Upstairs at the White House

by J. B. West

  In February, the President announced his intention to visit Russia in the summer, after an important Paris Summit Conference—a trip that was stopped by the downing of a U.S. reconnaissance plane over Soviet territory.

  The U-2 plane incident, and the consequences of it, came as an enormous blow to everything Ike had worked for for two years. All those worldwide trips, cementing old alliances, and developing international understanding, were a prelude to reaching better relations with the Soviet Union.

  Instead, a summit meeting was shattered and Dwight Eisenhower left office with the Cold War almost as frigid as before.

  Mrs. Eisenhower clung more closely to her quieter pattern of living, spending more time with her grandchildren, playing cards with her close friends, entertaining only for State visitors. She turned the East Room over to John and Barbara for a spring dinner-dance for their friends—the only time the young couple had ever used the mansion to entertain. In October, Mrs. Eisenhower celebrated her husband’s seventieth birthday with a lively party in the State Dining Room.

  As the 1960 Presidential campaign got underway, Mr. Eisenhower at first hesitated to become involved. Then, in the fall, he did go out campaigning for Vice President Nixon, against his doctor’s advice. But the election was won by the Vice President’s opponent.

  Mrs. Eisenhower had planned a gala victory celebration for the Nixons. Instead, her considerable talents as a hostess were extended to her own family—a grand debut for her two nieces in the East Room of the White House on November 25.

  “I want it to be like the debuts I remember, with old friends and their daughters,” the First Lady said proudly as she and her sister “Mike” introduced Ellen Doud Moore, 19, and Mamie Eisenhower Moore, 18, to Washington society. And it was like a page from the past.

  Bouquets sent by friends and guests for the afternoon tea began arriving at the White House days before the debut. “Keep them fresh, in the refrigerators, then bank them along the East Room wall,” directed Mrs. Eisenhower. (And when we did, florist Robert Redmond whispered, “It looks like the Roosevelt funeral in there.”)

  Dressed in a blue, sequined afternoon gown, Mrs. Eisenhower stood with her sister and the two girls in the Green Room, greeting the 500 guests. There were two tea tables, in the State Dining Room and the Blue Room, for Mrs. Eisenhower’s last big occasion in the White House.

  “Wasn’t it a wonderful thing for Aunt Mamie to do?” said Mamie Moore, as she watched her aunt spread her own particular charm throughout the crowd.

  After the debut, Mrs. Eisenhower moved into Christmas….

  “I want it to be the most beautiful Christmas ever,” she told me. “It’s our last one in this wonderful house.”

  Her sentiment about the mansion she had ruled so majestically over the previous eight years was echoed in her choice of music for her farewell dinner for the President’s Cabinet, staff and close personal friends. As the Army chorus sang “Auld Lang Syne” and “Bless This House,” the First Lady’s eyes glistened with tears.

  More than any of the others, Mamie Eisenhower hated to leave.

  Shortly before Inauguration Day, we were at Gettysburg, arranging for the Eisenhowers’ last move. There were still changes she wanted made, but now it was almost too late.

  “I’d like to have had these stairs widened,” she said, indicating the narrow steep stairs leading from the kitchen to the upstairs bedrooms, “So the servants could carry the big tray you gave us more easily, but I guess we won’t bother, now.”

  Then, with a sad little smile, she shrugged. “Oh, well, instead of having my trays carried upstairs, I’ll probably be downstairs with a dustrag in my hand.”

  Later that afternoon, she went on a shopping trek to Gettysburg. “Stop here,” she said to Sergeant Dry, pointing to a bakery. “I want to get a cake for the help’s dessert tonight.”

  Thoughtful of every detail as always, Mrs. Eisenhower carried the little bakery cake into the kitchen of her Gettysburg home. But there she found Delores Moaney merrily whipping up her own cake batter, using fresh eggs, butter and milk.

  The First Lady quietly set her little present down on the counter and walked through the swinging doors into the dining room, where I stood checking a list of items to go in the big, new storehouse behind the barn.

