The Residence - Inside the Private World of The White House (41 page)

The first ladies I interviewed wanted to help shine a light on the people who made their lives bearable in the White House. I appreciate their time and am grateful for their insights as ultimate White House insiders. Laura Bush told me about the horror of 9/11 and the healing process that she and the staff went through together. Barbara Bush recounted her playful friendships with the household workers. (“You don’t tease people that you don’t like. You tease people you like. . . . They teased back, and I deserved it.”) Rosalynn Carter praised the staff for making her family feel more comfortable during the tense 444-day Iran hostage crisis. She seemed genuinely moved by the kindness they showed her. Tricia Nixon, Luci and Lynda Johnson, Steve and Susan Ford, and Ron Reagan all helped reveal what it’s really like to live in the “great white jail.”

I also greatly enjoyed talking with former social secretaries Amy Zantzinger, Desirée Rogers, Julianna Smoot, and Bess Abell, and am so appreciative for the help of Sally McDonough, Kaki Hockersmith, Melissa Montgomery, Deanna Congileo, and Wren Powell. Thank you to the presidential aides who provided an important perspective into the relationship between the political staff and the residence workers: Anita Dunn, Reggie Love, Katie Johnson, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, Reid Cherlin, Adam Frankel, Julianna Smoot, Andy Card, and Anita McBride. And thank you to Emmy Award winner Pete Williams, who very generously took my book jacket photo and made me laugh in the process. I’m also grateful to the White House Curator’s Office, the White House Historical Association, and to the staffs at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and
Museum, the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, the Richard Nixon Foundation, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, and the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon gave me this simple and necessary advice after months and months of interviews and research: “Sit down and start writing!” A bestselling author and accomplished journalist herself, Gayle was an important sounding board for me throughout this journey. And thank you to Christina Warner and Annie Kate Pons. Annie, I love “doing life with you” too, even if we are on opposite coasts.

I’m eternally grateful to Bloomberg’s Al Hunt who gave me the chance of a lifetime when he assigned me to the White House beat, and to editors Joe Sobczyk, Steve Komarow, Jeanne Cummings, and Mark Silva who helped me discover the joys of reporting.

Sources and Chapter Notes

NOTE ON REPORTING

My research for
The Residence
included candid conversations with more than a hundred White House insiders. I interviewed three former first ladies and the children of four presidents, along with numerous presidential aides. But the most revealing details came from my conversations with roughly fifty former residence workers and a current staffer, most of whom had never spoken in such detail about their experiences working for America’s first families. In fact, most had never even been approached by a reporter before. Many of these conversations were in person. In rare circumstances sources asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject matter and I respected their wishes. These firsthand accounts of life in the residence were supplemented by extensive research from archival materials, including oral histories from presidential libraries, memoirs penned by residence staffers and political aides, and biographies.

INTRODUCTION

Interview subjects include Laura Bush, Rosalynn Carter, Barbara Bush, Reggie Love, Reid Cherlin, Susan Ford, Frank Ruta, Betty Finney, Amy Zantzinger, Stephen Rochon, Ron Reagan, Cletus Clark, Katie Johnson, Tricia Nixon, Julianna Smoot, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, Bob Scanlan, Tony Savoy, Nelson Pierce, Christine Limerick, Walter Scheib, Skip Allen, Ronn Payne, Roland Mesnier, and Worthington White. Published sources include Preston Bruce,
From the Door of the White House
(New York: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Books, a division of William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1984); Lillian Rogers Parks with Frances Spatz Leighton,
My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House
(New York: Ishi Press International, 1961); Faye Fiore, “Jacqueline Kennedy’s Pink Hat Is a Missing Piece of History,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 26, 2011; Dominique Mann, “In Wake of New Film ‘The Butler,’ Black Ex-White House Staffers Reflect,” MSNBC.com, September 14, 2013; Hillary Rodham Clinton, interview of the first lady for
House Beautiful
, November 30, 1993, by Marian Burros, William J. Clinton Presidential Library; “Jacqueline Kennedy in the White House,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum; Sue Allison Massimiano, “Those Who Serve Those Who Serve,”
Life
,
“The White House 1792–1992,”
October 30, 1992; (FY) 2014 Congressional Budget Submission—the White House; Preston Bruce’s oral history is available at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum; Liz McNeil, “Jackie Kennedy: New Details of Her Heartbreak,”
People
, November 13, 2013; Carol D. Leonnig, “Secret Service Fumbled Response to 2011 Shooting,”
Washington Post
, September 28, 2014; Carol D. Leonnig, “White House Intruder Was Tackled by Off-Duty Secret Service Agent,”
Washington Post
, September 30, 2014; William Safire, “Inside the Bunker,”
New York Times
, September 13, 2001; Laura Bush,
Spoken from the Heart
(New York: Scribner, 2010); Letitia Baldrige,
A Lady, First: My Life in the Kennedy White House and the American Embassies of Paris and Rome
(New York: Viking Penguin, 2001); James Bennet, “Testing of a President: The Overview; Clinton Admits Lewinsky Liaison to Jury; Tells Nation ‘It Was Wrong,’ but Private,”
New York Times
, August 18, 1998; Courtney Thompson, “Obamas Called on Chicago Vendors for State Dinner Décor, Stage, and Lighting,”
BizBash
, December 2, 2009; Abigail Adams, “Letter to Her Daughter from the New White House,” White House Historical Association, November 21, 1800; White House Dimensions and Statistics, White House Historical Association; J. B. West with Mary Lynn Kotz,
Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies
(New York: Warner Books, 1973); Carl Cannon, “November 21, 1963,”
Real Clear Politics
, November 21, 2013; Claire Faulkner, “Ushers and Stewards Since 1800,”
White House History: At Work in the White House: Journal of the White House Historical Association,
26; Robert Klara,
The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America’s Most Famous Residence
(New York: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, 2013); William Seale,
The President’s House
, Volumes I and II (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association with the cooperation of the National Geographic Society, 1986); Katherine Skiba, “Chicagoans at Forefront of White House Holiday Décor,”
Chicago Tribune
, December 5, 2013; Walter Scheib and Andrew Friedman,
White House Chef: Eleven Years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen
(Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2007); Sheila Rabb Weidenfeld,
First Lady’s Lady: With the Fords at the White House
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979); John and Claire Whitcomb,
Real Life at the White House: 200 Years of Daily Life at America’s Most Famous Residence
(New York: Routledge, 2002); William Seale, “Secret Spaces at the White House?”
White House History: Special Spaces: Journal of the White House Historical Association
, 29 (2011).

