Joseph Corbin worked as a motorcycle cop in the Washington, D.C. area for nearly three decades, escorting five U.S. presidents as part of his duties.
The 91-year-old Seminole, Florida, resident will be talking about his working relationship with some of the most powerful men in the world from 4-8 p.m. Thursday at Fayz at the Lake off S.C. 260, where he will hold a signing for his book, “The President’s Escort.”
“I’m the only person who has escorted five presidents,” said Corbin. “No one else has ever done that, and no one will anymore because they don’t just allow one escort anymore; now, there has to be a minimum of five. I am also the only person to have escorted four presidents in one week.”
The book also details Corbin’s life around escorting the presidents, starting with his upbringing in Rappahannock County, Virginia, about 60 miles west of Washington, D.C.
As an officer with the Metropolitan Police Department, Corbin would escort the president’s bulletproof armored car on its travels throughout the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. He began his duties during the administration of President Harry S. Truman.
“I began working at the police department and was assigned to motorcycle duty,” he said. “I was notified that I was being transferred to the Special Operations Division, the one that takes care of escorting the president and other dignitaries. But I was assigned to the president.”
Corbin had less seniority than some of his colleagues, many of whom were jealous, he said.
“They would say, ‘How in the hell did you get that job?’” Corbin said, laughing. “They’d tell me that they’d been there longer.”
Corbin believes Truman himself had something to do with it.
“When I joined the police department, I was assigned duty at the White House, and I would see President Truman go for walks in the morning,” said Corbin. “He was always so kind to me. After I began escorting for him, it was almost like he adopted me as his own son, because he didn’t have any sons. He was just very good to me.”
After Truman declined to run for re-election in 1952 and left office in 1953, Corbin continued to work for his successor, President Dwight Eisenhower.
“Eisenhower would not go to the airport to meet any head of government from any country that came to the United States,” said Corbin. “So, I would escort then Vice-president Nixon, and we would go to the airport and escort the person to the White House, and then Eisenhower would greet them there in the Rose Garden.”
Corbin said that President John F. Kennedy would keep a stack of papers roughly a foot high in his car with him at all times and that he would read them quickly.
“He could read them, and you thought he was going so fast he was just reading the headlines, but he was reading the whole thing,” said Corbin. “He would have full retention, and he could talk to you while he was reading them, too.”
Corbin continued with President Lyndon B. Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, and then went back to escorting Richard Nixon when he came into office in 1969.
“Nixon was always so kind to me,” said Corbin.
The former president was almost singlehandedly responsible for Corbin gaining a job protecting a Supreme Court chief justice after he left the president’s detail.
“He had just appointed Warren Burger to the Supreme Court when I retired,” said Corbin. “Congress had made a rule that one person had to travel with the chief justice as his bodyguard.”
Corbin’s chief of police called him to tell him the news, and Corbin said he would need to speak with his wife, Nancy.
“She said, ‘No way,’” said Corbin. “She said I’d been on this presidential detail for years. She said the phone rings and I have to go. She said we didn’t have any social life. She didn’t want me to take the job at all.”
Corbin said his chief, the chief justice and the president himself did some wrangling, but he stood firm in his decision to turn down the job and honor his wife’s wishes.
“I recommended a friend for the job; he had just retired when I did, and he was a good fit,” said Corbin.
Corbin said he remembers his time with the presidents fondly, but that he only thought about writing a book about his experiences in the last decade.
“It came from going into the schools and talking with the children there,” he said. “They are so interested in what you have to say. They ask intelligent questions. I thought it would be bad if I left this world and didn’t have something written down for them where they could read about it and study it.”
Corbin said it took about four years to get the book to press. It was finally published late last year.
“When you’re writing about the presidency, it’s so hard,” he said. “You have to get permission for all the photos that you put in there; anything you write about the presidents has to be approved. That’s why it took us so long.”
Corbin dedicated the book to Pat Choy, a native of Singapore who teaches in Largo, Florida, a town close to Seminole.
“She was the one who started inviting me to come to her classes and give talks to her students, five or six years ago now,” he said.
He said he chose the Manning area for a book-signing because his wife has family that lives in the area, and they come up often annually for her family reunion.
“It’s held in Columbia, and we like the area here,” he said. “She looks forward to coming every year, and I tag along with her.”
