Upstairs at the White House

by J. B. West

  Miss Kung dressed like a man, and the White House valets, thinking she was Mr. Kung, went into her room to unpack her bags and help her undress. In a short time, they were in the Usher’s office. “Your Mr. Kung is a girl,” Caesar the valet told the horrified Mr. Crim, who immediately sent two maids up to attend to her needs.

  But even the President was fooled, and called her “my boy” very expansively at dinner. (“I call all young people ‘my boy,’” he tried to cover.)

  Miss Kung proved to be quite a nuisance for the First Lady. Mrs. Roosevelt called down to the Usher’s office, exasperated. “Mr. Crim, can you please explain to Miss Kung that she is to call you if she needs anything? She pops into my room a dozen times a day.”

  The tiny, delicate-looking Madame Chiang stayed at the White House nine days, and the White House maids were never so happy to see anybody leave. “Mrs. Generalissimo” brought her own silk sheets with her, which had to be laundered by hand every day, and stitched back inside the heavy quilted sleeping bag she had brought along from China.

  Caesar, the same valet who unpacked Miss Kung, rushed into the Usher’s office the day Mr. Molotov arrived. His hands were trembling.

  “He’s got a gun in his suitcase,” the valet whispered excitedly. “What shall I do?”

  Mr. Crim’s eyes opened wide. That was a piece of hardware most unwelcome in the White House. But delicate international conferences were going on in the President’s study. The Chief Usher called the Secret Service, explaining the situation, then hung up the phone. He turned to Caesar, who was still waiting.

  “Just hope he doesn’t use it on you!”

  In 1943, Mrs. Roosevelt was always on the go. And the more train and airplane tickets I wrote for her, the more criticism she drew from Congress. If her critics bothered her, however, she never let on. It seemed to us that she merely ignored them. The main attacks came for the trips she took in military planes, trips to visit the servicemen abroad. Because many of Mrs. Roosevelt’s trips now included visits to military installations, the Army took over planning that portion of her travel.

  The President crossed the Atlantic to the Teheran Conference, visiting Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Malta, before he returned to the States aboard the U.S.S. Iowa.

  When he returned on December 17, 1943, all kinds of doctors checked into the White House, and we knew the President was sick, though he kept his appointments. He was wheeled in and out of the Map Room, overseeing the war. At home, he juggled a railroad strike, finally seizing the railroads, placing them under military control. Though he still delivered his regular fireside chats from the Diplomatic Reception Room on the ground floor, he didn’t go outside at all.

  By January, 1944, the President had a raging case of influenza. He was not able to go to the Capitol to deliver his State of the Union speech. But by April, he was well enough to seek sunshine, and recuperated on Bernard Baruch’s plantation in South Carolina.

  He returned to the White House, much thinner, and we noticed that his hands trembled almost all the time. Later, in July, buoyed by the success of D-Day, the amphibious invasion of France on June 6, he announced that he would accept the Democratic nomination for an unprecedented fourth term.

  We were all worried. It seemed that crews of doctors were being spirited in and out through the south entrance of the White House. The President quickly lost his Carolina tan and now looked gray as a ghost.

  He took the train to California, arriving in San Diego just long enough to accept his nomination, speaking from the back platform of the train, then went on a Pacific inspection trip to bases in Hawaii and Alaska.

  When he returned to the White House from his month-long trip, his first visitor, on August 18, was Senator Harry Truman, the vice-presidential candidate he’d chosen to replace Henry Wallace of Iowa on the Democratic ticket.

  We were curious about the newcomer from Missouri. “Wonder if he’ll be coming around here any more than Wallace did,” Claunch asked, as the two candidates, in their shirtsleeves, ate lunch beneath the Andrew Jackson magnolia. (Traditionally, Vice Presidents rarely were seen around the White House.)

  “I doubt it,” Mr. Crim replied. “You know the President!”

