The Call to Service

The speaker, Elizabeth Anderson Howell, gave a moving tribute to her husband, Brady Kay Howell, who was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon. The occasion was poignant not only because this young widow, in her mid-20s (as was her husband) had suffered such a loss, but also because her loss seemed to this gathering somehow to represent a wound to the heart of the public service. ASPA has been among organizations lamenting, and working to redress, the poor reputation of government among students and young professionals. Losing Brady Howell, a shining example of the kind of highly qualified and motivated young people government needs to recruit, was a deep blow to all of those who care about its future.

Brady was a Presidential Management Intern, one of the 344-member PMI class of 2000. PMIs are nominated by colleges and graduate schools, complete long applications, endure daylong assessments in Washington, and then are recruited by federal agencies. For those drawn to the career service, this is a high honor and terrific opportunity for a two-year intensive immersion in the challenges of government work.

Interested in obtaining a top-secret security clearance since his youth in Idaho, Brady lived a life of faith and achievement, including service as a missionary in the Canary Islands for two years on behalf of the Mormon Church, Cub Scout leader, Sunday school teacher. He came to Washington after graduating from Syracuse University's highly rated Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs with a master's degree in public administration.

Here he won a coveted spot in the Navy's PMI program, carefully designed by the senior civilian official on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Susan Marquis, herself a former PMI. Brady started work in June as the first PMI assigned to the Director of Naval Intelligence Staff, helping in the work that establishes strategy and policy for the entire naval intelligence community. Recently, he began training as a watch officer for the CNO Intelligence Plot, providing briefings to the CNO, the Secretary of the Navy and senior officers. The position usually is reserved for the most promising intelligence officers. Just weeks before his death, he got his top-secret clearance.

These are the kinds of opportunities that surely would attract young people to the public service-if they knew they existed-and they certainly excited Brady Howell; he wore his clearance badges around his neck with pride and joy.

After Brady's death, ASPA's Northern Virginia chapter instituted a scholarship in his name, and the first recipient was given his $500 check the night Liz Howell spoke. Large crowds turned out at memorial services here and in Idaho. The Navy sent an honor guard and a one-star admiral to the Idaho service, which also was attended by Gov. Dirk Kempthorne. At the Office of Personnel Management's Eastern Management Development Center in Shepherdstown, W.Va., where Brady had attended a two-week leadership course, a tree was planted in his memory.

Because Brady Howell grew up in a family and community that instilled the values of public service, his journey into government does not seem exceptional. But it is exceptional in the larger context of Americans' views of government service. To be sure, polling shows a considerably more benign public view of government in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But deeper down, the surveys indicate low levels of interest in joining the ranks of government. Put simply, it's hard as hell to get young stars like Brady to see a compelling future in the service of Uncle Sam.

Articles in this and other recent issues of Government Executive make clear the huge challenges that confront government as it responds to the urgent tasks of homeland security, defense planning and international relations. Challenging work is required to modernize agencies' missions, technology, staffing, training and intra- and intergovernmental relationships. One huge institution now in the beginning stages of such a transformation is the U.S. Army, as Katherine Peters reports in this issue. As Deborah Shapley reports this month, intensive work is under way to ensure that foreign aid and diplomacy support the country's need to improve its image in the Muslim world. Another big challenge, the subject of our cover story, is to design and build the new Transportation Security Administration, whose work force will exceed 30,000 people.

At a National Academy of Sciences meeting last month, former Undersecretary of Energy Ernest Moniz described the painstaking planning the department has done to identify and describe the government's key unmet energy research needs, and the success this effort has had in attracting top-flight scientists to do the work. That kind of strategic work, and also greater efforts to communicate the interest and excitement of the kinds of assignments offered to Brady Howell, are the sorts of steps we need to help revive interest in working for government.