Utah Secretary Takes a Giant Step for Mankind

Howard Hughes’ late secretary would have been delighted. Oliver North’s would not have been.

An admirer of Dallas Keller, secretary to the reclusive billionaire, became the first man to join the board of directors of Professional Secretaries International, when he was installed in the post Thursday at the organization’s annual convention in Universal City.

At the same convention, Fawn Hall, the secretary who admitted stealing and destroying government documents, was judged to have strayed from the ethics of her profession, even though she acted on orders from her boss, Lt. Col. Oliver North.

Of 120 secretaries who answered a questionnaire distributed at the convention by a magazine for office workers, 69% thought Hall acted improperly and 95% said a secretary ought to call ethical issues to the attention of her employer rather than blindly follow orders.

1,400 at Gathering

About 1,400 secretaries from the United States and dozens of other countries swarmed over the Registry and Sheraton Universal hotels in Universal City for the five-day convention, which closed Thursday.

During a nearly five-hour business session Thursday, Rob Metcalf, 33, was installed as director for the Northwest District, the first time in the organization’s 45 years that a man has risen to that post.

Metcalf, an executive secretary for a Provo, Utah company that makes and distributes educational items for children, said he was inspired to enter the traditionally female field by his childhood memories of Keller.

“My parents and he were friends,” said the sandy-haired, slightly built father of three. He was impressed by Keller’s stories of the exciting inner workings of the Hughes empire, he said, and Keller’s insider role.

Only eight male delegates, including Metcalf, attended the convention. But only three showed up last year, he said.

Timid Comeback

Metcalf regards that as a sign of a timid comeback of men to secretarial work, a field men dominated until World War I, he said.

“A lot of men who are administrative assistants to executives don’t want to come out and say they’re secretaries,” he said. “They haven’t been taught that it’s something to be proud of.”

In an impromptu gathering outside a convention business session, Metcalf and a handful of women secretaries agreed that old conceptions of secretarial work are dying. “Serving the office coffee isn’t an issue any more,” said Susan Sassaman, a secretary at a Detroit advertising agency. “We’re a part of the management team,” she said, and, as such, secretaries share in management’s ethical responsibilities.

Suzanne Arn, a Kansas City secretary who is on the organization’s strategic planning committee, said she has no regrets after losing her job when she refused to go along with what she said were an employer’s unethical demands.

Was Asked to Lie

“I was in a situation where I was asked by my boss to lie to some individuals,” Arm said. “I told him I could not do it. I told him it was against my ethics to follow his lie with my lie. They were not white lies that you give on the phone all the time. They were major.”

A couple of months later, she said, he found a pretext to fire her.

She said she simply applied for a new job.

Another secretary asked what excuse she gave during her employment interview for losing her old job.

“I said we had a difference of opinion on office policy,” she said.

It worked. She got the job.