Secretary Powell Meets with Youths in Atlanta

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with members of the Brookhaven Boys and Girls Club in Atlanta, Georgia on October 1, 2004. He explained to them some of the duties and responsibilities of the Secretary of State and answered questions they posed. See photos and Secretary Powell's remarks below.

SECRETARY POWELL: How are you guys doing today?

BOYS AND GIRLS: Fine.

SECRETARY POWELL: Fine? I'm really pleased to be here to have a chance to talk with you. And I'm not going to talk long because we're going to have an opportunity for you guys to ask some questions. But it's always a pleasure for me to be back with the Boys and Girls Club.

As Ms. Spillett was saying, I used to be on the big board of Boys and Girls Club. I spent a lot of time going around the country and visiting clubs all over the country and helping communities to get more clubs. When I first started working with Ms. Spillett back in 1997, I guess it was, we had about 1,200 clubs. That's a lot of clubs; 1,200 is a lot. But we said, you know, we could do better. There are a lot of young people out there who need clubs.

So we all got together and we worked and I formed an organization called America's Promise. We were able, over the last 7 years now, to go from 1,200 clubs to over 3,000 clubs, 3,400, I think, and growing. And so that means that there are lots of places like this around the world for young people like yourself.

Why? Because people in your life, the adults in your life, care about you and want you to have safe places like this. Your shirts say it all, "A Positive Place to Be, A Positive Place to Grow," a great place to learn about yourself and about other people and to make sure that you're happy and cared for.

Now, I'm pleased to be here, but I don't know if you know why I'm here. You're like, "Who's this guy? Why did he come down here?" The Secretary of State? What's the Secretary of State? Have you ever seen me on television? You don't know who I am. Does anybody know who I am? (Laughter.) Ever seen me on television? What do you watch--MTV? (Laughter.) But you guys don't know who I am. I'm just some guy. They say get all the kids here and we're going to bring some guy in.

Well, I'm from Washington and I'm called the Secretary of State because I'm responsible for matters of state. I work with all of the foreign governments around the world for the President, and when the President wants to talk about how do I deal with China, how do I deal with India, what am I going to do about this, what am I going to do about that, I'm the one who advises him. And I've been doing it for the last three and a half plus years.

And I used to be in the Army. Some of you may recall that. That's why I brought my book, because I wrote a book about my life as a soldier. And you don't have to read it, no homework assignment. (Laughter.) But this is my life as a soldier, and it's a lot of pages about being in the Army and going to war. And I like to show this to young people and show you what I used to look like when I was a soldier. First of all, I was a lot younger then than I am now. This picture is about 10 years old, but I was a big shot soldier. I had four stars and I wore a suit (inaudible) with medals and four stars here, four stars there, and a hat with four stars. I used to walk around with a lot of stars, and I was very important when I was a soldier. I'm important now as Secretary of State.

The reason I like to show you the book and show you that picture of me when I was a big general because I like to show you the back of the book, and this is when I was about your age. This is when I was a kid growing up in the South Bronx section of New York City, a poor family. My family came from somewhere else. They weren't born here. My parents came from the Caribbean. They came from Jamaica. They came here with nothing and they met each other, married, had two kids, and they raised us to be, you know, kids who cared about family and cared about doing well in school, the best we could. And they just wanted us to do everything with our lives that we could do with our lives that this country would let us do.

But I didn't know then what I was going to do. When I was a kid this age, maybe just about the ages you all are now, first of all, I never looked like this except once a year when my mother would put this junk on me so that I would look good in the picture. And I looked like a real jerk. (Laughter.) What you can't see is--like I wouldn't let them print the picture, but below here I had short pants. I wasn't even wearing long pants. And I had socks up to my knees. (Laughter.) Ugly shoes. It wasn't that funny. (Laughter.) And I had these horrible shoes on because my feet were so big when I was a kid, and the kids on the block called me "Footsie" because my feet were so big, and they made fun of me.

