The Death of a President and the Birth of a Career

I served as a special agent in the United States Secret Service from May 16, 1983, until May 16, 2004. While a special agent, I had the honor and deep responsibility to protect three sitting presidents. Through my years of being a special agent, I learned there is no such thing as a routine day. Anything and everything was possible. On any given day, my work could go from a morning run with the president, to the boredom of answering phones in the office, to the thrill of flying on Air Force One. Some days I did all three!

Many people ask how I chose the Secret Service as a career. The answer is complex. The main part of my answer is that children are very impressionable. When I was only eight years old, the murder of President John F. Kennedy changed my life.

Over that fateful November weekend in 1963, I decided I wanted to become a Secret Service agent in order to protect the president of the United States. Twenty years later, that is exactly what I became. Through hard work and a little bit of good fortune, my dream grew into reality.

BEGINNINGS

I was born in the small town of Gainesville, Georgia (about fifty miles northeast of Atlanta), the third of three sons. My parents worked hard to provide a good life for my brothers and me. They carefully planned everything. My brothers and I were each six years apart so that no two of us were in the same school at the same time. None of us were in college together. In my parents' lives nothing seemed to happen by chance. Planning was one of the most important lessons I learned from them. Always plan ahead! And, have a back-up plan and a backup for the backup. I often heard my dad remind my brothers and me, "Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance." I found this good advice, as with most things he said.

My parents worked to make sure their three sons graduated from college. Even though my parents went to high school but did not go to college, they made sacrifices to make sure that their sons did.

My parents were born after World War I and grew up during the Great Depression. Both of their families had little money in their early years. But through hard work and good planning, they accomplished many amazing things during their fifty-nine years of marriage.

My dad was a serious, self-made man who did not seem to have much of a childhood. The son of a cotton mill worker who also served as a Baptist minister, Dad dropped out of high school at sixteen to work in the mill and helped support his family of two brothers and four sisters.

My father fought in the Pacific during World War II. After the war, he remained very patriotic. He joined the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Dad loved God first, his family second, and baseball third ... although the order could vary depending on what teams were in the World Series.

After my parents married, Dad found he had a talent for business. He quit his job as a mill worker, and became a furniture salesman. Within ten years, Dad started his own furniture business, the Emmett Furniture Company. He owned this business for sixteen years before moving on to other endeavors.

My mother was the picture-perfect mom of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Always well dressed, she cleaned our house and did other housework clothed like TV moms on popular shows. It did not matter how busy she was, she always seemed to have dinner on the table promptly at six o'clock when my father arrived home from work.

Growing up, I got to spend a lot of time at Dad's furniture store. We always called it "The Store." Most days during the school year, Dad sent one of his two deliverymen (Robert or Reeves) to pick me up from school. They drove me to The Store where I did my homework, played in the large area of the rug department, or watched the newest black-and-white TVs. One of my favorite things at The Store was the drink machine. For a dime, usually given to me by Dad from the cash register, I got the coldest glass-bottled Coke in the world!

The smell of new furniture and fresh floor wax filled the old 1920s building. Interesting people came and went all the time. Police officers, local politicians, businessmen, just about anyone you could think of and a few you would not have thought of came through The Store. Dad was a friend of Congressman Phil Landrum from our Ninth Congressional District. One day while I was watching cartoons in the TV section of The Store, Congressman Landrum came in. I felt very special when this important man who worked in the nation's capital sat and talked with me for a few minutes.

Some days after school Robert or Reeves would drop me off at the public library where my mother worked part-time. At the library, when I finished my homework, I devoured books about World War II, the military, or guns. My mom's coworkers, who considered me "cute," fussed over me. Often they gave me dinner-spoiling treats and delighted in patting me on my blond, crew-cut head.

I attended Enota Elementary School within the Gainesville City School System. I got a great education in a school system that over the years produced many doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Also, two astronauts and a couple of Secret Service agents came from those schools.

Each day following morning Bible readings, the Lord's Prayer, and the Pledge of Allegiance, we studied reading, writing, arithmetic, and American history. At recess, we played hard, always to win. Sometimes our enthusiasm resulted in bloody noses, scrapes, cuts, and bruises.

In addition to regular fire drills, our school also prepared for a nuclear attack. My parents and grandparents had practiced bomb-raid drills during World War II. By the time I was in elementary school, my classmates and I listened carefully to what we were to do in case of a nuclear attack by the Soviets.

We practiced evacuation drills. Since there was no good defense in the case of a nuclear attack, the idea was to send everyone home in order to be with their families. Traveling the great circle route, an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) took about twenty minutes to launch from the Soviet Union and reach the United States. I remember one time when given the signal, all students got into groups, and we all walked home.

In the fall of my second grade year, these evacuation drills took on a new urgency. The Soviet Union shipped nuclear weapons to Cuba just ninety miles from the United States. I later learned this was called the Cuban Missile Crisis. All I can remember is that my teachers and parents talked about things in hushed tones and seemed to be worried.

President John F. Kennedy...