by Colin Powell
I have nothing but praise for crew members, flight attendants, gate agents, baggage handlers, porters, mechanics, and all the others who, under lots of pressure, keep us moving.
I go back and forth to New York regularly on the Acela, the closest train we have in this country to high speed. It is fast, comfortable, and dependable . . . and there’s no TSA. I travel business class, but Alma always goes first class because of the service and the sandwich. (Grrr.) Many of my friends still fly the shuttle. But heaven help your schedule if there’s bad weather somewhere over the East Coast, clotting up air travel from Maine to Key West.
On the ground, for the sake of efficiency and comfort, I always insist on a professional limo service and an ordinary sedan. I am too old to crawl into one of those stretch limos kids use for high school proms. I am not stuck up. I’ve just had too many experiences where a client, intent on chatting with me, will borrow a new car from a local dealer, and then, distracted and erratic, try to drive, talk, and figure out all the new knobs and switches.
I am not picky about hotels. Any will do, from a Days Inn to a Ritz-Carlton. But I avoid hotels where there’s too much service. I don’t need staff constantly bugging me to explain how to adjust the thermostat or turn down the bed. I don’t need to rattle around large suites. When I sign in, I use an assumed name. Until writing this book I used Edward Felson, from, of course, one of my favorite movies, The Hustler.
My desires are mostly simple: Please give me a cheap clock radio; not one that needs printed instructions and plays my iPod. I am old; please make the numbers red and no less than three inches high. Get the cheapest one you can find, and tell people they are free to take it.
Give me a closet big enough to hang something in and not already filled up with a safe, iron, ironing board, and that silly folding suitcase rack, left over from the days of ocean liner suites.
Please, oh please, don’t get fancy shower controls with handles that give you no clue how to turn it, push it, or pull it on and off. I only need one showerhead, not a decontamination sprinkler system. Put the Jacuzzi in the Honeymoon Suite.
I haven’t really found a pressing need to have a television set or phone in the bathroom. Nor do I need a scale. And I’m really frightened by those padded and heated Japanese toilet seats in upscale hotels. The complex control panel suggests other things the toilet will do, but I have been afraid to try them and doubt the need.
Here’s a biggie: please, please, put large print on the shampoo and conditioner tubes and bottles. Is it asking too much to let us know in a readable font that we’re putting shampoo and not hand cream on our heads?
A simple coffeemaker, please. I don’t need to grind coffee beans. This doesn’t apply in Las Vegas, where they generally don’t give you a coffee machine in your room. They want you downstairs pulling the slots while you wait your turn in the coffee shop line.
Keep the TV simple. I don’t want to use it to go on the Internet or play games. Push a wrong button on the remote and you have to call room service to straighten it out.
Please cut the number of bolsters, cushions, and all the other stuff piled on beds that make it difficult to find pillows and have no functional purpose beyond encouraging female guests to do the same thing at home. Guys don’t get this.
Lamp switches should be at the base of the lamp. Don’t make me have to follow the wire down to a switch near the floor, or burn my hand feeling up toward the bulb.
Finally, we live in the information age. Please don’t make us crawl under desks looking for a wall outlet for our iPhones, laptops, iPads, and other electronic gizmos that need feeding.
Otherwise, I enjoy traveling. I am always happy to be out where I can observe all the myriad varieties of Americans. And I love being on the speaking circuit, or in schools, Boys and Girls Clubs, charity events, and all the other wonderful activities going on around our nation. They keep us rolling forward.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Gifts
As you rise in rank in the Army, you pick up large numbers of plaques and certificates commemorating your various units and awards, and you accumulate large numbers of signed, framed photos from senior officers and other officials. These are displayed prominently on “me walls” in offices and home dens. After a few years, there’s no need for paint or wallpaper; you’ve got enough plaques and photos to do the job.
By the time I became a colonel, I had quite a collection, more than any wall could hold. A charming older brigadier general, about to retire, frequently dropped in to my office. Because he was always a source of wise advice, I asked him what he was going to do with all his plaques when he retired.
“Colin, my wife and I have designed a beautiful log cabin in the Shenandoah Mountains. We plan to live there most of the time, enjoying the beauty of the mountains. And on cold winter nights, we will huddle on the couch in front of the fireplace, drink hot toddies, and throw the plaques in, one by one. Our kids won’t want them.”
Well, I ended up saving most of mine, now mostly housed in my archive collection at the National Defense University in Washington. Also at the archive and here at home are large collections of glass, Lucite, stone, and brass objets d’art. The most memorable of these is a dark slab of granite with my image and a dedication lasered into it. So help me, the thing looks like a pet’s headstone. I am sure the folks who gave it to me had it made by a tombstone maker.
Military challenge coins are another popular gift, usually embossed with the crest and motto of the unit, and often with the name of the commander. Every 101st Airborne Division trooper was expected to carry a 101st Division challenge coin. Whenever or wherever in the world you met another trooper from the 101st, he would “challenge” you with his coin. If you didn’t have yours, you had to buy him a drink and suffer deep embarrassment. I carried my 101st coin in my wallet for decades, until a little round spot on my bottom started to become ulcerous.
