~Basil

By Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD

July 24, 2019

I was 23 years old when President Kennedy was killed. Now, 55 years later I am most likely the only person still alive who personally knew the two physicians who figure most importantly in the case, Admiral George Burkley, Kennedy’s physician, and Dr. Malcolm Perry, the surgeon who performed a tracheotomy on him after he was shot.

When I was a teenager my father and our family and Dr. Burkley and his family shared a duplex at the Newport Naval Hospital in Newport, Rhode Island, where then Capt. George Burkley, M.D. was Chief of Medicine and my father, Capt. Donald Miller, M.D. was Chief of Surgery. I remember Dr. Burkley as a pleasant man, a straight arrow Naval officer like my father.