The Residence - Inside the Private World of The White House (3 page)

From the highest staff position to the most entry-level one, getting hired to work at the White House is not as simple as answering an ad or applying online. “The jobs in the White House are not advertised,” said Tony Savoy, head of the Operations Department until 2013. “Nearly everyone I interviewed had a family member or a friend who recommended them for the job. You’re vouching for the person you’re bringing in.” Most workers stay on for decades, some even for generations: one family, the Ficklins, has seen nine members work in the White House.

Every administration names a social secretary. The post has traditionally gone to a woman—until 2011, when Jeremy Bernard was named to the position by the Obamas, becoming both the first male and the first openly gay social secretary. The social secretary acts as a conduit between the first family and the residence staff, and between the West Wing and the East Wing. The position involves supervision of seating for state dinners and formal events at the White House, with the secretary distributing worksheets to the residence staff showing how many people are expected and what rooms will be used for the event.

The social secretary often gets pulled between competing worlds. Letitia Baldrige, who served in the post during the Kennedy administration, showed the president letters disapproving of John-John’s long hair—which the first lady loved. When the president insisted he get a haircut, Jackie Kennedy didn’t speak to Baldrige for three days.

Residence workers can make the social secretary’s job of navigating endless parties and following time-honored traditions much easier. Julianna Smoot, who served as the Obamas’ social secretary from 2010 to 2011, credits the team of White House calligraphers, who sit in a small office down the hall from the Social Office in the East Wing, with saving her from one embarrassing oversight during her time there. One day in the late summer of 2010, one of
the three calligraphers—who are responsible for creating a massive number of invitations to White House events—approached Smoot and asked, “Have you thought about Christmas?”

“It’s in December. Can’t we talk about it when we get closer?” Smoot said. Christmas seemed far away, and there were so many events to work on before then.

“We’re actually behind on planning by now,” the calligrapher told her worriedly.

Smoot was shocked. “Of course I wouldn’t know that!” she recalled later. “It was this panic moment! We had to come up with a theme
and
the Christmas card. I think the reason we had Christmas in 2010 was because of the calligraphers.”

The social secretary sometimes delivers bad news to the residence staff on behalf of the first lady, who usually wants to stay above the fray. When Laura Bush hired Lea Berman as her new social secretary, it fell to Berman to take Executive Chef Walter Scheib aside and tell him to stop serving “this country club food” to the family. Scheib said he’d just been following orders and besides, much of what he prepared could hardly be called “country club food.” In fact, it was far from highbrow. “If the president wanted a peanut butter and honey sandwich then by god we made the best damn peanut butter and honey sandwich we could,” Scheib says, adding, “This is what the president wants, be careful what you call it.” When Berman started showing him dog-eared pages of Martha Stewart cookbooks, the chef was enraged.

Christine Limerick oversaw about twenty staffers in the Housekeeping Shop, which she managed from 1979 to 2008 (she took a hiatus between 1986 and 1991). Six worked on the second and third floors in the family’s private living quarters, including several maids and a houseman who vacuumed and moved heavy furniture. Two staffers handled the laundry exclusively and the rest took care of the tour areas and the Oval Office, and they were supplemented by
additional workers when there were house guests and big events, such as state dinners.

The White House also employs a team of florists, led by a chief florist, who prepare arrangements daily in the Flower Shop, located in a small space on the Ground Floor, nestled under the driveway of the White House’s North Portico. The florists are responsible for coming up with unique arrangements that suit the first family’s taste. During the holidays and around state dinners the florists call in volunteers to help; the Obamas often use outside event companies from Chicago to help stage elaborate state dinners and decorate for Christmas. The chief florist focuses on the public spaces and helps oversee all of the arrangements; the members of the Flower Shop share responsibility for decorating the entire complex, from the private quarters on the second and third floors to the West Wing, the East Wing, and the public rooms. No corner of the White House is overlooked.

Reid Cherlin, who was a spokesman for President Obama, remembers being awed by their work. “What always struck me was the flowers. Coming in in the morning in the West Wing, if you came in at the right time, the florists would be putting new bowls of peonies out,” he said. “There’s something about putting fresh flowers in a place where no one is necessarily going to be. It’s one thing for them to be on the coffee table in the Oval Office, it’s another thing to be sprucing things up in areas where people aren’t even going to congregate.”

Everyone works together to make the residence look as perfect as possible, said Bob Scanlan, who worked in the Flower Shop from 1998 to 2010. “If a flower was down in an arrangement, it wasn’t unusual for the housekeeper to come in and say, ‘You guys might want to take a look at the Red Room, there are petals on the table. I picked them up but it looks like they’re dropping still.’ We kept an eye out for each other because everything reflects on everybody.”

The residence is served by around six permanent butlers, and
dozens of part-time butlers who come in on a regular basis to help with state dinners and receptions. Of the six full-time butlers, one is designated as the head butler, or the maître d’. The task of tending to the president’s more personal needs is handled by valets, who are always close at hand. There are typically two valets who work in shifts. They are military personnel who take care of the president’s clothes, run errands, shine shoes, and work with the housekeepers. For example, if the president’s shoes need to be resoled, a valet alerts a member of the Housekeeping Shop. When the president goes to the Oval Office in the morning, a valet stands close by in case he needs anything, including a cup of coffee, breakfast, or just a cough drop. When the president travels, a valet packs for him and often rides in a backup vehicle in the motorcade, carrying a spare shirt or tie in case the commander in chief spills something and needs a quick change of clothes.

