Mayor Oden’s final speech directed at leadership class

Mayor Terry Oden’s wife recently mentioned to him that he should start gathering together all his memories, whether they be photos, letters or events, so that they are preserved. He listened, and presented his story to the Mountain Brook Leadership Class during a talk Oct. 6. Oden helped establish Leadership Mountain Brook, and this was his final speaking engagement as mayor.

Oden’s presentation, titled “A Tale of 10 Cities,” followed his journey as a United States Secret Service agent that spanned 25 years.

“This is basically a history lesson,” he said to the class at the beginning of the meeting. 

Oden covered the general history of the organization, but opened with an event that overhauled the agency: the Kennedy assassination, which took place about two months before Oden accepted his first posting. 

By January 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson had been sworn in, and Oden was posted in Atlanta. Soon after, he was flown to New York City, where he stayed to protect Jackie Kennedy until she remarried and decided that she no longer wanted protection.

“She was a very, very sweet lady,” he said, which greatly contrasted his thoughts on his next assignment with Lyndon B. Johnson. 

“He was rude, crude and mean,” Oden said, but clarified “his bark was worse than his bite.” After Johnson’s presidency was over, he followed the family to their ranch in Texas, where he was paired with Johnson’s daughter, Luci. Oden watched her grow and eventually moved back to Birmingham with his wife before he was again called to action when American planes were being hijacked to Cuba. 

In two days, he trained to be a sky marshal, leading him to fly countless hours during the following months. He finally returned home, moved to Kansas City for a few years, and returned again to Birmingham. Almost immediately, Oden and his family were uprooted to San Francisco to take the lead of the Reagan campaign for about a year.

“I moved from the least expensive office to the most expensive office,” he said. 

While he and his family were in San Francisco, Oden was offered a position in the Paris office. “They told me, ‘All you gotta do is two things: Be in charge of the Democratic National Convention and learn how to speak French.’ And I said, ‘OK.’”

He had more than 90 countries in his territory while in Paris as a special agent for international operations, as well as two daughters who were trying to adjust to the Parisian lifestyle.

“They hated it until they picked up some French,” he said of his daughters. Paris would come to be his favorite place he lived during his years in the agency, but he returned home to Birmingham four years later, where his time as an agent — and his presentation — ended. 

Over the course of an hour, Oden took the Mountain Brook Leadership Class through 25 years of his life. The students had questions, as anyone who had just listened to his story would. He mentioned his love for Paris and that he still keeps in touch with Luci. He explained how he started in the Secret Service and that he had a Dalmatian for 15 years. 

Even with an hour of talking and questions, there was still more that the students wanted to learn. Finally, one asked, “Are you ever going to write a book?” and Oden replied, “Nope, probably not.” 

It looks as if for now, Oden’s adventures will be that of a word-of-mouth epic.