Bob Clark, a former correspondent for ABC News who covered the assassinations of both President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, has died. The network confirmed Clark’s passing to TVNewser.
Ken Rudin, a former colleague at ABC, called Clark “an absolute national treasure.”
Clark was riding in a press car in President Kennedy’s Dallas motorcade in 1963. After the shots were fired, Clark rode on to Parkland Hospital, following the presidential limousine, and later reported what he saw by phone on ABC. “The president was lying in the back seat of the limousine, his head cradled in the first lady’s lap,” Clark said during a bulletin on the network.
That image was not photographed, Clark said in a 2003 gathering of journalists who covered the assassination, because the pool car carrying photographers jumped out of the car when the shots were fired and began working at the scene outside the Texas School Book Depository, while the presidential limousine raced to the hospital–with Clark and other reporters following.
In 1968, Clark was also a witness to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy He is believed to be the only journalist to have been present in both Dallas and Los Angeles.
Clark (left, with ABC’s Tom Jarriel, on election night 1968) served as a Washington and White House correspondent for ABC News, and was a host of the network’s Issues and Answers, which was later rebranded as This Week.
After his retirement from ABC, Clark served as a guest host and commentator on C-SPAN.