Medical student mistaken for a doctor at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963

John Hugh never wanted to go to medical school. In fact, he hated the sight blood.

“Oh yeah, but how do you do that? I didn’t know how to do that. I thought, ‘Gosh, I can’t tell my folks,'” Hugh said.

Fifty years ago, he was a first year medical student in Dallas.

“We got to wear white lab jackets and ties and go play doctor on the weekends at Parkland,” Hugh said.

On Friday, November 22nd 1963, Hugh took a shortcut to class after lunch. It was just another normal day.

“We were running late. We said, ‘Let’s take a shortcut from the cafeteria to the emergency room by way of the blood bank.’ Just when we got, there, there was screaming,” Hugh said.

Moments later, the Secret Service saw Hugh – and mistook him for a doctor.

“He said, ‘We’ve got to get him in the ER.’ I climbed into the back seat,” he said. “It was just something you did when you were told to do. Like being professional.”

He helped carry President Kennedy’s body into the hospital. He still remembers every moment, every detail.

“I was at the head of the head pushing, Mrs. Kennedy was right here, and I remember hearing the click click, click click, click click of the wheel. I

remember looking at her saying, ‘My God she is so tiny. She looked like my sister.’ I never knew she had freckles. Looking back it’s a hell of a thing to think at the time,” he said.

In the emergency room, Hugh watched as the doctors flooded in to save President Kennedy’s life. A few moments later, he stepped out.

That was 50 years ago.

“It’s like watching a kaleidoscope, and seeing little snippets of things rather than a continuous moving picture,” Hugh said.

The next picture shows Hugh dropping out of medical school, eventually moving to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.

We asked him, “Do you think this was the final straw, what ultimately willed you to leave medical school?”

“I don’t know. I think that may be one of the reasons I never talked about it, because it was a very painful time leaving med school. One of the first in my family to graduate from college, certainly the first to be accepted into medical school. It was quite a big deal to an Asian family, a poor white family. Not living up to your parents’ expectations is pretty traumatic,” Hugh said.

Hugh eventually gathered himself and grew into his own. He now works as a talent agent.

We asked, “I believe in fate, things all happen for a reason. Have you yet figured out why you were there that day, why this all happened to you?”

“No, I believe in that though that everything happens for a reason, everything we do and happens to us happens for a reason. I have not yet put that together. I don’t know,” he said.

Like millions of people who were alive in 1963, Hugh said somehow in some way, President Kennedy’s assassination changed his life.