March 30

Forty-five years ago today (Monday), I witnessed an event that has never left my memory and never failed to give me chills when I recall it.

March 30, 1981, had the look of a routine day on the new president’s schedule. Ronald Reagan was a little more than two months into his first term and that day he was doing what president’s do: giving a speech. I had covered many of his during the general election.

This audience was the AFL-CIO, the venue was the Washington Hilton, and the speech was a nothingburger. Reagan had made inroads with organized labor in his successful race against the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, and he wanted to keep those so-called Reagan Democrats in the fold. So, the speech was a natural.

I was working for UPI as a White House correspondent back then, sleepily recording the president’s remarks and then heading for the exit to be in position to ask a question as he approached his motorcade. Reagan stayed inside to shake some hands before emerging before a small crowd and a clutch of journalists. I was standing near the limo.

As Reagan walked toward the armored car, I heard six shots. Pop-pop. Pop pop pop pop!

Reagan’s good-natured wave and amiable grin vanished, and a look of concern crossed his face as the chief of his Secret Service detail, Jerry Parr, shoved him into the vehicle. A tussle developed to my right as members of the press pool sought to disarm and subdue the gunman, a young man named John Hinckley Jr.

To my left I saw Press Secretary James Brady sprawled face-down on the sidewalk, blood pooling by his head. Tim McCarthy, another member of Reagan’s Secret Service detail, was on the ground and wounded, as was Washington policeman Thomas Delahanty.

Reagan’s motorcade sped off, and I bolted into the Hilton lobby so quickly, I could see some in the crowd still crouching out of fear. Frantic to find a telephone (no cellphones back then), I unwittingly ran past a bank of pay phones and then up the down escalator to some Hilton offices.

I asked a secretary if I could use the phone on her desk for a second, and she said sure. I began to dictate to the Washington newsroom, and hearing me, the secretaries began to cry. The bulletin read: “Shots were fired as President Reagan left a downtown Washington hotel today. The presideent did not appear to be hit.” That typo was a measure of the anxiety my words were triggering.

I briefly lost my composure as I continued to relate what had happened. The Secret Service men, weapons brandished, yelling, “Get back! Get back!” Brady attempting to lift his head. My friends in the Washington bureau attempted to calm me down. But it was difficult.

My heart felt like it was pounding out of my chest. Could this be happening again? It was less than 20 years since the JFK assassination after all. But I had a more personal reason for hyperventilating.

Nine years earlier, on May 15, 1972, when I was 23 and a brand-new reporter for UPI, I was covering Gov. George Wallace’s upstart campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. He was doing very well in Maryland, and as a reporter in UPI’s Baltimore bureau, I was assigned to cover him that day.

Wallace was a populist with a hefty side order of racism. The governor of Alabama, he once won a race by promising ‘“Segregation forever.” He channeled many of the working-class grievances Donald Trump later highlighted in his three campaigns for the White House.

Wallace would usually attack the pointy-headed liberals and the demonstrators who hounded his events. He did not disappoint on this day.

At a stop in Wheaton, and later in Laurel, I scanned the crowd as they reacted enthusiastically to what Wallace was selling. I noticed one weirdo in the crowd at both events, wearing a straw boater, some Wallace campaign buttons, and a dazed smile. A typical Wallace fan, I thought.

It was Arthur Bremer.

Bremer wanted to kill some politician for reasons that were never clear. He had stalked President Nixon before turning his attention to Wallace. And in Laurel that day, Bremer acted on his obsession. Wallace was shot in the stomach and paralyzed for the rest of his life. A Secret Service agent, an Alabama state trooper, and a Wallace campaign worker were all wounded but recovered. And it happened right in front of me.

I remember seeing Wallace’s wife, Cornelia, throw her body over his in an attempt to shield him from further harm. And then, I had to go. I turned and ran so fast through the parking lot I was told later that onlookers described a man wearing a tattered raincoat and a wild look on his face fleeing the scene of the shooting. It was me. I needed a phone, damn it!

And after calling in what I had seen, the story hit the newspapers all over the world. My byline graced the front pages for days. Pretty heady stuff for a kid fresh out of college.

As my report expanded, it hit television newsrooms everywhere. At about the same time, my dad, Frank Reynolds, was being urgently paged at LaGuardia airport in New York. Wallace has been shot, an ABC News desk assistant blared into the phone. Then he proceeded to say, “UPI’s Dean Reynolds reports from the scene” — “just a minute,” my dad said, “that’s my son.”

Fast forward to 1981 and something similar took place. As the news desks scrambled for information on the Reagan assassination attempt, many were left to rely on the wire services, UPI and AP. We were there. I was actually interviewed by the FBI after the shooting. With my dad in the anchor chair that day, assistants were feeding him my copy from the scene. At NBC, one of my heroes, Roger Mudd, was reading my stuff with an on-air credit. Wow!

I’ve often wondered since then what history would have been like if Reagan had died from the serious wound in his chest which we belatedly learned about. Vice President George H.W. Bush would have taken over and led the nation for most of Reagan’s first term. Who knows if Bush would have been re-elected?

Not incidentally, what would have happened to my career? To say I made a splash early on is an understatement. Reporting tragedies is among the most difficult tasks for a journalist. We’re all human, and we can sense what others may feel in terrible circumstances. So, we try to do the best we can, keep breathing, keep putting one foot in front of the other to get through it. And no, we don’t lie.

What stands out to me over the decades is how much the luck of the draw had to do with it. Way to go, Deano. Right place, right time. A chance you either grab or drop.

Perhaps it was fate.