A Dallas pastor at the time, he administered last rites to President John F. Kennedy, after an assassin’s bullet Nov. 22, 1963, brought down the nation’s 35th president and he lay mortally wounded at Parkland Hospital.
Huber also prayed with and comforted first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, but the priest never said much about that time in the years that followed, according to his nephew Fr. Oscar Lukefahr, also a Vincentian, who was inspired by his uncle’s priesthood to join the same order.
“He was not the kind of person who enjoyed being in the limelight,” said Lukefahr.
“If people asked questions about it, he answered cautiously. He didn’t go around saying, ‘I was the one who anointed the president.’ He was simply a priest who did his job, and that was that.” As the nation marks the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, Huber’s name may not be as familiar as many others who have become part of the public memory of those dark days, but a January 2007 issue of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly recounted how Huber, then pastor of Holy Trinity parish, walked several blocks from his church to see the president’s motorcade. Believing that the nation’s first Catholic president, who was travelling in an open- topped limousine, had spotted his Roman collar and waved to him, Huber returned to his rectory to tell his friends what had happened.
“It was a thrilling moment for me,” he was quoted as saying.
A while later, Vincentian Father James Thompson, associate pastor, told Huber that the president had been shot. Both immediately left for the hospital, located within the parish boundaries.
According to an article in the Dec. 1, 1963, issue of The Catholic Missourian, Huber was admitted to the emergency room to administer last rites to the president.
News stories from 1963 said others in the emergency room, including Mrs. Kennedy, joined the priest as he prayed the Our Father and the Hail Mary.
“She graciously thanked me and asked me to pray for the president. She appeared shocked,” Huber told the news service.
After Dallas, Huber moved to a parish near St. Louis and spent his last two years back in Perryville. He died in 1975, leaving to his nephew the chalice he had taken to Parkland Hospital.