Flew on 'Jack the Ripper' with Capt. William J. Crumm’s crew - the first 8th Air Force crew to return to the US to consult with the War Department, participate in a training manual for new recruits, and a bond selling tour in Feb. 1943. He then became a 2nd Lt. Navigator and was dual training as an Engineer-Navigator on B-29s when the war ended. After the war, he joined the Secret Service and became the deputy director (1951-1971). He was present when President Kennedy was shot and flung himself over Vice President Lyndon Johnson to shield him when shots were being fired and received the Treasury Dept.’s Exceptional Service Award for his actions.



Rufus Wayne Youngblood is best known as the U.S. Secret Service agent who shielded Vice President Johnson during the tragic Kennedy assassination. Born in Macon, Georgia, in 1924, he was raised in Atlanta and enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Force shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack. During World War II, he flew in some of the Eighth Air Force’s earliest combat missions. After graduating from the Georgia Institute of Technology with an industrial engineering degree, he joined the Secret Service in 1951 and protected Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon during his 20-year tenure. He retired in 1971 as the agency’s deputy director. He penned his memoir, '20 YEARS IN THE SECRET SERVICE: MY LIFE WITH FIVE PRESIDENTS', before returning to Georgia, where he resided with Peggy, his wife of 53 years, and his family until his death in 1996.