Meeting Colin Powell

I did meet Gen. Colin Powell when he was first Secretary of State. It was before 9/11 and I think he was still enjoying himself in the job. The story goes that his elevator was next to what was then the door to the info center, which was kind of a computer help desk. He was returning to his office early in the lunch hour, probably just getting back from some meeting, and observed an elderly black woman coming into the Infocenter to see her daughter. Three or four minutes later he came back down to meet her.

All the managers were at lunch and missed it, but when he came in it got pretty exciting. At the time, I was back in the server room with the acting manager, Mr. Robert Clause who looked like Santa Clause and was soon to retire.

One of the women came back ecstatic: "He's here! He's here! I can't believe he's here!" She continued this exclamation for quite some time after turning to alert folks in another room. Having no idea what she meant (had Jesus joined us?) Bob and I went to investigate. We were about knocked over by a tall, young black worker coming the other direction who quickly opened his locker, in the intervening hallway, and pulled out Colin Powel's book.

"He's here, I'm going to ask him to sign this."....

When I got into the main room of the InfoCenter ahead of the young man. It was suddenly quiet.

"Where is he?" I asked a woman standing against the back wall.

She pointed.

A couple of rows up, Colin Powel had knelt in the aisle next to a young worker, her mother seated on the other side, and she was explaining to him what it was that she did at her computer. No sooner did I spot him than the silence was broken by the woman returning from the server room: "It's him. It's him. I can't believe it's him." The young man and his book quickly passed her and got into position.

The exclamations of the excited lady could not go unnoticed. Secretary Powel looked up at her and said, "Chill, woman." This brought a lot of laughter and he became aware that some thing of an audience was growing. As he signed the book (I marveled at that young man's preparedness for this moment), another woman asked if she could get her camera. As she ran for her locker, we heard Secretary Powell say, "Hurry up the President might be calling me."

I'm getting nervous. I start whispering to folks, as I'm lining up to get my picture taken next to the Secretary, "I hope that Lynn and Carey don't come back and catch us goofing off." People look at me to see how long it's going to take me to figure out how silly that thought is. It is hard to get in trouble when you're goofing off with the number-one boss.

That was a very memorable moment. He was still everybody's hero in those days. How I wish that in the early days leading up to Iraq he might have awakened to the need of the country, not only for good soldiers and leaders, but occasionally its need for patriots with critical thinking and principles un-tethered from other worldly values and undaunted by the need for personal sacrifice.

Easy for me to say, but hard for anyone to do.