Physician discusses JFK assassination
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http://www.myplainview.com/canyon/news/article_f6555d0a-48c4-11e3-bbd1-001a4bcf887a.html
By JAMES BARRINGTON Canyon News staff
Dr. Don Teal Curtis, of Amarillo, was a first year resident at Parkland Hospital in 1963. As one of the first three medical providers to attend to President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 23, 1963, the day he was shot in Dallas. Curtis spoke to a packed Derrick Hall audience at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum on Thursday evening.
Curtis had graduated from the Baylor University school of dentistry and specialized in Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology and Surgery. Having finished his medical internship, Curtis was in the first of two years of medical residency when he walked from the neighboring clinic where he had seen patients on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, to Parkland Hospital for lunch in the hospital cafeteria before performing scheduled surgery in the early afternoon. He told the audience that he witnessed a “lot of police cars” in the parking lot, and as he approached, he recognized the presidential limousine, covered with blood and a number of roses that had been placed on the back of the car.....
...As a resident, Curtis had worked many trauma patients, including victims of gunshots and knife wounds. With another surgeon beginning a tracheotomy to open the president’s airway, Curtis went to the president’s leg to begin what he called a “cut-down” procedure....
...As he was beginning the cut-down procedure and another doctor was beginning the tracheotomy, a third doctor moved around to the president’s head and lifted it so he could examine the president for any wounds that were not visible from his position, lying on his back. As soon as the doctor lifted the president’ head, he said, “Stop resuscitation. This is not compatible with life.” Curtis reported that each senior physician, and there were several in the room by then, looked at Kennedy’s head. Curtis also looked, and he told the audience “the posterior part of his head was blown out.” Curtis, who had become very familiar with entrance and exit wounds during his trauma room work at Parkland, said that there was no doubt in his mind that the exit wound on the president’s head was at the back....
...Curtis went on to describe being called to testify before the Warren Commission. He detailed the membership of the Warren Commission and the intimidation tactics used by Arlen Specter, the counsel for the commission that interrogated him and the other medical staff, essentially forcing them into compromising their testimony to make it fit the “official version” that was essentially laid out by J. Edger Hoover, the director of the FBI and a Kennedy opponent, before the Warren Commission was organized.
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