American Experience

Nancy Reagan on the Assassination Attempt on her Husband

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NANCY REAGAN: I was at a luncheon at an art museum and we'd gotten to dessert and for some reason, this has never happened to me before or since and I hope it never does, I just had this overwhelming feeling that I should get back to the White House. And I made some kind of an excuse and I went back to the White House and we were in the midst of refurbishing and so on and I went up to the solarium where Ted Rayburn and Red [inaudible] were and I was talking to them and I looked, there's a ramp that goes up to the solarium, and I turned and looked and there standing at the bottom of the ramp was George Opfer who is head of my detail, motioning me to come down and I thought, well that's odd, why doesn't he come up here. It was so strange. And, I went down and he said, I want to tell you there's been a shooting. Well, you know, I don't think he had gotten the words out of his mouth and I was headed for the elevator. And, he said, but the President's all right, the President wasn't hurt. I said nevertheless, I'm going to the hospital and we got in the elevator and went down and he's still saying to me, no it would be much better if you stayed here. And I said, George, you either get me a car or I'm going to walk to the hospital. But I'm going. So, of course, he got a car and we went.

Well, when I got there everybody's still telling me he hasn't been shot, he hasn't been hit. I think it was Mike Deaver who was standing waiting for me and I think he was the one who told me that he'd been hit. And I remember saying but they told me he hadn't been and he said, "I know, but he was hit." And they took me in a little tiny little room, I mean tiny, you could get two people in the room and I kept wanting to see him and they wouldn't let me see him. And that didn't make me feel very easy. And then when they finally let me see him, he was so white, I'd never seen anybody so white and he had that thing over his face to help him breath and there was blood and he opened his eyes and saw me and that's when he said, "Honey, I forgot to duck."

I put the thing back down on his face and said, "Don't talk, honey. I love you". And then I stayed with him until they took him in to be operated on and I walked by the gurney into the operating room. And then they asked me if I wanted to go to the chapel, which I did. And then they finally decided that they could take me out of that little room and get me into a larger room. And I went up there and waited.

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