CHAPTER I: CONTROLLED CHAOS

For this chapter the author drew on conversations with Desirée Rogers, Luci Baines Johnson, Rosalynn Carter, Stephen Rochon, Barbara Bush, Nelson Pierce, James Jeffries, Kaki Hockersmith, Bill Cliber, Betty Monkman, Laura Bush, Gary Walters, Bess Abell, Christine Limerick, Bob Scanlan, Tony Savoy, Skip Allen, Katie Johnson, Jim Ketchum, Chris Emery, Linsey Little, Ronn Payne, Walter Scheib, Michael “Rahni” Flowers, Daryl Wells, David Hume Kennerly, Milton Frame, Roland Mesnier, Reggie Love, Ivaniz Silva, Cletus Clark, Susan Ford, Lynwood Westray, and Katie McCormick Lelyveld. Published sources include Michael Ruane and Aaron C. Davis, “D.C.’s Inauguration Head Count: 1.8 Million,”
Washington Post
, January 22, 2009; Krissah Thompson and Juliet Eilperin, “The Elusive Mrs. R: Marion Robinson, the White House’s Note-So-Typical Live-In Grandma,”
Washington Post
, March 31, 2014; Kate Andersen, “Rogers Heats Up Obama Social Calendar That Economy Can’t Chill,”
Bloomberg
, April 10, 2009; Kate Andersen, “Obama Invites LeBron James to Play in White House Court Opener,”
Bloomberg
, June 20, 2009; Letitia Baldrige,
A Lady, First: My Life in the Kennedy White House and the American Embassies of Paris and Rome
(New York: Viking Penguin, 2001); Laura Bush,
Spoken from the Heart
(New York: Scribner, 2010); interview with President Barack Obama,
The Tom Joyner Morning Show
, August 27, 2013; interview with First Lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden,
The Gayle King Show,
April 19, 2011; Thom Patterson, “Special Ops: How to Move a President in a Few Hours,” CNN, January 19, 2009; Traphes Bryant with Frances Spatz Leighton,
Dog Days at the White House
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975); Preston Bruce,
From the Door of the White House
(New York: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Books, a division of William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1984); Alonzo Fields,
My 21 Years in the White House
(New York: Crest Books, 1961); Anne Kornblut, “Reggie Love, Obama ‘Body Man,’ to Leave White House by Year’s End,”
Washington Post
, November 10, 2011; Carl Anthony, “Jackie Kennedy’s Last White House Days & What She Found in JFK’S Desk,” carlanthonyonline.com, December 6, 2013; Patricia Leigh Brown, “A Redecorated White House, the Way the Clintons Like It,”
New York Times
, November 24, 1993; “Power Shifts Hands in Flurry of Activity,”
USA TODAY
, January 22, 2001; Sally Bedell Smith,
For the Love of Politics: Inside the Clinton White House
(New York: Random House, 2007); Ann Devroy and Ruth Marcus, “Clinton Takes Oath as 42nd President Asking Sacrifice, Promising Renewal,”
Washington Post
, January 21, 1993; Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy,
The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012); Lauren Collins, “The Other Obama: Michelle Obama and the Politics of Candor,”
New Yorker
, March 10, 2008; Jodi Kantor,
The Obamas
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2012); Roland Mesnier with Christian Malard,
All the President’s Pastries: Twenty-Five Years in the White House
(Paris: Flammarion, SA, 2006); Lady Bird Johnson,
A White House Diary
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970); Nancy Mitchell interview by James Deutsch for the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., August 27, 2007; Henry Haller, interview for the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., August 27, 2007; Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “On Moving Day for 2 First Families, a Bit of Magic by 93 Pairs of Hands,”
New York Times
, January 20, 2009; J. B. West with Mary Lynn Kotz,
Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies
(New York: Warner Books, 1973); Tim Carman, “White House Memories: Chef John Moeller on Pretzels, Maple Syrup and Calorie-Counting,”
Washington Post
, February 18, 2014; Nancy Reagan and William Novak,
My Turn
(New York: Random House, 1989); Liz Carpenter,
Ruffles and Flourishes
(New York: Doubleday, 1970); John and Claire Whitcomb,
Real Life at the White House: 200 Years of Daily Life at America’s Most Famous Residence
(New York: Routledge, 2002); Hillary Rodham Clinton, interview of the first lady for
House Beautiful
, November 30, 1993, by Marian Burros, William J. Clinton Presidential Library; President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, interview for
National Geographic
, July 25, 1995, William J. Clinton Presidential Library; the Anne Lincoln and J. B. West Oral Histories are available at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum; “Clinton Ok’d Using Lincoln Bedroom for Contributors,” CNN, February 25, 1997; Jim Kuhnhenn, “Obama Returns to Chicago Home After Illinois Fundraiser,” Associated Press, June 2, 2012; Barbara Bush,
Barbara Bush: A Memoir
(New York: Scribner, 1994); Andrew Rosenthal, “Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed,”
New York Times
, February 5, 1992.