as you have heard history really does matter I want you to think of what we're going to be talking about tonight as as a legacy for your grandchildren and my grandchildren and your great grandchildren and my great-grandchildren because they will not have the opportunity we're going to have tonight and that is to speak and to hear directly from people who were eyewitnesses and who were medical experts with regard to quite clearly the most controversial event that I think I can remember in my lifetime a quick story about me my father was in the military so where I lived the assassination happened at night we live just outside Madrid Spain my neighbor came hammering on our door screaming my mother answered the door and asked what happened she said that the neighbor mrs. Attaway said that President Kennedy has been assassinated my mother started crying the neighbors started crying I remember looking out the window any of you have been in the or in the military at that time you might remember this I remember looking out the window at that time I was in the fourth grade and seeing all these grown men run to their jobs in their Air Force uniforms in the nighttime so you knew that it was something serious for those of you who don't know for a little while we thought the Russians did this and those of you who think that that was not serious it was serious very serious so tonight what we're going to try to do is provide people who actually were eyewitnesses to this entire event this situation to to the assistance of the president after he was shot we're going to provide no filter from a journalist's no filter from history that's why I have here a list of questions from the audience if you haven't had a chance to give us your questions yet you'll see people coming through when I do these programs I like to give the audience questions as much time as possible you hear enough from journalists they yak a lot so this is an opportunity to answer the kinds of questions I think that you may have with that please welcome please join me in welcoming first of all dr. Ronald C Jones chairman of the Department of Surgery Baylor University Medical Center dr. Jones it was the chief surgery resident at Parkland Memorial Hospital's emergency room on November 22nd 1963 he was among the team of doctors that worked on the resuscitation of President Kennedy in trauma room 1 and then less than 24 hours of 48 hours later he was part of the surgical team that treated Lee Harvey Oswald ladies and gentlemen dr. Ronald Jones dr. Robert McClelland dr. McClellan is an instructor in surgery at Parkland Memorial Hospital in 1963 he is now a professor emeritus of surgery at the UT Southwestern Medical Center he participated in the treatment of President Kennedy in trauma room 1 assisted in the surgery of governor John Connally and less than two days later the treatment of Lee Harvey Oswald ladies and gentlemen a round of applause please for dr. Robert McLeod [Applause] dr. I want to start this off first of all for our audience who may not live here give us a sense of what Dallas and the hospital was like in the early 1960s Parkland Hospital that was the third Parkland Hospital the first one was in the late 1800s burned second one was on Maple Avenue and the third was the current Parkland Hospital on Harry Hines and it had not been completed there's only seven stories running the ten stories that it is now and it had opened in 1956 so it was a relatively new hospital county hospital for the indigent or low-income patients for Dallas County and there was some segregation going on in that hospital at the time as there was throughout the country dr. McClellan your thoughts about Dallas and Parkland at the time right well one of the things that has struck in my mind is how Dallas has changed in general just from say the political standpoint at that time in the early 1960s and late 50s there was probably a much less balanced political climate here perhaps a great deal toward the right side in fact I remember seeing a publication in one of the two papers I forget which one whether it was a Times Errol or the Dallas news somebody had bought a full-page ad the day before President Kennedy came with President Kennedy's picture on it and said wanted for treason so that was some of the climate that existed here at that time and that caused a great deal of kind of concern and worry in fact when President Kennedy came to Dallas let's go through this now of the day itself for those of you who were not born at the time it was on a Friday it was a very nice day tell me what happened how your day dr. Joan tell me how your day began and how you were first notified okay I had just finished a vascular procedure and abdominal aortic vascular procedure and that was concluded about 11:30 having started about 8:00 or 8:30 and we went down to the cafeteria to have lunch along the dr. Perry and I did who was my staff and they operator began to page dr. Tom shyir statin he was Chief of Surgery dr. Tom shyir stat that means respond immediately and then other physicians were paged staff and I knew he was not even in town and so I went up to the telephone on the wall in the cafeteria to call the operator and I said why are you paging everyone stat and she said dr. Jones the president's been shot and they're bringing to the emergency room and they need doctors right away and that gave you a tremendous rush flush adrenaline rush feeling and I turned around and the chief of anesthesia and the or supervisor were right behind me and I told them what had happened I said general gonna believe this but the president's been shot and dr. Jenkins said I'll go upstairs and get an anesthesia machine and Audrey Bell said I'll get the operating room ready and so dr. Perry and I along with doctor red Duke who was a fourth-year resident went out the back of the cafeteria ran down the hall down steps into the front of the emergency room and ran back into trauma room 1 and that's where the president was and mrs. Kennedy was standing just inside the room on the left and the president was on the cart and we saw this small wound in the neck and the large wound in the back of a hand dr. McClellan how about you where were you when you first were over no comment I was in the operating room at Parkland on the second floor apartment and I was showing a movie about how to