Standing in the line of fire: Former agent talks about relationship with Reagan

DIXON – On March 30, 1981, Tim McCarthy became the second agent in Secret Service history to take a bullet while protecting the president.

Saturday night, he talked about those six revolver rounds fired outside the Washington Hilton. His audience was about 100 guests at the $75-a-plate dinner at the Brandywine conference center on state Route 2.

McCarthy was one of four men wounded, including the president, during the failed assassination attempt. The stories McCarthy gathered during 22 years with the Secret Service served as fodder for his keynote address to the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home Preservation Foundation’s first dinner fundraiser, “On the Path to the Presidency.”

“President Reagan, like many presidents, cast a wide shadow and carried a heavy weight behind him,” McCarthy told the foundation’s supporters. “His home is a monument not just to Dixon but also to the world.”

McCarthy was on the plane that took president-elect Reagan to Washington for inauguration in 1981, and he was on the plane that took the former president home to California in 1989.

He developed a personal relationship with Reagan after one of John Hinckley Jr.’s six .22-caliber destroyer rounds passed through McCarthy’s lung, liver and spleen during an assassination attempt later determined to be a misguided solicitation for actress Jodie Foster’s attention.

That afternoon, agents spirited the wounded president away from the shooting in an armored limousine, and McCarthy joked that, lying doubled over on the hotel’s front sidewalk, he thought he’d “have to call a taxi to get to the hospital.”

The Boyhood Home operates solely on private funding, though a combination of admission fees, gift shop sales and donations. No federal, state or local tax money is used, something “President Reagan would have appreciated,” McCarthy said.

“The ideals, values and principles of Ronald Reagan were shaped in this community,” foundation Treasurer Jeff Lovett said. “We have a moral obligation to keep his memory burning bright for years to come.

“How many communities can say they were the home to a U.S. president?” Lovett asked. “We’re fortunate, and we need to do everything we can to preserve that memory.”