  The strain of campaigning showed on the President’s face when he returned from Hyde Park, victorious in the election. He’d campaigned in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Delaware, Camden, New Jersey, Chicago, Boston, Springfield, Bridgeport and Hartford, and took a final whistlestop through his home state, New York. It was a lesser effort than in earlier days, but, to our thinking, a rather incredible feat for a man who, handicapped and tired, looked much older than his 63 years.

  Mrs. Roosevelt went along on some of the trips, but we noticed that her various interests seemed to take precedence over the campaign. After the election, the President saw even less of Mrs. Roosevelt. Their daughter, Anna Boettiger, moved into the White House to take care of her father.

  And it was Anna who got the new Vice President there to ride in the triumphal post-election parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. Mr. Truman, in Missouri at the time, tried to beg off because of a prior commitment to his old Army unit. “I wouldn’t be able to get there and back in time,” he said.

  Anna fumed. “Hasn’t the stupid so-and-so ever heard of a plane?” she said, and she arranged for a military plane to go to Missouri. Vice President Truman flew in for the parade.

  The Hopkinses had rented a house in Georgetown, so Anna and her six-year-old son Johnny moved into the old Lincoln office on the second floor of the White House. After quiet Diana, the antics of lively Johnny Boettiger kept the staff hopping.

  It was Anna who dined with the President on trays in his study, Anna who now mixed his martinis and laughed at his jokes, Anna who listened to his speeches and threw him ideas.

  But it was Mrs. Roosevelt who took charge of the fourth inauguration.

  “Because of the President’s health, we want to hold the inauguration here, rather than at the capitol. Can you manage it?”

  The Chief Usher never says no to a First Lady’s request, Mr. Crim had taught me. But he blanched at that question, knowing that we’d all be loaded down taking care of all the crowds.

  “We shall certainly try, Ma’am.”

  When the joint congressional committee announced the White House ceremony, the statement cited the savings in inaugural expenditures, in view of war conditions, “which necessitate the abandonment of normal ceremonial activities, shortage of critical materials, the restriction of travel, shortage of hotel accommodations….”

  But we knew that if Franklin Delano Roosevelt had felt up to it, wild horses couldn’t have kept him away from the Capitol. And the parade, which was canceled because of “wartime austerity,” would have been used to incite patriotism.

  The historic fourth inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt was by far the greatest assemblage of people ever to gather at the White House. By January 20, 1945, the staff, working with President Roosevelt’s friend and military aide, General Edwin “Pa” Watson, had spent two double-duty months in preparation. The day began at ten in the morning with Episcopal services in the East Room, for two hundred seated guests.

  At noon, the invited crowd, more than we’d expected, spilled over onto the South Portico, to watch Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone administer the oath of office to the President and to Vice President Truman, who was making his second visit to the mansion.

  Colonel James Roosevelt, now a military aide to the President, physically supported his father to the platform. The President’s speech was mercifully brief, and one of his most eloquent. Despite his doctor’s instructions, however, Franklin Roosevelt wore no overcoat. It was a rainy, sleety, windy day, with snow on the ground. The throngs in the audience, standing beneath the South Portico in the raw weather, stamped their feet and rubbed their hands during the ceremony.

  We’d spread out tarpaulins on the ground around the south entrance for top dignitaries to stand on. The rest, including many frozen Congressmen,
had to stand behind a rope in the cold slush on the back lawn.

  At 1:00, after the wives of the President and the Vice President greeted them in the lobby, we served lunch to 1,805 guests. It was a “plated” luncheon with covered dishes of food ready for the guests to pick up, served from long buffet tables in the East Room, the State Dining Room, and the ground floor corridor.

  We’d barely cleared away after the first group when Mrs. Roosevelt began to hold her inevitable tea. At 4:00, the President and Vice President received two hundred Democratic members of the Electoral College in the State Dining Room; at five, Mrs. Roosevelt and Mrs. Truman greeted nearly seven hundred additional guests.

  And there was more to come. That evening, as I changed from my formal morning clothes to evening dress, I felt that it was the most strenuous day I’d ever put in. Mr. Crim said as much, as did the doorman, John Mays, who’d been there since William Howard Taft’s time.