repair a hiatus hernia to several the senior surgery residents and in the midst of that I heard a little tap on the conference room door and so I went to the door and looked out and one of our senior surgery residents was standing there dr. Crenshaw and he said dr. Mac would you step outside I needed tell you something and so I went in shut off the projector and stepped back outside and he said they just called from the emergency room and said they're bringing President Kennedy in from his motorcade downtown where he's been shot and they want all the surgery faculty to come down to the emergency room immediately so dr. Crenshaw and I got into the elevator they're in the operating room and rode two floors down to the emergency room that was just below the operating room and as we were riding down we were talking one another and saying hopefully that well many times we hear about some bad things being brought into the emergency room but it turns out that it's really not that bad with that the door through the elevator came open I opened out into the emergency room and I saw immediately a huge crowd of people shoulder-to-shoulder men in business suits standing there in the emergency room filling it up and I thought I'd never seen anything like this before and just as I stood there and took that in the crowd spontaneously parted made a little corridor down to the emergency operating rooms just off of the central part of the emergency room and they're sitting outside trauma room one on a folding chair was mrs. Kennedy in her bloody clothing so I knew immediately then that this was just what they said it was I you general it may not be able to see it but can everybody see the pictures that we have displayed for you now that is trauma room one is that correct let's roar most of us who are not familiar with medicine we probably have a different vision of what might have been a trauma room but that was an up-to-date trial room trauma room for 1963 correct that's right and if you look at this room I don't know if I can find the pointer or not I had a pointer here you can see that this room he was on the cart and I'm standing about right here and you can see that that's no more than six feet to this cabinet and by the time I needed the chest raised and the cut-down trays to a start an IV I could not get to that there was there are so many people there did you see the picture that was before this the staff members a lot of people may be under the impression that maybe only three or four people were in that room in terms of medical staff these are members of who what worked on the president at the time I worked on the staff all these individuals no these were the residents and some of the staff taken a few months later and dr. Perry who worked on the president was sort of considered the primary surgeon is here and deceased dr. Tom shires they are deceased and dr. Baxter who was also their deceased and dr. Crenshaw who you mentioned deceased dr. Caraco who was the second-year resident deceased and there's some others up there I know I think Phil Williams was in the in the front row he was in the area this is a room that is what dr. McClellan 15 feet square probably approximately that not much bigger than that size above average master bedroom closet or something well a little bit larger than that but not very large at all so where you live maybe it is that you're you describe this cry for us if you can when you first walk in the room now you've mentioned you saw you saw mrs. Kennedy sitting on a folding chair dr. McClellan let's go on from there to tell us specifically what you saw from that period forward well I've walked by mrs. Kennedy and push the door to trauma room one to open and there are also several other people dr. Perry dr. Jones dr. Carrick Oh were in there before me and they were just beginning to work on the president dr. Perry was assuming the role of the primary surgeon and as I walked by on the left side of the gurney that president was lying on dr. Perry leaned across and handed me a surgical retractor and said Bob would you go stand at the head of the cart and leaned over and put this retractor in the wound in his neck where we're going to explore and do a curriculum and can you explain to it for those of us that Emes what a retractor isn't well a retractor is a little metal surgical instrument very simple little blade that has a little hook on the end of it and you can put that in the edge of an incision and pull it open so the operating surgeon can see better down into the wound so that put me at the head of the gurney leaning over the president's head and looking down from about 18 inches into his head wound in the back of his wound so I had probably the best view of that massive wound in the back of his head from that position where I was helping dr. Perry and dr. Baxter do the tracheostomy and the exploration of this wound now dr. Perry dr. Carrick oh the the initial concern was this wound here right based upon what I've heard you say there wasn't a doctor in the room was probably closer to that massive head wound they know than you know in fact when I went and stood in that position the first thing that kind of exclaimed out of my mouth was I said my god have you seen the back of his head it's gone and dr. Coe said no we just got here just ahead of you and we haven't had time to look at anything except this wound in his neck and I said well the back of his brain the half back half of his brain is gone and as I stood there just as I said that the right half of the cerebellum the back part of the brain fell out of that massive wound in the back of his head onto the cart so this was obvious that this was a fatal injury to the brain doc dr. Jones where were you at the time what what did what did you see at the time position wise president flat on the table arms out dr. Perry's above and near the shoulder I'm right here and so I couldn't see over the the back of the head nearly as well but I did get a one of the few people that saw the the wound right here in the middle of this neck and think all of us that first day thought that was an entrance wound and our assumption was for the first 24 hours that that was an entrance wound this was an exit wound subsequently that was proven wrong when we didn't once he was cited that he was dead we didn't turn him over and at autopsy