In the old days, challenge coins were given out sparingly, but sometime in the 1980s the tradition went viral. Many Army guys have dozens of them. Every unit and every senior leader has challenge coins; they spread them around to everyone they meet at any opportunity. Over time they have become more elaborate and more expensive, and more and more junior leaders and offbeat units have been passing them out. I’ve gotten personalized coins from a commissary officer, and even from a young sergeant who was a sedan driver. The practice has even spread to the civilian world. Cabinet officers and other civilian appointees give them out.
I started to push back when my coin collection went into the hundreds. It seemed like too much of an ego trip for the givers and a questionable use of funds (most, but not all, are paid for by the government). On the other hand, the troops love them and are eager to receive them, so the tradition has grown. I gave out challenge coins when I was Chairman and Secretary of State. I still have a small stash that I give out sparingly to, say, recovering GIs at Walter Reed Hospital, who seem to deeply appreciate them.
As I moved into more senior positions in government and traveled the world more frequently, gifts from foreign leaders started to pour in. Naturally, they placed a demand on me to respond. Congress constrains us not to spend more than about three hundred dollars on the gifts we give and, darn it, not to keep gifts worth more than three hundred dollars, as determined by appraisers in the department and the General Services Administration. My protocol office was creative within this limit in finding Americana gifts for our foreign guests and other visitors.
On one of his visits, my dear friend Igor Ivanov, foreign minister of the Russian Federation, gave me a bottle of vodka in the shape of an AK-47 assault rifle. Since someone in some office somewhere decided it was worth more than three hundred dollars, I couldn’t keep it or drink it. Don’t ask me how they figured that out. Sad to say, it is probably now stashed away in some government warehouse.
Clocks, watches, cufflinks, and pen sets have always been the gifts I like best to receive. I now have lots of clocks, watche
s, and pens, and I enjoy them all.
But then there are the portraits. Over the years, I have received several dozen portraits of me from various countries. We have a display of the better ones in our exercise room at home. It has always fascinated me that the way artists paint my face is a near-sure giveaway of where they came from. An artist cannot avoid adding his culture to your image. Thus, in a very excellent portrait by a famous Japanese painter, I bear a striking resemblance to Admiral Yamamoto. The one on Egyptian papyrus looks strikingly like Hosni Mubarak. The one from Romania kind of makes me into Dracula. The artist from the Detroit NAACP didn’t think I looked black enough, so he broadened my nose and thickened my lips. The two paintings from Bermuda are both pastels, and oh so very mellow. Only thing missing is Jimmy Buffett playing “Margaritaville.” I don’t recall what we did with the one done in birdseed. Every time my staff moved it, they left behind a trail of birdseed.
Russian President Gorbachev once gave me a beautiful shotgun. Because I wanted to keep it, I paid my government $1,200 to buy it back from the American people.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, I got lots of guns, bayonets, assault knives, and binoculars from leaders of the former Warsaw Pact countries. It was one way for them to unload their inventories and give gifts at no expense. Even my sharp-eyed appraisers couldn’t pretend these things were worth more than three hundred dollars.
My French colleague Dominique de Villepin used to give me bottles of French red wine. He insisted red wine was the elixir of health and urged me never to drink white. For some strange reason, those bottles all broke before I could turn them in for appraisal.
Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy loved to give American men gorgeous ties made by his favorite tailor and tie-maker. Too bad so many of them were stained and didn’t make it to the appraiser. He once gave me a high-tech watch that doubled as an emergency homing device for pilots in the event of a crash. You pulled a wire antenna out of the side of the watch. I turned it in.
Aware of my service in Germany and my fondness for German beer in those old flip-top bottles with porcelain caps, Joschka Fischer, my German counterpart and the leader of the Green Party, brought me a case of fine German beer. On his next trip, I scratched my head to come up with a gift for him. Since he was the leader of the Green Party, I gave him a case of the empties to return for the deposit. But since he loved to cook out, I also gave him a set of barbecue tools.
President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, a very gracious host, gave a spectacular luncheon in his palace in the capital, Astana. Though the vodka toasts flowed freely, I managed to successfully defend our nation’s honor. Well beforehand I had been alerted to one of his habits: if he liked a guest, he would take off his watch and give it to him. The guest was then expected to give the president his own watch in return. After lunch, we stumbled into a small elevator to head downstairs. There he took off his watch and presented it to me. I then took off my watch and proudly, with a hug, gave it to him. He got a Timex, I didn’t.
Arab officials, especially from Gulf nations, are exceptionally generous. Their gifts are normally way, way over the three-hundred-dollar limit. They know we have to turn the gifts in, but they can do no less. It is a sign of their friendship and respect, and it’s deeply embedded in their culture. The gifts were accepted in that spirit. I ended up with quite a collection of Arab daggers. Some were quite simple, and I kept them. Others, which were encrusted with jewels, were turned in.
One night in 2004, a very close Arab friend overheard Alma remark that her favorite car had been a 1995 Jaguar that I had long since sold. Shortly after I retired in 2005, an identical, completely restored 1995 Jaguar showed up in front of the house. Since I was no longer a government employee, I was legally able to keep it, and I did for a while, but regifted it just before the Washington Post got wind of it and wrote a story.
