Jerry Parr, 85, agent who saved Reagan

Jerry S. Parr, 85, the quick-thinking and fast-moving Secret Service agent who was credited with saving the life of President Ronald Reagan after the 1981 assassination attempt in Washington, died of congestive heart failure Friday at a hospice center near his home in Washington.

Mr. Parr had been an electric power lineman before his Secret Service years and a clergyman in retirement. But he was best known for the fraught moments after gunfire erupted on March 30, 1981, as Reagan was leaving the Washington Hilton Hotel.

In that time of chaos, Mr. Parr seemed the epitome of the firm-jawed man of action: forceful, resolute, decisive.

At the president's side when the shots resounded, Mr. Parr did not immediately look for the gunman, John Hinckley Jr. Instead, according to accounts, Mr. Parr placed his hand on Reagan's shoulder and pushed the president into a limousine.

The vehicle pulled away from the hotel, leaving behind a scene of blood and tumult. Severely wounded by gunfire were White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy, and D.C. Police Officer Thomas Delahanty.

Although Mr. Parr and the president were moving swiftly away from the carnage, shielded by the armor of a bulletproof vehicle, the agent's responsibilities were far from over. Carefully, he ran his hands over Reagan's body, searching for bullet wounds. He found none.

Then he recognized the ominous signs: The president complained about pain in his chest, and there was blood on Reagan's lips.

Mr. Parr immediately ordered that the limo be driven to George Washington University Hospital instead of the White House. The president survived, but he had a close call.

"If Jerry hadn't made the change," first lady Nancy Reagan later told CNN host Larry King, "I wouldn't have a husband."

Doctors, noting the president's severe loss of blood, sometimes reported as three pints, have agreed with that assessment.

Among those who knew him inside and outside the Secret Service, Mr. Parr was regarded as a patient man willing to hear out the troubled, to keep confidences and try to suggest a course of action.

He was called on so often to play the part of wise adviser, according to his wife, Carolyn Parr, that, after retiring from the Secret Service in 1985, he obtained a master's degree in pastoral counseling and became co-pastor of Festival Church, an ecumenical church in Washington.

Mr. Parr had been fascinated by the Secret Service from boyhood. His father had taken him in 1939 to see the low-budget action film Code of the Secret Service, one of several movies in which Reagan starred as the dashing agent "Brass" Bancroft.