was found that he had been shot in the back as well since dr. Perry had made the incision here they didn't in Bethesda recognized this wound and so they saw a wound back here and I'm wound up here and they didn't find any bullet and they didn't find an exit area so once they called us the next morning and found out about that they said okay he's been shot back here and this is an exit wound not an entrance wound okay now I know have some some real questions about the wounds themselves ones that I'm not sure you you've been asked before had he not been shot in the head would they would he have been able to survive the other one because basically I've heard you say before both of you said the head wound was not survivable even today that correct driver that's correct now what about the other one I think that was survivable that was a wound if it did whichever direction it came from the front of the back or the back to the front it would have skimmed across the neck and out next to the major blood vessels that was one concern we had not only and making the correct me that was the major blood vessel to the brain the carotid artery injured it was not but that could have been injured but it was not injured so this one here from the front to the back of the back of the front was basically a soft tissue injury that was been readily survivable but it did injuries went by didn't it into his windpipe yeah but that was would not have been any kind of fatal now we have come to the point that I find most fascinating because we all have memories and in 50 years time those memories memory sometimes our divergent and the two of you have different memories of the wounds that you saw I want you for us to describe in your own words nothing from me or anybody else what you saw in terms of the the the wound injuries dr. McClellan we'll start with you because I know that you had some and hearing what you're saying you had some questions about the wounds and what has been described as a woman's right and that's based mainly on two things first of all what I saw in the emergency room and then a number of years later when I first had the opportunity to see the Zapruder film and see several you know showings of it that altered what I came to think about the nature of the wounds and whether there was more than one shooter or simply one shooter and what I saw and the Zapruder film was as I'm sure many people have seen this film as he's coming off of Houston Street onto Elm Street heading toward the triple underpass he's sitting next to mrs. Kennedy and they love both look fine then just as they make that turn as I'm sure everybody would recollect President Kennedy's hands go up to his neck and so something has clearly happened at that time and then the motorcade continues moving slowly down toward the triple underpass on Elm Street and disappears behind the large sign that was present at that time he's not there now for a few moments and then it proceeds out from behind that sign and as the motorcade comes out from behind the sign you see President Kennedy still has his hand to his neck and mrs. Kennedy now has realized something has happened then she's leaning over to him as if to say what's wrong and just as she does that President Kennedy's head literally explodes and he's thrown violently backward and to the left and so that made me see that as I saw that in several you know run throughs that this looked like he was hit from one direction from behind or above with that first shot and then that a shot came from in front and threw him violently backward and to the left and that fit with what I saw that massive wound whoa not high but low in the back of his head yeah let me stop you right there because everybody you can see what we're showing you I should point out you are drawing so we're not going to show you the the actual photograph but it's this drawing that dr. McClellan believes is inconsistent with his conclusions this one shows a bullet coming from upper back down that's inconsistent with that's not Lewiston with what I saw okay well I don't think that drawing is consistent with what the autopsy showed either they show a small wound here and then a large wound here if you look at this appreader film and I'll just take the opposite interpretation of that the the head does go back and so people said well the head goes back you must been shot from the front John Latimer who's a urologist in New York did a lot of studies he first did it with watermelons and he shot and invariably the watermelon went back into the land there was some criticism over that so he took skulls and filled it with material like brain and each time consistently it always the brain went forward the fragments went up and there were two fragments found in the windshield of the limo and the skulls always fell back now they weren't attached to the body but nevertheless they always fell back even though they had been shot for the back and these studies were done at the same angle in a tall building 265 feet which the three films are three films not justice Souter that show this and that's how they determine that he was shot two hundred and sixty-five feet away and all that was consistent with being shot from behind should tell you that dr. Jones you that's wait for me to say is you you have meleave the Warren Commission's conclusion is more reliable than Don McClelland there's there's other evidence that as far as this entrance wound and exit wound because of the fibers that the forensic pathologist now you got to believe the pathologist commander him was 38 years old when he was doing this and the fibers in the back go in and the fibers in the shirt where it exits and the tie go out so that's the point that they make that this must be an entrance in an exit if you just looked at this it looks like an entrance wound we described it as a quarter of an inch there's 2.5 centimeters in an inch quarter of it's 6.5 that's the size of the missile so it's consistent with the missile no question about that but it could be an entrance or an exit but it's the forensic pathologist interpretation that makes that determination that it's an exit wound if you look at that as a fruit or film you see this flap of skull come out right here and it I think it's a little lower than what this film shows now yeah everybody get a shot of that it's a