Sid Davis, wearing glasses at center, with other reporters interviewing President Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One.

Sid Davis − the last surviving journalist who witnessed the swearing-in of President Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One amid the tumult of his predecessor John F. Kennedy's assassination − has died.

He died at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, on Oct. 13, according to his son, Larry Davis. He was 97 years old.

Davis was a 34-year-old reporter for Westinghouse Radio when he was among the small group of reporters assigned to fly on Air Force One as Kennedy traveled to Texas on Nov. 21, 1963. The next day, when JFK was shot as his motorcade passed Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Davis was riding in the press bus a half-dozen vehicles back from the president's open limousine.

"We heard a loud noise and I wasn't sure whether it was a motorcycle backfiring, but Bob Pierpoint (of CBS) said, 'That's gunfire!" Davis recalled in a 2012 interview with The Hill. "Then we heard more shots and saw people running for cover on the grassy knoll, and then everything turned into chaos."

He was among the reporters at Parkland Memorial Hospital who heard a Catholic priest, Father Oscar Huber, say he had just given Kennedy last rites.

A frantic White House aide gathered Merriman Smith of UPI, Charles Roberts of Newsweek and Davis to be rushed in an unmarked police car to Love Field in Dallas to witness the new president's inauguration. As they pulled onto the tarmac next to Air Force One, a hearse carrying JFK's body and Jacqueline Kennedy was arriving, too.

The reporters were escorted onto the plane, where LBJ was waiting to be sworn in. Jackie Kennedy joined them, and Sarah Hughes, a U.S. district court judge in Texas, administered the oath of office − seen as an important signal to the nation and the world of continuity.

The White House allowed only two reporters to take the flight back to Washington, so Davis got off the plane. When the press bus arrived a few minutes later, he stood atop the trunk of a car and briefed a jostling mass of journalists about what he had seen.

Davis, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, later became the Washington Bureau chief and vice president of NBC. His survivors include sons Larry and Morse, a brother, Irvin, and four grandchildren. A Navy veteran, he is to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Merriman Smith, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his coverage of Kennedy's assassination, committed suicide in 1970. Charles Roberts died in 2021.

Sixty-two years after that somber swearing-in, the central figures who were on board Air Force One have died, among them Johnson, his wife, Lady Bird, Jackie Kennedy and Hughes. The top administration aides who were there also have died, including Kenneth O'Donnell, Larry O'Brien, Jack Valenti, Malcolm Kilduff, Pamela Turnure, Evelyn Lincoln and Bill Moyers.

Moyers died in June at age 91.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sid Davis, journalist who covered JFK's assassination, LBJ's swearing-in dies

Reporting by Susan Page, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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