  “They might as well live high on the hog while they can,” she said drily, “because they won’t be able to live like that after we move back, when they’re living off me.”

  Moving out has been a sad occasion for all the First Ladies. Even Mrs. Truman, who had expressed such relief at getting back to Independence, missed the hustle-and-bustle, the instant service, all the little pleasantries of White House life. It was even harder for Mamie Eisenhower, who had so thoroughly established herself as “Lady of the House.”

  When she first came there, she’d been disappointed at the furnishings. Now, on leaving, she thought they were grand.

  During the Eisenhowers, there had been more drastic changes in White House life than in any previous administration, but the changes came gradually and the Eisenhowers adjusted easily. Television, for one thing, had become a permanent part of the Presidency, as well as an entertainment medium for the First Family; air conditioning made it possible for the family to use the mansion all summer long; jet planes carried them all over the world and back within days, and brought friends and supporters in from all over the country for an evening, revolutionizing White House guest lists; the office of the Presidency had grown so that it filled the west wing, halls and basement, and the old State-War-Navy Building next door.

  Our White House had grown, too, in this postwar era, and not just because of the increased size of the renovated mansion. Now, we had a staff of seventy-two, ten more than when I began during the Roosevelts. But this work force was nowhere near sufficient to take care of the enlarged patterns of White House living. Rather than ask Congress to increase our appropriation (all Presidents are reluctant to ask for a household raise from Congress), we found it necessary to draw upon resources and manpower from other government agencies to run the place. And those agencies, ever delighted to get a foot in the White House door, were only too happy to lend assistance.

  The Navy, which came in through the ground floor during the Trumans, operated a little “staff mess” underneath the President’s offices in the west wing. Cooks and waiters were primarily Filipino servicemen from the same Navy personnel force that had staffed Presidential yachts since the Spanish-American War. This little dining room was operated like an exclusive private club, with Presidential assistants during the Eisenhower and succeeding administrations vying for the status of membership there, When the renovated mansion needed extra help, Mrs. Truman requested additional Navy stewards to work as pantry-helpers; Mrs. Eisenhower added two more Navy Filipinos to help with heavy cleaning upstairs. And so nobody ever had to ask Congress for salaries for more servants.

  During the evolution of the White House, the military moved in in other ways, too. The Air Force now provided all the President’s transportation—three planes, helicopters, and personnel to fly, navigate, maintain and serve on them.* Gone were the days of the Presidential railroad car, “Ferdinand Magellan,” and the President paying for his own train ticket—although Mrs. Eisenhower still used the trains and paid her own way. For years the Army had supplied drivers and gasoline for the fleet of twenty White House limousines and utility trucks. Then, of course, there was the Signal Corps, who handled all the electronic communications and photographic equipment, with at least a fifty-man contingent in the White House. And the Marine Orchestra, a twenty-two-man unit at the President’s disposal. And General Snyder and Col. Tkach, the physicians. If the military didn’t run the White House, they still staffed a great deal of it.

  From the Treasury Department, the President’s protective force had been increased to at least twice the personnel and equipment of Roosevelt days. (This peacetime President was barraged with more threats, his house surrounded by mor
e pickets than had ever occurred during the “hot” wars.) From the Park Service came workmen to care for the sixteen acres of White House grounds. And from General Services, engineers, plumbers, builders, to assist the regular maintenance staff.

  The complexities of the modern Presidency thrust upon General Eisenhower and his wife a different style of living from past Presidents. But it was a style that they easily adjusted to, and even designed, themselves, because of their experience with the attendant personal power of a high military command. They enlarged the scope of the White House, taking, for the first time, personnel and equipment out of the mansion itself to Gettysburg, a non-government weekend and summer retreat. The White House was now beginning to be looked upon as anywhere the President happened to be, rather than just the eighteenth-century mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  It was a complex world in which we found ourselves in January, 1961, as we packed up paintings, trophies, and gowns for the Eisenhowers. Regal, sentimental Mamie Eisenhower was the last First Lady born in the nineteenth century. She was the first to leave the White House in the Space Age.

