In Texas, he was known as Harry Whittington, an Austin lawyer with deep roots in the Lone Star State's GOP who served both George Bushes in their time in Texas politics. In the rest of the world, he was best known as the guy who famously survived getting shot by then-VP Dick Cheney during a 2006 quail-hunting trip. Whittington died on Saturday at the age of 95 after a brief illness, reports the Texas Tribune, having very quickly forgiven Cheney for the errant shot—and having in fact been the one to apologize for it, notes the New York Times.
"Quail hunting is a fast-moving procedure," Whittington said years later. "I had been hunting for 50 years before this ... and I’d never seen an accident. Cheney was swinging to his left and when he did he swung over into where I was hunting." Whittington carried some 30 shotgun pellets in his body for the rest of his life; one lodged in his larynx caused his voice to "warble," as he put it.
Shortly after he was released from the hospital, Whittington released a statement saying, "My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week." Some years later, in his 2011 memoir, Cheney issued an apology of sorts: "I, of course, was deeply sorry for what Harry and his family had gone through. The day of the hunting accident was one of the saddest of my life." (More Harry Whittington stories.)
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