The Residence - Inside the Private World of The White House (5 page)

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staff delights in knowing every inch of the mansion, its little-known corners and historical secrets. The underground locker rooms where butlers keep their crisp tuxedos and maids house their uniforms (pastel shirts and white pants) are just a short distance from a bomb shelter under the East Wing that was built for President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II; this room is now the President’s Emergency Operations Center, built to withstand a nuclear detonation. The tube-shaped bunker is where the president may be taken in case of an attack. The Ground Floor Map Room was once a billiards room before it was transformed into the president’s top secret planning center during World War II; it was there, surrounded by maps tracking the movements of American and enemy forces, that FDR contemplated the invasion of Normandy. Few people were ever granted the authority to glimpse inside. “When the room was to be cleaned,” wrote Chief Usher J. B. West, “the security guard covered
the maps with cloth, standing duty while the cleaner mopped the floor.” Decades later, Bill Clinton used this room to give his televised grand jury testimony during the Lewinsky affair; and today it is used as a holding area for holiday party guests waiting to be photographed with the president and first lady in the adjoining Diplomatic Reception Room.

Other rooms tell different stories spanning centuries of American history. Abigail Adams used the grand but drafty East Room—the largest room in the White House, with ceilings more than twenty feet high—to hang laundry. The room, which later served as a temporary home for soldiers during the Civil War, now serves as the setting for most presidential press conferences. The State Dining Room, often used for highly choreographed state dinners in connection with the signing of significant military and trade agreements, was once Thomas Jefferson’s office. The Green Room, now a formal sitting room on the State Floor, began as Jefferson’s bedroom and breakfast room; James Monroe used it as a card parlor, and Abraham Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, was embalmed there, candles illuminating his face as camellias were placed in his hands. The small Victorian-style Lincoln Sitting Room on the second floor was used as a telegraph room in the late nineteenth century; during the darkest days of Watergate, Richard Nixon sought refuge amid its heavy drapes and dark furnishings, spending hours there with music blasting, a fire blazing in the fireplace, air-conditioning cranked up as high as it would go.

On the third floor there’s a sanctuary hidden from view on the roof of the South Portico with 180-degree views of the Mall and the Washington Monument. It was designed by First Lady Grace Coolidge as her “Sky Parlor.” Now known as the Solarium, the airy hideaway serves as the first family’s family room. It’s here where young Caroline Kennedy attended kindergarten, where President
Reagan went to recuperate after being shot in an assassination attempt, and where Sasha and Malia Obama giggle with friends during sleepovers.

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ONE OF THE
residence workers I interviewed minded being called a “domestic.” There’s nothing demeaning about working in the White House, in
any
capacity. “When you can’t afford it yourself and you’re surrounded by the finest pieces of furniture and Americana in the entire country every single day, that’s kind of cool,” says Florist Ronn Payne.

To Executive Pastry Chef Roland Mesnier, preparing elaborate desserts for five presidents was the pinnacle of his career. “The White House is the top of the top. If it’s not the top at the White House, when is it going to be the top?”

It is this distinct commitment to service, and pride in their role, that allow America’s first families to work and live in the White House complex with confidence and security, and to enjoy precious moments of peace. The stories of these residence workers offer a glimpse at our presidents and their families as they live within the confines of the office, literally and symbolically. Their incredible stories—some heartwarming, some hilarious, some tragic—deserve a place in American history.

CHAPTER I

Controlled Chaos

The transformation in the household from one Administration to another is as sudden as death. By that I mean it leaves you with a mysterious emptiness. In the morning you serve breakfast to a family with whom you have spent years. At noon that family is gone out of your life and here are new faces, new dispositions, and new likes and dislikes.

—ALONZO FIELDS, BUTLER AND MAÎTRE D’, 1931–1953,
MY 21 YEARS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

It’s the only time I ever had a job quit me.

—WALTER SCHEIB, EXECUTIVE CHEF, 1994–2005

O
nce or twice a decade, on an often bone-chillingly cold day in January, Americans are riveted by the public transfer of power from one president to the next. Hundreds of thousands of people flood the National Mall to watch the president-elect take the oath of office, in a serene and carefully choreographed ceremony that Lady Bird Johnson called “the great quadrennial American pageant.”

Behind the scenes, however, this peaceful ceremony is accompanied by an astounding number of complex logistics. Laura Bush
calls the “transfer of families” a “choreographic masterpiece, done with exceptional speed,” and its successful execution depends on the institutional knowledge and the flexibility of the residence staff. The hum of White House activity starts even earlier than usual on Inauguration Day, with workers coming in before the break of dawn. By the time their day has come to an end, a new era in American history has begun.

The White House belongs to the outgoing family until noon, when the new president’s term begins. On the morning of the inauguration, the president hosts a small coffee reception for the new first family. Just before the first family departs, the staff crams into the opulent State Dining Room, where they have served so many state dinners, to say good-bye to the family. They are often overcome by the range of emotions they feel—trading one boss, and in some cases a friend, for another in the span of just six hours. In many cases they have had eight years to grow close to the departing family; they have seldom had any time to get to know the mansion’s new residents. There is rarely a dry eye in the room—even though many may be excited about the future.