  The day came to an end after midnight, when the last of eighty close friends and political advisors left the White House. They had been guests of the Roosevelt family for a dinner in the State Dining Room.

  Upstairs, the guest rooms, as usual, were packed.

  “If we had one more person, we’d have to put him in the basket with Fala,” Mays announced.

  All thirteen of the Roosevelt grandchildren were spending the night, even though Mrs. Roosevelt had feared “an epidemic of chickenpox or something.” All his sons, his daughter, his cousins Laura Delano and Margaret Suckley, made the solemn occasion a gala family gathering for the President.

  But he went to bed early, exhausted.

  Two days later, the President, taking Anna along to take care of him, left for Yalta and the fateful meeting with Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill, where the Allies reached controversial agreements on their various responsibilities and spheres of influence in the future world.

  While he was gone, Mrs. Roosevelt carried on with all her usual activities. She entertained a Nigerian prince and a rabbi; held meetings with people involved in specifics of her various causes—civil rights, women’s rights, labor. She was beginning her own next four years.

  I was in awe of this remarkable woman. She was formal and distant with her staff, yet kind and warm to people everywhere. And she accomplished so much. None of us had a tenth of her energy.

  It was after the President had returned from Yalta, tired beyond belief, and flown to Georgia to rest, that Mrs. Roosevelt held a luncheon for top women in government.

  As I looked out the window over the north driveway, one of the guests, a short gray-haired woman, made her way up the steps. She looked vaguely familiar.

  Mays, resplendent in his blue tailcoat and white stockings, grandly swept the lady in. I stepped out of the office, asking, “Ma’am, your name?”

  “Mrs. Truman,” she said.

  Embarrassed, I led the wife of the Vice President of the United States into the Red Room.

  * Traditionally, during the period from Thanksgiving to Lent, it consisted of ten large, official receptions and dinners held at the White House to honor members of the Diplomatic Corps, the Judiciary, Congress, the Cabinet, the Chief Justice, the Vice President, and the Speaker of the House.

  * Now called Camp David.

  The Trumans

  1

  “I’M TAKING A LONG weekend,” Mr. Crim said, as he worked his arms into the sleeves of his topcoat, “Why don’t you go ahead and take the four days, too?”

  I glanced at the Usher’s log. Mrs. Roosevelt had absolutely nothing on the schedule Friday through Monday. With the President in Warm Springs, life was unusually slow at the mansion.

  “Perhaps I can go on out to Iowa and bring back my family,” I replied. Zella had waited until after the ordeal of the Inauguration to take our baby daughter to meet the relatives, but after so many weeks alone, I had come to dread weekends in the empty apartment.

  “Very well, Mr. West,” Mr. Crim nodded. “I’ll see you Tuesday morning.” Tipping his hat smartly, he marched out the door at the stroke of four. Mr. Crim is so formal he probably doffs his hat to his wife, I thought, arranging the desk for the night usher.

  I walked from the White House to the barber shop on G Street, wishing I’d packed a suitcase so I could catch the 5:30 train to Chicago. Now, I’d have to wait until the next day.

  It was chilly for April, and I remember thinking later, as the crowded bus jostled along 16th Street, how pleasant it might be to draw duty with the President in Georgia.

  Mrs. Smaltz, the resident manager, was standing in front of the apartment house when I got home. “Isn’t it just terrible!” she cried. “Isn’t it awful!”

  “Yes, it certainly is,” I agreed, wondering what new turn the war had taken. I ran up the two flights of stairs and snapped on the radio as soon as I unlocked the apartment door. It was a few seconds after six, and every station was blaring out the news bulletin. For a moment I stood rooted to the rug, hat and raincoat still on, then I wheeled around toward the door.

  Halfway down the hall, I remembered to call Mr. Crim. I knew he did not have a radio in his Virginia home. He answered the phone at the first ring.

  “Have you heard?” I asked.

  “No, what’s happened?”

  “The President died this afternoon. I just heard the news on the radio. It sounds like a stroke.”

  “I’ll meet you in the office,” he said.

