(relaxed music) (relaxed music continues) (relaxed music continues) (relaxed music continues) (relaxed music continues) - Hello and welcome to "The Bookmark."

I'm Christine Brown, your host today.

My guest is Kathryn Clark Childers, author of "Scared Fearless: An Unlikely Agent in the US Secret Service."

Kathryn, thank you so much for being here.

- Oh, my pleasure.

I'm delighted to be in Aggie land.

What a beautiful campus this is.

And it's all green and pretty.

It's fun to be here.

- We're so happy to have you.

I'm so excited to have you here to tell your story too, because it's such a fascinating story and an inspiring story.

But let's start at the beginning with this title.

What does it mean?

- Well, in looking for a title, it was really hard to come up with an answer that hadn't been already used a million times.

And in my speech that I give, I really say, "Do it scared."

That's my mantra.

And we thought about that as a title for a while, and I know the press thought about it.

And I think the Scared Fearless came up as a more, showing a little more catchy.

But I think what really caught my eye was, what do we call the sub-thing?

- [Christine] The subtitle.

- The subtitle of: An Unlikely Agent in the Secret Service.

Because that's really my story, is how you become unlikely in your life.

Likely things aren't the things you write books about.

It's the unlikely.

It's the scary.

It's the interesting.

But what do they say about interesting?

If you can't think of anything else you say interesting.

But with that, I have lived a really engaging life.

And it started with the fact that when I was a little girl growing up in the West, my daddy was a great daddy that believed that girls could do anything.

There weren't that many.

Most of them and their mothers wanted us to get the Mrs. in college and go off and be happily ever after with our apron cooking for our husbands.

And if you don't know, Mrs. stands for missus.

And I speak to a lot of women's groups, young women's groups, who don't know what that means now.

So things change.

But as a little girl, I had one person I looked up to.

There wasn't much media play, but her name was Annie Oakley.

And I remember being eight, nine years old and thinking, "I wanna grow up and be like her."

She was in the Buffalo Bill Wild West show.

She had a exciting life.

And it turned out that I had this almost idyllic life growing up in a peach orchard, just at the heart of a area called the Wasatch Mountains near Pleasant Grove, Utah.

I had a horse and I had a little buckaroo jacket with fringe and little buckaroo boots.

And the only thing was Annie Oakley distinguished herself by really being a world-class marksman.

She didn't hunt, but her expertise in a sport was unbelievable.

And we just didn't have any people to look up to, to follow, that were in the sporting world.

So I decided that I wanted to learn how to shoot my dad's old .22.

So one day he brought a can out on the post and he said, "Okay, is today the day you wanna learn how to shoot the .22?"

And I said, "Today's the day."

And so I snugged that old rifle up in my shoulder, and I looked down at that end of the barrel and I put it down.

And I said, "I can't."

Big tears, crocodile tears.

I said, "I'm just scared.

Daddy, I'm scared.

No, nevermind."

And he said, "But I thought you wanted to be Annie Oakley for heaven's sakes."

And I said, "Well, I do, but I'm scared."

And he said, I remember that today, he said, "Then just do it scared for heaven's sakes."

It's just a feeling.

It's just something you have to embrace your whole life or you'll end up not doing anything 'cause everything will eventually scare you.

So that's where the do it scared came.

The scared fearless came.

It was that I was always scared but I acted fearless.

And sometimes I find that the adrenaline rush you get from being in fear or being afraid or being wound up a little bit probably makes you better.

So that's that answer.

- So this is the story of how you became, you were that little girl shooting cans in the backyard, to the unlikely part is you were one of the first five female agents in the US Secret Service.

And this book doesn't just tell your time in the Secret Service; you also talk a little bit about your childhood.

And one thing I liked is you describe a lot of the extracurriculars you enjoyed.

You enjoyed shooting, you enjoyed horseback riding, playing tennis.

And it's a wonderful lesson in you never know what skills are gonna serve you later in life.

- I like to talk to students' groups.

I like to talk to universities.

And I call that speech: What's in Your Backpack?

because you give a resume to a college or to a job application.

And it has the standard I went here, I grew up here, these were my parents, this is my interest.

What's one person I really admire.

Well, I came up with the question of: What's one thing no one would believe about you?

And in doing that, I found that I could help people realize that whatever was in their backpack, and it might be playing tennis, knowing how to shoe a horse, doing magic.

