Chester Clifton Jr.; Military Aide to Kennedy, Johnson
Maj. Gen. Chester V. (Ted) Clifton Jr., senior military aide to President John F. Kennedy, has died. He was 78.
The retired general, a longtime Washington resident, died of lung ailments on Dec. 23 in Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Clifton joined Kennedy’s staff in 1961 and was in close contact with him throughout his presidency. He was in the Dallas motorcade Nov. 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, and at Parkland Hospital, where doctors sought to save the President.
Clifton was aboard Air Force One when Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as President and later served Johnson as a military aide.
Born in Edmonton, Canada, Clifton grew up in Tacoma, Wash., and attended the University of Washington. He graduated from West Point in 1936 and received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin.
In World War II, he served in Italy in the Monte Cassino and Anzio campaigns and in the invasion of southern France.
After the war, he served on the staff of Gen. Omar N. Bradley when Bradley was Army chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Clifton studied at the Army War College, held a troop command in West Germany, served on the staff of the Army’s European headquarters in Paris and went to the Pentagon as deputy chief of information for the Army.
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