On the very first day after his inauguration, George W. Bush was shocked when he met his valets. Laura Bush says, “These two men come and introduce themselves to George and say, ‘We’re your valets.’ So George went in and talked to his dad and said, ‘These two men just introduced themselves and said they were my valets, and I don’t
need
a valet. I don’t
want
a valet.’ And President Bush (George H. W. Bush) said, ‘You’ll get used to it.’” And he did. Sooner or later, any president must have an occasion to be grateful for the luxury of not having to worry about packing a spare shirt.

R
ESIDENCE WORKERS ARE
there to alleviate the burdens of daily life for the first family, who generally have no time to cook, shop, or clean. They also serve under the highest possible security—what other household has a team of snipers keeping constant watch on the roof?—and must accustom themselves to a job with little privacy. Many observers have noted that living in the White House
can be like spending time in a prison—though, as Michelle Obama notes, “It’s a really nice prison.”

Longtime White House maid Betty Finney (nicknamed “Little Betty” because of her tiny frame) says that the high level of security helps make the people who work there, and the family, feel safe. “You know the snipers are up there to protect you. Why not feel at home?” she said. “You’d wonder where they were if you didn’t see them!”

Recent security lapses, however, expose the vulnerability of this potent symbol of America’s democracy and the family who call it home. They also show how multifaceted and critical the job of a residence worker can be. As the nation’s first black president, President Obama reportedly faces three times as many threats as his predecessors. In 2014, former residence workers were horrified when a man armed with a knife was able to scale the White House fence, sprint across the North Lawn, and actually make his way deep into the mansion’s main floor, bypassing several Secret Service officers, before he was eventually tackled by an off-duty agent. In another terrifying incident in 2011, a maid inadvertently became a sort of private investigator when she was the first person to notice a broken window and a chunk of white concrete on the floor of the Truman Balcony. Her discovery led to the realization that a man had actually fired at least seven bullets into the residence several days before. (The Secret Service knew a shooting had occurred but wrongly concluded that the shots were fired by rival gangs in a gunfight and that they were not aimed at the executive mansion.) White House maids are trained to be “very observant,” and they know to report anything out of the ordinary, Limerick says, especially if it could endanger the first family.

Certainly there’s nothing ordinary about life in the residence, no matter how hard the staff work to make the president and his family feel at home. Beyond the very real security concerns, the
White House bears precious little resemblance to a normal American household. The Reagans’ son, Ron, told me about a visit he and his wife made to see his parents. When they arrived too late for dinner, they decided to rummage through the kitchen in the private quarters, looking for eggs and a frying pan. When a butler heard them rattling around late at night, he rushed in, looking concerned.

“Can I help you? Don’t you want somebody to do that for you?” he asked earnestly.

“No, thank you,” Reagan replied. “But can you tell me, where are the eggs? Where do you keep the frying pan?”

The butler didn’t look pleased. The last thing the staff ever wants is to feel useless. In the end, Reagan had to ask the butler to bring up eggs from the Ground Floor kitchen; there were none in the Reagans’ family kitchen.

“They really,
really
do want to do what they do. They don’t want to just stand there.”

Hillary Clinton was another first family member who sometimes wanted to be able to fend for herself. She designed an eat-in area in the second-floor kitchen so that her family could have their meals together informally.

“I knew I’d done the right thing when Chelsea was sick one night,” she said. That night, she recalled, the staff “went crazy” when she went to make her daughter scrambled eggs.

“Oh, we’ll bring an omelet from downstairs,” the butler told her.

“No, I just want to make some scrambled eggs and applesauce and feed her what I would feed her if we were living anywhere else in America.”

Though the first family may sometimes wish they could forget about the majesty of the residence, many of the workers said they took solace in it. “If you’re having a little bit of a bad day with a member of the first family or their staff, you step away from it and you look at the house,” said Limerick. “If I would see the White
House lit up at night I’d think,
I actually work inside that building, and I’ve had the wonderful privilege to do that
. It could set my mind straight and I could deal with the next day.”

T
HE
W
HITE
H
OUSE
is the physical embodiment of American democracy. It sits on eighteen acres in downtown Washington, grounds that are cared for year-round by the National Park Service. The main building, known formally as the executive mansion, is divided into public and private rooms. The mansion may look like it only has three floors, but its design is deceptive: the building actually contains six floors, plus two small mezzanine levels. In addition to two belowground floors, there is the Ground Floor, where the main kitchen, the Flower Shop, and the Carpenter’s Shop are located; the State Floor, also called the first floor; the two mezzanines, which house the chief usher’s office and the Pastry Kitchen; and the second and third floors, which are the first family’s private quarters. The staff kitchen and storage areas are located in the basement levels. The East Wing and the West Wing have their own hidden floors, the most famous of which is the Situation Room, located underneath the West Wing. It has become a symbol of the gravity of the presidency, where the commander in chief gathers with advisers to handle major crises and conduct secure calls with foreign leaders.