little bit lower than that if you take a look at this is a fruit or film that you're taught that you're talking about right correct and the end the autopsy - and the autopsy - but dr. McClellan again your concerns are with that whole theory of even a single gunman you think that in point of fact this may have been also done by someone who was shooting from the grassy knoll I think that's at least possible and here again there's no question that as dr. Jones says that whether this was the entrance or an exit this was a separate wound and I think that there was a second bullet fired from the grassy knoll that blew out the back of his head I don't think this bullet that came through here had anything to do with making that massive wound in the back of his skull and that was low enough where I could see down into it and see the back part of the cranial cavity and then when the cerebellum fell out I could see even farther back into the skull so this was a wound way back in the back of the of the skull which is more consistent with a wound coming from the front and blowing out the back the lower part of the back of the skull now I'm sometimes asked well did you see an inference wound that would be consistent with that that that big wound and I have to say no I did not and all I can speculate there and I want to emphasize that's all I'm doing is speculating that the wound that maybe came in from the front from maybe the grassy knoll and blew out the back of his head was perhaps hidden within the hairline and we didn't spend any time after he was pronounced dead looking at his head his head was covered with blood and the thick hair on his head very readily could have covered up a wound that entered about here and blew out the back of his head that's my speculation I emphasize that that speculation what what would go into one of the questions from the audience that what other than time would be a reason for the divergence of opinions is it just there's just not enough evidence to be to say anything conclusively because I think most of us have the impression that basically what we see in the Warren Report and other things is that it's pretty conclusive but I'm kind of hear from both of you well medically I don't know well of course we know you know that in 1976 to 79 the because of all the speculation about this and they say 75 to 80 percent of the American public believed there was a second gunman or a conspiracy rather than one gunman the house special select assassinations committee was set up and studied all of this again from 1976 to 1979 and they concluded after that that an all probability and I think that's the way the conclusion was stated in all probability there was a conspiracy there was more than one gunman and they also said which kind of made everybody wonder about that however we are not at liberty to reduce all of to produce all the findings until 50 years from now until 2029 I still don't understand that those are guys get doctor just does that frustrates you the two of you what when I think about all the people who who claim to be witnesses to some part of this 48-hour event from the death of the President to the to the death of Lee Harvey Oswald the two of the individuals who have more education more experience with gun gunshot wounds than anybody else are the two of you and yet you don't seem to have had enough access to the materials does that seem proper to you well I know you mentioned to me let me give you example can you mention to me I think the assassination Review Board and you went hoping to see what x-rays and some other thing did you get to see them well dr. McClellan was there too along with dr. Baxter and dr. Perry and dr. Paul Peters and they said that they were going to bring us some x-rays and some pictures photos and see what our opinion was of what had been described in the autopsy and what pictures they had there so we met over to medical schools UT Southwestern they showed up they said well we couldn't bring any of that material for security reasons you know or 30 40 years later and I don't know what the security reasons were they just didn't bring him for one reason or another so we haven't seen that and all we have to go on is the is the Warren Report and the pathology report we don't have evidence of another shooter that we can put our hands on I know you've talked to the mute mr. Hoffman I have heard his presentation he claims that he saw somebody from the overpass shoot from the overpass when Arlen Specter who came down here six months after the assassination represented the Warren Commission was a junior counsel he was one that quizzed me after it was over with he came out in the hall at Parkland and he because he was quizzing me about the entrance wound I initially no question about it thought it was an internship he said I want to tell you we have people who will testify they saw him shot from the overpass but we do not believe they're credible witnesses and I don't want you saying anything about it Arlen Specter told you this do you not think that that's a suggestion of how to conduct your testimony Ryan's trying to be as this was after the testimony I'd already well what I thought and you know he he quizzed me with such questions as well dr. Jones have you ever seen a individual shot from 265 feet with a missile going X number of miles per hour entering the back on exiting the front of the neck with a rifle that he described well you know that's a specific thing probably you haven't so that tells you you know I really haven't seen a lot of gunshot wounds for instance I'll reviewed the littered I reviewed our experience the next year at Parkland we saw 1200 plus gunshot wounds 515 of which were admitted to the hospital so we were seeing three gunshot wounds a day on average that we saw a lot of gunshot wounds dr. McClellan and I guess this view to dr. Jones had you ever seen him damage to a body from a gunshot wound like you saw that day well I've seen some pretty bad damage done yes fact even worse than that but I have to defer to dr. Jones he's much more expert in seeing in the managing gunshot wounds than I am of all of us at Parkland saw quite a head of that but dr. Jones I think was our expert if you will then and still is well we've seen you know most of the gunshot wounds that we see are pistols now you're seeing 8k 40,000 all types