Gene Coleman Akin

I was notified while I was on duty in the operating suite of the hospital that anesthesia assistance was needed in the emergency room. President Kennedy supposedly had been shot and had been brought to the emergency room, and I immediately went down the back elevator to the emergency room to see if I could be of assistance, and when I walked in, a tracheotomy was being performed. President Kennedy still had an endotracheal tube, an oro-tracheal tube in place, and the connector from this to the Bird respirator was removed. The anesthesia machine had been simultaneously rolled into the room and Dr. Jenkins connected the anesthesia machine to the oro-tracheal tube and it stayed there for a brief period, until the tracheotomy tube was placed in the tracheotomy, at which time I connected the breathing tubes from the anesthesia machine to the tracheotomy and held this in place while Dr. Jenkins controlled the ventilation with 100-percent oxygen from the anesthesia machine.

Did you assist Dr. Jenkins then in his work?

Only insofar as I held the endotracheal connector in place into the tracheotomy tube.

What doctors in addition to Dr. Jenkins then were present, if any, at the time of your arrival?

You mean everybody in the room? I don't know that I can name all of them.

Name as many as you can, if you will, please?

There was Dr. Jenkins, there was myself for a brief period, there was Dr. Giesecke, Dr. Jackie Hunt--they left shortly after arriving. I heard later that they had gone across the hall to Governor Connally's room to assist him; Dr. Malcolm Perry, Dr. Charles Baxter, Dr. Kemp Clark, Dr. Bob McClelland, Dr. James Carrico, Dr. Ron Jones, was there, I think, shortly after I arrived, and Dr. Fouad Bashour came in from cardiology; Dr. Don Seldin walked in briefly, I can't remember the team that worked on the cutdowns on the legs---I can't remember that. This is sort of hazy, because it was a couple of days later we went through the same business over again and I am liable to say that there was somebody there that worked on Kennedy that actually had worked on Oswald, because I was on the Oswald mess too. This is all that I remember were positively there. I remember their being there, but there were others that I am not sure of.

What did you observe as to the President's condition?

He looked moribund in my medical judgment.

Did you observe any wounds on him at the time you first saw him?