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I Am A Secret Service Agent
My Life Spent Protecting the President
By Dan Emmett, Charles Maynard St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2017 Dan Emmett
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-13031-0
CHAPTER 1
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 appeared on TV to talk about these Soviet missiles one evening. Kennedy was the youngest person ever elected to be president of the United States. I liked him. I knew he was very important by the way my parents talked and watched him intently. This crisis passed, and school life continued.
At "show and tell," my friends and I brought all kinds of things for our classmates to see. We tried to outdo each other and bring really interesting objects. Once, a buddy of mine brought a fully automatic .30-caliber M2 carbine that his father, a police captain, provided. Guns played a large role in my upbringing. At a young age, my dad taught me how to use a gun, including all the safety rules. He told me, "Never point a weapon at anything you do not intend to kill or destroy."
When I was eight, I roamed our neighborhood with other gunslingers, my faithful Daisy BB gun in hand. Often, several boys in our neighborhood wandered around with their BB guns. Sometimes we carried actual firearms, usually a .22 rifle. Other than not having as many birds around, we caused no damage and no one was ever hurt. No one ever lost an eye or was rushed to the hospital.
We tried to get the most out of our BB guns by shooting things at the utmost limits of the gun's range. By trial and error, I learned the basics of shooting, including how to adjust the rifle's sights to account for wind and elevation. These experiences became valuable later in my life after I joined the marines. Firing an M16 rifle or an M1911 pistol came easily due to my early self-training.
Many of my relatives served in the military in World War II and Korea. Dad's World War II service included helping liberate the Philippines from the Japanese. Like many World War II veterans, he spoke little of his military career. During the rare times he did talk about the war, I listened carefully, completely fascinated by his exploits.
My Uncle Olan, an army tank platoon commander, fought in North Africa against the Germans led by Field Marshal Rommel. During one battle, the Germans captured my uncle. He spent the rest of the war in a Prisoner of War (POW) camp in eastern Germany. Uncle Olan suffered as a POW. He nearly froze and starved to death several times. He came home with a medical discharge, a broken man. My uncles Fletcher and Bud fought in Europe and barely survived their experiences.
The sons of these men, the next generation, also served their country in the armed forces. One of my cousins became an officer in the air force and flew combat missions in an F-4E Phantom over Hanoi in Vietnam. Another of my cousins became a naval officer aboard a nuclear attack submarine. Still another of my cousins lived in Germany married to an army infantry officer.
Growing up around military veterans, I always understood my duty was to serve America. I felt it was my destiny, just as it had been for my father, cousins, and uncles. Most of my relatives simply assumed I would contribute in the same way with military service. It surprised no one in my family when I became a Marine Corps officer. But my service to the United States would turn out to be a great deal more than military service.
A DEFINING MOMENT
Friday, November 22, 1963, began just like any other day in the third grade. I left school that afternoon glad the weekend was beginning. As I walked down the sidewalk, someone said that President Kennedy had been shot and was dead. I figured it was a hoax, because something like that could never happen.
The green "Emmett Furniture" pickup truck pulled up at the school. Robert, Dad's deliveryman, picked me up that afternoon to take me to the store for the usual afternoon of homework and playtime. I struggled into the cab under the weight of my military pack filled with textbooks. Inside the truck, Robert was wearing his usual aviator sunglasses and smoking his usual Phillies cheroot.
Normally Robert was quiet and reserved. He seemed disturbed about something.
"What's wrong, Robert?" I asked.
With difficulty he answered, "President Kennedy's been assassinated."
Puzzled I said, "What does 'assassinated' mean?"
Robert swallowed. "It means the president has been killed."
"You mean the president is dead?"
While looking straight ahead, he simply and quietly said, "Yes."
The world changed in that moment. Without my realizing it, so did my life.
The five-minute trip from the school to the store seemed to last much longer. We rode in silence listening to the news on the radio. When we got to The Store, many of Dad's customers stood in stunned silence watching the news on three or four televisions in the TV Department. The newsman told the details of the assassination that had happened in Dallas, Texas.
No one seemed to notice me. Dad's customers talked quietly about Russian or Cuban involvement. They may not have thought I understood any of it. The Russian part worried me. I remembered from the year before when we had to practice going home due to a possible nuclear attack during the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to those gathered around the TVs, if the Russians had killed the president, there would certainly be war.
