Parkland doctors Crenshaw and Baxter in 1983: "The RIGHT SIDE of Kennedy’s skull and brain were gone... the doctors said"

[Micah Mileto]

Crenshaw was included in a 11/22/1983 piece in the Philadelphia Daily News, titled Where Are They Now? by Debbie M. Price (Link):

 

A few hours before the motorcade began, Dr. Charles Baxter and Dr. Charles Crenshaw, had joked that the only way they’d be able to see the president was if he came to the back door of Parkland Memorial Hospital.

 

“It was very ironic. Very tragic,” recalled Crenshaw, now 50 and head of the surgical department at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. “Because that is exactly what he did.” Crenshaw, then a second-year resident, and Baxter, then the physician in charge of the emergency room, were among the dozen doctors who rushed to Trauma Room One as the motorcade sped for Parkland.

 

The teaching hospital even then was a pioneer in emergency room technique, and the doctors threw themselves automatically into their “fire drill” – removing Kennedy’s clothes, shoes and back brace, inserting intravenous tubes into both arms and legs, a chest catheter and a trachea tube, performing heart massage and giving O-negative blood.

 

“Even though you know what you're going to see, it’s still shocking to see the president lying there with his head shot off,” said Baxter, now 53 and chief of the Parkland Regional Burn Center and head of the hospital’s chemical organ transplant bank.

 

The right side of Kennedy’s skull and brain were gone, a certain indication that he had been killed instantly, although there was a faint pulse when he arrived at Parkland, the doctors said.

 

“It was a mortal wound,” Crenshaw said, “Maybe the treatment was overkill, but I think it would have been heinous to sit back and say, ‘OK, he’s dead.’ We would have done the same procedure for any patient.”

 

Crenshaw remembers Kennedy as a huge man who filled the entire gurney. He says he still can see the flowers Mrs. Kennedy was carrying, spattered with blood and brain matter, lying in a disposal pail under the cart. Secret Service agents, some of them with their guns cocked, swarmed around the doctors.

 

“All I thought about at the time was doing the procedures. The gravity of the matter didn’t hit us until it was all over,” Crenshaw said. “Mrs. Kennedy came in and put her ring on his finger. It was very touching.” Two days later Crenshaw would operate on Oswald.

 

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

Crenshaw was included in a 11/22/1983 piece in the Philadelphia Daily News, titled Where Are They Now? by Debbie M. Price (Link):

 

A few hours before the motorcade began, Dr. Charles Baxter and Dr. Charles Crenshaw, had joked that the only way they’d be able to see the president was if he came to the back door of Parkland Memorial Hospital.

 

“It was very ironic. Very tragic,” recalled Crenshaw, now 50 and head of the surgical department at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. “Because that is exactly what he did.” Crenshaw, then a second-year resident, and Baxter, then the physician in charge of the emergency room, were among the dozen doctors who rushed to Trauma Room One as the motorcade sped for Parkland.

 

The teaching hospital even then was a pioneer in emergency room technique, and the doctors threw themselves automatically into their “fire drill” – removing Kennedy’s clothes, shoes and back brace, inserting intravenous tubes into both arms and legs, a chest catheter and a trachea tube, performing heart massage and giving O-negative blood.

 

“Even though you know what you're going to see, it’s still shocking to see the president lying there with his head shot off,” said Baxter, now 53 and chief of the Parkland Regional Burn Center and head of the hospital’s chemical organ transplant bank.

 

The right side of Kennedy’s skull and brain were gone, a certain indication that he had been killed instantly, although there was a faint pulse when he arrived at Parkland, the doctors said.

 

“It was a mortal wound,” Crenshaw said, “Maybe the treatment was overkill, but I think it would have been heinous to sit back and say, ‘OK, he’s dead.’ We would have done the same procedure for any patient.”

 

Crenshaw remembers Kennedy as a huge man who filled the entire gurney. He says he still can see the flowers Mrs. Kennedy was carrying, spattered with blood and brain matter, lying in a disposal pail under the cart. Secret Service agents, some of them with their guns cocked, swarmed around the doctors.

 

“All I thought about at the time was doing the procedures. The gravity of the matter didn’t hit us until it was all over,” Crenshaw said. “Mrs. Kennedy came in and put her ring on his finger. It was very touching.” Two days later Crenshaw would operate on Oswald.

 

Thanks, Micah. I think you know that I listed a number of Crenshaw's statements in chronological order, and noted that an evolution took place. I don't think he was lying, but when you see something disturbing and people ask you over and over again if you saw (fill in the blank), well, eventually you start thinking you saw (fill in the blank). This is one of the problems with police line-ups. When people are asked beforehand how sure they are they can make an identification, they are often quite conservative in their estimates. If they then make an identification, and are told or otherwise encouraged by the police to believe they made a correct identification, well, then their estimates change and they suddenly claim they got a really good look etc...even if the police were not telling the truth. In studies of this sort, moreover, the subjects are sometimes told that the police were incorrect in telling them they were correct, and that there is evidence suggesting innocence as well as guilt. And yet the subjects normally hold fast and insist they really did get a good look and that the person they ID'ed really was the culprit. 

Because numerous tests of this sort have been conducted, and always come to the same conclusion, it is now accepted within cognitive psychology circles that positive re-enforcement can not only lead people to make IDs when they really aren't sure, but can actually change the memories of those given the positive re-enforcement. 

We are not tape recorders. We are more like mud impressions on the bottom of a creek. 

Edited February 3 by Pat Speer