by Jerry Parr
It made me believe that the Service, just by our presence, stopped that assassination attempt. Events such as these are unknown and uncelebrated victories.
On the night of the attempt on Reagan’s life, Ed Hickey had said something to me as I sat in the White House mess eating a very late dinner. “I think you saved the president’s life,” he stated. It hadn’t crossed my mind.
I did what every agent is trained to do. I was blessed with quick reflexes, confidence, and good judgment. I knew my purpose. But I was in no way alone in saving the president’s life. If it weren’t for Tim McCarthy’s courage in facing the assailant and spreading out his body, the bullet he took would have hit me or the president. The armor on the car and window stopped bullets. The hospital trauma and surgical teams had deep experience with serious gunshot wounds. The nurses were outstanding caregivers. The Secret Service training helped us all respond instantly and appropriately. The president’s own robust constitution saved him. Saving the president was a team effort.
The press was very kind. They were calling me a hero on TV as soon as they identified me. Maybe the respect I’d always shown them came back to me. They could have called me something else. After all, a president was wounded and nearly died on my watch.
I wondered whether the Service would be criticized for putting a fifty-year-old in charge of the PPD. But a later commentator mentioned that my age may have been an advantage. A younger man might have hesitated to manhandle a president, he said, and the slightest hesitation would have been fatal. Because the White House was known to be secure, a less experienced person would almost surely have taken him there instead of to an unsecured hospital.
The Reagans never blamed me or the Service. From the very beginning, Mrs. Reagan repeatedly thanked me and still gives me a hug whenever our paths cross.
On April 28 Reagan addressed Congress, praising Tim McCarthy and the other wounded men. Four of us—Tim, Dennis McCarthy (who disarmed Hinckley), Ray Shaddick, and I—received awards from the US Senate and the Treasury Department, as well as the Presidential Rank Award. We were named “Top Cops of the Year” and featured on the cover of Parade magazine. I made a TV documentary for a weekly show called Top Cops, in which President Reagan introduced me, praising my work.
I have been thanked many times over, but my greatest reward is that Ronald Reagan lived twenty-three more years. Shortly after his recovery, Mother Teresa paid a visit. According to Mike Deaver, who was present, she told the president, “God has a plan for you. You were spared for a purpose.” She confirmed his own belief that he was spared to be a peacemaker. Among his achievements would be a lasting nuclear arms reduction treaty negotiated with Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union in 1987. The Berlin Wall fell ten months after Reagan left office, and the Cold War ended two years later with the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union.
And surrounding it all, embracing it all—the training, technology, human courage, medical skills, the president’s personal strength, and his later achievements—was the grace of God. The grace of God.
Later I asked the president, “Did you know you were an agent of your own destiny?” I told him about seeing Code of the Secret Service many times as a little boy and being inspired to become an agent like Brass Bancroft when I grew up. He smiled. “It was one of the cheapest films I ever made.”
On the first anniversary of the near-fatal attack, I dreamed of being alone in a small rowboat far out in the ocean. The boat was about ten feet long with no oars. The sea was calm when the dream began. There was no wind, but I could smell the salty air I remembered so well from my childhood visits to Miami Beach.
As I sat alone, I could see an empty horizon. There was no telltale glow of city lights in any direction.
Then there appeared to be a dark cloud bank on the horizon. I assumed this indicated a possible thunderstorm, and rain and lightning would be in the offing, maybe soon.
The bank loomed closer. I began to sense that it was coming toward me and my boat slowly but inexorably—and I had no oars. As I pondered what to do, I realized the dark mass moving toward me was not a cloud; it was water, a gigantic wave from one end of the horizon to the other. This was what we’d call today a “rogue” wave, somehow created by fresh winds or an undersea earthquake. I felt totally helpless to do anything. I was afraid but could do nothing. I just had to ride it out.
The wave towered over me. As it got closer and closer, I could feel its immense power begin to lift me higher and higher.
I rose up the wave’s silent side. This mass of dark water carried me higher to its crest. Then, at the crest, the water was calm again. There was no trough. There was stillness now and only the sound of water lapping the sides of the boat.
I woke up.
I continued to process this dream for a long time. It represented an overwhelming experience . . . a rendezvous with death had been escaped.
Perhaps it merely meant I had ridden out this crisis: the president was saved, and life went on for me. This was certainly true. The president lived for many more years, passing away in 2004 at age ninety-three. But I think there was a higher understanding.
My own reflection seems to say, You were lifted by the event so you could see your entire life more clearly. God was lifting you up.
A few years later I had lunch with Dr. Shervert Frazier, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He said my dream put the whole event together for me. I have never dreamed about that day since. But I never forget the relief and peace I felt at the crest of that wave.
CHAPTER 10
FROM THE WHITE HOUSE TO THE POTTER’S HOUSE
These are the words which came to Jeremiah from the LORD: Go down now to the potter’s house, and there I shall tell you what I have to say.
JEREMIAH 18:1-2, REB
1985–1989
As the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” filled the air, I adjusted my mortarboard once more and looked for Carolyn sitting near the front. We connected; she was looking back at me. She smiled and gave me a thumbs-up.
