Margaret Truman (12 page)

VI

Just as one Wilson daughter's wedding was winding down, a second was starting up. After Jessie and her new husband left their wedding reception, the party kept going, thanks to her younger sister Nellie, who loved to dance and kept the Marine Band playing for several hours beyond their agreed-on quitting time.

On the evening of Jessie's wedding her most frequent dance partner was Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo, a widower with six children who was almost fifty years old and a grandfather to boot. McAdoo was tall and handsome with courtly southern manners. His business successes had led to his appointment as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and he and Wilson had become close friends during the 1912 presidential campaign.

By the time Jessie and Frank returned from their honeymoon, Nellie and the secretary of the treasury were seeing quite a bit of each other. One evening when the family was together in the second-floor Oval Room, one of the servants announced the arrival of Secretary McAdoo. The president started to get up and then the servant added, “For Miss Eleanor.”

Mac had already proposed once and Nellie had put him off. When he proposed a second time, she said yes. Nellie's nuptials were smaller and less glittering than Jessie's, partly because Mac had been married before and partly because Nellie's mother, Ellen, had not been feeling well. The ceremony took place in the Blue Room and only about one hundred people were invited.

Nellie returned from her honeymoon to find that her mother's health had deteriorated. Ellen Wilson died in August 1914, leaving her daughters devastated and her husband deeply depressed.

A little more than six months later, Woodrow Wilson met an attractive widow named Edith Bolling Galt and his spirits began to lift. By the end of 1915, another member of the Wilson family got married. This time it was the president, but the wedding took place at Mrs. Galt's home, not at the White House.

VII

After John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson arrived in the White House with two teenaged daughters. At sixteen, Luci was too young for any serious romance, but the gossip columnists quickly discovered that nineteen-year-old Lynda Bird was dating a young navy lieutenant and supposedly wearing his ring. That started a buzz about an impending wedding, but the chatter ended abruptly when the couple broke up a few months later.

As it turned out, Luci beat Lynda Bird to the altar by more than two years. One of her friends, Beth Jenkins, attended Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and in the course of visiting Beth, Luci met a young man named Patrick J. Nugent. Before long, she and Pat were commuting back and forth between Milwaukee and Washington, but the press never caught on—possibly because they were preoccupied with Lynda Bird's love life or maybe it was because Luci's blond wig threw them off the scent.

In the fall of 1965, Luci and Pat made a trip to the LBJ ranch in Johnson City, Texas, to request the president's permission to marry. As soon as the media got wind of their plans, the White House press office was bombarded with questions and requests for details.

Eventually, all—or almost all—was revealed. The wedding was to take place at noon on Saturday, August 6, 1966. The reception would be held at the White House but the ceremony would be performed at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in northeast Washington. Although it was not generally known, Luci had converted to Catholicism, the religion of her fiancé.

Luci insisted that the design of her wedding dress be kept secret until she walked down the aisle. This produced security precautions worthy of a summit conference. The designer, Priscilla of Boston, was met at the airport by the Secret Service, and the dress was hand-carried to the White House and locked in the Lincoln Bedroom. It was taken out, presumably under armed guard, so Luci could wear it for her bridal portrait, but during the photo session no one was allowed to use the elevators or walk through the White House halls until the all clear was sounded.

Luci's wedding day dawned hot and humid—hardly a surprise in a city noted for its sweltering summers. During the ceremony, Lynda Bird, the maid of honor, and two of the bridesmaids almost fainted. Another bridesmaid and the matron of honor did pass out.

Even more noteworthy was the way the perennially impatient father of the bride sat still during the entire eighty-fiveminute ceremony. Lady Bird's social secretary, Bess Abell, reported in amazement, “I do not remember him looking at his watch one single time during the service.”

The only glitch of the day occurred when someone mistakenly packed Luci's going-away outfit in one of the suitcases she planned to take on her honeymoon. The suitcase was already stowed in the trunk of the getaway car, but Luci refused to leave until the outfit—a deep pink suit with matching turban—was retrieved.