One kid I interviewed, a young man I interviewed, I said, "So what's special about you?"

And he said, "Nothing."

I said, "Oh, come on.

I'll bet there is."

And he said, "Well, I do do magic.

And I take the train down to Grand Central Station," this was in Upstate New York, "and I sit there and I practice my magic."

And he said, "I meet really interesting people.

And I sit on the floor with my hat," with my magic thing.

And I said, "And I bet you're raising money for college, right?"

And he looked at me and I said, "Well, you could."

But yes, I was athletic.

In those days, it was not important to be athletic.

There was no Title IX.

There were no sports in high schools.

But it just so happened that after my dad taught me how to shoot that old .22, I went to Pueblo, Colorado for a high school when we moved, and that school actually had a rifle team.

And I ended up being one of the best shooters in the state of Colorado, never thinking it would mean anything.

And I was a tennis player and I was a skier and I was on the National Ski Patrol.

I was on the cusp of being a token everything because I knew just enough that as doors were opening, they'd say, "Oh, well, you could probably be a skier."

Or "You could always be on the ski patrol.

We need a token woman."

And I didn't resent that because in my mind, being the first at something was an opportunity.

Now probably they should have taken 100 first people, but they didn't.

And the fact of having an opportunity to be first, to me, I wasn't even interested in the long-term longevity of the history.

I didn't sense that.

I was just excited for the chance.

It's like when your dad threw you the car keys and said you could take the family Buick, and you went: "Really?

You're gonna let me drive?"

And so it was the excitement of being able to do things that got me to continue to learn.

And I've always believed that everything that you ever do either helps you or haunts you.

And the more things you learn, I've protected Caroline Kennedy as one of those first women.

Because as Clint Hill, the agent who hired me said, they could drop me into any situation.

I could go with her when she was on a fox hunt in Northern England.

I didn't have a horse, but I figured out how I'd ride along with the grooms.

I was with her quite a bit on horse, I mean, in a horsey kind of situation.

I could play tennis with her when I was actually an undercover agent, warming her up for tennis.

In other words, it was a cover to be able to do what the people we protected do.

There were agents that skied with President Ford.

There were agents who traveled with the kids to school.

And it just makes it easier to blend into their lives, and also take on the responsibility of keeping some of the most important people happy, alive, and sometimes entertained.

And from embarrassing their mother, Jacqueline Kennedy, or the president of the United States.

Now, that's tongue in cheek.

That wasn't our job.

But sometimes that kind of happened.

- Well, I think it would be a severe understatement to say that the late '60s, early '70s were a time of change.

Just generally socially for women.

- I would say this.

It was the beginning of change.

It was the beginning of opportunity.

And what some people like to call the women's movement was probably more of a revolution.

But at the same time, we weren't comfortable with, or many people weren't comfortable with saying that.

As you might remember, the Equal Rights Amendment never passed, because basically women in the country and men, people of the country were not willing to affirm it through the state action.

I think because many women were afraid of what it would bring.

They were afraid it might bring military service, which it did, or we never passed the Equal Rights Amendment.

But it would change the way things were.

And although there were many people who were unhappy with that change, there were a lot of people who loved the change.

But everything was changing.

Birth control was happening.

There were protests in the street against Vietnam.

We were having assassinations.

It was a very tumultuous time.

- Amidst all that, that's when these firsts started happening.

So what was the catalyst or the driving force at the Secret Service to hire their first women agents?

- Well, I think it was a man called Clint Hill.

As I told you, that he did the introduction to the book which was so flattering to me.

Clint Hill was the man who saved Jacqueline Kennedy as the First Lady, when she was coming out after the assassination of her husband on the back of the limousine.

He did an heroic effort.

He performed heroic measures to leap up onto the car, push her back into the automobile and cover the president and her with his body.

And became, and still is, probably one of the most distinguished agents in the history of the Secret Service.

He's written five books and he was very close to Mrs. Kennedy.

And after the assassination, I think the entire world including the Secret Service and law enforcement were looking at ways of improving, doing anything they could to make it even safer, to work harder, to come up with new ideas.

And also, it was interesting that Lyndon Johnson had begun to change things with the Equal Rights Amendment.

And there were opportunities and equal, equal pay never paid, I don't believe, or paid off.