  I don’t think there’s a soul alive who was around on April 12, 1945, who doesn’t remember where he was, how he heard the news, how he felt when Franklin D. Roosevelt died. There’s something about the unexpected death of a President that we all take so personally that years afterward, when we talk about it, we always say, “I was in the kitchen when I heard the news”—or “I was walking down the street”—or “I was in a classroom.” We seem to relate the experience to our own whereabouts. I can remember my surprise at finding a cab right around the corner in front of Walter Reed Hospital—sometimes it was just about impossible to find one during the war. I can remember the silent ride back to the White House, being grateful that the taxi had no commercial radio, because I didn’t want to talk to the cab driver about it.

  I remember thinking how frail the President had looked, how teams of doctors kept running in and out of the White House in the days after the Inauguration, how his daughter Anna had stayed on to take care of him, accompanying him to the Yalta Conference, and how he had no longer cared to disguise his paralyzed condition. He had even delivered his State of the Union message from his wheelchair, and, for the first time in his life, allowed public photographs and newsreels of that indispensable vehicle. He was too weak to pretend. There had even been talk that he wouldn’t be able to make the trip to Warm Springs, where he found relaxation and therapy.

  As the cab driver pulled up to the White House, I asked him to take me to a side entrance to avoid any press people who might be around. I noticed Anna Roosevelt Boettiger’s car in the driveway. She’d been out at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where her son Johnny was recuperating from a stomach ailment. Once in the office, I checked the Usher’s log—Secretary of State Stettinius, Anna, and her husband, John, were already upstairs.

  Mr. Crim had arrived. “Mrs. Roosevelt is getting ready to go down for the body,” he told me. “The swearing-in is going to be in the Cabinet Room.”

  It was all so sudden, I had completely forgotten about Mr. Truman. Stunned, I realized that I simply couldn’t comprehend the Presidency as something separate from Roosevelt. The Presidency, the White House, the war, our lives—they were all Roosevelt.

  But if Mr. Crim or any of the rest of the staff had any feelings about the President’s death, they didn’t show it. Every function, every movement, every reaction was business as usual. It could have been the day before. Have they no feelings, I wondered?

  Steve Early, from the President’s office, called. “Mrs. Roosevelt is preparing to leave by military plane. We’ll have a meeting on the arrangements a
t eight o’clock, after the swearing-in ceremony.”

  Mr. Crim and I hurried down the ground floor corridor, through the glass doors to the Cabinet Room. Speaker Rayburn, Majority Leader McCormack, Minority Leader Joseph Martin, Admiral Leahy and General Fleming were already assembled.

  Two Secret Service agents arrived from the east wing, bringing Mrs. Truman and her daughter, Margaret.

  A gray-faced Mr. Truman, flanked by two agents and a tearful Secretary of State Stettinius, stepped out of the President’s office to meet Chief Justice Stone. The two men shook hands, gripping each other’s arms.

  “Did you bring a Bible?” the Chief Justice asked Mr. Truman. “Oh, no—you see—I didn’t know,” the Vice President stammered.

  Steve Early and Jonathan Daniels of the President’s staff scrambled around the office, searching. There was an embarrassed silence. Mr. Crim snapped to the telephone and, in his best under-cover voice, called our office.

  “Claunch,” he said, “look in the bottom drawer of my desk for that Gideon Bible. Bring it over right away, and be sure to dust it off first.”

  Within seconds Claunch was over with one of the Bibles the Gideons had presented to Mrs. Roosevelt for the guest rooms.

  The ceremony was brief. Chief Justice Stone raised the Bible, administered the oath, and the shaken, gray-haired man in the gray suit and bow tie, shorter than anyone else in the room, repeated:

  “I, Harry S. Truman, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

  Mr. Crim and I melted into the background and disappeared back to the office, just in time to answer Mrs. Roosevelt’s call.

  “I will receive the Trumans in the Red Room,” she said. I watched Mr. Crim straighten his back, walk back to the Cabinet Room, escort his charges to the Red Room and, in a ringing voice, announce: