- PNC is proud to support, "Business Forward," where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in Central Illinois.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to "Business Forward," I'm your host, Matt George, joining me tonight, Kathryn Childers.

Kathryn was one of the first five women to be hired into the U.S. Secret Service.

She's also a phenomenal person that I had the pleasure of meeting through our mutual friend, Lee Graves.

Welcome, Kathryn.

- Hi there.

Is it cold enough for you up there in Illinois?

- It is cold.

This is typical Illinois weather right now, typical.

- Oh boy, I feel for you.

- You're in Texas.

- I'm in Texas.

(both laugh) But we just got one.

We had a freeze that took out all of our tropicals, so nobody's without some input with mother nature.

- Yeah.

Well, thank you for coming on.

- You bet, you bet.

- So in your book, "Scared Fearless," which is a great read by the way, you tell so many fascinating stories.

What do you mean by "Scared Fearless" or your mantra, "Do it scared?"

What do you mean by that?

- I thought about that yesterday because I did an interview with a morning host in San Antonio about the book.

And she said, "When was I most scared?"

And I thought about it last night and I think most of my life, I've been scared.

The difference in my life and what I was able to do and see and become involved with, is that I gave up being scared.

I just accepted it as another source of energy, another source of tears, another source of other things, but it was just part of what I was, and it goes way back to when I was a little kid.

I grew up in the Intermountain West, in a little tiny town called Pleasant Grove, Utah, and didn't have many women to look up to in terms of what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I had a horse and a dog, and then one of those French coats, and I decided, I wanted to grow up and be Annie Oakley.

But there weren't many options for little girls, the comic books certainly weren't about little girls being heroes or whatever.

And to cut that story short, I asked my dad, my father, if he would show me how to shoot a can off a post with an old 22 that we had.

And he said, "Well, girls don't really do that."

And I said, "Oh, come on, daddy.

I wanna be Annie Oakley."

And he said, "Well, you got the horse."

And I said, "No, but she was a sure shot.

I need to learn to shoot a can off a post."

So one day we walked down to the back foray, if you will, he put the can up on the post and he snug that old gun in my shoulder and I started to cry and I put down the gun, he took it out of my hand, and he said, "What's wrong?"

I said, "I don't know."

And this is always part of that discussion, I'm just scared.

Not defining what scared was, but I saw very quickly that if I went to that fallback position of being scared of something, I'd never tried, I'd never do it, I'd never know if I could do it.

And he was of a very kind man and always believed in me, even though I was a little girl and he said, "Well, then Kathryn, just do it scared."

And I had never forgotten that in my entire life because I had a number of opportunities that particularly in the late '60s and the early '70s, if you were a woman, you could easily fall back.

And it was very acceptable to just say, "Well, I would be scared to drive alone to Washington, or, "I would be scared to apply to the police department."

One, they wouldn't hire you anyway, but I would be scared to borrow money because they won't give me credit.

And what I learned was if you gave it up and moved forward, sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't, but that's been my mantra in everything I've ever done.

And I see now young women's eyes light up when I say, "What do you wanna do?"

Well, I wanna get my masters or I wanna get my MD in pediatrics.

I said, "Why don't you?"

Oh, I'm scared, I couldn't find the money.

I said, "Well, you will never know unless you ask.

You have opportunities now that we didn't."

But that's kind of where that came from.

- Well, that's pretty cool and an inspiration because I have four daughters and I always tell them it's girl power all the time.

(Kathryn laughs) - So when I saw you speak, it was a really cool night.

It was an interesting night, I won't go into exactly why I was cooking for you, but I ended up cooking for a group of 20 people.

And you were the speaker for that night in the crowd and it was just a joy of a night.

And you talked about in 1970 being kind of that pioneer, breaking that glass ceiling of being that female that got into that business of the U.S. Secret Service.

And I had chills when you were telling me that story, because you were talking about just in the story about your dad, but women didn't go into the Secret Service.

And here you are, getting in there, and now today there might be, I don't know if this is true, but there might be just many women.

I saw President Bush speak once, and there were more female Secret Service members than male.

So I just found it just interesting at what you did.

- Well, Matt, there I have a little over 500 women and we just celebrated the 50 years of when they hired the first five of us.

- [Matt] Wow.

- And at the time, it seemed so impossible because everybody in those days and people listening tonight, particularly in their late '60s or '70s that were born in the late '40s.