And so I was just an average kid, didn't know where I was going to go, didn't know what I was going to do, kind of wandering around. We didn't have a Boys and Girls Club. We had a scouting program, and we had a church program so I had places to go. But even as a kid, my parents said to me all the time, "Look, we have expectations for you. We work hard, we do the best we can, we don't bring a lot of money into the house, but we expect you to do well. We don't expect you to fail. We don't expect you to get in trouble. We don't expect you to do anything but take advantage of all the opportunities that this country has given to you, given to this family."

"So I want you," they said to me and to my sister, "to go to school, study hard, get an education, believe in yourself, and believe in the family. Above all, don't shame the family. Don't get in trouble. Don't do drugs because I'll break your neck. Don't do anything that you know we will be ashamed of."

And it was that little simple set of rules that I got from my mother and my father about sticking with it, knowing that some days are, you know, better than other days, some days are just awful. You wish you didn't have to get up and go to school or go somewhere. Some days are great and everything goes well. But you take every day as it comes and you never let anything hold you back. You never let failure hold you back. You never let a disappointment stick with you. You just get rid of it, and you get on to the next day.

You always do those things that you know are right. Now, how do you know what's right? You know what's right. You've got a little something up here that tells you what's right. Your teachers tell you what's right and what's wrong. Your family tells you what's right and what's wrong. You come to this club, and this club helps you learn the rules of life and what's right in life and what's wrong in life, and how you should do those things that are right and stay away from those things that are wrong.

But above all, I want you to value this club because this is a place that people have spent a great deal of money on, of course, but more than that, they spent a great deal of love on making sure that you have this kind of place. And they do it for only one reason, not because it does anything for them, they could take that money and go have a good time or do anything else. They do it because they believe in you. They do it because they trust you. They do it because they love you. And they do it because they know that sooner or later you'll go, the old people will be gone, I'm an old man, and you're the youngsters who are going to be the leaders. You're coming along. You're going to take this all over. So we've got to invest in you. We've got to make sure that you know that we believe in you and we want you to believe in yourself.

And so study hard, mind your parents, mind your teachers. Never bring shame on yourself, never bring shame on your family, never bring shame on your community. Believe in this country. Believe that there is nothing that is holding you back. Your color doesn't hold you back. Your background doesn't hold you back. The only thing that can hold you back is you. Get your education. Learn how to use the English language well. Speak it, read it, and write it. Communicate and learn because, if you know the English language, you can learn any other subject. If you believe in that, if you believe in yourself, you can be anything you want.

People ask me all the time, when you were, you know, that age back (inaudible), you were brought up in New York in an immigrant family, didn't have a lot, did you ever think you could grow up to be a general or to be the Secretary of State, going around the world to visit people? No, I couldn't imagine it, didn't think about things like that. But it happened. It happened because when I was your age I did what I just told you to do: study, listen, be proud of yourself, proud of your country, do what your parents want you to do; above all, realize you have a lot of years in front of you, a lot of years to learn things, to grow up strong and true, to have families of your own, to be successful.

And just remember that one of you, if not in this Boys and Girls Club then in some Boys and Girls Club, there is a kid--maybe it's this club--who is going to be a Secretary of State or is going to be a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Just make sure that you are one of those who are in line for success. Success is all up to you.

So that's the end of my little lecture, but we have a few minutes if anybody would like to ask a question (inaudible) came down from Washington.

Yeah.

QUESTION: Why did you immigrate? Why did your parents immigrate from Jamaica?

SECRETARY POWELL: My parents came to the United States because they couldn't find work, good work, in Jamaica. They were poor, very poor, and there were no opportunities in Jamaica for them. And the United States, in those days, back in the 1920s, was seen as the place you go where there are jobs, where you can become a citizen and where you can make a new life for yourself.

So, like so many people who have come to this country over the last 250 years, my parents got on a boat. They came separately. They both got on banana boats. My father came to Philadelphia, and my mother came through Ellis Island. My father went to Connecticut and worked in a garden, a garden cutting grass, and then he came to New York. And my mother, she came to New York, and she worked sewing, sewing labels in clothing. And they met and they married, two children. And they're both dead now, but they had a nice, nice life. My sister became a teacher. Now she's retired. She was a teacher for 40 years. She was very successful.

