Struggle to Zero

By Don Bell

This book is not only about my career as a Special Agent with the United States Secret Service, but about all the facts regarding how someone born into the lowest financial class in our country could navigate around and through the great white sharks in life without remaining in the lowest class as a human being on this earth. My personal faith and sheer fear of failure kept me going.

* Born in Parnell, KY the most backward community in Kentucky at that time

* My patched up log/plank house had no indoor or outdoor bathroom facilities for our ten family members

* I went barefooted from June - September. We were always aware of the Copperhead and Rattlesnakes and were prepared to run like hell if we encountered one

* My oldest brother Eldon would walk to school every now and then with his feet wrapped in rags during the winter months while my parents could obtain enough money to buy him shoes

* I began working at nine years of age and at twelve I chopped weeds out of corn and cotton fields for the local farmers for $2 or $4 per 12 hour days. I picked cotton during picking season in order to earn money to buy my school clothes

* Two weeks after high school graduation I began my clerical job at FBI Headquarters at the age of 18

* At age 20, I was chosen out of many applicants for the position of an FBI Tour Leader. I was taught for three classroom weeks the detailed history of the FBI and Director J. Edgar Hoover's life. This was a great break for me. I would take friends of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on the FBI tour and return them to his office. He would be at his desk with his shirt sleeves rolled up working as usual

* At age 21 I coached the FBI Headquarters women's basketball team. We won our conference, and the main trophy was placed in FBI Director Hoover's outer office

* While employed in the Memphis FBI Field Office prior to becoming a Secret Service Agent, I was the last person to handle and prepare Dr. Martin Luther King's bloody clothes after his assassination for their airplane trip to the FBI Lab in Washington, D. C. for various tests/exams

* I was the first law enforcement official to be honored with a luncheon in the FBI Director's private dining room located in the new FBI Headquarters building

* I was featured on the CBS 60 Minutes TV program that involved one of my investigations as a Secret Service Agent

* I was the first Secret Service Agent to set foot in Communist Bulgaria with our advance team regarding a visit by former President Nixon

* A Chief Federal Judge appointed me to be on a panel that chose a U. S. Magistrate Judge

* I was the Secret Service Headquarters liaison representative with the FBI Headquarters, U. S. Department of Justice, U. S. Department of State, and U. S. Congress

* I hope this book will give hope and encouragement to all those young individuals that all things are possible if you stay focused and keep your hand on the throttle and your eye on the rail

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645317784

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Struggle to Zero

Don Bell

Copyright © 2019 Don Bell

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2019

ISBN 978-1-64531-777-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64531-778-4 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Parnell, Kentucky, 1940–1945

Number One Community, 1946–1948

Sardis, Kentucky, 1946–1948

Columbus, Kentucky, 1949–1950

Hornbeak, Tennessee, 1951–1956

Elbridge, Tennessee, 1956–1958

Washington, DC, 1958–1962

Murray State University, 1962–1965

Marine Corps Reserve Active Duty, September 1965–March 1966

Memphis, Tennessee, 1966–1971

Memphis, Tennessee, Secret Service Field Office1968–1971

United States Secret Service Headquarters, 1971–1977

Louisville Field Office, 1977–1988

Post–Secret Service Career

Entering into the Totally New World of Politics

Kentucky State Senate Campaign, 1990

Kentucky State Treasurer Campaign, 1991

Disgusting Campaign Requests

Kentucky State Auditor’s Race, 1995

US Congress Race, 2000

Kentucky Lieutenant Governor Race, 2003

Life After Being a Candidate for Political Offices

Life in Florida

This book is dedicated to Frank Albert Stubblefield, member of the US House of Representatives from Kentucky’s first district (January 3, 1959–December 31, 1974).

I will always be grateful for taking a personal interest in me during such a critical point in my life. I owe whatever success I have in my life to him and Odessa, his wife.