In other words I graduated college 1969 with a degree in elementary education, that surprises most.

They go, "Well, how did you become a female agent with a degree in elementary education?"

Well, I ended up being lucky, I ended up being, shall we say well rounded in that I had a lot of skills and picked up athletic skills and I had an athletic...

I was tall and I was fairly strong, and I had a lot of the attributes that you had to have.

And it was the time that no one was offering anything except teaching, maybe nursing, and secretarial.

The absolute business of women in 1969 when I graduated college, was being a secretary.

If you could type 60 words a minute, if you were really smart, if you could take shorthand, if you could absolutely pick up anything the boss in the higher levels needed you to do, then you were a good candidate for a job as a secretary.

Later they would even call directors of things, executive secretaries.

That's where we belonged, and people were relatively happy with that.

And then all of a sudden, this movement started of, oh my gosh.

If you've seen the movie "Hidden Figures," have you seen that, Matt?

- I have.

- Fabulous.

- [Matt] Okay.

- And the book talking about, they were reaching out to resources because we were in the space race with the Russians, and they were needing more computers.

The women, they weren't secretaries, I didn't realize this, they were actually called computers.

The women that did the math, that did the engineering and all, were highly needed in the program and they couldn't find very many, nor had they recruited very many, nor had many been trained.

And all of a sudden, the space race threw them into the mix of the business of getting to the moon that they were an additional aspect.

And the same happened with me with the Secret Service in that they were looking particularly for...

It was after, if you think about it right now, I'm sure I can't remember, I think it were 42 or something.

(both laugh) - I'll stick with 51, I think.

- 51 is good, but I remember when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, and we all do that were alive then.

And the world changed then, everything changed.

The Secret Service had to change because they had lost their president.

And they were looking for ways to expand the role of protection, to do a better job, to make more circles of protection, more abilities.

And that's when they decided to hire women.

And if you look in my book, in the beginning of my book, I give a lot of men credit, including Lyndon Johnson.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- Who passed so much legislation helping women become available for jobs on the federal level.

Richard Nixon who signed the act that women could carry firearms so that we could be hired.

They were beginning to realize that perhaps we were an underutilized source of beings, not just women, not men, but beings that could be a part of a business.

- And Lyndon Johnson, speaking of him, his right hand people were females.

He did a lot, like you said in that, and that's a pretty interesting thing.

So when you think of Secret Service... By the way, you gave me this pin.

So this is the Secret Service pin that you gave me that night.

- Yeah, I'm wearing mine today.

50 years of women.

- I appreciate it.

- But I'm glad you have it, thank you very much.

- Yeah, so when people think of Secret Service, they just think of the president most of the time, but it is more than that.

There's a huge part of counterfeiting and counterfeit operations, were you involved with those types of operations?

- Oh, yes.

And that wasn't what I really thought I was signing up for.

(both laugh) I had seen the day that Clint Hill, the agent who saved Jack O. Kennedy, and then later to be Onassis on the back of that limousine in Dallas after the assassination of her husband.

And as a junior in high school, I thought to myself, That is the brave thing I've ever seen, who is that man?

I can't imagine who that is.

Well, later, many recall and you may recall, we watched that whole weekend on everything that was happening on a grainy, old black and white TV.

And crazy, I graduated from college and a help in the business of pushing it forward shoulders I had a dean of women at the university that made a call to a Congressman and asked if he would interview me.

She said, "I think this woman needs to be in Washington and she would be a good aid for you."

And he did, and first thing he did was ask if I could type.

And that's a hand around the corner to get back to your story about, we did more than the president- - Right.

- Protective.

And then it was Clint Hill who interviewed me at 23 or 24, something like that, as a candidate, to be one of the first women.

And the first thing he said is, We first look for people who are worthy of trust and confidence without any exception.

People who can pass top secret security clearances, people who are willing to give their lives at all costs to protect leadership of our country.

And, here we finally got to the question, And protect the currency of the United States.

The currency, the counterfeit operations were so rampant after the Civil War that it was actually Abraham Lincoln who established the Secret Service to investigate how we could stabilize the currency because you had blue currency, red currency, south currency, I don't know, it was an absolute mess and there was no way to control it.

Later, they decided to add the protection of the president and that cadre to that treasury department group called the Secret Service, so they had both jobs.