I was easy to spot. At fifty-six, I was one of the oldest graduates lined up on a beautiful spring day, May 16, 1987, about to receive a master’s degree in pastoral counseling from Loyola University of Baltimore. I stood out for another reason. My mortarboard was a little different from the other master’s candidates: I’d received it in Illinois a week before from Eureka College, President Reagan’s alma mater, when I gave their commencement speech. Eureka had named me an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.
I had stayed with President and Mrs. Reagan for a year after the shooting, at their request. They wanted the stability of being with people they knew and trusted. And I felt that the agents protecting Reagan needed time to process the events of March 30 and to institute new procedures to prevent a similar attack in the future.
Nobody wanted me to leave. But protection is a young person’s job. I was fifty-one. Like an aging athlete, I wanted to leave protection while I was still at the top of my game.
In 1982 I had been elevated to assistant director (Protective Research) of the US Secret Service. I moved from the White House to the director’s office at Headquarters on G Street, a few blocks from the White House.
My assistant director peers were Larry Schaefe (Investigations), Ed Pollard (Protective Operations), Steve Garmen (Administration), and Bob Snow (Public Affairs). Together with Deputy Director Bill Barton and Director John Simpson, we seven set policy and led the US Secret Service from 1982 until I retired in 1985. We met in the director’s conference room once a week or more often in an emergency.
My responsibilities included the Inspection, Technical Security, Liaison, and Intelligence divisions—and managing a $40 million budget. Though I knew almost nothing of computers, I took on the mission of bringing the Service from the file card system used since the administration of President Grant into the digital age. Fortunately, I knew how to recognize the people who had the skills I lacked. Chief engin
eer Pat Shambach and my deputy Ed Walsh deserve a lot of credit for making me look good.
Even though my work responsibilities were weighty, I traveled less, and for the first time in years I actually had some discretionary time. I read more, prayed more, and thought about my future. By 1985 I had twenty-seven years in government service, including four in the Air Force. I was over fifty and eligible to retire. Many agents left for big-paying jobs in corporate security: oil companies, financial institutions, even professional football.
But neither money nor job titles nor perks appealed to me. My pension would be ample, and Carolyn’s career had taken off. She was now special counsel to the assistant attorney general (Tax Division) at the Justice Department. And I sensed that even bigger things were in store for her. Though we still had private school and college costs to come for Trish, we’d be okay financially.
I had been called into the Secret Service as a way to nurture and protect life. Now I sensed God had another mission for me. But I wasn’t sure exactly how that would look. As on that day twenty-three years before in the Vanderbilt coffee shop, I was again standing on the threshold of a major life shift.
My last day in the Secret Service was February 16, 1985. I felt a mixture of sadness and relief. I had really loved being an agent. I also loved the men and women who worked with me. I had met world leaders and traveled to every continent but Antarctica. In some ways I had lived a storybook life. That little boy riding on his dad’s shoulders in Miami could never have imagined such a life might lie ahead. At the same time, for decades I had performed in a public fishbowl under tremendous pressure. I needed a change. I was ready to pursue my new call to serve God and others.
I filled out the final paperwork, cleaned out my desk, and walked over to the White House to say good-bye to President and Mrs. Reagan. As she always had since March 30, 1981, Mrs. Reagan greeted me with a warm hug. As the president extended his hand, he asked, with a twinkle in his eye, “You’re not going to throw me over the couch, are you?”
As soon as I heard about Loyola’s master’s program in pastoral counseling, I thought, This is the Lord’s leading. The combination of “pastor” and “counseling” resonated with my spirit. Over the years I had grown more firmly rooted in God’s love and care, and I wanted to share that love with others. I knew I had a gift for listening. I could sense when people were hurting and connect deeply with them. Because of my working-class background—and my career in the halls of power—I was comfortable with almost everyone. I had seen pain in my mom and dad, in my stepfather Jack Cox, in winners and losers—even in presidents—and knew it could show up anywhere. I had experienced my own dark night of the soul.
And Jim Connolly’s death continued to haunt me.
So in September 1983, while I was still assistant director, I started to attend night classes at Loyola. Most of my classmates were priests, nuns, or Protestant clergy. Jack Callope (later a monsignor), Fay Buford, and Mary Grealy became my study partners and close friends. We prayed for each other, learned from each other, and practiced on each other.
I had to postpone one requirement for graduation until I retired because it couldn’t all be done on weekends and evenings: one thousand hours of supervised clinical practice at Affiliated Community Counselors in Rockville, Maryland. My supervisor was Hilda Weisman, PhD, who had studied under Harry Stack Sullivan. She was a great teacher. With the clients’ permission, I would tape-record my sessions, and Hilda would listen and make comments. She’d say, “Jerry, you’re talking too much.”
“But what am I supposed to do when they stop talking?”
“Then you listen to the silence. Don’t be in a hurry. Wait. If they don’t start talking again, say, ‘Tell me more.’ There’s always more.”
