Clint Hill – Five Presidents

Thoughts

I’ll start with this, I am not a big fan of history or any history books. While I understand it’s important to learn from it, history was never in my top 10 favorite subjects or almost on any list for that matter. I think what stuck out to me on this book was the narrative being told from the secret service point of view, and it’s a 1st hand account from someone who dealt with five presidents. It seemed interesting enough and decided it might be worth the read. *Disclaimer – it was.

Clint Hill takes you on a personal journey as the best way I can describe it. Everything that he writes and how he writes seems like we are right there with him. He’s warm and respectful when he goes through and recalls each of his stories. He was just an average guy growing up in the USA and worked his way up through the ranks. Aside from the personal stories with JFK, Nixon, and all the countries that he visited. One of the more intriguing parts of this book, deals with detailing the amount of time away from his family. I don’t think that many of us will ever understand the secret service’s shift schedule and the demands of that job. How much you sacrifice for such a prestigious position.

All that being said, I ate through it over the course of a round trip plane ride. I easily could have read through 500 more pages to read anything that Clint had experienced. Living such a full life, being sometimes the right hand man to many president’s and other political officials, and spouses as well. His time with Mrs. Kennedy was the most intriguing chapter of them all. To hear from someone who was with the Kennedy’s at every waking second to detail how friendly and personal they were, and what tasks he had done to keep their secrecy. I’ll tell you that I’ll be picking up Mrs. Kennedy and Me.

For someone who isn’t a history buff, I gotta say this made me more interested in a lot of the events that took place across these five president’s. Not to hear about it from a textbook, but from an eyewitness who had full access to president’s personal lives.