Shhhh. . . .
Kathryn Clark Childers has a secret, with a capitol “S.”
Back when she was a young woman straight out of the University of Colorado, she took on one of the most dangerous jobs in the world and didn’t blink an eye.
Childers was a Secret Service agent for the U.S. Government.
In “Scared Fearless – An Unlikely Agent in the U.S. Secret Service,” Childers tells us all about her adventures as an agent in a hard-to-put-down book that rings more like a fairy tale than reality.
Of course, in the Corpus Christi area where she now makes her home, Childers is remembered as a TV news anchor for KIII-TV and as the editor of the iconic coffee table book “Snow – The South Texas Christmas Miracle 2004.” Oh, and as a clown known as “Sassy the Sheriff.”
But before that, Childers handled a .357 magnum as well as Annie Oakley operated her Winchester rifle in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows.
How Childers went from living the life of a farm girl in Utah, a shy high school student in Colorado and a prim and proper college co-ed during the volatile 1970s to a Secret Service agent is an exhilarating story. With gumption and tenacity, she became one of the first female Secret Service agents in the country in 1970 when five women were recruited to “try out.”
She went from the classrooms of the University of Colorado to tracking down counterfeiters and protecting the children of former President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
It is quite a story.
But it’s real.
Childers makes sure the reader understands that she was a “real” agent willing to give her life for her country and the people whom she was safe-guarding.
Her exploits were invigorating during an era which she describes in the chapter “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” She was one of the first women Secret Service agents in the United States.
She reveals some of her undercover assignments, the dangerous duties for the people she was charged to protect and the fancy state dinners she attended. But the life of a secret service agent is dangerous and her duties also involved ferreting out threats against the President of the United States.
She admits, she was scared.
While deadly serious about her assignments, Childers tells her story in a lighthearted manner, never taking herself too seriously and always making sure that readers realize she had a dangerous job that she lived to tell about.
She was a groundbreaker and she was a good one. Childers and the four other women who joined her in that first class of female Secret Service agents helped blaze a trail for future female agents. The ordeal is historic and no one can talk about the trials and tribulations of that experience as well as Kathryn Clark Childers.