And it's interesting, I don't know many other agencies that have this dual responsibility, but I've often heard in discussions and in classes we took that they felt like by alternating where one day you'd be protecting the president of the United States or in advance where you flew to Europe and did an advance for Air Force One and contingency of Secretary of State and the president, whatever, to fly into a war zone in Afghanistan.

All those kinds of things, and actually walking and work the zone with the people.

If you then were rotated off and became, shall we say an investigator.

If you were working counterfeit to buy counterfeit off the street with good money, is basically how you make a buy in counterfeit, to arrest the person for doing that because it's obviously against the law.

My role was, one of the few women, there were only five of us in the entire United States, where they would drop me in as an undercover agent for the agent who was buying the counterfeit.

If you've seen the movie, "Line in Fire," you'd have a better idea of that.

Those were the really frightening experiences for me.

I was scared all the time.

I was scared that I might mess it up and not protect the guy I was with.

I had to look like a lady of the evening in bright red lipstick and bow gum chewing, a little outta my character.

But I liked it, it was like that.

(both laugh) But I was his bodyguard I was also part of the act to buy the undercover- - Wow.

- Money.

But then the next day, they'd send me back to Washington and ask me if I had a long dress that I could wear to a state dinner that night, because they wanted me to protect the Queen of Spain.

(both laugh) I was off with the red lipstick and on with the gown, and then everybody wants to know where you carry your gun.

(Kathryn laughs) - Well, that was gonna be one of my questions.

But you mentioned the Queen of Spain, and you also...

Some of your assignments included Gandhi, Imelda Marcos, but I think when you really read your book, and look and read your bios, and just everything about you and the stories, you talk a lot about the Kennedy children.

I know you protected them, but did you just wake up sometimes and say, "Man, my dad, he's not gonna believe this."

Or, "Man, my parents would be so proud."

It's the Kennedy kids, right?

- Yes, the real, rooting tooting, honest-to-goodness Kennedy children.

The young man that stole everybody's heart on Pennsylvania Avenue in the little blue suit when he saluted his father.

One of the most charming young...

I only knew him when he was seven, eight years old, but always charming, always had a joke, always toss headed in a lot of fun.

First time I met him, he got off a plane when I was joining the assignment and he was wearing a blue blazer with Exeter, I think it was a school.

It was one of these things that roll badges on it, and it was covered with dog hair.

(both laugh) And it evidently been the pillow for their dog in the station wagon to take him to the airport.

He was very, shall we say, he wasn't trying to impress anyone, and the khakis and the blue blazer with the cuffs falling down on the side was kind of the look those days.

And boys went to prep school in New York, but he was a darling little boy.

And I protected them at Hyannis Port.

And the first time I was there I thought, well, this looks like even something in South Texas, kind of a simple little cottage where they would spend the summer, whatever.

And then I looked in the backyard and there was a Navy trainer airplane from probably World War I, and was just a tiny, little with canvas on the wings and whatever.

It was sitting in the back and the Navy, when JFK had been elected president, gave it to John as a play thing in the back of the Hyannis Port backyard.

(both laugh) So there were some things that were advantageous to have your daddy being president.

- [Matt] Right.

- But, I really spent more time with Caroline.

She was in her early teens, and again, it was my job to be undercover.

I got the nickname, "The pistol pack of nanny," which is kind of a funny one.

And there were a lot of men who thought, yeah, that's all they are.

She's just a pistol pack of nanny.

Well, there was a lot more to that than I think most people realized, because to stay in touch and in a, again, I keep talking about this circle of care, the circle of protection, and yet there also has to be an effort to give them their independence the best you can.

- [Matt] Wow.

- And maybe that's where my elementary education degree came in, I don't know (laughs) But I asked Clint Hill, he wrote the forward to my book, and I asked him, of all the women in the world how he happened to choose me.

Because he was the primary, I think he an agent named Jerry Parr, the Head of the Secret Service, the Director at the time.

But I had the feeling that Clint Hill, and since all of this was happening after the Kennedy assassination when they decided to add women, had a real active role in that.

And he said, "Well, one, we were looking for women who could do the job physically.

Maybe not breaking down the doors, but doing the thing."

And there, I could have broken down a door, I think the big 200 pounders were better at it than I was.

So I'd let them do it first and then if I had to, I could shoot because I was a better shot than they were.

- That's what I read, yes.

- In other words, I always looked at it as a remarkable teamwork.

But the thing that I brought, and I talked a lot to college kids and young people that are wanting to maybe be, let's say they wanna be in space engineering, which in many years ago wouldn't even have been a possibility or whatever they dream of being.

