final credits - lyn nofziger
Lyn Nofziger was the White House aide who announced to the world that Ronald Reagan had been shot during John W. Hinckley Jr.'s 1981 assassination attempt.
To allay the fears of a nation about the health of their president, Nofzinger relayed two remarks which Reagan supposedly made -- that he told wife Nancy he forgot to duck and that he told the surgeons preparing to operate: "I hope you're all Republicans."
It was perhaps Nofziger's most visible moment in a two-decade political career spent mostly behind the scenes.
Nofziger first teamed with Reagan in 1966 when the former actor was running for governor of California. It was reported he later helped Richard Nixon put together his infamous White House "enemies list."
During his year in the Reagan White House, Nofziger saw as one of his principal responsibilities the rooting out of Democrats in federal government and replacing them with Republican loyalists.
Lyn Nofziger died March 27th, 2006 at the age of 81 from cancer.
Seen as irascible and outspoken, Nofziger was a Washington correspondent for the Copley News Service when he joined Reagan's campaign for governor during the summer of 1965. He advised Reagan throughout the rest of his political career.
It was Nofziger who convinced Reagan to hold weekly televised news conferences.
The voters "see Reagan on television," Nofziger once said. "They identify with him. He comes across to them as a nice man and a decent man. And they just don't believe that he's capable of doing [bad] things. And I think, maybe if there were no television, there could well be no Ronald Reagan."
Sporting Mickey Mouse ties and often seen chomping on cigars, Nofziger was so irreverent at times that he was considered ill-suited for the role of White House press secretary after Reagan was elected president in 1980. He became assistant to the president for political affairs instead. It was said Nancy Reagan strongly disapproved of Nofziger's disshelved appearance.
"I'm not a social friend of the Reagans -- that's by their choice and by mine. They don't drink enough," he once said.
Nofziger confessed later the press secretary appointment was a bad fit. He left the White House after only two years to become a lobbyist, declaring "I don't like government. Some do. Some don't. It's like spinach."
But it was Nofziger who gladly stepped in for Reagan's press secretary, James Brady, who was also shot outside a Washington hotel in Hinckley's assassination attempt.
Franklyn Curran Nofziger served in the U.S. Army during World War II. After the war, he enrolled at UCLA but quit after one semester over the university's foreign language requirement.
"Hell, if people want to talk to me they can speak English," he explained.
During the 1964 presidential campaign Nofziger regularly passed out buttons reading either "Western Tory Press" or "Eastern Liberal Press," depending on how he interpreted the views of his media colleagues.
In 1968, Nofziger leaked news to political reporters that Reagan had fired two top aides who had been discovered to be homosexuals.
Suddenly out of a job, Nofziger joined President Richard Nixon's administration as deputy assistant for congressional relations. Not directly involved in the Watergate scandal, he later acknowledged helping Nixon prepare his infamous "enemies list."
Nofziger was re-hired by Reagan to provide creature comforts for the press during his bid for the presidency. Some reporters felt the luggage and food service were the best of any campaign.
After separating from Reagan a second time, Nofziger was convicted of three felony counts of illegal lobbying under a law prohibiting former high government officials from lobbying ex-colleagues for a year on matters of direct and substantial interest to their former agencies.
He was a political consultant to George H.W. Bush in his unsuccessful 1992 run for re-election and later turned to writing western fiction in the tradition of Louis L'Amour.
Until recently, Nofziger maintained a web site at www.lynnofziger.com.
In his last posting Nofziger reflected on the Christmas card he received from the current U.S. president stating, "The War Against Christmas seems to have picked up a couple of new recruits named George and Laura Bush."
True to the end, Nofziger seemed to have always bitten the hand that fed.
Nofzinger died three days shy of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Reagan assassination attempt.