ARDMORE, OKLAHOMA
MAY 29, 1955
6:00 A.M.
As a twenty-eight-year-old mother of two is about to give birth to her third child, she and her husband are hoping that it will be a boy. They are affluent people, with a strong belief in the American dream.
If their child is indeed a boy, it will be named after his father, who, in addition to being president of Ardmore’s Optimist Club, is a deeply religious and highly prosperous oilman. There will, one day, be whispers that he is connected to the Central Intelligence Agency, whispers that will be scrutinized very closely.
But all this is in the future, as the hoped-for baby boy enters the world.
Two miles across the Oklahoma town, a brand-new and modern Memorial Hospital is opening to the public. The newborn baby boy could very well have earned the honor of being the first child delivered in this state-of-the-art facility. That would be a mark of distinction, if only in Ardmore. But Jo Ann, as the mother is named, has opted to deliver at a hospital known as the Hardy Sanitarium, which will make the birth unique in another way. The opening of the new hospital will mean that Hardy, a two-story brick building that has been a vital part of Ardmore’s fabric for forty-four years, will now close for good on this very day. Rather than being the first baby born in the new hospital, Jo Ann’s baby will be the last born at Hardy.
So it is that John Warnock Hinckley Jr. is born in an obsolete mental hospital.
At first glance, the baby appears to be completely normal.