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By Root 900 0

I had a lot of eccentricities that were not likely to make my traveling team more comfortable. I didn’t want to stay in grand hotels, and the first hotels in which we stayed were nicer than I would have chosen. Some people who had contributed to the campaign would never miss the $2,000 they sent in, but some supporters who gave $25 or $50 could have used that money for something they really needed, and for them, I didn’t feel right staying in a nicer hotel room than I really needed. As a consequence we stayed in some pretty lousy places. Ryan remembers coming into a room in Iron Mountain, Michigan, so late that he didn’t even turn on the light, he just fell into bed. When he got up in the morning, he was horrified that his room was covered with cat hair. Remembering that I am allergic to cat hair, he rushed to my room to find out that my only problem was no hot water. After Iron Mountain, Ryan intervened to make certain that frugality was not being taken too far.

We ate pretty much only on planes or in our hotel rooms. At first, the meals we were brought were from the nicest restaurants in town, beautifully served and exquisite. It was lovely at first, but it soon became too much, at least for me. Can I just get salads, I asked. So salads it was, for all of us, and always the same, always chicken Caesar salad, lunch and dinner, day after day, until I finally cried uncle and banned chicken Caesar salads from the menu. How about meatloaf? From then on, it was meatloaf or chicken, occasionally steak—sensible food I might have made at home.

And then I didn’t want to rest. There were, at the beginning of my schedule, lots of rest days. But when I had those rest days at home, I was restless not resting. So, at the end of September I said, I’m not going home again until this is over. The children would join John or me or both of us on the road on weekends and for rallies, too, if they wanted, and they were the only reason to go home. And when I stayed out, so did our little team.

Where we stayed, the Secret Service stayed, and what we ate, the Secret Service ate. So when I wanted meatloaf instead of something more highfalutin, they ate it, too. But they were trained not to complain. They were trained to be nearly invisible. One of the agents told me that the way to find out if you are Secret Service material is to put on your best suit and stand completely still in your backyard for eight hours. I knew I was going to like the agents. They may have been less sure about me. Soon after the announcement I met the lead agents who were assigned to protect me. We met in our D.C. living room. I sat on one love seat; Kevin Pain, who did the talking, sat opposite me on the other.

“We’re going to be around all the time,” he said. “I know.”

“We are here to protect you, so we can’t carry your luggage or your purse; we’re not being rude.” “I know.”

“Our offices will open all your mail; do you know all the people who send you letters and packages?” “No, I get a lot from eBay sellers, packages from all over.” “We heard that,” he said. I thought, Geez, they heard that?

“The other agents on the detail are not being rude when they don’t talk to you. The lead agent will initiate all conversations with you.” “Fine.”

“And everything we see and hear is confidential.” Okay.

The conversation was formal and fast. To me, Kevin Pain is just a stitch, even then at his most regimented, clicking through a checklist. He is such a straight arrow. He talks as if he’s reading a movie script for a Secret Service agent. He talks about “the roommate,” that’s his wife. On intense questioning, I could get him to talk about the house he and the roommate were building in Texas or about hunting with his son, but he was pretty much a look-straight-ahead guy, and he ran a very tight ship. Having grown up in the military, I knew him before I knew him. And I honestly liked him. I suspect I got more smiles from Kevin Pain than any protectee—that’s what we are called—ever had.

I had grown up around formal and disciplined. I had grown up with men standing straight-backed