But at the same time, after Kennedy's assassination and the horror and the anger and the sadness that the country went through, they began to look at opportunities for including different kinds of people.

Different genders at that time was the big issue.

Women were just as big an issue as anyone else.

And Clint Hill, as a then assistant director was part of a group that decided to recruit women; he and director James Riley and another agent named Jerry Parr who was the agent that saved Ronald Reagan.

Very strong personalities in the service.

Very willing to look at the change and the challenges.

And very embracing of the idea that it would include the job.

It would improve the job.

It would include women, but it would improve the whole effort that they did because women provided a different kind of protection.

- Well, and it makes sense, especially that these two kind of visionaries saw that.

And as you've mentioned briefly here, but it's in the book; clearly there are certain situations where a woman agent could fit in, could be undercover, could do things or be places that maybe a male agent wouldn't be able to fly under the radar, so to speak.

- Yes.

It expanded the coverage.

There are also places that maybe a man might be stronger in a position.

But it wasn't to say that a woman couldn't be part of that team that would perhaps make the undercover effort look more real.

I laugh about a case once where a gentleman was assigned to me, an agent and a big guy.

I think I tell the story where he said, we were in a situation where we were gonna have to get into a room and it looked like we might have to break down the door.

And he said, "You're so tough.

You break down the door."

And I kind of rolled my eyes 'cause I didn't really think we needed to, but he was just challenging me.

And I said, "You're so tough.

You break down the door and I'll take care of the rest of them.

And I'm a lot better shot than you are."

And then we both kind of laughed and knocked, and it was actually open.

It was one of those deals.

But I found that being responsive and saying, "I'll do what I do well and I'll help you.

And I'll have your back," was something that I've used the rest of my life.

And that and a sense of humor.

'Cause if you take yourself too seriously, you put people in a corner.

And my entire effort in my life of everything I've done is that let's get along and work together and move forward and do things that are out of the box.

And you have to have a lot of skills to be able to do that.

And trust and competence which was part of it.

A security clearance.

I had to be 5'7".

Annie was only 5'0".

So Annie never would've made it.

All of those things to me, we passed on to the next generation of women who came in.

I just gave a speech today, So I'm trying to remember which I said.

But I have always said that being the first at something is really flattery.

And it's you get remembered.

There's no question.

Second folks who never know who the second horse was at the Kentucky Derby, even though the second horse was what, that much different from the nose of the first horse.

But it's a challenge to be first because you do have a story to tell.

I never suggested I was the best.

I'd always wished that I'd stayed longer.

I'd always enjoyed it so much I would've made it my full-time career.

But I didn't.

I fell in love and decided that a career was not all I wanted, even though it was not a career I would've given up without holding on like crazy.

But I met a man from Texas and he asked me to marry him.

And at that time, there was very little wiggle room for women.

You carried the same size gun even though it was very big.

You didn't have time off to have a baby.

You could be married, but it wasn't, I don't remember frankly, but I don't think it was looked upon very graciously.

It was hard to date.

I had a date once with a fellow and I had just been given all my gun, my badge, my commission book and all that.

And I carried it in my purse 'cause they hadn't figured out where, a shoulder holster and that kind of thing.

And we went out and we were sitting there and he looked in my purse, which was a little intrusive.

But he said, "What are those?

Handcuffs?"

And I said yes.

And he didn't know what I, or he kind of did, but he was just harassing me.

And he said, "What do you do with those?"

And I said, "It's part of my job.

And I have to carry my equipment with me because I'm on call all the time."

He said, "You don't know how to do that."

Now, that made me a little angry.

So I whipped 'em out.

I put 'em on his wrist.

I handcuffed him to the chair, and then I realized I didn't have the key.

So I had to go home to get the key.

Needless to say, he never asked me out again.

- No, but I bet he learned a lesson that day.

- I don't know.

I don't know if he did.

But he did learn that women can handle handcuffs if they need to: so there.

- Another challenge you mentioned several times in the book about being first is wardrobe issues; which seems trivial, but there was a standard set of kind of the uniform you picture for a Secret Service agent: a black suit and dark glasses.

But there was no manual for women.

There was no dress code for women.

You guys had to figure it, you ladies had to figure it all out yourselves.

- Oh, and it was almost funny.