of rapid fire but back then we were seeing 22s 30 to 38 45 caliber pistols and shotgun injuries occasional rifle injuries and a rifle injury you get a rifle injury to the arm it is literally destroys at the bone the soft tissue and everything so it does massive destruction occasionally we saw some small caliber missiles I remember one of the State Fair shot right here and came out there and the kid slow recovery but he made a recovery and and came back to full function so but not with a with a rifle like that that you hit the brain what one of your colleagues dr. Charles Crenshaw who is no longer with us have wrote a book about his experiences with regard to the assassination a year of your your thoughts about the book and also he mentioned a rather unusual phone call that he got a suggestion of how he should conduct his testimony from there on out it any of you ever got a strange phone call to go ahead doctor sitting right there in front of me I think has some knowledge of that don't you yeah so I think that phone call which came from the White House apparently did come through talk to us a little bit if you can about what you know of that phone call all I know is circumstance I know nothing directly about what I was told and what I was told and again by my good friend sitting here in front of me who was sitting there in the nurse's station listening to the phone and that someone called from the White House as Lee Harvey Oswald was on the table wanting to find out what condition he was in that's all just hearsay really for me but I think that's probably did occur okay if anybody ever tried to coax your testimony in either way your memory trying to change your memory you're the facts you wrote down because right after this happened you are oh I believe you were both asked by The Secret Service to write out what occurred right what you did anybody ever ask you to alter that in any way any form any fashion no no no no it was a stamp what was interesting we wrote it out and hand scribbled it out on a piece of paper and then years later I saw it stamped top secret and in the Warren Commission the Warren Commission did over 25,000 interviews and had over 25,000 pages there was 25,000 just from the FBI and there was another 46 hundred pages produced from the Secret Service so they had 30,000 pages of information nobody is able to go through all of that information most of the interviews were done outside I think there are only ninety some odd people it actually appeared before the the Warren Commission how do they treat the two of you the Warren Commission yeah well they interviewed me at Parkland in the administrator's office and in fact I was interviewed by a Arlen Specter who was at that time just a junior lawyer we were both the same age and we had a very nice interview there and I told him what my impressions were at that time and he wrote them down and it's interesting too that that written report that they had us do right after we came upstairs from having attended the president if you get to New York Times condensed version of the Warren Report those written reports are reproduced in their my written report is just in my handwriting is in that so there's nothing secret about that Jones that you feel that the the Warren Commission got your fair and complete and accurate information about what you saw the day of the assassination I think that question what a lot about what we thought was the what I thought was the entrance wound and tried to convince me that it was an exit wound and said that if a bullet does not fragment does not tumble does not strike bone that the exit wound can be the same size as the entrance wound the pristine bullet really was not pristine it was christine in the nose but the back of the cartridge was was damaged and so it was not pristine dr. McCullough I know that you have smiled when asked whether or not you supported the Magic Bullet theory no I don't really and there's a lot of question not just for me but for many people about that it can you explain the your concerns about well I think to think that a bullet made all those turns going through the president and then out you know and then going into governor Connally and through his chest and out into his arm and then into his thigh that's a pretty athletic kind of bullet I think in order to do that dr. Jones I think one of the interesting things that the Warren Commission arlen specter's the one that came up with a single Bullet theory in the Magic Bullet theory is that that bullet goes in here out here tumbles and because it's tumbling and perhaps the side of the missile or the back side of the missile hits the ribcage here then it causes this massive sucking chest wound in his chest just below the nipple line fifth rib and comes on down still tumbling fractures his wrist and then a fragment goes into the thigh now Connally is in the limo with a suit on he's taken off the out of the limo put on a stretcher brought in to trauma room two closer taken off and her gowns put on sheets are put on him he's taken on the stretcher up to the operating room moved to the old work table sheets are taken off folded the table comes back down to the ER and somebody finds the Missal on the table and and nobody saw that and had that melody there had to be in his clothes that fell off or it had to just be hanging in the skin and fellow but nobody saw that during that entire transport or examination that's that's difficult to believe I'm not saying it can't happen but that's part of this Magic Bullet theory it was also found on the stretcher that was completely pristine with a sheet there were no blood or anything on it just this bullet lying there with no bloodstains or anything what do you you know let me see what we have up here this is a picture right now that you're taking a look at I believe that's the assassination review board that you're that you heard dr. Jones talk about earlier this is what you arrived hoping to see some x-rays perhaps some other photographic information some photographs that might help to elucidate your how helped your memory with regard to what you saw that day didn't see anything because it was I don't believe we were given anything we were asked some questions and they took that testimony but don't think we saw anything it's bug that they brought what were you have you ever been