Over the weekend, I watched live TV as President Kennedy's coffin arrived at Andrews Air Force Base (AAFB) near Washington, DC, in Maryland. I would come to know Andrews well twenty-seven years later. I remember seeing the president's blood still on First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy's legs and dress as she stayed with the former president's coffin. I also recall the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson's, first address to the nation. I did not like him. He was completely different from John F. Kennedy, whom I liked a great deal.
Later, on Sunday, November 24th, my family and I watched as the accused presidential assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was gunned down on live TV. He was in the Dallas police headquarters. Since I did not yet know about due process and guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, I remember feeling that justice had been done. The man everyone seemed to believe had killed the president was also dead.
Up until that point, I — along with everyone else in America — was in shock over the assassination. I could not believe John F. Kennedy was no longer president. I did not remember Dwight D. Eisenhower as president. It seemed Kennedy had been president my whole life. Now he was gone. As depressing as the entire situation was, a moment was about to occur that would change my life forever.
In the middle of all the confusing and emotional events of that weekend, I saw a picture taken moments after the fatal shot to Kennedy. The photo showed Secret Service agent Clint Hill on the back of the presidential limousine. Agent Hill had jumped onto the car at the sound of the shots to protect the president and Mrs. Kennedy by shielding them with his own body.
When I saw the picture, I asked my father, "Who is that man?" "He is a Secret Service agent," replied Dad.
"What is he doing?"
"He was trying to block the assassin's bullets with his body."
I could not quite understand the idea that a man's job was to place himself in front of a bullet meant for the president. At eight years of age I didn't understand everything, but I knew enough to understand that being a Secret Service agent sounded very important ... and very dangerous.
In that one picture I could see Agent Hill's unquestionable courage and devotion to the president. I also saw the importance of the Secret Service. Without a doubt, that one picture inspired me to become a Secret Service agent. Children are indeed impressionable. President Kennedy's death and the picture of the Secret Service agent on the car changed my life. I wanted to be worthy of trust and confidence and to live within arm's length of the president of the United States. I wanted to be a Secret Service agent.
CHAPTER 2
Preparing to Serve the Country
As the years slipped from one to the next, so did my ideas of what my career would become. I wanted to be everything from an astronaut to a surgeon. In the end, two career ideas always returned. I continued to want to be a commissioned military officer and a Secret Service agent. I saw the military as my patriotic duty and a place where I could exercise my healthy spirit of adventure.
Even as a child, I took risks. I enjoyed quests. I liked things just dangerous enough to produce some adrenaline. Many afternoons I rode my homemade skateboard down our street as fast as possible with no helmet or protective pads. As I grew older, the machines became more dangerous, and my love for them became more intense. That love was dampened a little on a summer day in 1971 when I crashed my Mustang Mach I into a tree. Two weeks later the car was repaired, and I continued on my way, excited to be in control of a 351-cubic-inch V8 engine. However, I drove with slightly more care.
When I graduated from high school in 1973, I enrolled at North Georgia College, a military college only twenty miles from my hometown. I chose this college for its academic excellence and for its ability to prepare me to serve my country. All males living on campus were required to be in the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). This meant that I wore a uniform and learned the customs of the US Army.
North Georgia College's commandant of cadets had graduated from West Point and served in the Korean War. He was one of the finest men I have ever known. As the fighting in Vietnam began to wind down while I was in college, the army started to change. The army moved from a conscript force to an all-volunteer army. Recruiting commercials invited young men and women to "Join the People Who Join the Army" and offered, "Today's Army Wants to Join You."
I began noticing marine recruiting commercials and posters that boasted of keeping its standards high and its ranks small. "We're looking for a few good men," declared the marines. The hard-nosed Marine Corps approach intrigued me. However, I had never met a marine officer. No marines worked at North Georgia College.
I learned that the marines came to our campus to find good candidates for their officer programs. Once a quarter, the marines set up a booth in the student center for one or two days. Students dropped by and talked to the recruiters about opportunities in the marines. Interested students took the Marine Corps officer's written exam. One day I decided to see what the marines had to offer. Captain Kenneth L. Christy led that recruiting team.
On a beautiful autumn afternoon, I drove to a motel near campus to take the exam. I first met Captain Christy when I pulled into the parking lot. He had just gotten out of his car and was walking across the pavement. He looked the part of a military officer. A little over six feet tall with large biceps, he was a slightly smaller version of one of my favorite TV cowboy actors.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from I Am A Secret Service Agent by Dan Emmett, Charles Maynard. Copyright © 2017 Dan Emmett. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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