The Residence - Inside the Private World of The White House (14 page)

Most of the time, however, working on such an intimate basis for the most powerful family in the world makes the staff feel respected. And it’s in their interests to keep quiet about whatever they hear. Susan Ford, who was just seventeen when her father took over the presidency, said, “These people wouldn’t be there for so many years if they talked.”

White House painter Cletus Clark, who served presidents from Nixon to George W. Bush, never spilled secrets. “I’m just like a ghost. I’ve always stayed to myself. And I know right from wrong.”

“They serve from president to president, they know all of the
families, and they are always discreet,” Laura Bush told me—in a much more measured voice than her mother-in-law. They maintain their discretion even when chatting with the first families themselves. “They don’t tell about the presidents that lived there before you or anything about their family, which we admired and respected because, of course, we wanted them to treat us the same when we left.”

The kinds of memories of everyday life that are treasured by most families are especially dear to the first families, who have often invited residence workers to join them on their downtime. Laura Bush says that her husband and Butler Ron Guy shared a love for fishing. “Any time the butlers came to our ranch, which they did when we hosted heads of state at our ranch, George and Ron Guy would bass fish at every free moment they had. I have a great big blowup of a photograph of George and Vice President Cheney and Ron Guy out on the little electric bass boat that we have at our ranch, fishing.”

“There are just a lot of ways that we knew each person who worked there. We knew them so well,” Mrs. Bush said. “Harold Hancock, I remember, was one of the doormen who we loved. He was such a gentle and lovely man and he died while we lived there. I have a wonderful photograph of him standing at the door waiting for the president to come back with Spot, our dog. . . . They were always great to all the animals. They acted like they were really wild about all the animals, whether they were or not!”

Luci Baines Johnson says she loved Wilson Jerman and remembers him vividly even now, nearly fifty years after leaving the White House. “He had a smile that could soothe a savage breast,” she said in her slow Southern drawl.

In an ultimate example of discretion, Jerman found a way to dodge people’s questions by never really admitting where he worked. “I’d say, ‘I work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,’ and 99 percent of the people don’t know where that is. They’d ask you, ‘What warehouse
is that? What building is that?’ I’d say ‘It’s downtown.’” He didn’t want to answer the barrage of questions that would follow if he told them the truth.

Like Ramsey, Jerman was so worried about saying something that would get him fired that he did not talk about his job at all when he worked there. “There would be too many questions asked,” he said. “You see, you never see. You hear, you never hear. And you don’t know nothing.”

Even in the face of unfolding history, Jerman maintained focus on his job and seemed completely uninterested in breaking any news. In the early evening on April 15, 1986, Jerman and Chef Frank Ruta were preparing dinner for the Reagans when the president walked in. He often came into the kitchen, but this time he wasn’t just checking in to see how they were doing.

“I just want you boys to know that in five minutes we’re going to begin bombing Libya, and I want you to be the first to know,” Reagan announced.

“That’s nice, Mr. President,” Jerman replied, “but what time would you like to have dinner?”

Reagan stopped, thought for a second, and said, “You better ask my wife that.”

Ruta laughed, recalling the stunned look on Reagan’s face. A moment later, Mrs. Reagan whisked her husband out of the kitchen; she was always wary of having him talk too much to the staff, especially when it came to divulging national security secrets.

Ruta was just twenty-two when he started in the White House kitchen, where he prepared most of the Reagans’ family meals. He told me that Nancy Reagan protected her husband fiercely—her devotion to him was complete and genuine—but that Mrs. Reagan never had anything to worry about from the residence workers. Ruta never gossiped, and he never asked the maids and butlers to
share any gossip either. “Their privacy has to be respected. You’re not there to be the public’s eye.”

Sometimes staffers cannot help but witness private moments. Every evening, the usher on night duty brings up the president’s briefing book, which contains sensitive material put together by the West Wing staff to prepare him for the next day, and turns off the lights. Usher Chris Emery remembers often finding the Reagans in the sitting room together after dinner when he was dropping off the briefing book. “Sometimes they’d be watching
Who’s the Boss
—the TV was very loud because he was a little hard of hearing. It’d be eight or nine o’clock and he’d be there with these big black government-issue glasses in his red robe, in a flowered chair with a dinner tray next to him stacked with papers, working. Mrs. Reagan would be right next to him, and a lot of times I’d go up and they’d be holding hands. There was nobody around to see it.”

Painter Cletus Clark said he took pains to avoid disturbing the family, even though it meant complicating his job. “They really didn’t want us around there that much. You had to work around the first family as much as possible. When they’re in the West Sitting Hall and we had to go down to the Queens’ Bedroom, which is on the East Side, we used to have to go up to the third floor and walk down the hall and come down the back stairway. You’ve got to keep working.”

Clark’s loyalty to the job was clear when he was instructed to do some painting work at the home of Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, President Nixon’s best friend. The press soon got hold of the story and questioned the use of White House staff for a personal job.

