The Residence

Kate Andersen Brower

• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780062476012
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

#1 New York Times Bestseller

"A revealing look at life inside the White House... it's Downton Abbey for the White House staff." — The Today Show

A remarkable history with elements of both In the President's Secret Service and The Butler, The Residence offers an intimate account of the service staff of the White House, from the Kennedys to the Obamas.

America's First Families are unknowable in many ways. No one has insight into their true character like the people who serve their meals and make their beds every day. In her runaway bestseller, former White House correspondent Kate Andersen Brower pulls back the curtain on the world's most famous address. Full of stories and details by turns dramatic, humorous, and heartwarming, The Residence reveals daily life in the White House as it is really lived through the voices of the maids, butlers, cooks, florists, doormen, engineers, and others who tend to the needs of the President and First Family.

These dedicated professionals maintain the six-floor mansion's 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms, 28 fireplaces, three elevators, and eight staircases, and prepare everything from hors d'oeuvres for intimate gatherings to meals served at elaborate state dinners. Over the course of the day, they gather in the lower level's basement kitchen to share stories, trade secrets, forge lifelong friendships, and sometimes even fall in love.

Combining incredible first-person anecdotes from extensive interviews with scores of White House staff members—many speaking for the first time—with archival research, Kate Andersen Brower tells their story. She reveals the intimacy between the First Family and the people who serve them, as well as tension that has shaken the staff over the decades. From the housekeeper and engineer who fell in love while serving President Reagan to Jackie Kennedy's private moment of grief with a beloved staffer after her husband's assassination to the tumultuous days surrounding President Nixon's resignation and President Clinton's impeachment battle, The Residence is full of surprising and moving details that illuminate day-to-day life at the White House.

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

Once 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.

ON JANUARY 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.

Most Americans had never heard of Barack Obama until 2004, when, as an Illinois state senator, he delivered an electrifying keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. His meteoric rise left the Obamas with very little time to prepare for life in the White House. Knowing this, the residence staff wanted to help ease their transition. It must have felt surreal to Obama when the chief usher turned to him and said, “Hello, Mr. President, welcome to your new home,” as he walked through the imposing North Portico doors for the first time as president. During brief moments of quiet time that afternoon and evening, between parade watching on Pennsylvania Avenue and their first inaugural ball, the Obamas grazed on a buffet in the Old Family Dining Room where no detail was overlooked.

That day was the result of months of careful advance planning. For residence workers, the transition to the next administration begins about eighteen months before the inauguration, when the chief usher prepares books for the incoming president and first lady (with the added challenge of not knowing who they will be) that include a detailed White House layout, a list of staff, and an overview of allowable changes to the Oval Office.

Gary Walters, who served as chief usher from 1986 until 2007, started gathering information on the candidates during the primaries, well before a general election candidate is selected. It was particularly difficult when President Ford, President Carter, and President George H. W. Bush lost their bids for a second term. “The ownership is of the family that’s there but you have to be watching out for what’s going to occur,” Walters said.

In December, after the election and before the inauguration, Walters would arrange for the incoming family to get a guided tour of the White House from the current first lady. It’s then that the incoming first lady would be presented with a book containing the names and photographs of the people who work in the residence. The book helps the first family learn the names of everyone who works in the house and is partly a security measure, so that if they see anyone unfamiliar they can alert the Secret Service.

The departing first family pays for their personal things to be moved out of the White House. The incoming president also pays for bringing belongings into the mansion either out of the new first family’s own coffers or from funds raised for the campaign or transition. It is the job of the incoming family to coordinate with the Secret Service to get their personal effects to the White House the morning of the inauguration.

One logistical challenge that comes with every inauguration is the transfer of the incoming first family’s furniture and larger belongings to the White House. After the election of 1960, the Kennedys’ social secretary, Letitia Baldrige, told Jackie in a memo that she had asked the Eisenhowers’ social secretary, Mary Jane McCaffree, “if we couldn’t smuggle a lot of stuff over without the [Eisenhowers] knowing and she said yes, the head Usher could store cartons, suitcases, etc., out of sight and then whisk them into sight on the stroke of 12 noon. Isn’t that marvelous??? Right out of Alfred Hitchcock.” Baldrige recalled pulling up to the White House with Jackie’s maid, Providencia Paredes, and Jack Kennedy’s valet, George Thomas, in a car with the inaugural gown and all of the Kennedys’ luggage. They arrived as everyone else was gathered at the Capitol for the inauguration ceremony. The snow-covered South Grounds were bathed in bright sunshine. “We had timed the pilgrimage from Georgetown to the White House so that we would not arrive before twelve noon, because at noon, officially, the new president takes possession of the White House.”

Nearly a half-century later, the same conditions applied. The Obama family’s advisers started meeting with residence staff soon after the election, and by the week before the inauguration, much of the Obamas’ furniture had already been shipped to the White House, where it was stored in the China Room on the Ground Floor so that it could be moved quickly upstairs. The Bushes had told Chief Usher Stephen Rochon that they wanted to make the move as easy as possible for everyone, but Rochon was eager to make sure the Bushes never felt as if they were being pushed out. “We want to keep it out of the sight of the existing family. Not that they didn’t know it was there, but we didn’t want them to feel that we were trying to move them out.”

Other Obama advisers made similar connections with the residence staff. More than two months before the inauguration, Chief Florist Nancy Clarke met with the Obamas’ decorator, Michael Smith, to discuss floral arrangements for the private rooms where friends and family would be staying on the night of the inauguration.

“There’s very limited time to prepare the house, so there’s a whole team working on making certain that everything was as perfect as it could be in the time that we had allotted,” said Social Secretary Desirée Rogers, a close confidante of the Obamas since their Chicago days and their first social secretary. On Inauguration Day “we were in the house as soon as we could be,” she recalls, “laying out things, getting things ready, putting the clothing in each room.”

Weeks before the inauguration, Rogers met with the florists and discussed what kind of flowers would sit on the cabaret tables and which kind of candelabras and candlelight they would use for those precious moments the first family has to enjoy their new, heady surroundings before they change for the balls.

“All those little things can make everybody feel comfortable and welcome,” Florist Bob Scanlan said.

The new president filled most of the West Wing with loyal aides from his presidential campaign and from his early political career, including longtime spokesman Robert Gibbs, whom he named as his first White House press secretary, and close friend Valerie Jarrett, whom he brought on board as a senior adviser. Michelle Obama brought her own team of aides, many of whom she had known for years. A couple of days after moving in, Michelle asked her East Wing staff and the entire residence staff to gather in the East Room. Katie McCormick Lelyveld, the first lady’s then press secretary, remembers her boss making it clear who was in charge.

“This is the team I walked in the door with,” the first lady told the longtime residence staffers as she gestured toward her small cadre of political aides. “You guys are pa...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Main Cast of Characters
• Introduction
• Chapter I: Controlled Chaos
• Chapter II: Discretion
• Chapter III: Devotion
• Chapter IV: Extraordinary Demands
• Chapter V: Dark Days
• Chapter VI: Sacrifice
• Chapter VII: Race and the Residence
• Chapter VIII: Backstairs Gossip and Mischief
• Chapter IX: Growing Up in the White House
• Chapter X: Heartbreak and Hope
• Photos Section
• Epilogue
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• Sources and Chapter Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Also by Kate Andersen Brower
• About the Author
• Praise
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher