Upstairs at the White House

by J. B. West

  “But the President likes my cooking!” she argued indignantly.

  I looked out the window. Spring was here, warming Pennsylvania Avenue for the tourists. No matter what the problems are, nobody ever wants to leave the White House.

  “Let’s work it this way, Pearl,” I told her gently. “I’m going to turn all the cooking over to René—for the family as well as for the guests. But you will live here, as a guest of the White House, for two weeks. All of your meals will be served you, and you will have every privilege of the House while you look for another job….”

  Pearl, our guest, was on top of the world for two weeks. The maids made her bed. The chef prepared her meals, which were served by the butlers. She rode around in White House cars.

  Mrs. Kennedy ran into me in the center hall during Pearl’s first week in residence.

  “I just saw Pearl!” she exclaimed, eyes wide. “Did you give up, too?”

  “Not at all,” I said, and explained my delicate maneuver.* Mrs. Kennedy was delighted.

  “That’s splendid,” she said. “Just splendid!” She grinned impishly. “Now can you ease out Julius, too? What we really need is a pastry chef, rather than an assistant for René.”

  Julius had become known as the “platter prettier-upper,” and his specialty was ice sculpture, which was Mrs. Kennedy’s least favorite form of table decoration.

  So I eased Julius out, then hired Ferdinand Louvat, the pastry chef.

  I discovered the sensitivity of President Kennedy’s political antennae as I carried out “the West plan” to relieve Julius of his job. The morning I assigned Julius to his guest room on the third floor, I met the President at the elevator, and walked with him to his west wing office.

  “Mr. President, I have released Julius Spessot from the kitchen today, because Mrs. Kennedy would like to have a pastry chef,” I informed him. “Could you give him an autographed picture?”

  “Sure, I’d be glad to,” the President answered. Then he frowned. “But aren’t you afraid he might want to write something?”

  “No, he doesn’t know enough to write,” I replied.

  Several days later, Mrs. Kennedy called me to the second floor. “Mr. West, I’ve had some statements drawn up by my attorney. Do you think it’s all right for the employees to sign a pledge that they won’t write anything about their experiences in the White House?”

  I was taken aback a bit. “I’ll certainly check on it,” I said and I telephoned her attorney, James McInerney, to check out the legal implications. In effect, the pledge was purely psychological, he explained. “Legally, it really has no force of effect.”

  The attorney had drawn up the statement “to conform to Mrs. Kennedy’s requirements and those of the Presidential Office,” and he had also written Mrs. Kennedy a warning that “if publicly disclosed, the agreement may be falsely construed as a further advance in the area of executive privilege (of non-disclosures), which had come under attack by the Congressional Freedom of Information Committees.”

  So, under the instruction of Mrs. Kennedy, I had the household employees sign the pledge. I assume the President, himself, asked his own staff.

  As the lawyer warned, the pledge did come under attack. Pierre Salinger, the President’s press secretary, let it slip out at a press conference, and newspapers across the country went up in smoke about the White House muzzling its employees. Pierre, who protested lamely that “we just felt that it is a step to ensure that the President’s wife will have privacy,” was besieged by newsmen.

  And the President, who had just squeaked by in the election, was in a tight spot. He called me from the west wing.

  “Mr. West, may I come to see you in your office?”

  “Certainly, Mr. President,” I answered, startled.

  President Kennedy strode in, looking so official I all but saluted.

  “I want you to help me, Mr. West,” he began. “This ‘pledge’ business is causing a lot of trouble. Would you take the blame for it?”

  “I did ask the staff to sign it, Mr. President,” I answered.

  “Good. We’ll put out a statement saying it was your idea, and you initiated it. It will look more official, and less of a personal thing coming from you.”

  President Kennedy, perhaps because of his constant exposure during the television age, was more interested than any of the other Presidents in every nuance of what the press and the public would think about him and his family in the White House.

  He fretted about the color of the walls, the height of the fences, any departure from tradition. Unfortunately, we were never treated to samples of his famous humor. He was always entirely serious about the White House. At the same time, he also had an interest in having the house reflect the issues and people who concerned him. His wife, who set the pace, made the choices, chose the style of living for the Kennedys in the Executive Mansion, was closely attuned to that interest.

  For example, Mrs. Kennedy’s purchase for the President’s House of crystal from Morgantown, West Virginia, was a direct outgrowth of what the President had learned about that state and its problems when he campaigned for the Presidency there in 1960. John F. Kennedy had prevailed in that West Virginia primary, proving his popularity there, but he also was exposed to and struck by the pervasive poverty of the Appalachian region. He was determined to shape government programs to eliminate that misery.

  It was Mrs. Kennedy’s idea to buy the West Virginia glassware, which we filled with fine French wines. She wanted not only to bring to the White House an authentic piece of traditional American craftsmanship, but also to symbolize the President’s interest in the economic problems and potential of Appalachia.

  * With Pearl’s special references, she was employed in Georgetown within days after she left the White House.

