When I lived in Baltimore I used to work a side job doing admin support for a not-for-profit org. Basically it was an org promoting the idea of women breaking the glass ceiling in business and getting on more corporate boards, mentoring young business women, yada, yada, yada. A lot of the members were themselves female corporate executives, business owners, attorneys - many of them partners in big Baltimore or DC area firms, a few State and a few Federal judges, a few politicians - a pretty “well heeled” group of women.
Although some of the org’s members I worked with over the years were real PITA’s, some were great and for me, it was a great networking opportunity and a resume enhancer in addition to the additional income. (Nothing like having a CEO of one Baltimore’s biggest companies, an editor of the Baltimore Business Journal and a former (Republican) Congress Woman as professional references).
Every year they held a big luncheon and that’s when I did the most work; preparing and mailing out invitations, tracking reservations in a database I developed for that purpose, some years even doing the bank deposits of checks I picked up from the PO box, helping with the table assignments, reaching out to the corporate sponsors to get their guest list, creating and printing the guest lists and printing name badges, overseeing the registration tables and the volunteers and dealing with any last minute problems and dealing with the VIP guests.
And these were pretty big events and they had some very high profile speakers over the year I worked for them, including, Lea Rabin, Jehan Sadat, Coretta Scott King, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Madeleine K. Albright, and my favorite – former Prime Minister, Lady Margaret Thatcher.
It was at the Thatcher event where I encountered Kathleen Kennedy Townsend when she was serving as Lieutenant Governor of Maryland (she was a VIP guest and not a member of the org).
Prior to the event, I already had an impression of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and my brief encounter with her only confirmed it – she was dumber than a box of hair, and nasty to boot. It was just before Lady Thatcher was about to speak; I was standing in the back of the room, making sure any late attendees quickly found their seats, and KKT who had already been seated, came up to me to ask me where the ladies room was. I gave her directions – something like “go through the double doors and go right, then at the corridor, go left, you will see the rest rooms to your right”, and she just stood there looking at me with a blank stare as if this was way too complicated for her to comprehend and I ended up having to walk her to it. She actually demanded that I do so and actually saying to me at one point - “Don’t you know who I am? I am the Lieutenant Governor!”
She also had a plain clothed State Police security escort with her and while she went into the lady’s room, he went into the men’s room, but before he did, he politely asked me to stay outside the lady’s room in case KKT came back out before he did. When KKT came out and she didn’t see her State Police security escort, she panicked. She basically walked around in circles and kept calling (actually yelling) out his name over and over again and then asking me if I had seen where he went, asking me to page the hotel security.
I told her that he went to the men’s room and would be right back out and she went ballistic (sorry, perhaps “ballistic” is a poor choice of words when it comes to a Kennedy).
But I recall saying to her: “Well, when you got to go, you’ve got to go”.
When he came out of the men’s room, she yelled at him and admonished him for not standing outside the door of the lady’s room to wait for her to come out, saying; “I can never, never, ever be left alone and unguarded, NEVER!!! - you m-f-ing idiot!!!”
OK, perhaps he broke protocol, but never mind the fact that the security for this event, being that Lady Thatcher was the guest speaker was already extremely high.
And I knew this all too well because I had to provide the final guest list to Lady’s Thatcher’s Scotland Yard detail several days in advance and even had to submit my personal information for them to perform a background check on me (and I think the US Secret Service was also involved) and I also had to show up several hours before the luncheon to go over their security requirements for screening or alerting them to any suspicious persons, anyone trying to get in who wasn’t on the guest list, and also facilitated and worked with the hotel’s security staff to work with Scotland Yard on their sweeping the area with bomb sniffing dogs and setting up metal detectors.
And the poor MD state Police escort; as he walked away from me with KKT storming off in front of him, he looked back at me and mouthed “I’m sorry” and then rolled his eyes.
I can only imagine that working on Hillary’s SS detail could possibly be a worse assignment.
I wouldn’t trust this woman as far as I could throw her nor would I assume anything she says is true.
Just saying.