When it was finally found, she changed out of her wedding gown and went down to the South Portico to throw her bouquet, which landed squarely at Lynda Bird's feet. With this last ritual performed, Luci slipped back upstairs, changed out of the pink suit and turban and into an inconspicuous dark dress and a hairpiece that turned her short hair into shoulder-length curls. At last she was ready to depart.

The newlyweds' getaway worked out as planned. Luci and Pat went through the tunnel that connects the White House to the Treasury Building next door. There, a nondescript black sedan was waiting in the basement garage. The couple crouched on the floor until they were out of sight of the White House and on their way to New York.

VIII

With Luci married off, the press was free to devote their full attention to Lynda Bird. Her romances, rumored and otherwise, kept them busy. At one point, she was dating a White House military aide, but he was replaced by a medical student who in turn was replaced by the movie actor George Hamilton. The relationship seemed to be thriving but there was no sign of an engagement ring.

After graduating from the University of Texas, Lynda Bird took a job as a magazine editor in New York while Hamilton continued to jaunt around the world making movies. They managed to see each other often enough to persuade the press that marriage was a distinct possibility. Then early one morning in 1967, just about a year after Luci's wedding, Lynda Bird slipped into her parents' bedroom to announce that she was going to marry Charles Robb, a marine officer who was the captain of the White House color guard.

George Hamilton, not to mention most of the nation's working press, was totally surprised by the news. And what news it was. Lynda Bird Johnson's marriage—scheduled for four P.M. on Saturday, December 9, 1967—was going to be the first White House wedding in fifty-three years.

Lynda Bird's white silk-satin wedding gown was longsleeved with a high collar and a front panel outlined in embroidered silk flowers studded with seed pearls. Her attendants wore red velvet. The ceremony was performed on an altar surmounted by a gold cross and decorated with ficus trees and masses of greens dotted with tiny white lights. It was over by 4:16 and Lynda and Chuck marched out of the East Room under an arch of swords held by his brother marine officers in their full dress uniforms.

In contrast to earlier White House weddings, there was no hope of barring the press. As a small concession to family privacy, however, the cameras and lighting equipment were hidden behind poles draped in white to match the walls of the East Room and the networks were allowed to shoot only during the wedding procession and at the beginning of the reception—twenty minutes of footage, all told.

IX

In 1971, President and Mrs. Richard M. Nixon's older daughter, Tricia, became the first, but surely not the last, White House bride to be married in the Rose Garden. Until a few weeks before her engagement was announced, the gossip columnists had failed to notice that Tricia was being seen more and more in the company of a young Harvard Law student from New York City named Edward Cox.

Apparently, the press can only concentrate on one presidential daughter at a time, so for a long while their attention was almost completely focused on Tricia's sister, Julie, who had married Dwight David Eisenhower II, the only grandson of President Eisenhower, about a month before her father was sworn in as president. Julie and David had met some eighteen years earlier when Richard Nixon served as Eisenhower's vice president. There were dozens of photos of the two of them together as children, not to mention their families' political prominence, so from the media's point of view, it was a marriage made in heaven.

I'm sure Tricia was more than happy to have her sister be the center of attention since it gave her a chance to conduct her own romance in private. She and her future husband had known each other since 1964 when Richard Nixon joined a New York law firm after his 1960 defeat for the presidency. They met at a school dance but the relationship took off after Cox, then a Princeton freshman, served as Tricia's escort at the International Debutant Ball.

Marriage was out of the question because the young people were still in school, but by the time Cox was in his second year of law school, it was a different story. By then, the press had finally begun to notice that Edward Cox was spending a significant number of holidays at the White House and Camp David. For several weeks, rumors were rampant. They were finally confirmed on March 17, 1971, when President Nixon announced Tricia's engagement at a St. Patrick's Day reception at the White House.

The wedding was set for four P.M. on Saturday, June 12. Outdoor weddings are always a gamble, even in the normally sunny month of June. Everything was set for a Rose Garden ceremony, but in case of rain, the plans called for moving it to the East Room. I hate to imagine the tension in the family quarters as the weather reports came in. The forecast indicated a fifty percent chance of showers, and as predicted, it began to drizzle about an hour before the ceremony.