“I did what they told me to do,” Clark said. “I don’t ask no questions.”

Barbara Bush says that the residence staff “probably gossip less than one gossips normally.” Of course, she added mischievously, “I’ve got to say that we do have the perfect family.”

Rosalynn Carter appreciated the staff’s discretion. “I just trusted them completely. They were all so good. I don’t remember ever covering up anything, but I don’t ever remember them trying to listen in. I guess they were doing things around while we were talking but I don’t remember that at all.”

These workers hate the spotlight. Usher Nelson Pierce, who was a thin man with a gentle smile, didn’t have many photos of his time at the White House, largely because he dodged photographers so conscientiously during his twenty-six years there (1961 to 1987). “I wasn’t there to be photographed,” said Pierce. “I got caught three times on television: once was when I was plugging in the Christmas lights on the North Portico and the cameras weren’t supposed to be taking pictures, but they were. And then twice when holding an umbrella: once for the president and once for the first lady when they got off the chopper.”

D
ISCRETION IS ESPECIALLY
important when it comes to protecting the way food is secured for the first family. For large orders, the White House uses prescreened food supply companies whose workers are fully vetted by the FBI and the Secret Service. The items are picked up by Secret Service officers and brought to the White House. If the president takes a liking to a certain snack he encounters during his travels and wants it sent back to the White House, arrangements are sometimes made to have it sent to residence staff at their home addresses so that no one knows it’s going to the president.

When it comes to the first family’s regular meals, though, the raw materials are bought anonymously by residence workers to ensure safety. Storeroom Manager William “Bill” Hamilton, the longest-serving residence worker in recent history (he started when President Eisenhower was in office and retired in 2013), was responsible
for buying food for family meals and occasionally for larger dinners. A slim, bald seventy-seven-year-old who looks remarkably young, Hamilton often ran to a local grocery store to pick up whatever the family needed, from toilet paper to apples. He still will not reveal which store he went to. (“The Secret Service won’t let me say!”) The anonymity was crucial: no one knew he was shopping for the first family, and no one was interested in poisoning his food.

Hamilton’s office was located underneath the North Portico, across from the White House Ground Floor Kitchen, making it convenient for him to stay in touch with the executive chef about which ingredients were needed for the family’s meals. When shopping time came, Hamilton generally traveled to the market in a Secret Service van made to look like a normal SUV, rather than one of the imposing black vans in the White House motorcade. “Just like any van, except that we take all the seats and stuff out of it, but on the outside it looks like any other van.”

Because no packages are accepted through the mail at the White House compound, everything has to be cleared through the Secret Service in a building in remote Maryland. Whenever someone asked Executive Pastry Chef Roland Mesnier how they could send the president something special, he would tell them not to bother. “You can send it but they’re not going to see it. It’s going to be destroyed.”

When the president eats meals outside the White House, a member of the military is generally assigned to monitor the kitchen, watch the food being prepared, and taste it to make sure it’s safe. Jane Erkenbeck, an assistant to Nancy Reagan, said that her hotel room was always next to the first lady’s, in part to make it easier for Mrs. Reagan to get room service meals delivered safely and expeditiously. Erkenbeck herself would order the food, she recalls, and “it was always delivered to me, it was never delivered to her. Then I would take it into her room.”

W
ORKING AT THE
White House also requires a degree of composure under unusual circumstances, even from workers who don’t necessarily have daily exposure to the first family. Plumbing Foreman Reds Arrington and his brother, Bonner, who was the carpenter foreman, were warned by their uncle—who got them their jobs—about the importance of keeping their own counsel.

“They all kept their mouths shut,” said Margaret Arrington, Reds Arrington’s widow. Now that so much time has passed, she feels free to share some of what her husband saw behind closed doors.

“When the family was around,” she recalled, her husband and his brother usually “disappeared,” staying out of the way. But “they did any job they were asked to do. One job was to move some chairs for Jackie Kennedy. When they got off of the elevator, she was sitting at the end of the hall on the phone and had her leg propped up, crossed at the ankle, fiddling with her toes.” The first lady was wearing pants, and her casual demeanor caught them off-guard. “They were so shocked, seeing her sitting there in a very unladylike position, that they both ran straight into a wall with the chairs!” They hit the wall so hard, they were worried they’d damaged the priceless antiques.

If the first lady or the president decides to come down for an impromptu visit, workers try to look out for one another, sending along advance notice so their colleagues won’t be caught by surprise. According to Reggie Love, the Secret Service or the president’s secretary would call the Usher’s Office to let them know when the president was heading to the residence or to visit any of the shops downstairs.

As Cletus Clark remembers, when Betty Ford came downstairs to the basement to thank him before her husband left office, he got a call a few minutes before from the Usher’s Office: “The first lady’s coming down, so carry yourself accordingly.”