Keeping in Touch

My memory ticked back to June 13, 1960 -- the day I entered on duty as a GS-4 stenographer for the FBI – the day I first met Jane.

My mother worked downtown, so I rode to work with her in the family’s 1958 Chevrolet.

“Good luck. I’ll pick you up here at five,” she said, as she dropped me off in front of the Walker Scott Department Store on Fifth Avenue.  The Bureau offices were in the San Diego Trust and Savings Bank Building at Sixth and Broadway, a location with which I was familiar, having spent the last four years a few blocks away attending Cathedral Girls’ High School at Third and Cedar Streets.

My best friend, Lana Ludlow, and I strolled many an after-school hour up and down Broadway, checking out the cute sailors.  Our fetching brown jumpers, bobby sox and saddle oxfords rarely aroused the attention of the U.S. Navy, however.  It wasn’t until the FBI called me up to join its ranks that I realized the Bureau’s offices were located there.  Once I accepted the job, Lana dropped me like a hot potato.  I suspected it had something to do with her family’s attitude toward the Federal Government. During the 1960 census, her grandmother had commented that, “the number of toilets in a person’s home is none of the government’s business!”

It felt good to be out of the old brown uniform.  I wore a dark blue gingham dress with a large white collar, white gloves and freshly polished white pumps.

As I pushed through the brass-framed revolving door of the bank building, I was too young and nervous to notice the lobby’s marble floors and walls, iron teller’s cages, and a ceiling so high that its chandeliers appeared to be suspended in space. I found my way to the elevators.  An outer door of scrolled brass opened to reveal its dark wood-paneled interior.

“Seven please,” I said to the uniformed operator.  When the doors opened, the words “Federal Bureau of Investigation” stenciled in gold on the glass, gleamed in front of me.  I entered the office.  From her desk behind the counter, a tall, stern-looking woman approached. She wore a straight, dark dress. Her glasses had rhinestones at the corners, and her black hair was pulled back tightly into a chignon.

“You must be Marjorie McClintock,” she said.  “I’m Jane Esther Campbell.”

Jane was a 20-year veteran, and the secretary to the Special Agent in Charge.