Rose Spisak—Many Thanks

Foreword

The purpose of the contents in this book is to leave my life story behind for my family and friends. I also wanted to document the trials and tribulations of just an average young kid who did not want to end up in poverty for the rest of his life. I expect that many individuals will have very little interest in reading this book. This book is not only about my career as a special agent with the United States Secret Service, but about all the facts regarding how someone born into the lowest financial class in our country could navigate around and through the great white sharks in life without remaining in the lowest class as a human being on this earth. My personal faith and sheer fear of failure kept me going. I never had two good choices as I traveled through life. I always had only one choice. For example, when I stepped into the airplane for my first airplane ride to Washington National Airport on June 8, 1958, my other choice was to remain in Elbridge, Tennessee, and have a career in a local feed mill, making five dollars a day. Well, as I saw it, I had only one choice, and that was to leave home and take the lowest-paying job in the United States government as a clerk in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in Washington, DC. I thank J. Edgar Hoover every day for giving me the $2,960-a-year job. He gave thousands of poor young kids, and others, from the rural areas of our country the opportunity to see a whole new world.

In addition, I wish to profusely thank US Congressman Frank Albert Stubblefield, who saw something in me that caused him and his spouse, Odessa, to go above and beyond to make arrangements for me to attend Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky. Congressman Stubblefield represented the First Congressional District of Kentucky. The longer I live, the more I realize how much they did for me as a young kid in Washington, and later as friends, while assigned to our headquarters, in DC. I think about their kindness almost daily. They were among the nicest people I have ever known. I dedicate this book to them.

I also wish to mention how much I appreciate Maurice Miller, the Secret Service agent in charge of the Memphis, Tennessee Field Office. He saw something in me that caused him to push Secret Service Headquarters hire me as a Secret Service agent. I will always be grateful to him.

My spouse Stephanie and our children, Becky, Greg, and Brian, had to hang in there with me during my absence while on assignments with the Secret Service. I always managed to bring them a gift when I returned home. Sometimes, while on extended assignments, I would become emotional thinking about them as I sat in my hotel room, because I missed them so much. I have done the same thing today, after my little grandchildren leave for home. I have never mentioned this to anyone.

Oh, I almost forgot all those political campaigns as a candidate for all those offices, knowing that my chances for victory were almost zero. I sometimes forget how much stress and agony that I put my family through. Looking back, I simply do not know how I withstood all this activity, which was horrible, at times. I never mention this side of my life to anyone, except those who already knew that I was a candidate for many political offices. I was in the big leagues as far as being a candidate for Congress, etc. Most of our friends here in Vero Beach know nothing about that side of my life. Trust me, I was up close and personal to the darkest side of politics. I saw it from the national level, right down to the lowest level. As you read this book, you will understand what I am talking about. I did my best to be very descriptive, in view of the fact that I have not mentioned various names since many of the subjects remain alive, today. I do not want to say anything to embarrass their children.

I wish to emphasize that I have not done anything great in the eyes of most people, but I thought that I would inform anyone who reads this book that I was someone who believes in the power of one. I wanted to experience many things in my life other than being a Secret Service agent, although I am very grateful that I was able to experience a career with the Secret Service. So these writings are about my overall experiences in life. I accidentally became a Secret Service agent for which I am thankful. I wanted to experience as many things throughout my life as possible, BECAUSE I want to be tired at the end, realizing that I have eternity to rest.

Parnell, Kentucky,

1940–1945

Show me a person with no enemies and I will show you a person with no MISSION, no PURPOSE, no PASSION, and no COURAGE. Having a few enemies is EVIDENCE you are actually alive and not dreaming.

On May 17, 1940, a very tired and aggravated stork was making its last stop at the end of the day, flying around looking for a house to drop me off. However, it took revenge on me and left me in the most God-forsaken place on earth, Parnell, KY, the ass-end of civilization. Man, that stork must have been really tired at the time, due to its unusually very busy day.