QUESTION: Will we be able to visit the White House?

SECRETARY POWELL: Sure. Come on up and I'll get you a visit.

QUESTION: How are we going to get there?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, that's a second question. I'll ask Roxanne how you're going to get there. (Laughter.) But if you guys get to Washington, come see me. I'll show you around the State Department, and we can get you a visit at the White House if we can get you to Washington.

Nice to meet you. Well, let's see. Let's try you, then we'll come back. Yes, dear.

QUESTION: I am 12 years old. And my question is, do you like being the Secretary of State?

SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah. It's too hard. The work is too hard, though, but I like it. What time do you get up in the morning?

QUESTION: I get up at 6:20.

SECRETARY POWELL: I get up at 5:00. How much homework do you do at night?

QUESTION: It depends, but I always do math.

SECRETARY POWELL: It depends, but she always does math. I do 2 hours of homework every night. What time do you get to school?

QUESTION: I get to school at 7:30.

SECRETARY POWELL: I get to school at 6:30. So it's a hard job. I work very hard. I work from 6:30 in the morning till about 7:00 at night, then I go home, and I have 2 hours of homework every night. So it's a very hard job but it's very exciting. Yesterday, for example, I had the Foreign Minister of China came to see me. My equivalent of the Secretary of State of China. I had the Foreign Minister of Mexico. He came to see me. And I had the Foreign Minister of a country called Papua New Guinea. Have you ever heard of Papua New Guinea?

QUESTION: Uh-uh.

SECRETARY POWELL: It's right in the Pacific, a country of islands. And I gave a speech to a group of people. I had a meeting with the President by television. He was on remote television. And my day is filled with phone calls talking to people, meeting foreign visitors. So many foreign visitors come to the United States who want to talk to us about how they can help us and how we can help them. I do a lot of television interviews. I just finished a speech here to a place called the Southern Center for International Relations.

But so I like the job very much. Some days it's really hard, though. Some days it's really hard and, you know, you're sad because you didn't do everything you wanted to get done that day and you (inaudible) had hoped you would do. But you've just got to keep going and feel good because you're doing the right thing and you're serving your country.

What do you want to do?

QUESTION: I want to be a doctor or a lawyer.

SECRETARY POWELL: A doctor or a...?

QUESTION: Lawyer.

SECRETARY POWELL: A doctor or a lawyer. And you like math, too?

QUESTION: Yes.

SECRETARY POWELL: Is math your favorite subject?

QUESTION: Yes.

SECRETARY POWELL: Math is...English and math are the two most important. All the others are important. English is essential because, if you don't master English, then how can you do math? How can you understand a math book? And then math is important because math teachers you logic and how to reason, how to work your way through a problem for which there is only one right answer. How do you get to it? So math teaches you disciplined thinking and so I'm very glad that you like math. And you'll need math if you're going to be a doctor, for sure, and even a lawyer so you can add up all the money you're going to make. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY POWELL: How long I'm going to...?

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY POWELL: I don't know. I've been the Secretary of State for three years and eight months or so, and a lot depends on the election coming up. But I don't have a specific term so I serve at the pleasure of President Bush and so I don't know how much longer I'll be Secretary of State. I will have been in public service, one way or the other, for 40 years now, 35 years in the Army and four years as Secretary of State. It's getting close to 40 years of service to the public in one way or the other. But I can't tell you how much longer it'll be.

QUESTION: I'm 13 years old. And my question is how is it like to be the Secretary of State?

SECRETARY POWELL: You know, the hardest part is cameras are always watching you. See the one back there? You're always being watched. Every word you say people are listening to. And so whenever I give a speech or whenever I go out in front of the building and talk to the press and have one of my guests with me, you know that every word you say is going to be broadcast around the world. So that puts a lot of pressure on you all day long.

