RIP: Jerry Parr - Bodyguard who helped save Reagan

Jerry S. Parr, the Secret Service agent credited with saving President Ronald Reagan’s life during an assassination attempt in 1981, died Friday at a hospice near his home in Washington. He was 85.

The death was confirmed by Mr. Parr’s wife, Carolyn, who said he died of congestive heart failure.

Mr. Parr was just feet away from Mr. Reagan when John W. Hinckley Jr. opened fire on the president outside the Washington Hilton hotel on March 30, 1981.

“When he was about probably six or seven feet from the car, I heard these shots,” Mr. Parr said in a 2013 interview promoting the memoir he wrote with his wife. “I sort of knew what they were, and I’d been waiting for them all of my career, in a way. That’s what every agent waits for, is that.”

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Memory eternal!