President Nixon strolled down to the press tent that had been set up on the South Lawn and informed the reporters that the Nixons had advised their daughter to play it safe and move indoors. Tricia had refused. “I want a Rose Garden wedding,” she insisted.

According to the meteorologists, who must have been dreading the president's wrath if they got it wrong, the rain would not last very long. Based on that information, the ceremony was postponed to 4:30. Miraculously, the rain stopped and the wedding began. Tricia and Ed had barely become Mr. and Mrs. Cox when the rain resumed. Everyone fled indoors where there were plenty of refreshments including three kinds of champagne, all domestic.

In addition to the weather, Tricia's wedding produced two other causes for anxiety. Her father was so nervous about dancing in public that he asked the press corps to send in some sympathetic reporters—“people who know nothing about dancing”—when it was time for the obligatory dances. Although he looked nervous, the president performed no worse than any other father of the bride.

The second source of anxiety was the 355-pound, seven-foot-high wedding cake. The recipe had been published in advance and several well-known food writers had tried to duplicate it without success. One attempt resulted in something that looked and tasted like baked sludge. The actual product proved to be edible as well as beautiful.

Around seven o'clock, the couple, still in their wedding clothes, departed to the music of a small combo playing “Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Good-bye.” Unlike previous White House newlyweds, there was no attempt at a stealthy exit. Their black limousine was parked at the North Portico and their destination was later revealed to be a private hideaway with security provided by the Secret Service—Camp David.

X

There is no question that White House weddings are special. The setting is unique and the White House staff are experts at providing the very best in food, music, flowers, and gracious service. A White House bride is not only a star on her wedding day, she can claim a place in the history of the nation's most famous house.

Do I regret not having been married at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Not in the least. I wasn't ready to get married when Dad was in the White House. For one thing, I was determined to have a career as a concert singer. For another, even more important, I hadn't met the right man. When I finally achieved both those goals, I was more than happy to be far away from Washington. My wedding took place at Trinity Episcopal Church in Independence, Missouri, where my parents had been married in 1919. The reception, too, was the same place theirs had been—219 North Delaware Street, my mother's, and later my own, childhood home. It suited me just fine.

Questions for
Discussion

What are the advantages of getting married in the White House?

Are there any drawbacks to having a White House wedding?

Should the media be allowed to cover the event?

II

Dogs are not the only pets that have lived in the White House, but somehow they always get the most press coverage. Perhaps it's because they're more photogenic than the competition, which has included goats, birds, snakes, lizards, rats, and raccoons. I also think dogs have a talent for getting attention.

I'll never forget my one and only dog, an Irish setter puppy named Mike, that was given to me by one of my father's cabinet members not long after we moved into the White House. Talk about getting attention! One of Mike's favorite habits was bounding into my lap whenever I sat down. I simply could not convince him that long and lanky Irish setters were not cut out to be lapdogs.

Mike once leaped into a pool in the White House garden and my mother's secretary jumped in to rescue him. Knowing very little about dogs, she didn't realize that setters are good swimmers. She emerged from the pool dripping wet and hopping mad. Mike, of course, loved every minute of it.

Mike was a model of good behavior compared to some of the dogs that have lived in the White House. Dwight Eisenhower's Weimaraner, Heidi, left endless stains on the White House rugs and also had a bad habit of leaping up in front of Mamie whenever a photographer tried to take her picture.

I don't know what crimes Ulysses S. Grant's son Jesse's dogs committed, but several of them died suddenly and under mysterious circumstances. I suspect they were executed for some malfeasance by a member of the White House staff. President Grant thought so, too. After several unsuccessful attempts at dog-owning, Jesse was presented with a fine Newfoundland. His father promptly called the White House steward into his office. Without mentioning the string of unexplained deaths, Grant said, “Jesse has a new dog. You may have noticed that his former pets have been peculiarly unfortunate. When this dog dies, every employee in the White House will at once be discharged.”