able to see any of the photographs anything like that did you go to Washington DC No well they we saw nothing there anymore in fact it was a really really strange kind of dramatic we went to the National Archives and you you wouldn't I didn't go you know well the Boston Globe called me and I thought it was sort of a put up that they were doing in retrospect wish I had gone but you know didn't what they took five of us when I hire as I recall and each one of us individually we stood out in the ante room of the entrance of the National Archives the five of us and then they call us each separately and we were very dramatic it was kind of ridiculous really each one of us were as we were called to come back to the room where we were to look at this material a soldier in uniform carrying a rifle over his arm escorted us marched us you know with the rifle next to us and that people were standing around staring you know what was this going on and took us down to the room and then took us into another little ante room and we waited there for a minute and then they call us inside this other room and there was a man sitting behind a desk on a dais kind of like this and we were asked then to come up on the dais and sit down and he showed us some pictures handed us some eight-by-ten glossies of the post mortem and said is this what it looked like when you saw this at in Dallas and I think each of us as we compared notes later the five of us who went through that said yes that's what we saw thank you they said and that was that was in and we flew back home to Dallas so that was a kind of odd but it was really over dramatically done I think let me I want to go back a little bit dr. Jones in the in trauma room one if I remember correctly you or the person who had to cut some of President Kennedy's clothes away in order to to begin to begin his treatment you came across and in removing some of his clothing you came across an ace bandage you which was used to hold in place I believe a back brace is that that correct that's what some of the I'm just curious about what some of the treatment that that took place with regard to the president when he first came in you mentioned the cut down and those of us who are not in medicine perhaps you could well a cut down is making an incision somewhere to isolate a vein and make an incision in that vein and put a catheter in it and secure it and then connect that to an IV catheter in the bottle is hanging so that's what a cut-down is the ace bandage was wrapped around the abdomen and down the thigh to hold the back brace in now what I thought you were going to get into was medication that might have been given and when we started they cut down dr. Carrick Oh who had remembered that perhaps doctor that President Kennedy had Addison's disease which was a deficiency in the adrenal gland and might have been on steroids or had been on steroids in the past and when that happens and you have a traumatic insult your adrenal gland may not function properly and you can eventually die from that so he gave him 300 milligrams of hydrocortisone IV that was one of the questions Arlen Specter asked me he said you gave him 300 milligrams of hydrocortisone did you ask his doctor did you ask miss Kennedy if he had Addison's disease no so you just administer without any information except what you had read in a newspaper or a magazine which was what dr. Carrow had done he said what if you had given too much what if you had what would happen if you'd given too much and I said nothing would have happened it wouldn't have made any difference if he needed it he would could have utilized it if he didn't they would have been all right but that was a kind of questioning I got some pretty strict questions more questions from the audience did either of you witness the removal of President Kennedy's body from Parkland and what were your recollections of that I did not I know the issue about him being moved and dr. Earl roe who rose who was the the forensic pathologist wanted to do the autopsy in Dallas because the rule was if you were shot in Dallas and killed you are autopsy in Dallas County and the Secret Service and FBI said get out of the way and took him in despite what dr. Rose was saying and took him out I did not see him removed and according to the autopsy people they said he was not placed in a bag although we've heard that he was placed in a bag but I didn't see it I understand that one of the two of you was in the room he'd been they had pushed the the cart to the side you were kind of against the wall in between the cart and mrs. Kennedy came in and I think I read that somewhere is that the Torah can you can recall that story how that was dr. Baxter and I were still in the room as the prayer after the president was pronounced dead and that crowded room when the president was pronounced dead emptied rapidly and in doing that the cart the president was lying on was pushed over against the wall and the war heard dr. Baxter and I happened to be standing at that time and as the crowd pushed out and pushed the cart against the law we were trapped between the cart and the wall so we had to just stand there as the rest of the people left and then after the entire room emptied we began to push the cart away so we could around the head of it and leave trauma room one ourselves but before we could do that the door to trauma room one came open and a priest came in and in order to get out of the room we would have had to kind of push him out of the way so again dr. Baxter and I simply froze against the wall and found ourselves in a position inappropriately where we had to observe the president's last rites so the the priest came over father Huber we found out was his name later and he came over and I remember the first thing he said in administering the last rites he said if thou liveth down close to the president's left ear and then I couldn't hear him say anything else and he completed that briefly and was getting ready to leave himself when the door came open again the trauma room one and mrs. Kennedy came in and she came over directly across from where dr. Baxter and I were standing and next to father Hubert and she spoke in such a soft voice that I couldn't hear what she said but from the context of father Hoover's answer I knew that she had asked father Huber if he had received