“When the Clintons came down and Chelsea came with them, they didn’t say a word,” Head Housekeeper Christine Limerick recalled about Inauguration Day 2001. “I’ll get emotional about this now—[President Clinton] looked at every person dead on in the face and said, ‘Thank you.’ The whole room just broke up.”

During the farewell, residence workers present the family with a gift—sometimes the flag that flew over the White House on the day that the president was inaugurated—placed in a beautiful hand-carved box designed by White House carpenters. In 2001, Limerick, Chief Florist Nancy Clarke, and Chief Curator Betty Monkman gave Hillary Clinton a large pillow made from swatches of fabrics that she had selected to decorate different rooms in the house.

There is very little time for reflection. At around eleven o’clock
in the morning, the two first families leave the White House for the Capitol. Between then and approximately five o’clock in the afternoon—when the new president and his family return to rest and prepare for the inaugural balls—the staff must complete the job of moving one family out and another family in. In that rare moment, when the eyes of Washington and the world are trained away from the White House toward the Capitol, the staff is grateful that the public’s attention is temporarily diverted from the turbulent activity within the residence walls.

Since employing professional movers for one day would require an impractical array of security checks, the residence staff is solely responsible for moving the newly elected president in and the departing president and his family out. No outside help is allowed. Throughout the day, even as they continue to perform their traditional roles, the residence workers also serve as professional movers, with just six hours to complete the move. The job is so large, and so physically demanding, that everyone is called in to help: pot washers in the kitchen help arrange furniture, and carpenters can be found placing framed photographs on side tables. The move is so labor intensive that on the day of the Clintons’ arrival one staffer sustained a serious back injury from lifting a sofa and was unable to return to work for several months.

For Operations Supervisor Tony Savoy, Inauguration Day is the most important day of his career. The Operations Department usually handles receptions, dinners, rearranging furniture for the tapings of TV interviews, and outdoor events, but during the inauguration they are the team that “moves ’em in and moves ’em out,” Savoy says. The trucks carrying the new family’s belongings are allowed in through one set of gates, and dozens of residence workers from the Operations, Engineering, Carpenters, and Electricians shops race to remove furniture from the trucks and place them precisely where the first family’s interior decorator wants them. “The best transition is when they don’t lose” and get to stay another four
years, Savoy joked, masking the very serious anxiety that comes with this astounding task.

In the six hours between the departure of the first family and the arrival of the newly elected president and his family, the staff has to put in fresh rugs and brand-new mattresses and headboards, remove paintings, and essentially redecorate in the incoming family’s preferred style. They unpack the family’s boxes, fold their clothes perfectly, and place them in their drawers. They even put toothpaste and toothbrushes on bathroom counters. No detail is overlooked.

Florist Bob Scanlan helped with the transition from Clinton to George W. Bush in 2001. As transitions go, the Bushes’ was relatively easy, since they knew the territory better than most. George W. Bush was a frequent visitor to the residence when his father was president. The Bushes were used to being surrounded by a large staff, and Laura Bush recognizes that they “had a huge advantage” over other first families because they had spent so much time at the White House when the first President Bush (“old man Bush” as the staffers affectionately call him) was in office. “The only other family that had that were John Quincy and Louisa Adams.”

Bill Clinton was well aware of the Bush’s familiarity with the house and its staff and joked that Bush even knew where to find the light switches. Clinton, on the other hand, had been to the White House only a handful of times before his inauguration: once, as a teenage member of the American Legion Boys Nation, when he was photographed shaking President Kennedy’s hand; once as a guest of the Carters in 1977 (which also marked Hillary Clinton’s first visit); and several times for the National Governors Association dinners during his terms as governor of Arkansas. Before they moved in, Hillary said she had only been to the second floor once, when Barbara Bush gave her a tour after her husband won the election. She had never even seen the third floor. When they moved in, Hillary delved into the history of the house, asking curators to
compile a book showing how every room looked through history back to the earliest photographs and drawings.

In the modern era, however, Barack Obama is the president who found the transition the most challenging. He moved with his family from their home in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood directly into the White House. The Obamas were even less accustomed to a household staff than the Clintons: they had one housekeeper in Chicago, but not a nanny, leaving their daughters, Sasha and Malia, with Michelle’s mother, Marian, during the campaign. Without the benefit of growing up the son of a president—or living in the relative luxury of a governor’s mansion—it took time for Obama and his family to grow comfortable with their new lives.

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ANUARY 20
,
2009,
1.8 million people huddled together in twenty-eight-degree weather to watch Barack Obama become the first African American to take the oath of office. It was not only the largest crowd that had ever attended a presidential inauguration, it was also the largest attendance for any event in the history of Washington, D.C.