When they sent our letter or the letter I got, but I remember the name was John Fostis, I believe was his name, and invited me that I had passed all the criteria and that I was going to be in, I was being offered the opportunity to become a Secret Service employee, and that I should report to bootcamp, a kind of training, with white athletic shorts, white T-shirt, white tennis shoes, and an athletic supporter.

And as a young woman right outta college in 1970, we didn't talk about things like that.

And I had no idea what it was.

And the letter was actually written to me as Mr. Clark.

I think they changed that fairly shortly after that.

But what you wore was a problem.

I worked as an undercover anti-war demonstration person on the streets of Washington for weeks and nights, and in Miami and ferreting out threats against the president.

So that was a wardrobe issue as to how to look right in that situation.

But the worst was a state dinner because the agents would wear tuxedos.

Again, dropping into the format.

If agents are standing there in jeans and hoodies, you can immediately go around and say, "That's an agent, that's an agent," whatever.

And the first time I was given the opportunity to work a state dinner was with the Queen of Spain.

And the head of the detail gave me about an hour and a half.

I'd been working all day with her.

And he said, "Do you have anything to wear to a state dinner?"

And then I was really scared.

No, I was scared a lot.

And I said, "Oh sure.

Yeah, right.

I'm sure I do."

Well, I had brought my pledge formal from the University of Colorado.

This was my first year outta college.

I don't know why it was in a plastic bag.

And it was the kind that you zip up the back, and you always go (inhales sharply).

And wasn't sure if it would fit.

And luckily it fit.

And then one of my roommates loaned me a wiglet.

That was a time we didn't have these extension things.

But a wiglet was supposed to make you look pretty.

So I was all ready to go to the state dinner and my roommates popped me in our little Volkswagen and were gonna drop me off.

And we got halfway there and my roommate said, "You can't carry," it was a big bag like this, "You can't carry a big bag like that to the White House for a state dinner."

I said, "Well, I have to have my gun, my badge, my commission book, my extra, I have to."

And she said, "That will never do."

So we stopped at a store called... See, this is what's different about my book.

I tell you the factual, the funny, and shall we say heartwarming tales along with the ones that were scary.

And along with the ones where I was glad when I went home that night and everybody was safe, and we'd done what we were supposed to do.

But in this case, we stop up, and I run in and I'm in my fancy outfit.

It was a pledge formal, mind you, with all these important people.

I show my badge to this woman.

And I always describe her, I love description.

And I do do a lot of description for a first-time novelist or a book writer or whatever I am.

And this woman was tall and kind of square.

And she had a black dress and black stockings and black shoes.

And on her chest was a pair of glasses on beads.

And when she breathed, they would go in and out.

And she was very much in charge.

And she was very distressed with the fact that this young woman was flailing a badge.

She was about to call security.

Which she probably should have actually.

And I said, "No, no, no.

I'm an agent in the Secret Service that I need to buy a purse for my equipment, for my revolver, for my gun."

And she went... And all of a sudden the beads started going.

It's just a visual.

None of you have probably shopped with a woman like that recently.

But the women who were in charge of the better purse departments in those days were very much in charge.

She took a bunch of bags.

We went in and we tried all of 'em quickly.

And she's holding, what is that?

The curtain.

Anyway, so she's holding the curtain.

I get all set and I say, "Thank you very much."

Jump in the Volkswagen, and I'm dropped at the East Wing of the White House to join in my position standing next to the Queen of Spain with my stuff in this little bitty bag.

But we made it.

And those were problems.

And if you wanted the job, you had to figure it out quickly as to how to do it.

So those were the kind of not so important.

You had to have all the training, the important stuff, but you had to figure out how to look like a part of the group.

- Lots of problem solving.

- [Kathryn] Yeah, a little bit.

- Lots of improv, on the fly kind of stuff.

So you did this for several years, and unfortunately we can't cover every assignment you had.

But that's why I would encourage people to read the book, because there's a lot about the Kennedys, your time serving the Queen of Spain, I mean, it's like you went from being a child watching the Kennedys on TV to then later protecting them and standing next to them and being a part of their lives.

And it's a fascinating journey.

And I'm sure that must have been surreal to go from watching them on television to standing next to them.

- It was surreal.

That time was surreal.

I remember being in, and most folks that were born earlier than you that are in their late 60s or 70s or whatever will remember that day when John Kennedy was assassinated.