  * The Air Force estimated that the Presidential plane, the Columbine III, which cost $3 million, cost $711 per hour to run. And although the yacht Williamsburg had been put in mothballs in 1953, the Navy still spent about $60,000 a year to maintain the smaller craft, the 92-foot Barbara Anne, and the 60-foot Suzie E.

  The Kennedys

  1

  JACQUELINE KENNEDY WHISPERED. OR so I thought, at first. Actually, she spoke so softly that one was forced to listen intently, forced to focus on her face and respond to her direct, compelling eyes. There was wonder in those eyes, determination, humor, and—sometimes—vulnerability.

  When she looked around a crowded room as if searching for the nearest exit, people assumed that she was shy, uncertain. I don’t think she was ever shy. It was merely her method of studying the situation: memorizing the room, or assessing the people in it. She spoke no small talk—no “I’m so very glad to meet you and what does your husband do?” She limited her conversation merely to what, in her opinion, mattered.

  Her interests were wide, however, as was her knowledge, and she had a subtle, ingenious way of getting things accomplished.

  I soon learned that Mrs. Kennedy’s wish, murmured with a “Do you think …” or “Could you please …” was as much a command as Mrs. Eisenhower’s “I want this done immediately.”

  Mrs. Eisenhower had called me to her bedroom one morning several weeks after the 1960 election.

  “I’ve invited Mrs. Kennedy for a tour of the house at noon on December 9,” she said. “Please have the rooms in order, but no servants on the upstairs floors. And I plan to leave at one thirty, so have my car ready.”

  “Mrs. Kennedy’s Secret Service agent phoned from the hospital this morning,” I told the outgoing First Lady. “She asked that we have a wheelchair for her when she arrives.”

  At that moment, Mrs. Kennedy was still at Georgetown Hospital, recovering from her Caesarian surgery of November 25, when John F. Kennedy, Jr., was born.

  “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Eisenhower frowned. “I wanted to take her around alone.”

  The thought of Mamie Eisenhower, the grandest of the First Ladies, pushing a wheelchair through the corridors of the White House—especially when the passenger had been a political enemy—was too much for me.

  “I’ll tell you what …” her carefully manicured fingernails drummed the night table. “We’ll get a wheelchair, but put it behind a door somewhere, out of sight. It will be available if she asks for it,” she said.

  On the morning of December 9, the house was spruced up in its Christmas best, the wheelchair hidden in a closet beside the elevator, and I was waiting at the south entrance to meet the future First Lady.

  Just before noon, the Secret Service agent who had been assigned to Mrs. Kennedy drove a dark blue station wagon into the circular driveway. She was sitting in the front seat, next to him.

  Harriston, the silent, genial doorman, opened the door for her.

  “Thank you,” she smiled at him, and stepped out.

  I was struck by how young she appeared. Dressed in a dark coat, wearing hat and gloves, she could have been a young Congressman’s wife paying an obligatory call. She was taller than I had realized, as tall as I, even in her low heels. Very thin, it seemed to me, and quite pale.

  “I’m Mr. West, the Chief Usher,” I introduced myself.

  “I’m Jacqueline Kennedy,” she whispered. As if I didn’t know.

  She stepped, a bit hesitantly I thought, into the Diplomatic Reception Room, looked around at the walls, sofas, and rug, and, without saying another word, walked with me through the green-carpeted hallway toward the elevator. Her wide, uncertain eyes took in everything around her, and I could tell she was somewhat ill-at-ease.

  “Mrs. Eisenhower is waiting upstairs,” I explained, as we entered the elevator.

  She did not reply.

  I thought suddenly of my daughter Kathy, who is always shy at first, and reveals nothing of herself until she is perfectly sure of her surroundings. Once sure, however, she takes over completely. Every time.

  As the elevator door opened to the second floor, Jacqueline Kennedy took a deep, audible breath.

  Mrs. Eisenhower stood in the center hall, a tiny figure under the high ceilings, surrounded by the beige expanse of hall. And very much in command.

  “Mrs. Kennedy,” I announced. Mrs. Eisenhower did not come forward.

