Security has always been an important topic when organizing a high-profile meeting like the Rotary World Congress, an annual five-day convention which draws well over 20,000 people in attendance from more than 100 countries. Two instances stick out in my memory.
In 1981 the Congress was held in São Paulo Brazil. The country was under the control of a military dictator who recognized the benefits of associating himself with that event. So his people negotiated for him the slot of kickoff speaker on the first day of the Congress. His role was to welcome the visitors from all over the world and to assure them that São Paulo and all of Brazil welcomed them.
At the time, Brazil was facing serious economic problems which were causing inflation to reach 100% and more per year. One interesting consequence of that was that supermarkets all employed one person to do nothing but change the price stickers on everything on the shelves. This person would begin in the first aisle increasing prices move through to the last aisle and then start all over again in the first because the price would go up on a daily basis.
Another thing that I found amazing was when it was the date to submit deposits for services such as bus transportation or hotel rooms, everyone to whom we owed money would have a runner (usually a teenage boy) would be waiting outside the door of our office when we opened in the morning to receive the check for his company and run it to the bank to be deposited. Monies on account were indexed up so that they did not lose their value. But a check in the mail or a bank transfer that took several days would have lost the benefits of indexing.
Because of the economic problems at the time, the crime rate was very high, much of it in the form of pickpocketing and holdups on the street. President João Figueiredo saw an opportunity to use the Rotary Congress to open the door to greater vacation and business travel. But he wanted to make sure that the experience was not blemished by the side of homeless people in the experience of robberies. So he activated the police and military to sweep through São Paulo two days before the start of the Congress and pick up all known or suspicious people. They filled the jails and held them until the day after the Congress was over when they release them without charges since they in fact had no specific evidence against these people. The major newspaper in São Paulo on the day after the Rotary world Congress had the headline "Most Crime-free Week Ever in our City".
The presence of the Brazilian President on the Rotary stage created two special problems. One had to do with the traditional presentation of the flags of all the countries in which there were Rotary clubs at the very beginning of the first session. Each of the more than 170 flags was processed through the hall and placed on the stage while each country name was announced. It was a time of special pride for that years Rotary President as well as for all Rotarians from the country in which the Congress was being held because the last two flags to be presented with a flag of that year's Rotary President and that of the host country.
Two days before that opening session representative of the Brazilian President came to me and announced that the flags could appear on stage but could not be processed in our announced so long as we insisted on presenting the flag of Taiwan which Rotary recognized as a country separate from China. The Rotary president who was from Finland, a country which had never before had one of its citizens as Rotary President, was devastated. Of course the Rotarians from Brazil were also very disappointed to not be able to see their flag carried across the stage and put in a place of honor.
The presence of the Brazil president caused another disruption on the morning of the day that he would appear on stage. I was in my temporary office in the Anhembi Event Center when a member of my staff informed me that it was impossible to make calls outside the event center. Back then they still had an old manual switchboard operated by a woman who you might confuse with your grandmother whose job it was plug wires into holes in order to connect people for outside lines, etc. but suddenly she wasn't responding. So I hightailed it over to the switchboard room and was shocked to see this woman standing outside her little office looking like the blood had been drained from her. She was so frightened that she couldn't even tell me what had happened. A quick look inside the room made everything clear. The country's military police had taken over control of the arena where their president was to appear and all rooms adjacent which included the switchboard. Our suite operator was ordered out of her room machine gun point, but fortunately was not physically harmed in any way. They completed their sweep searching for bombs or hidden weapons. But I had to get a replacement switchboard operator and send "grandma" home for the day to let her nerve settle.
The 1985 Congress in Kansas City was another occasion when security and political protocols occupied me. We had been hoping to get US President Ronald Reagan to speak at that Congress. The invitation had been extended months before and we were informed that because of the many obligations, it could not be confirmed whether the president could attend. I was about to give up hope when five days before the event we still were getting no definitive answer. But then a very strange thing happened. The large hotel immediately adjacent to the arena we were using called me to apologize that they would have to move 10 of our guests who held reservations there to another hotel. They didn't seem to want to explain why and that made me suspicious that some last-minute request from a sheik and his entourage might have decided to come at the last moment. So I began to threaten legal action if they failed to fulfill their obligations.
After some hemming and hawing the hotel director explained that the reason was that those rooms would be used by members of the US Secret Service. But that was all the hotel would say. When I finally reached the US President's scheduling office at the White House, I learned that in fact we would be having a speaker from there but not Pres. Reagan. Due to some unspecified scheduling conflict, he was sending VP George H.W. Bush to speak in his place. From that moment on we were inundated with members of the Secret Service. Every member of my staff who needed to be around the stage or backstage had to have personal details collected so that a background check could be done. Needless to say, they explored every entrance and exit to the building and even insisted that a driveway be organized behind the building that was semi-circular so that the VP's limousine could get out by driving forwards or backwards in the event of any emergency.
There were debates with the VPs scheduling office over who should sit next to whom on the stage and even whether there had to be a pause before the vice president was introduced so that someone could step on stage and place the seal of the vice president of the United States on the front of the lectern where he would speak.
Finally the day came and while I was serving as stage manager for the session, I was the only member of our staff allowed to be in that area right around the rock-star sized stage which was probably 4 feet high. Sharing that unlighted no man's land were a number of Secret Service whose job it was to constantly scan their designated part of the audience to look for any possibility of something that might represent a danger to the vice president. Mr. Bush's speech was well received and as planned he walked off stage left where I happened to be. But he didn't remember that the stairs were toward the front of the stage. I suspect he saw me in the dim light that was being reflected off the stage itself and figured that was where he was supposed to exit. There are a dozen Secret Service people there but each is doing his designated job, looking at the audience. So when the president came near I stuck my hand up to take his and firmly guided him to the spot where the stairs were. At that point I noticed that I suddenly had the attention of Secret Service. But the moment the vice president took the last step and was on the floor he said to one of his agents "it's fine. Get his name and address."
To my surprise the next day I received a special-delivery letter on the stationery of the Vice-President, not specifically mentioning the stairs but thanking me for "being there when I needed you. George" It's good to have been at the right place at the right time.
Herb