It's those extra things you've collect in your life that are off often left off a resume.

They're hobbies, they're special talents, they're special bits of knowledge that you're particularly good at, they're languages, they're abilities to... You watch the Olympics now, and the ability to repel or the ability...

The fellow that did the big air the other night and you think that he's worked his whole life for that one thing.

Well, it may be a skill that would develop him into something else, but I came with...

I was a pretty good expert tennis player with no place to play 'cause I didn't have women's teams, but I warmed up the guys.

I was an expert shot, one of the top in the state.

I was athletic, I had had a horse, I knew how to ride, and I spoke, limited, but I did speak German.

Those were things that when they were looking for a woman to add, particularly to the women's details, the first lady, the first daughters, foreign heads of state, like the queen and whatever, and particularly to Caroline, you needed to have skills that not only did you have a gun, a badge, a commission book, extra rounds of ammunition in your purse or your shoulder holster, but you had these other things that let you fit in, let you become a part of the system and be there for one reason, and that was to keep them safe, to keep them happy, and keep them, and this was always tongue and cheek, but from embarrassing the president or their mother.

That was just a sidebar.

- Wow, that's pretty cool.

Well, everybody wants to talk about what you did in the Secret Service, but you have so many different things going on, and that's what I thought was really interesting.

You're in the television and broadcasting business too, and one of the really cool things is reading about how many interviews, I mean, close to 20,000 interviews over your life time, including this.

I have to bring this one up because I love comedy, Lucille Ball.

So how was that?

- That was short.

- Okay.

(Kathryn laughs) - But the celebrity part if it, lemme lead up to that.

After I left the Secret Service, there really was no place for a marriage or children in those days.

They've certainly accommodated that now, but it became very clear to me, the longer I was there and how much I loved it and how much I would give up anything to be in this remarkable place in history, and making a difference and making a difference for women.

It's great to be first.

You're not always the best, but you hope you're not the last if you don't screw it up.

And that turned out to be true.

So then I fell in love with this Texan and I thought I'm gonna have to figure out something else to do, and it was a hard decision.

But I moved to Texas and got involved in community service.

My teacher had been Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, because I was assigned to the White House as one of the agents that escorted tours of all the upstairs and the downstairs at the White House.

And that was because I had an art degree, because I was a teacher.

And I watched what she had done in raising money from friends and doing nonprofit kinds of things to turn the White House into a living museum of the presidency.

So I had that skill.

I came to South Texas and I ran city council, 'cause I had really committed myself to try to make the world a better place.

And best thing that ever happened was I lost.

And I can remember thinking, where I was in the rifle range, they always said, "A winner never quits and a quitter never wins."

It was an old phrase or something.

But I thought, maybe I can do something else with this experience because I've gotten to know people in the region quite well.

And the local television station, remarkably there was a time in TV back in the mid '70s, where the FCC was requiring public service programming.

In addition to what you at PBS do, you had to have some public air service time on the networks, you had to have children's programming, you had to have educational programming.

And it was when Oprah had just her show and Phil Donahue in Chicago.

And the president of my company, my ABC affiliate, asked me if I would be interested in hosting a morning show.

And I said, "I've never seen a local morning show."

And he said, "Well, there aren't many."

- [Matt] Yeah.

- "But would you be afraid to speak to important people, scared?

Would you be scared to do live every day when things go wrong?"

And I said, "Scared, no.

I gave that up."

And I said, "Do I have to keep them alive?"

- Right.

- "If all we have to do is talk, I'm good, I'm good."

- Kathryn, you're great at that.

And I'm telling you, when we met, it was just a special night and I wanna have you back on because that might be the fastest 30 minutes I think we've ever gone through.

- Oh, are we done?

- We're coming to the end.

I don't want it to end, but we're coming to the end.

I do wanna say this, thank you for everything that you do and you are out of all the credits that you have.

The one that is your best, is you're a great storyteller and you do a lot for charity too.

So thank you for coming on the show, we appreciate it.

- Thank you.

And it was fun hosting with you.

We made a lot of money for Boys and Girls Clubs that night, I think.

- We did, and we'll do it again, so- - And if they don't know, you're a great cook.

- Thank you.

Well, that's nice of you.

Thank you.

Well, thanks for coming on, and this is another episode of "Business Forward."

(upbeat music) - Thank you for tuning into "Business Forward," brought to you by PNC.

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