The dog, Faithful, lived to a ripe old age.

III

Many presidential families already owned pets that they brought with them when they moved to the White House. But no matter how many pets they had, people inevitably gave them a few more.

When President Kennedy attended a summit meeting in Vienna with Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev, it was not a particularly cordial encounter. But Khrushchev was charmed by Jacqueline Kennedy and later sent her a large collection of gifts, including a fluffy white mongrel named Pushinka for Caroline. Despite her questionable bloodlines, Pushinka had an illustrious background. She was the daughter of Strelka, the dog the Russians had sent on one of their early space missions.

At that time, the United States and the Soviet Union were in the midst of the Cold War, so the Secret Service was understandably suspicious of Pushinka. For all anyone knew, she might have an electronic bug implanted in her tail. Before the dog could be admitted to the White House, she had to undergo a security check. Fortunately, she turned out to be clean.

In 1855, Commodore Matthew C. Perry returned from his historic voyage to Japan, a trip that opened that country to trade with the West. Perry brought back several crates full of gifts for President Franklin Pierce, including Japanese silks, porcelains, and fans. The gift that appealed to the president most was a collection of seven tiny canines that were known in Asia as “sleeve dogs.”

Pierce kept one of the dogs at the White House. The others were given to friends, including Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, who was so delighted with the creature that he carried him around in his pocket.

Most probably the dogs were Japanese spaniels or chin chins, now known as Japanese chins. They lived in the Imperial Palace and were often given to important foreign visitors. The name “sleeve dog” comes from the fact that they could be carried in the sleeve of a kimono.

IV

There have been quite a few cats in the White House, but most of them have kept a low profile. Cats are much too cool to curry favor with the press. They are also experts at hiding under beds or curling up in closets to avoid being interviewed. But if they want attention, they know exactly how to get it.

Theodore Roosevelt's family had two cats, Slippers and Tom Quartz. Slippers had a habit of wandering off but the White House staff noticed that he invariably reappeared when an important dinner was scheduled. The dinners always included a fish course and he was probably thinking of the leftovers.

Calvin Coolidge's pet collection included a pair of cats named Tiger and Blacky. Tiger was an alley cat who came wandering in from Pennsylvania Avenue one day and decided to stay. Blacky, whose ancestry was equally undistinguished, was sent to the president by a nurse in Massachusetts because she didn't have room for him.

Blacky was a hunter and was such a menace to the squirrels, birds, and rabbits that inhabit the President's Park that he had to be kept in the guardhouse by the front gate in the spring and summer when the wildlife was out in force.

When he was not playing serial killer on the South Lawn, Blacky's favorite pastime was riding in the White House elevator. He would sit and wait for someone to open the door for him, then he would hop onto the seat and ride up and down for hours, obviously gathering his strength for another run at the wildlife.

When nine-year-old Amy Carter moved into the White House in 1977, she brought along her Siamese cat, Misty Malarky Ying Yang. The cat seemed to know her place. Aside from posing for a few photos, she tended to shun the limelight, but as it turned out, she was simply waiting for the right moment to dazzle the public with her charms.

The moment came when Amy's parents, Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter, held their first state dinner for President and Mrs. José López-Portillo of Mexico. The Carters welcomed the López-Portillos at the North Portico and escorted them to the second floor for a private visit. After half an hour or so, it was time to go downstairs and greet the other guests.

With the Color Team preceding them, the Marine Band playing, and their guests waiting expectantly at the bottom of the Grand Staircase, the Carters looked down and saw that Misty Malarky had appeared from nowhere and was padding down the stairs in front of them.

The next White House cat of note was Socks Clinton, who arrived in 1993. Socks is a real rags to riches story. The Clintons picked him up as a stray in Arkansas and gave him a home in the Governor's Mansion in Little Rock. A few years later, he had taken another leap forward and was living in the White House.

For the first few years, it was a dream existence. Socks whiled away his days napping in the sunshine on the South Lawn or poking through the papers on the president's secretary's desk. He also became an instant celebrity and was inundated with fan letters, all of which he dutifully answered, signing his responses with a paw print.

