Malcolm O. Perry 2d | JFK's doctor in Dallas, 80

Dr. Malcolm O. Perry 2d, 80, who attended to President John F. Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital after he was shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, died of lung cancer Saturday at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Dr. Perry was an assistant professor of surgery at UT Southwestern and a vascular surgeon on the Parkland staff when he became the first staff surgeon to treat Kennedy after the shooting. He found no vital signs but noted a convulsive effort to breath. He performed a tracheotomy while other doctors and surgeons gathered to help. Dr. Perry and another surgeon, Robert McClelland, performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Kennedy until no brain activity was detected and the president was declared dead.

McClelland said his friend rarely spoke of the assassination, except in his official government testimony. Even so, Dr. Perry's early account of the president's injuries gave rise to conspiracy theories that persist today - that the small wound near Kennedy's Adam's apple could have been an entrance wound, suggesting a shot from the grassy knoll instead of the sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository.

Dr. Perry also was one of the doctors to operate on presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, fatally shot two days after Kennedy's death. Dr. Perry retired in 2000 as professor emeritus of surgery at UT Southwestern.

- Inquirer wire services