The Residence - Inside the Private World of The White House by Kate Andersen Brower Page B
Authors: Kate Andersen Brower
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residents, the staff often seems to be pulling for the incumbent to be reelected, whether Democrat or Republican. When Bill Clinton defeated the first President Bush, Chef Mesnier felt the outcome was a “veritable disaster.” He had grown so close to the Bushes that he was truly unsure whether he would be able to serve another president.He wasn’t alone: when other residence staffers called out sick after President Clinton’s election, the joke was that they had caught the “Republican flu.”
In part, this is because the arrival of a new family means casting aside everything they’ve learned about each member of the outgoing first family and starting fresh. But most accounts agree that the residence workers’ devotion to President George H. W. Bush was more than customary—it was genuine, almost profound. The Bushes were generally easy to please, and the residence workers found themselves quickly at ease with them. Even before she moved into the White House, Chief Usher Gary Walters reported, Barbara Bush assured him that she wouldn’t be making any changes in the kitchen. “I’ve never had a bad meal [at the White House], so you just have the chefs put whatever they want to on the menu every evening and we’ll be surprised at what we eat each night.”
“What if you don’t like something?” he asked her, unaccustomed to such an easygoing first lady after working for Nancy Reagan.
“Then we’ll tell the chef not to have it again,” she told him.
O N N OVEMBER 11 , 1968, days after Richard M. Nixon won the presidential election, he and his wife, Pat, were guests of the Johnsons at the White House. Johnson and Nixon were bitter political enemies, but they made nice during a four-hour lunch. Johnson surprised even his wife with his civility. “Lyndon, I thought, was generous and rather fatherly,” Lady Bird said. “I thought, it was not so much Nixon the man he was talking to, but the next President of this country.”
Lady Bird showed the incoming first lady the second and third floors, reassuring her of “the efficiency, devotion, and impersonal professionalism” of the residence staff.
During the stress and strain of the move, first ladies have beenseen on the morning of the inauguration stealing a quiet moment to themselves. “You wonder what must be going through their minds,” mused Head Housekeeper Christine Limerick. The Johnsons had a particular affinity for life in the residence. Lady Bird recalled wandering through the second and third floors in her robe with a cup of coffee early on the morning of Inauguration Day, her final day in the White House. A little more than five years earlier, she and her family moved into a White House consumed by grief. On the evening of December 7, 1963, just as Jackie Kennedy was moving out, Lady Bird must have been moved to tears by a note the first lady left behind. “I wish you a happy arrival in your new house, Lady Bird,” Jackie wrote. “Remember—you will be happy here.” All those years later, the grief of those first few months must have come rushing back.
She stood in the Yellow Oval Room and the Lincoln Sitting Room, wanting to soak in their rich history one last time. She said a final, private good-bye to the place she and her family had called home for so many years. “This was partly the housewifely need to see whether any personal object had been left anywhere,” she said, “but mostly just to stand still and absorb.”
Lady Bird peeked into her daughter Luci’s room, which was strewn with half-filled bags and boxes, and leafed through a guest book showing all the guests who had stayed with them over the years. When she walked up to the Solarium she was struck by how different it looked without their furniture. “Its personality all stripped away and looking cold and clinical now, and what a gay, happy room it had been—the citadel of the young.” On the State Floor she could smell the ammonia as maids, butlers, and almost
In part, this is because the arrival of a new family means casting aside everything they’ve learned about each member of the outgoing first family and starting fresh. But most accounts agree that the residence workers’ devotion to President George H. W. Bush was more than customary—it was genuine, almost profound. The Bushes were generally easy to please, and the residence workers found themselves quickly at ease with them. Even before she moved into the White House, Chief Usher Gary Walters reported, Barbara Bush assured him that she wouldn’t be making any changes in the kitchen. “I’ve never had a bad meal [at the White House], so you just have the chefs put whatever they want to on the menu every evening and we’ll be surprised at what we eat each night.”
“What if you don’t like something?” he asked her, unaccustomed to such an easygoing first lady after working for Nancy Reagan.
“Then we’ll tell the chef not to have it again,” she told him.
O N N OVEMBER 11 , 1968, days after Richard M. Nixon won the presidential election, he and his wife, Pat, were guests of the Johnsons at the White House. Johnson and Nixon were bitter political enemies, but they made nice during a four-hour lunch. Johnson surprised even his wife with his civility. “Lyndon, I thought, was generous and rather fatherly,” Lady Bird said. “I thought, it was not so much Nixon the man he was talking to, but the next President of this country.”
Lady Bird showed the incoming first lady the second and third floors, reassuring her of “the efficiency, devotion, and impersonal professionalism” of the residence staff.
During the stress and strain of the move, first ladies have beenseen on the morning of the inauguration stealing a quiet moment to themselves. “You wonder what must be going through their minds,” mused Head Housekeeper Christine Limerick. The Johnsons had a particular affinity for life in the residence. Lady Bird recalled wandering through the second and third floors in her robe with a cup of coffee early on the morning of Inauguration Day, her final day in the White House. A little more than five years earlier, she and her family moved into a White House consumed by grief. On the evening of December 7, 1963, just as Jackie Kennedy was moving out, Lady Bird must have been moved to tears by a note the first lady left behind. “I wish you a happy arrival in your new house, Lady Bird,” Jackie wrote. “Remember—you will be happy here.” All those years later, the grief of those first few months must have come rushing back.
She stood in the Yellow Oval Room and the Lincoln Sitting Room, wanting to soak in their rich history one last time. She said a final, private good-bye to the place she and her family had called home for so many years. “This was partly the housewifely need to see whether any personal object had been left anywhere,” she said, “but mostly just to stand still and absorb.”
Lady Bird peeked into her daughter Luci’s room, which was strewn with half-filled bags and boxes, and leafed through a guest book showing all the guests who had stayed with them over the years. When she walked up to the Solarium she was struck by how different it looked without their furniture. “Its personality all stripped away and looking cold and clinical now, and what a gay, happy room it had been—the citadel of the young.” On the State Floor she could smell the ammonia as maids, butlers, and almost
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