My grandmother Maggie Bell was the midwife that brought me into this world on May 17, 1940. The only medical device present at this birth was a pan of hot water located on the old wood-burning cooking stove and some rags. We could not afford anything else. My grandmother Cole, on my mother’s side, was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, and a midwife. Her parents were part of the Trail of Tears march from North Carolina to Oklahoma. Along the way, they dropped out of the march and settled in Clinton County, Kentucky, which borders the state of Tennessee. This was the route that the Cherokee’s were forced to take as they marched to Oklahoma. President Andrew Jackson, who hated American Indians, was responsible for relocating the Cherokees. Both my grandmothers traveled all over the area delivering babies. I do not believe they received any money for their services. Someone may have given them a chicken or eggs, etc. I was a very stubborn and determined young baby. While being held by someone, I would grab a head of hair and never let it loose until someone pried my hand open. No matter how hard my hand would be hit or slapped, I would not let go.

My house was located in a God-forsaken place called Parnell, Kentucky. An old wood railing fence was built alongside the slate road. Horse-drawn buckboard wagons filled with parents and children, bouncing up and down, would travel down the road. Every now and then, a vehicle would go back and forth on the so-called road. Even into the 1990s, the county school superintendent told me that he had to send two buses to Parnell, in order to keep the Parnell students from fighting the other kids. My house had an open hallway, and it was put together with old logs and boards with cracks between them, which let snow blow into the rooms during a snowy, cold winter night. I slept on a homemade straw mattress at the foot of a bed, with my two brothers at the head.

One night the kids of a family that lived in the same area that had straw mattresses kept feeling something moving under them, inside the mattress. The next day, the father cut into the mattress, and to his surprise, a family of copperhead snakes had made their home inside the straw. The mattress with the snakes was taken outside and burned. Straw mattresses were common for most of the poor families because they were inexpensive to make. We had no electricity and no inside or outside bathrooms. NOT EVEN AN OUTHOUSE!

One day, while I was taking a crap in the field, my brother Otis started throwing rocks at me, which caused an unpleasant interruption. He had always gotten some type of pleasure out of throwing rocks for whatever reason. To this day, I have a scar on my forehead that was caused by one of the rocks that Otis threw that connected with my head. On those cold, winter nights you could piss off the front porch, since there was an open outside hallway, but if you had go the bathroom, you had to bare your butt in the yard, or in the open field behind the house, if you could call it a house with less than a thousand square feet.

There would be no heat in the house after everyone went to bed. The old wood-burning stove that was used for heat would go out because it took too much wood to keep it burning throughout the night. We had to sleep under as many quilts as possible in order to keep from freezing. The only wallpaper we had were pages from magazines and Sears and Roebuck catalogs, etc., that were given to us at Stearns Grocery Store. There were eleven children and two parents, who survived in this dwelling. I guess I did survive, which beats the hell out of me. We never wore shoes from May or June until September. One pair of shoes had to last until you wore them out, or until your foot got so big that the toe of the shoe had to be cut, in order to let your toes expand beyond the cut out part of the shoe. In other words, as an old Hank Williams song went, the shoe soles got so thin that if you stepped on a dime, you could tell if it was heads or tails.

Sometimes my oldest brother Eldon had to walk to school in the snow, with old rags wrapped around his feet due to the fact he either had no shoes at that time, or because his old pair of shoes were absolutely too small to walk the five miles to school. I can remember always being hungry. We ate meat, which was a chicken, on Sundays, once a month if we were lucky. Once a year, again, if we were lucky, meaning that if our father could find a hog to kill, we could eat pork. My parents, along with my brothers and sisters, would make lye soap and hominy in borrowed big black kittles sitting over a wood-burning fire in the yard. We ate a lot of cornbread and milk. I never remembered eating beef until I was much older while living in another area. We never had store-bought milk or bread. I remember to this day, the first time I ate store-bought bread. One loaf had to feed at least ten of us. It tasted so good that I could have eaten the whole loaf in five minutes. I was always hungry, and food was the most important thing in my life at that time. Sociologist Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs were physiological (food, water, shelter); safety (personal, financial, health); love-belonging (friendship, intimacy, family); esteem (self-respect, respect from others); self-actualization (accomplish everything that a person can to become the most that one can be, such as causes, etc.); and self-transcendence (giving itself to some higher goal outside oneself, such as altruism and spirituality).