last wives and so father Huber said to her clearly and I heard him say this he said yes I've given him conditional absolution and so mrs. Kennedy grimaced when she heard that that word conditional and she didn't say anything she stood there she was very self-contained stood there for a moment and exchanged a ring from her finger to the president's finger and a ring from his finger to her finger and stood there for another moment and then slowly walked down to the end of the gurney the cart the president was lying on and his right bare right foot was sticking out from underneath the sheet and she leaned over and kissed his right foot and then walked out of trauma room 1 and that's the last we saw of her and then dr. Baxter and laughs so that was the final thing that went on and called the room one there's a question from the audience thank you there's a question of the audience up for dr. McClellan I believe the doctors statement that the throat wound was an entry wound but where did this bullet go defer to you allow dr. Jo well initially we thought it was an entrance wound because we did not know he had been shot in the back but when we found out he'd been shot in the back then it could been if he was going to shot from the back that this could be an exit wound remember when when they looked upstairs in the sixth floor depository they found three cartridges up there so it at least three shots fired from the sixth floor so we know two of them at least he was shot twice and there were three cartridges found so that came from the sixth floor the rifle was found the sixth floor the wrapping that the rifle was brought in was found on the sixth floor I want to make sure I get through as many as they can there's a question here and I don't know if either of you can answer this is it true that all of the trauma room the one walls are in storage in Kansas City per the Kennedys request I don't know if it's a Kennedy's request but I understand they're stored in Kansas City that's my understanding too that they're in storage of the I think I saw some story that said that they've been destroyed actually but that they're no longer at Parkland they're no longer at Parkland I don't think they're open to the public I did not know what they'd been destroyed you the two of you have some concerns about this being 50 years and they're still being so much secrecy with regard to so much evidence so much material in this assessment yes I'm concerned about that well I have concern for instance that house patients home committee that concluded that there probably was a conspiracy and yet they haven't released the information leading to that conclusion until 2029 why is that I don't understand that but this concern it's been 50 years and I'm still alive this one pardon me one for both of you has your affiliation with the Kennedy assassination been a godsend or a curse in your life and also has it made you a better physician I don't think it's had any particular effect one way or the other in that regard I'm not saying I discount the importance of it I'm just saying that that was what I do what I did that day that was what I was trained to do and what I did the best way I could as did all of us and I don't think that I mean it sounds like all this is some great dramatic event which it certainly was I'm not discounting that at all but it didn't really affect my own personal life or its outcome and I think that's true probably of all of us it hadn't really affected people the only ways affected us is having been there in that presence and people wanting more information and just want to hear that one more time everybody's interested in hearing that story that you're able to tell them here's an interesting side for my voice an interesting question in comparison to the wound of President Lincoln I realize you weren't there what would you think about that President Kennedy's injuries were clearly not survivable I think the the the questioner has wants to know why is it that President Lincoln was able to linger for some period of time and not President Kennedy well he was shot with us small pistol as I recall and it was a smaller hole and they kept probing it and he kept bleeding but it was a it was a different caliber he did was not shot with a with a high-powered rifle you I've got some questions here that also have to do with Lee Harvey Oswald and this question is directed to both of you if the bullet fired by Ruby traveled front to back instead of left to right Kedah swalls life have been saved so he would have gone to trial I think that's quite true that he unfortunately as probably any of us would when he saw someone coming at him with a pistol tried to avoid being shot so he turned and presented his left side to the weapon and instead of going from front to back which it might have if say he hadn't seen the pistol very likely could have caused significant injuries but not fatal injuries but as it was when he turned the bullet went you know the left side and went across the back of his abdomen and injured both of the two main blood vessels in the body the vena cava and the aorta and usually you bleed out immediately you know when that occurs but as luck would have it he didn't and even that might have been salvageable but usually not so what happened to him and the way he moved cost him his life I think and they were able though to get down to the wound almost doctor char's was doing the operating dr. Jones and I were helping and dr. Perry was there also and just as we got down just as dr. chars got down near where he might get clamps on those two major injuries then Oswald who had suffered a great deal of shock and his heart had been injured he arrested and dr. Perry and I had dropped out of surgery opened his chest and massaged his heart for some time and initially we thought cardiac activity would come back but then finally it got flat here and cloudier until it was apparent the heart would not recover I reviewed our patients that had a combined a order and vena cavae injury went back as far as I can find the records after that we had never saved a patient that had that combined injury and even today I've seen didn't operate on what I've seen - they lurk in the last year and I went on we have many many days but they ultimately died he had in addition to that he had diaphragm the lung the liver the