And it was when television with Walter Cronkite, and the reporting was relatively new with live coverage.

And we watched it with such broken hearts and such, I mean, football games were canceled.

The country shut down.

People wept in the streets.

The overwhelming grief was unbelievable.

And for me then to be transposed into the middle of that world, not a part of it; I was on the circumference of it making sure that they were safe and comfortable.

But the observation deck was fascinating.

It really was.

With the Kennedys, with the foreign dignitaries, working in the White House, I actually gave tours of the White House.

I did almost everything.

And learned exactly what Jacqueline Kennedy had done to redo the White House.

She'd raised money.

And I'd never been around, my mother was a wonderful teacher, but she never was a part of a fundraising effort.

And Mrs. Kennedy would call her friends and have parties and do all these things and raise millions of dollars to totally refurbish the White House into a house that was befitting the president.

And it would have a historical American history.

I remember Dolley, Dolley... Oh, come on.

- [Christine] Madison?

- Madison.

Yes.

Dolley Madison had, you could actually see burn marks on some, if you've taken a tour of the White House, there are burn marks from where the British burned the White House.

And as her last ditch effort, she cut the picture, it's very famous, and rolled up this painting rather of George Washington and took it with her.

And that painting still hangs in the East Room, in the ballroom, exactly where it was before.

But I had to learn the history of the house to be able to tell dignitaries and the president's guests and school children what happened in those rooms.

And at that time it was the only presidential home that was open to the public.

But the reason was is that it was agents and executive protective service and all that who were guarding everyone who was there.

I was not only supposed to tell a good story, but I was in charge of my group from a protection standpoint.

- Well, to jump ahead, to speak of telling a good story, I wanna make sure we have time to cover how you've parlayed all of this wonderful experience into a speaking career and what you're doing now.

- Well, when I left the Secret Service, my mother had seen me at a launch of the Apollo 14 blast off with the queen.

And mother of course, and my father, but they wanted me to find a husband.

And that was what you did in those days.

And she called my father and said, "Look at this.

Kathryn's sitting here with queens and people with guns and the Secret Service.

She'll never find a husband.

And she called my sister and said, "You need to find her a husband."

And she did.

And she lived in Corpus Christi.

And I dated this fellow, a psychiatrist from Corpus Christi, and we dated for some time.

And eventually, he actually proposed to me on the range while I was shooting Uzi submachine guns, testing, and hitting targets with great zeal.

And he called and proposed to me over the phone at the top of the range on the conning tower when the fella up there said, "Make your weapons safe.

Agent Clark has a phone call from Texas."

And he answers and he said, "Kate, Kate, I've got the ring.

Will you marry me?"

And I'm thinking, "Cecil, it's not a good time."

But the question I know had to do with how I ended up with a speaking career.

Well, I moved to South Texas and ran for city council because I love public service.

And I didn't make that.

I was the token woman, the first woman to run for council against one woman who'd become mayor.

And the news director at the ABC affiliate heard me do some conversations and he called me and he said, "Would you be afraid to host your own show?

Would you be afraid to talk to famous people?"

And I said, "No, I don't think so.

Do I have to keep them alive?"

Anyway, I became the morning host on the ABC affiliate for a number of years, 18 years.

And speaking became something that was fun for me.

So my husband had Alzheimer's in his last 10 years, and I became his bodyguard.

A wonderful man.

A terrible way to be.

But if you have a caregiver or someone in your family who can be with you, we had a Airstream trailer and two Cocker Spaniels and we drove the country.

And at night I would write.

And I decided that I could keep him happy and give him something to do.

I did all the driving, the backing up, the whole nine yards.

And then at night I would dictate stories to my co-writer, Deb Perry.

And she put them into the feeling of a book.

Writing a book is probably the hardest thing I've ever done because I had so much material.

But that's how the speaking and that's how the writing all came together.

And now I'm here and I hear we're doing quite well.

- We are.

And unfortunately we're out of time because, again, your story is so fascinating.

I would encourage people to read more about the book.

You can visit tamupress.com.

You can google Kathryn and find her website and how to book her for speaking engagements.

Again, that book is "Scared Fearless" by Kathryn Clark Childers.

That's all the time we have.

Thank you, Kathryn.

- Well, thank you.

It was fun.

- I Really appreciate it.

And thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you again soon.

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