Then in 1997, Socks's carefree life was disrupted. The Clintons adopted a chocolate Labrador retriever named Buddy. Not only did Socks drop to second place in the White House pet standings, but he had to put up with all sorts of barking and growling from his replacement.

Cat and dog fights can be contained in the White House, where there's plenty of room and more than enough help to keep them from getting out of hand. But the Clintons knew it would be impossible to deal with the situation after they left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They decided to take Buddy with them and give Socks to Clinton's secretary, Betty Currie, whose White House desk had long been one of his favorite haunts.

The latest White House cat in residence, Willie, has been a member of the Bush family for over ten years, but she has never tried to capitalize on the relationship. On the contrary, she keeps such a low profile that most people don't even know she exists, which doesn't bother Willie in the slightest. Willie spends most of her time hiding from her owners, napping under one of their beds, or munching on tuna-flavored kitty treats.

V

During the Kennedy administration there were always at least a dozen exotic pets in residence, including lambs, guinea pigs, hamsters, birds, and rabbits. Among the pets in the Kennedys' private menagerie was Caroline Kennedy's pony, Macaroni, who divided his time between his stable at the White House and the Kennedy home in Virginia. When he was in Washington, he roamed freely around the White House grounds. One day Macaroni wandered over to the West Wing and stood staring into one of the tall windows in the Oval Office. President Kennedy stared back. After a few minutes, he went over, opened the door, and motioned to Macaroni to come in. The pony thought about it for a few minutes, then turned around and ambled off.

Macaroni missed his chance to become the first pony in history to visit the Oval Office. He may have considered this only a minor accomplishment in view of the fact that another pony had gotten as far as the second-floor living quarters.

When nine-year-old Archie Roosevelt was stricken with both measles and whooping cough, his younger brother, Quentin, decided that a visit from his pony, Algonquin, would cheer him up. Quentin persuaded one of the White House footmen to help him coax the 350-pound animal into the White House elevator. Algonquin was jittery about the venture until he became absorbed in studying himself in the elevator mirror and gave the footman a chance to press the button. The invalid was so happy to see Algonquin trotting into his bedroom that he immediately began to recover.

Abraham and Mary Lincoln's two younger sons, Willie and Tad, had their own ponies, which they rode around the grounds under the watchful eye of a White House messenger. When Willie died of typhoid fever, Tad lost all interest in his pony. The animal was replaced in his affections by a pair of goats. Strange as it may seem today, goats were popular pets in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were known for being gentle and good-natured and they could be hitched to small carts to give children a safe ride.

When they weren't busy pulling Tad around in his cart, Nanny and Nanko made a beeline for the White House flower beds, destroying the plants and driving the gardener into a frenzy. The only solution was to keep them in the stables. Nanko was the better behaved of the pair and when he was put in the stables, he stayed there. Nanny, however, always managed to get out and, of course, headed straight for the garden.

To keep the goat from causing too much destruction, the president had her brought into the White House, but instead of staying docilely in the basement, she wandered upstairs and curled up on Tad's bed. The housekeeper shooed her outside where she attacked the flower beds once again. That was her last foray. The next day Nanny disappeared. Somehow I don't think it was a coincidence.

Among the other White House children who had goats to pull them around were President Rutherford B. Hayes's youngest son, Scott, and Benjamin Harrison's grandson, Ben Mc-Kee. Ben's goat, His Whiskers, could often be seen on the front lawn of the White House with the little boy in tow.

One day, as President Harrison was standing on the North Portico, about to leave for an appointment, His Whiskers abruptly shifted into high gear and went tearing down Pennsylvania Avenue with Ben and his cart bouncing along behind him. The president, in his frock coat and high silk hat, took off after them, waving his cane and calling for His Whiskers to stop.

The goat finally slowed down and Harrison was able to grab him by his harness. Instead of finding his grandson screaming in fright, as the president had expected, Ben was fine. He told his grandfather that the ride had been great fun.