  As I escorted the young woman across the room to meet her formidable hostess, I was very much aware that neither lady had looked forward to this meeting.

  “Hello, Mrs. Kennedy,” Mrs. Eisenhower gave a nod and extended her hand in her most gracious meet-the-visitor pose. “I do hope you are feeling much better now. And how is the baby?”

  I turned and left them, and waited in my office for a call for the wheelchair, a call that never came. At 1:30 on the dot, the two buzzers rang, indicating First Lady descending, and I dashed to the elevator.

  The two women walked out the south entrance, where their cars were waiting. After the goodbyes and thank-yous, Mrs. Eisenhower stepped regally into the back seat of her Chrysler limousine and disappeared, off to her card game. Mrs. Kennedy walked slowly over to her three-year-old station wagon. As I caught up with her, to give her blueprints and photographs of the rooms, I saw pain darken her face.

  “Could you please send them to Palm Beach for me?” she asked. “We’re going there to rest until Inauguration Day.”

  Two months later, as we were tromping around the third floor, Mrs. Kennedy suddenly turned to me.

  “Mr. West, did you know that my doctor ordered a wheelchair the day I first went around the White House?” she asked.

  “Yes, I did,” I answered.

  She looked bewildered.

  “Then why didn’t you have it for me? I was so exhausted after marching around this house for two hours that I had to go back to bed for two whole weeks!”

  She stared into my eyes, searching for an explanation.

  “Well,” I answered carefully, “it was certainly there, waiting for you. Right behind the closet door next to the elevator. We were waiting for you to request it.”

  To my surprise, she giggled. “I was too scared of Mrs. Eisenhower to ask,” she whispered. From that moment, I never saw Jacqueline Kennedy uncertain again.

  Mrs. Eisenhower’s feelings about the young Mrs. Kennedy were never spoken, only intimated.

  The morning after Mrs. Kennedy’s arduous tour, Charles Ficklin, Mabel Walker, and I went up to the Eisenhowers’ bedroom for our daily conference. As usual, the First Lady sat propped up against her pink headboard, with a bow in her hair, picking at the breakfast on her tray.

  “… See that the maids begin packing all my summer clothes first,” she finished instructing the housekeeper, then dismissed her.

  “Change the lamb stew to beef, and leave out the potatoes,” she approved Charles’
menu, dismissing him, too.

  The President’s wife took a bite of grapefruit, then looked at me.

  “Well …?” she asked, one eyebrow raised quizzically.

  “The moving vans are scheduled to arrive on January 2 to take the first load to Gettysburg,” I answered innocently.

  “She’s planning to redo every room in this house,” Mrs. Eisenhower said. “You’ve got quite a project ahead of you.” Then, in the voice she reserved for disapproval: “There certainly are going to be some changes made around here!”

  Little did I realize how prophetic Mrs. Eisenhower’s statement was. Throughout the next thirty-four months, not only would I become involved in coordinating the transformation of the mansion—from historic house to national monument—but also, I would have to adjust White House management from a regimented, stylized order-of-business to that of running an impromptu, informal household.

  I would find myself dealing with Empire tables and rabbit cages; housing Maharajahs and ponies; steaming down the Potomac and wearing disguises; and thoroughly enjoying the most creative and challenging work to which the Chief Usher had ever been put.

  The new First Lady turned the White House inside out, and she imprinted her own rarefied life style upon the mansion. But the greatest change in the White House was brought about by the presence of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy herself. She was thirty years younger than any of the First Ladies I had served, and, I was to discover, had the most complex personality of them all. In public, she was elegant, aloof, dignified, and regal. In private, she was casual, impish, and irreverent. She had a will of iron, with more determination than anyone I have ever met. Yet she was so soft-spoken, so deft and subtle, that she could impose that will upon people without their ever knowing it.

  Her wit—teasing, exaggerating, poking fun at everything, including herself—was a surprise and a daily delight. She was imaginative, inventive, intelligent—and sometimes silly. Yet there were subjects that did not amuse her one bit.