Hilda also said, “Don’t be afraid to take on the client’s pain.” From what I was learning in class, this was heresy. I protested, “But what about countertransference?”
Hilda just looked at me and asked, “How do you think they get well?” Hilda, a Jew, helped me understand what the Bible means when it says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”[83] Or the ancient Christian prayer, “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world.” Hilda was saying that to take on another’s pain, to ache with him or her, is a form of divine healing.
As an intern counselor at Affiliated Community Counselors, I wasn’t paid. Our clients were too poor to engage a private therapist, but even so they paid ten dollars for an hour session on the theory that they should be expected to contribute to their own healing. They suffered from many kinds of mental illness: depression, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorders. I prayed for them all. And I almost always found something to love in each one.
In my write-ups I had to choose a diagnosis from a book called The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), but I hated labeling people. Everyone was unique, and nobody neatly fit a category. Whatever the label, I tried to meet people where they were and help them move to a better place. I believed healing was possible and tried to give them hope.
For my thesis I chose to write about Vicki (not her real name). She was fortyish, overweight, and full of self-loathing. She was very angry. She said she’d hated school ever since fourth grade. She felt stupid and kept failing. I initially diagnosed her “borderline personality disorder” because nothing really fit, but one day I had a flash of insight. Handing her a book, I said, “Vicki, could you read that to me?”
She blushed with shame, and her eyes brimmed. “I can’t read!” she whispered.
My own Trish had been diagnosed with a form of dyslexia when she was five years old, and I remembered the tears she spilled on the page where a specialist had her write the alphabet. My heart went out to Vicki.
“I think you have a learning disorder,” I said. “It’s called dyslexia. Cher has it. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller had it—he couldn’t read until he was twelve years old. Lots of successful people have it. You are not stupid. We’ll find you a teacher who can help you learn to read.”
Now Vicki was sobbing, but the tears were of relief and joy. “There’s a name for what I have? You mean I’m not crazy?”
“No, Vicki. You’re not crazy. You never were.”
Less than a month after I graduated, Carolyn and I moved from Potomac, Maryland, to the Tenleytown section of northwest Washington, DC. Our kids parasailed into new adventures: Kimberly to Syracuse University and a career in advertising; Jennifer to the University of Maryland and, in 1986, to marry and start a home of her own with Richard Turek, whom she met at Heritage Christian Church and had loved since she was fifteen years old; and Trish to Purnell, a girls’ boarding school in New Jersey horse country. Maintaining our large house just for the two of us no longer seemed worth the effort, and the daily two-hour round-trip commute to downtown DC had lost any charm it ever had.
After I retired, President Reagan appointed Carolyn to a fifteen-year term on the United States Tax Court. She was sworn in November 25, 1985, the second woman tax judge appointed in twelve years. While my White House connections undoubtedly helped, Carolyn came highly recommended by people I had nothing to do with: two commissioners of Internal Revenue, judges from both parties, two senators, and the Tax Section of the American Bar Association. Her work on illegal tax shelters had drawn praise from US attorneys across the country as well as lawyers who represented taxpayers. They wanted to see the bogus shelters shut down. Carolyn was becoming as well known in her field as I was in mine, and I was certain she’d make a good judge.
During our first couple of years in Potomac we’d continued to go back and forth to Heritage Christian Church. But when our pastor, Dick Miller, left for California, we looked for a Christian community in Potomac. We went to church, but until we moved to DC, we had never found one that felt like home.
One snowy night in January 1988 Carolyn and I nervously scanned the faces of sixteen strangers gathered around a table on the third floor of Christ Hou
se, a hospital for homeless men. We had signed up for Gordon Cosby’s class in Christian growth after hearing him preach the week before at our first visit to the Church of the Saviour in DC. We had no idea what we were in for.
“We’ll introduce ourselves,” Gordon began. “But don’t tell us what you do or where you’re from. We’ll learn that soon enough. Just tell us your name and your deepest pain.”
Gordon was not smiling. In fact, he looked grim. He was deadly serious.
One woman stood up and said, “I can’t possibly tell you my deepest pain.” She left.
Grateful to be halfway around the circle and not at the beginning, I wondered what people would say. The first woman said, “My husband left me with four kids to raise. He wanted a younger woman. I can’t forgive him.”
Neither Gordon nor anyone else said a word. We just absorbed it in silence.
The next person said, “I watched my beautiful twenty-seven-year-old sister die from cancer. I keep asking myself, Where was God?”
A young man said, “I’m in my third year of seminary and have lost my faith.”
When my turn came, I said, “My mother is in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. We tried to keep her at home, but it was impossible. My daughter Trish is the only one who can bear to go with me to visit her. It’s very hard.”
I had no idea what Carolyn would say. Later she told me she’d planned to say something like “Well, thank God everything is okay with me. I have a good job, a loving husband, healthy kids. I’m grateful to be so blessed.” She wasn’t in touch with any pain.
But what came out of her mouth, unbidden, was “I have a broken relationship with my oldest child.” She was shocked to hear herself. She had never voiced how much this hurt her, and how helpless she felt to fix it. But I knew it was true.