And so it is a job with a lot of pressure, but I have a lot of great people working with me. And to have the privilege of traveling around the world, seeing world leaders--on Monday I'm going to go to Brazil and visit our friends in Brazil, our foreign policy friends in Brazil. So to be able to travel--I have my own plane I travel with. It's got a lot of excitement to it.

But it's also hard work with long days. But the satisfaction from knowing that you're helping people around the world, that you're helping people in the Sudan who are starving and were pushed out of their homes, you're helping people also (inaudible) great deal of satisfaction and a lot of hard work.

Okay, let's come back this way, back in the middle.

QUESTION: What made you join the Army?

SECRETARY POWELL: What made me join the Army? When I was about 16 or so, I graduated from high school, just before I turned 17, and I went to college. And my parents said, "You've got to go to college." They didn't ask me. There was no discussion. We didn't sit around the dining table and say, "Do you want to college?" No, there was none of that. "You're going to college." I didn't want to go to college. "You've got to go to college. Your sister went to college, and you've got to go to college."

And so I went to college. I barely got in. And so there I am in college, and I didn't know what I was going to do. I tried engineering, but I wasn't good at math. And so then suddenly one day, I saw these guys on the college campus who were wearing uniforms. They were in ROTC. And I said, well, I've got nothing else to do, I'll try that. So I joined ROTC. I found that I liked it. I was good at it, and I liked the order and discipline being an ROTC cadet. And I was pretty good at it.

So I found something that I was good at. And I said, "Well, I'm not good at math, I'm not good at engineering, but I'm good at this, so this must be what I'm supposed to do." So that's what I did, and I was very successful at college military work. Then I got into the Army and I stayed. I kept getting promoted. I kept waiting for that to be it, when they'd say no more. They didn't. They promoted me. Finally, I made number one in the military as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

So what's awesome here is she thinks she wants to be a doctor or a lawyer. We'll see. We'll find out. But at least she's thinking about something. All of you are thinking about something. But don't worry. Something will turn up. Some door will open. Some light bulb will go on and you'll say, "That's for me." It might be a doctor, could be a lawyer, might be a social worker, might be a mechanic. Then again, it might be working in a school, maybe a bus driver.

It doesn't make any difference what it is as long as you enjoy doing it and as long as you do it well and as long as you are satisfied and happy and as long as you are contributing to your community and contributing to the country, then you've found the right thing. So it'll come to each and every one of you. Whatever you want to be, if you want to be a model, a movie star, basketball player, a rock group leader, a general in the Army. It'll come.

QUESTION: I'm 11. My question is what is it like to be followed by Secret Service every day of your life? (Laughter.)

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, the...come here, John. (Laughter.)

This is Mr. John Murphy and he is...they're not Secret Service. Mr. Murphy is with something called the Diplomatic Security Service. The State Department has its own kind of like the Secret Service, but I think they're better. (Laughter.) And they're called the Diplomatic Security Service.

MR. MURPHY: And I would agree with the Secretary. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY POWELL: Mr. Murphy is one of the senior leaders in the Diplomatic Security Service and he makes sure that I'm safe and my family is safe. And he has a number of wonderful young men and women, some not so young like him, who make sure that I'm safe.

But they do more than that. At all of our embassies around the world, people like Mr. Murphy are taking care of our ambassadors, taking care of the people who work in our embassies at some 200 places around the world. They also make sure that people who get passports to come to this country get them honestly. Whenever we find somebody who is cheating on passports or visas, the documents you need to get into the country, then people like Mr. Murphy do that.

So it's law enforcement and protection. It's a very important job.

Do you want to say anything more about it, John?

MR. MURPHY: It's a great job. Join it when you get there.

SECRETARY POWELL: You still want to come to Washington? (Laughter.)

QUESTION: I knew that he was a security because he had that little thingy in his ear.

SECRETARY POWELL: Dead giveaway. Everybody see it? What do you think the thing in his ear is? That's how he talks to...they want to see the thing in your ear. (Laughter.) That's how they...

