If Central Casting in the Hollywood days of yore was to send out a call for an actor to play a Secret Service agent Joseph T. Petro would fill the bill. Ramrod straight, steel gray hair and quietly distinguished, Petro looks like someone who could keep his cool no matter what the “bad guys” tried to do to the nation’s chief executive.
In fact, Petro, an Allentown native was, for 23 years a Secret Service agent. He was on details that protected Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and, when he came to America, Pope John Paul II. He also served the Secret Service in many other ways.
At its February 20th meeting members of the Allentown Rotary Club and their guests had a chance to hear from Petro as he spoke about those times outlined in his recent book “Standing Next to History.”
Petro began his talk by outlining a little history about how the Secret Service. It was created at the end of the Civil War primarily to detect counterfeiting. However, the act creating the Secret Service was left unsigned on President Lincoln’s desk when he left for Ford’s Theater, never to return. His successor Andrew Johnson did sign the bill. Petro highlighted the Secret Service history from its early beginnings up to our own time. He pointed out that the FBI was created in 1908 out of the Secret Service, a subject, Petro noted, that the FBI can be a little touchy about it. During the Vietnam War Petro served as a Navy lieutenant on the river boats that patrolled South Vietnam’s rivers. August 1974 found him part of the Secret Service security detail assigned to then vice-president Gerald R. Ford. Petro recalled vividly the night President Nixon left office. Just
hours before that event, when they were in the elevator together, Ford turned to Petro and said, “You’re new on the detail, aren’t you?”
From 1983 to 1987 Petro was part of the Secret Service detail around President Ronald Reagan. He told several interesting anecdotes about Regan’s first meeting in 1985 with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva, particularly about the rapport that quickly developed between thenm. “I think it was at that moment that Cold War began to melt,” says Petro.
Perhaps some of the most interesting stories that Petro shared had to do with Pope John Paul’s visit Petro, who sat in the front seat of the “popemobile” recalled for ARC members the huge crowds, the chants he heard of love for the pontiff from student groups and the security challenges caused by the crush of hundreds of thousands.
One of his most memorable recollections was seeing the Pope saying the Rosary in a tightly packed helicopter while flying from Monterey, CA to San Francisco, CA. while everyone else in the copter slept.
It was truly a fascinating meeting. Want to know more? Get “Standing Next to History.” I know I will.
Pictured below are Mike Orbin and Tom Christman, who were awarded their Paul Harris pins at this week's meeting.