After leaving State, I continued to receive gifts from foreign governments. One Arab nation came very close to presenting me with a beautiful rug the week before I stepped down. But our sharp-eyed ambassador suggested to them that perhaps they should have it cleaned one more time and send to me after I retired. That lad will go far.
Finally, during my time as Chairman about twenty years ago, I was seated next to Arnold Schwarzenegger at a benefit dinner. “How do you stay in shape?” he asked.
“I jog,” I told him, “but that’s getting harder as I get older.”
Several days later, a LifeCycle exercise bike showed up at the house. I used it for years, until more modern models came along. I still have Arnold’s original bike in my basement. Since it is not something you can regift or easily dispose of, I’ll let my kids figure out its destiny after I am gone.
Notwithstanding the fun I’ve had writing about exchanging them, we display in our home many wonderful gifts I’ve received over the years. Some are expensive, most not. They give us joy and fond memories of people and places all over the world we were privileged to visit and come to know well. And it gave us the opportunity to present to foreign friends gifts that convey our American spirit and tradition.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Best and Worst
I am often asked what was my best or worst job, which of the presidents I worked for was best or worst, or who was my most important role model. Did I have a single best mentor? What was my greatest single achievement? What was my greatest single failure?
I don’t answer those questions. To single out one success or one individual is to diminish many others that may be no less important. To single out your worst failure or least favorite person will surely make news . . . and your obituary writer’s day.
I have a deeper reason for not answering. No matter how significant or life-changing your greatest hit or miss might be, neither even begins to define all of who you are. Each of us is a product of all our experiences and all our interactions with other people. To cite calculus, we are the area under the curve.
Being born into a good family might be the best thing that ever happened to me. But it was only a start. My parents were wonderful, but so was my parish priest, my accomplished older sister, my aunts and uncles, my teachers, my neighbors, and my buddies in the street. I was also shaped by the bullies in the street, the indifferent teachers, the people who looked at me and saw a colored kid who deserved to be treated as inferior on that basis alone.
The most influential people in my life will never show up on a Google search. They touched me long before anybody even dreamed of personal computers, the Internet, or search algorithms.
There was my first boss, the immigrant Russian Jewish toy store owner. “Finish your education, Colin,” he told me. “Your future is not to work at my store.”
There was Sammy Fiorino, whose shoe repair shop was just around the corner. Sammy taught me poker, how to get along with the neighborhood cops, and never to play poker with a man named Doc.
There was Miss Ryan, my high school English teacher, the only teacher whose name I can remember. She threatened and terrified me into working harder in her class than I’d ever worked at school. The English lessons she drilled into me were one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received.
There was Colonel Harold C. Brookhart, my professor of military science at CCNY and a West Pointer. Colonel Brookhart nurtured me along through my early, less than polished attempts to do things the Army way. In my senior year, he sent me up to West Point for a three-day stay so I would be exposed to the principles and standards of the military caste and get a personal taste of my contemporaries. And in 1958, when I was about to set off for Fort Benning, he cautioned me with the best intentions not to expect Georgia to be like New York for a young black man.
There was Captain Miller in Germany, my first company commander. One day while out on maneuvers I realized my .45-caliber pistol was missing from my holster. Losing a weapon is serious business. I dutifully called him on the radio to report this horrible failure. When I got back to our camp site, he was waiting for me at the entra
nce. He handed me the pistol. “Local village kids found it,” he told me, as a cold chill came over me. “They fired off one round. We heard it and got down there before they fired off another round and hurt someone. For God’s sake, son, don’t ever let that happen again.”
He scared me to death. But when I checked the pistol I saw it hadn’t been fired. In fact, it had never really been lost. Somebody had found it next to my cot, where it had fallen out of my holster as I had raced out of the camp. Miller had thought up a way to teach a promising kid lieutenant a lesson he’d never forget.
As a young black soldier I looked for inspiration to the few senior black officers then in the Army, and back in history to the black soldiers who had always served the nation proudly, even if the nation would not serve them. I had an obligation to stand on their shoulders and reach higher. I had to let my race be someone else’s problem, never mine. I was an American soldier who was black, not a black American soldier.
Along the way there were many people I did not get along with and many who doubted my ability and potential. I learned from them to accept that they may be right and if so, to fix myself and keep moving on.
As I became more senior, more senior individuals entered my life, saw something in me worth using, reached out to guide me and move me along, and often pointed out weaknesses and problems. They all influenced me. I dare not begin to name them or this book would become much too long.
My focus here has been on early influences, because the shaping process begins in the early years. I often tell audiences that it begins the moment an infant hears her mother’s voice and knows it is her mother’s voice. It is that voice which speaks the language the infant will speak. It is that person who will make a remarkable bond of love with that child. It is that nurturing person who will begin imparting education, character, values, happiness, and kindness in the heart and mind of that child. In those early days, weeks, and months, the mother is the most important person whom that child knows. If she is not there or does not perform that role, the child has a much tougher road to travel.