Right about now, as a powerful country reels back its fist and gets ready to show Iraqis once again how brute force can ruin everything, the power of words can be deprecated. But don’t be fooled. Words rule.
Malcolm Kilduff, Who Announced Kennedy’s Death, Dies at 75
March 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEATTYVILLE, Ky., March 4 — Malcolm Kilduff, the White House spokesman who announced the death of President John F. Kennedy, died here on Monday. He was 75.
The cause was an aortic aneurysm, said the Breathitt County coroner, Bobby Thorpe.
Mr. Kilduff was serving as acting White House spokesman for the first time on a presidential trip when he accompanied Kennedy to Dallas. At a hastily arranged news conference at Parkland Memorial Hospital on Nov. 22, 1963, he announced: “President John F. Kennedy died at approximately 1 p.m., Central Standard Time, today here in Dallas. He died of a gunshot wound in the brain.”
A short time earlier, Mr. Kilduff had broken the news to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird. Fearing a widespread plot against other top-ranking officials, Johnson ordered Mr. Kilduff to withhold the announcement of Kennedy’s death until Johnson was safely aboard Air Force One.
Mr. Kilduff’s place in the events of that day came by chance.
Kennedy’s main spokesman, Pierre E. Salinger, was with a group of cabinet members on a plane bound from Hawaii to Japan.
Mr. Kilduff left the White House press office in 1965 and held a number of news jobs. He was editor of The Beattyville Enterprise, a weekly newspaper in his wife Rosemary’s hometown from 1983 to 1989.
After his wife’s death in 1998, Mr. Kilduff moved into a retirement home, and later a nursing home when his health problems became serious.
Copyright 2003 New York Times (Registration required)
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