Sid Davis, who died on October 13, was the last living reporter to watch Lyndon Johnson take the oath of office aboard Air Force One.
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Sid Davis, the last surviving journalist who witnessed the oath of President Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One during the chaos of his predecessor John F. Kennedy’s assassination, has died.
He died on October 13 at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, his son Larry Davis said. He was 97 years old.
Davis was a 34-year-old reporter for Westinghouse Radio when he was among a small group of reporters assigned to board Air Force One during President Kennedy’s visit to Texas on November 20, 1963. The next day, Davis was on a press bus in six vehicles returning from the president’s open limousine when JFK’s motorcade was gunned down as it passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
“I heard a loud bang, and I didn’t know if it was a motorcycle backfiring, but[CBS’s]Bob Pierpoint said, ‘That’s a gunshot!'” Davis recalled in a 2012 interview with The Hill. “Then we heard more gunshots and saw people running into grassy knolls. Then everything turned into chaos.”
He was one of the reporters who heard Catholic priest Father Oscar Hoover say he had just performed the last rites on Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Panicked, White House aides gathered UPI’s Merriman Smith, Newsweek’s Charles Roberts, and Davis and rushed them in unmarked police cars to Love Field in Dallas to witness the new president’s inauguration. When they arrived on the tarmac next to Air Force One, the hearse carrying JFK’s body and Jacqueline Kennedy had also arrived.
Reporters were escorted to a plane where LBJ was waiting to be sworn in. Joined by Jackie Kennedy, Texas U.S. District Judge Sarah Hughes administered the oath of office. This is seen as an important signal of continuity to the nation and the world.
The White House allowed only two reporters to board the plane back to Washington, so Davis got off the plane. When the press bus arrived a few minutes later, he stood on the trunk of the car and explained what he had seen to the throng of journalists.
Davis, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, later became NBC’s Washington bureau chief and vice president. His survivors include sons Larry and Morse, brother Irvin, and four grandchildren. The Navy veteran will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Merriman Smith, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his coverage of the Kennedy assassination, committed suicide in 1970. Charles Roberts passed away in 2021.
Sixty-two years after that gruesome oath, key figures aboard Air Force One have passed away, including Johnson, his wife, Lady Bird, Jackie Kennedy, and Hughes. A number of administration aides who were there, including Kenneth O’Donnell, Larry O’Brien, Jack Valenti, Malcolm Kilduff, Pamela Turnure, Evelyn Lincoln, and Bill Moyers, also died.
Mr. Moyers died in June at the age of 91.