pancreas injury and the right kidney so he had all those energy in addition to this major vessel all from one bullet because I I heard you say a heart injury I thought I thought oh there they go no injury from this shock that shot your heart okay so but but all that all that injury that you talked about from from one bullet now I'm going across the back part of the abdomen like that so what you do with it what we call it shish kebob he just got everything mm-hmm what was it was it difficult for you understanding what had happened at the beginning of this 48 hour period with the death of President Kennedy was it difficult for you to now work on his accused assassin that's a question that comes up a lot and you see this in prisoners shot the thing you have to remember is that within 48 hours he's accused but he's not convicted he might not have been the one remember they arrested him in Oak Cliff and he was suspected as being the accused assassin and he was charged but he had not been convicted so you know you you don't know what the outcomes gonna be so you really can't take that in consideration this comes from somebody who clearly is up to date on the assassination why are the House Select Committee exhibits why is house of the Select Committee exhibit f66 not reflective of your view of brain injury I'm not quite sure I understand that it might be perhaps the the questionnaire because I'm not familiar with exhibit f66 and perhaps will give them an opportunity there you go right then why is that okay so the question is why is that not reflective of of your conclusions in other words that shot front to back let's look this higher than the one that you've talked about dr. McClaren why is that not reflective oh it doesn't you hide the wound I saw was much lower in the back of the head and than that and I looked into that one for some period of time you know for from a distance of 16 or 18 inches you're both asked to talk a little bit about the the roles of doctors kemp Clark and can't be the but dr. Grossman no dr. Grossman now this is Ford forward I didn't think I thought I did the world was in writing well I could ask that anything is it comes from a doctor okay if you can talk about him Kemp Clark was chief of Neurosurgery and dr. Williams trained under him he came into the ER trauma room one a little later and but did go up to the head of the table and looked at the wound and when we just talked about opening the chest because close chest massage had just been described just a very short time before this and it was not as common as opening the chest and doing a cardiac massage so we just question that would it be worth it and he was looking to wound and gave us the signal don't do that so he was chief of Neurosurgery he's the one who made the official pronouncement of death and signed the death certificate as I recall and I don't know who poured if that's what yeah I'll work on that a little bit more it looks like it looks like here's a quote here's a question that I'm always curious about what are the discrepancies between what well mean but let me back up while the two of you may have some [Music] disagreement about the the wounds that you saw is it fair to say that you both believe a better autopsy could have been done in Bethesda to the president for the president United States a better better records Jenna that here I'm talking about in Bethesda could better work have finally been done with regard to that better records have been kept because I keep hearing reading reports that there's some concern about what what was arrived at there as opposed to what you actually saw based upon what I'm seeing from people here folks trust you they trust the two of you not so sure that that's a share do they have some disadvantage by not being able to see this neck one because of incision had been cut had been made through that so they didn't appreciate that they did find the one in the back that we didn't find and they could have been perhaps examined two organs a little more closely people have talked about the adrenal gland did he have Addison's disease but the the major injuries they described appropriately they had a lot of measurements you know they described this wound in a recent AML's not to reason now but in an AMA an article commander him said that when he made the incision and that's what you do in an autopsy to look at the brain you pull us make an incision call the skin forward that the skull actually fell out in his hands and when I when I first saw the president when you looked at him I thought he didn't look right on the table did when I first saw I mean his face looked relaxed it just didn't it wasn't full like it ought to be and I think it was the brain all the skull fracture that that Burton caused the skin to relax but I don't know that there's much more that they would have found by further examination to you know I don't think a little made any difference let me ask you about the final question the people who aren't born yet not with us today yet what's the legacy that you want to leave to them with regard to your memories of what happened what what how do you want your memories to be to those individuals in the future well I think good describe what you saw and I think what you'd like to do is tell them what your participation and it was we can theorize a lot and we can that's okay but I think the bottom line is what did you really do what was the procedures that you performed on this individual and what did you do with with Oswald that you you know you participated I agree with that I think all we can say is what we did and what we saw and if we get off into theorizing about different things I guess anyone can do that but we're no better qualified to do that than anybody else or maybe not as qualified as some people so all we can do is say what we did and what we saw on those two days that's a limited and I hope people will think that maybe we function reasonably well under the circumstances let's give our guests a round of applause you [Applause] you

Channel: SixthFloorMuseum

Views: 840,402

Keywords: Parkland Memorial Hospital (Hospital), Dr. Ronald C. Jones, Dr. Robert N. McClelland, JFK, Assassination, Sixth, Floor, Museum, Dealey, Plaza, Dallas, Texas

Id: xuZCxT88cMo

Length: 62min 33sec (3753 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 17 2013