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)
8:36:18 AM 
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