Well, it seemed that it took forever for me to reach the second need, which was safety. I was always consumed with getting food. Our Christmas gift consisted of an apple and an orange in one of my mother’s old worn silk stockings. I never remembered receiving an actual toy for Christmas. All the drinking and household water was carried from a spring, which was located down a hill from our house. I had a two-pound lard bucket that I carried, and my older brothers and sisters had larger lard buckets for their water. During the day, we continually went back and forth from the house to the spring with our buckets, looking like piss ants crawling in a line.

My grandmother Bell was extremely stingy. She would not share the apples on her apple tree with anyone. When my sisters Chris and Pauline went to the spring to get their bucket of water, they would pass the apple tree and pick one or two apples and then put them in their bucket of water in order that grandmother Bell could not see them. That was their way of hiding them due to the fact she would take them away from my sisters. Back at the house, we kept one pail of water with a dipper or gourd in it, as the drinking water. All of us drank out of the same dipper. We lived in rattlesnake and copperhead country, and during the summer, in our bare feet, we had to dodge these snakes. In other words, we had to walk softly and carry a big stick and run like hell.

Life was unbearably unpleasant living in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity or any inside or outside bathrooms. We always felt like we had received a bonus when, for whatever reason, we did not have to go to church service on a Sunday night. During this period of time, after dark, my older sisters would attempt to scare the crap out of us by covering their body with white sheets and running around outside making noises like ghosts. I was four or five years of age and being out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity, the darkness seemed unusually dark. They did a good job scaring us. Since I grew up around seven sisters, who were tough as nails, I had no doubt that females were the dominate sex. My sister Chris could throw a haymaker that would stun Mike Tyson. I firmly believe that women can take more punishment than men. Most men that I know are whiners who are dominated by women. They are generally weak! Remember, the strongest force on earth is a rich, good-looking woman.

During the winter months, we felt like we were freezing to death, and during the summer we walked around with no shoes, always on the lookout for rattlesnakes and copperheads. I can still hear our neighbor Tom Alley screaming and cussing his mule, Tob, as he broke new ground in the field around his log cabin. Man, did he ever use vile language, which included using the name of God in every sentence. I felt sorry for Tob. When you are four or five years of age, Tom Alley’s log cabin looked normal in size. Tom’s log cabin has been designated as an historical site today. It was just a short distance down the road from our old cruddy house. The cabin remains there today, and one of our family reunions was held there in the yard several years ago. As I entered the cabin to look around, did it ever look small inside? How did a family with children, especially the females, have any privacy inside such a small living space? All I can say is that the frontier families had no privacy inside their tiny homes. The only way you could have any quiet time or privacy would be in the outhouse, if there was one. As we grow older, things shrink, I guess.

These Bell family reunions brought together some the most unusual and sometimes classless people on earth. Where did some of these people come from? An example was Carlos Holder, the brother of the ex-spouse of my sister Ollie. I never really knew Carlos and never laid my eyes on him anywhere, except at one or two of our reunions. Carlos had led a sorry life. He had done time in prison for reasons unknown. However, he really tried to shine and present his best image at the reunions. Apparently, he had a set of false teeth made while doing time many years prior. He wore these teeth only when he came to the reunions. They did not fit his mouth, and when he opened his mouth, you needed to have your sunglasses on in order to prevent blindness from his unbelievably white teeth.

At one of the reunions Carlos’s wife brought a photo of a copperhead snake stretched out on their bed. She stated that when she walked into her bedroom one day, she immediately knew that a copperhead was in her room due to the fact copperhead snakes give off an odor similar to a cucumber. She began looking for that snake in her bedroom and finally found it. She shot and killed the snake and laid it on her bed in order to photograph it. As I previously mentioned, Carlos Holder was not the best human being on earth, and due to the fact he and his wife fought all the time, she finally had enough, so she loaded her pistol one day and opened up on him, thus, killing him on the spot in their house. Carlos was so mean to her that she was never charged with any crime. The sheriff was happy to get rid of him. Damn, I can still see those white, bright, prison made teeth, today, due to the fact they looked so unusual and bright in his mouth.

