He was best known for saving Ronald Reagan’s life during an assassination attempt in 1981, and died at a hospice near his home in Washington, aged 85.
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On March 30, 1981 outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., Parr was the lead agent on President Reagan’s security detail. He was the agent who shoved Reagan into the back of the presidential limousine and ordered the vehicle to the hospital during the assassination attempt.
“Jerry Parr was one of my true heroes”, she said. The cause was congestive heart failure.
Parr got the idea for his future career after seeing the 1939 film “Code of the Secret Service” which starred his future boss Reagan, according to CNN.
The president was at the hospital minutes after Mr. Hinckley’s firearm went off, and Mr. Parr’s elegance under fire and brisk intuition were broadly considered as having saved president Reagan’s life.
Poignantly, his last tweet was a tribute to his wife, Carolyn, to whom he had been married to for more than 55 years.
Parr swiftly pushed the President into the presidential limousine and sped him off to the George Washington University Medical Center. His quick actions were credited for improving Reagan’s chance for surviving the serious chest wound.
Protecting VIPs from every conceivable threat, Parr said, “is like eating a chicken gizzard”.
Reagan spent two hours in surgery and was hospitalised for about two weeks.
Joseph Clancy, director of the Secret Service, said in an e-mail that those who knew Parr “will forever be able to lean on the lessons of integrity, character and compassion that Jerry displayed at all times”.
Jerry Studstill Parr was born September 16, 1930, in Montgomery, Ala., the only child of Oliver Parr, a cash register repairman and Patricia Studstill, a beautician. “The more you chew it, the bigger it gets”. He was humble but strong, reserved but confident, and blessed with a great sense of humor.
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Parr became a minister after he retired from the Secret Service in 1985, the newspaper said.