MR. MURPHY: This little thing is connected to a radio.

SECRETARY POWELL: Oooh. Don't show them what else you have under your jacket. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: I'm 13 years old. And my question is when did you become Secretary of State?

SECRETARY POWELL: I became Secretary of State the same day President Bush became President, the 20th of January of 2001. The way our government works is that when there is a new President, especially if it's of a different party, when a Republican replaces a Democrat or a Democrat replaces a Republican, but when there's a changeover between parties and the new President brings in his own team, his own cabinet members. A cabinet member is the head of one of the departments. I'm the head of the Department of State and there's the head of the Department of Defense, Health and Human Services. Each one of those leaders are what's called a cabinet. And when a new government comes in and the President is inaugurated on the 20th of January, then his people come in on that same day. And so I took over the same time the President did. He took over as President and I took over as Secretary of State.

Now, to be a cabinet officer, to take over the Department, the President picks you. But in our system of government, the United States Senate has to agree with the President's choice. So there's a very fancy term they call what they use to get the Senate's okay. It's called the Senate advises and consents. The Senate says to the President we have advised and consent to the appointment. And once they say they consent to it, then the President appoints you. And the Senate advised and consented to my appointment, I think it was the morning of the inauguration and I was sworn in in the afternoon of the inauguration, a couple hours after the President was sworn in. He had a big swearing-in. I was just in a little room with a couple guys.

I think you were next.

QUESTION: I would like to ask, if you ever become President, what would you do to try to fix the war with Iraq?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I'm never going to run for office because that's not what I think I'd be very good at, but what I'm trying to do now to help President Bush fix the war in Iraq is to get people to understand how important it is for us to win, how important it is for us to allow the Iraqi people to have freedom and to be able for vote for their own leaders, and how important it is for us to defeat the terrorists and the insurgents there. Even though I am not the President, I certainly work--I work with the President to bring this war to an end so that we can have peace (inaudible).

QUESTION: I'm 12 and I would like to know what's your favorite part about your job.

SECRETARY POWELL: My favorite part about the job is just the people I work with. That's been the case with every job I've had, in the Army, when I worked in youth programs like Boys and Girls Clubs. Real joy comes from just being around good people, people who are (inaudible) to be with, who share your values, who are willing to work as hard as you work. And if I didn't have that experience in my life as a soldier and my life as a Secretary of State, I probably wouldn't have stayed in those jobs, wouldn't have done it.

So just working with people, being around people, are the most pleasurable part of my job. And talking to people. I live on the telephone all day long. With my job, I have to talk to people around the world, so when I come in in the morning, I talk to people in Asia because it's already nighttime there so I've got to get them before they go to bed. Even though I just got up, they're getting ready to go to bed so I've got to call them. And I follow the sun all day long and call different parts of the world in all different time zones. Just being able to talk to people gives me energy and makes life exciting for me.

I think this will have to wrap it up.

QUESTION: Who do you think won the debate: John Kerry or George Bush? (Laughter.)

SECRETARY POWELL: I was afraid--I was hoping I could get through the whole day without somebody asking who won the debate. Who do you think won? No, I don't...

QUESTION: John Kerry. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY POWELL: You know, there's a rule in--there's a rule in our system that the cabinet officers that deal in foreign policy and national security, we can explain our policies, but the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, who is responsible for our laws, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, we don't comment on any political matters. We serve and keep ourselves distant from partisan political activity. I support the President, I defend his position and I explain policies, but I don't take sides in the political debate.

So we'll watch and see what the American people say over time. But, you know, we'll know who prevails on the 2nd of November when everybody goes to their polling place. You guys are not old enough to vote, but you will be soon enough, so I'm glad you're thinking about this now.

I'm afraid I have to go now, but thank you for spending a little bit of time with me and you ought to thank me for getting you out of school early.

A BOY: Thank you. (Laughter and applause.)

SECRETARY POWELL: All right. (Applause.)

[End]