My brother Eldon told me about an incident that happened regarding one traveling preacher that stayed at our house while he and our father went around together, preaching the Word. The guest preacher would always have the first choice of food on the table during meals and the kids would end up with what was left. Sometimes, when these preachers found a home that would let them stay for long periods of time, they took advantage of this situation. Anyway, Eldon got tired of this setup, so one night, he and his buddies located a skunk. While the preacher was asleep, they took his trousers and enticed the skunk to leave its great smelling scent on the trousers. Well, when the preacher woke up and attempted to put on his trousers with the skunk odor, he left our house as fast as he could and never came back.

The area of Parnell, Kentucky, was so out of main stream compared to other parts of the United States that it was pathetic. The people in that area were so far behind culturally that they thought they were first. A relative of mine, Strongie Bell, had never seen himself in a mirror. So he had no idea how he looked to other people. One day, he and his family traveled to Burnside, KY, to catch the train for Cincinnati, Ohio. Burnside was the closest train station, which was located many miles from Parnell. While on the train Strongie had the urge to go to the bathroom. He finally located the door handle to the bathroom. However, he could not figure out how to open the door. As he was pulling on the door handle, he looked to the right and saw a man trying to get the door to the bathroom open also. However, what Strongie saw was himself in the long floor to ceiling mirror located right next to the bathroom door. Due to the fact that Strongie had never seen himself in his life, he did not recognize himself as being the man in the mirror. Man, you had to be backward to have never seen yourself in a mirror when you were in your thirties.

During 1938, as a two-year-old, my brother Garvin became sick with what was called the old flux, an intestinal illness. He could not keep food down, and as a result he was on the edge of death. His eyes had already sunk in, plus, he could not move. Our father stayed at his bedside, around the clock for two weeks and dropped water that was squeezed from a rag down his throat. He frantically tried to find a cure, and finally, the only old doctor in the county stated that the only cure was sheep tallow. After many attempts to find someone who would give him a sheep, one poor soul gave him one, which was slaughtered. The tallow was prepared and dropped into Garvin’s throat. He slowly got better and survived.

Actually, his condition was caused by the lack of food. Back then, due to the hard times, generally speaking everyone was stingy with their possessions, including giving up one of their sheep. My sister Flonnie weighed less than two pounds at birth but survived without doctors or hospitals. She was so small that my father could hold her in one hand. No baby milk bottles were available, and milk would be dropped into her mouth by squeezing it from rags. Our home remedy for the croup (a very hoarse cough) was a teaspoon of sugar with two or three small drops of coal oil (kerosene) mixed with the sugar. In the middle of the night, my father would come to our bedside with an old coal oil lamp in one hand and the teaspoon of sugar containing a few drops of kerosene in the other. Down the hatch this great tasting remedy would go. The taste was so horrible that it scared the croup out of our system. However, it apparently worked. Other great tasting home remedies were cod liver oil and mineral oil. I almost puke when I think about the taste of these remedies.

As a four-year-old, I recall many things very clearly, such as hoping that I could find a perfect forked tree branch that could be used to make a sling shot. How I longed for a perfectly made sling shot. A piece of rubber cut from an old rubber inner tube was used as part of the sling shot. I would dream about having toy cars to play with. Also, during the day, I would always stay outside the house during the summer months running up and down the hills. Sometimes, I would get so tired that I would have to lay down on the ground to rest, without thinking about those copperhead snakes. We had lunch, which was called dinner, during the middle of the day. This was customary for families. We would usually have nothing to eat but a piece of cornbread, maybe poke salad, pinto beans, or sometimes milk. I learned to like pinto beans because if I would not eat