“Rawhide Down” March 30th, 1981

In troubled times and these are troubled times it pays to keep a sense of humor. Humor helps you get through a crisis and inspires confidence in those you may lead.

On March 30, 1981, President Reagan, aged 70, was shot, along with James Brady and a bodyguard during an assassination attempt. Arriving at a Washington, DC, hospital, Reagan refused a wheelchair and walked to his room where he promptly collapsed. In his book Rawhide Down, Del Quentin Wilber says,

“Reagan was far closer to death than was previously thought. One paramedic, on seeing the president enter the hospital, thought, ‘My God, he’s Code City,’ meaning he was about to die. The doctors at first could not stop the internal bleeding, and Reagan ended up losing more than half his blood. Surgeons made repeated attempts to find the bullet. They had almost given up when it was discovered, only an inch from his heart. The slug was a devastator round, designed to explode on impact. Fortunately, the shot that hit Reagan had first deflected off the armored door of the presidential limo. Had the bullet exploded in his body, Reagan would almost certainly have been killed.”

Moving in and out of consciousness and with death potentially staring him in the face, Reagan never lost his sense of humor or stage presence. He demonstrated his remarkable courage and persistence by joking about…