  3

  JACQUELINE KENNEDY DEVOTED CONSIDERABLE time, energy, and concentrated attention to her children, yet you could hardly call her the typical American mother. Even when she pleaded for a “simple, unspoiled, normal life” for the children, it would mean the simple, normal life of a very wealthy family.

  She did want to shield Caroline and John from public curiosity, from the pomp and pomposity of White House life. And yet there were always nannies and nurses, chauffeurs and clowns, and a butler who served hamburgers on a silver tray.

  It was evident that Mrs. Kennedy intended to keep their lives separate from the White House operation. Caroline and John, in fact, never were a problem for the staff, as nurses were in attendance at all times. They never ran up and down the State halls by themselves, never slid down the banisters or romped in the East Room, as Teddy Roosevelt’s boisterous youngsters are said to have done.

  Instead, Caroline and John played in their rooms—or in the third-floor solarium. When they did appear, the staff was delighted, for they were well-behaved if exuberant youngsters, and totally charming.

  “I don’t want them to think they are ‘official’ children,” she told me. “When I go out with them or when they go out with their nurses, please ask the doorman not to hover around to open the doors for them.”

  At first, with three-year-old Caroline at her heels, the President’s wife pushed her baby son’s carriage around the circular driveway, under the trees, and back again. When little John learned to walk, they took the same route, Caroline skipping merrily ahead and Mrs. Kennedy slowing her pace to match the toddler’s.

  She designed a play-yard, hidden underneath the trees near the President’s west wing office. I directed the carpenters to follow Mrs. Kennedy’s sketches, and we soon had a treehouse, a rabbit hutch, a barrel tunnel, a leather swing, and a slide. As the “family” grew, we added a snow-fence pen for the lambs, a stable for the ponies, Macaroni and Tex, guinea-pig pens, and doghouses for Pushinka, a gift from Nikita Khrushchev, and Charlie.

  The President could look out on the play-yard from his office, and he often stepped out to shrieks, hugs, quacks, barks, cackles, bleats, and all sorts of commotion. He see
med to delight in the mad scene.

  “Do you think you could manage a big hole in the ground on the south lawn?” Mrs. Kennedy asked me, looking down from the Truman balcony.

  “I’m certain we could …,” I agreed, my curiosity piqued. Swimming pool? Wading pool? Pirates’ cave? I wondered what was next.

  “Good! Let’s put in a trampoline right there.” She pointed to a spot alongside the tennis court. “They’re too little for a high one, so could you place it at ground level so we won’t have to climb up to jump. And hide it somehow, please.”

  Out came the gardeners with shovels, and out came the Park Service with holly trees, because Mrs. Kennedy wanted a natural “screen” around the trampoline. The First Lady, in slacks and sandals as usual, came out to supervise planting of the seven-foot holly trees.

  “Oh this will be perfect!” she whispered, as the trees went into the ground. “Now, when I jump on the trampoline, all they’ll be able to see is my head, sailing up above the tree tops!”

  Actually, I believe that Jacqueline Kennedy enjoyed playing as much as the children did. Many times, when I watched her play with them, exactly as a child plays, I felt, strangely, that this was the real Jacqueline Kennedy. She was so happy, so abandoned, so like a little girl who had never grown up. Many times, when she was performing with such grace and authority the role of First Lady, I felt she was just pretending. She really longs for a child’s world, I thought, where she can run and jump and hide and ride horses. I thought of her as an actress—constantly playing a role.

  Caroline, Mrs. Kennedy and little John all loved animals and birds. But enough was enough!

  The ducks had to go back to Rock Creek Park, even though at first they had seemed a wonderful idea. With great glee, Mrs. Kennedy had me install a pen for the fluffy baby ducklings. Then, as they grew, we acclimated them to the majestic fountain on the deep south lawn. But the ducks ate the tulips. And Charlie, the terrier, ate some of the ducks. And Caroline kept falling into the fountain, accompanied by great whoops from the tourists lined up at the fence.

  Mrs. Kennedy ordered a showing of Bambi for Caroline and her friends in the ground-floor movie theater. Afterwards, she sent me a note:

  “Mr. West—will you see about getting some deer for the south grounds?”

  But before I could go on a deer-hunt, we learned that we’d be receiving a pair of Irish deer, a gift from the President of Ireland. I called the National Zoo, to inquire about the care and feeding of the animals, but was discouraged by the zoo-keeper.

  “The zoo says deer are dangerous and unpredictable,” I advised Mrs. Kennedy.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “Then I guess we don’t want any after all.” And the Irish deer took up residence at the zoo.

  Several weeks later, Mrs. Kennedy sent another note: “Mr. West—will you see about getting a pair of peacocks.”

  This time I didn’t bother to check with the zoo.

  “The zoo says peacocks are dangerous and unpredictable,” I lied. Enough, as I said, was enough.

  Mrs. Kennedy designed the play-schoolroom for Caroline in the third-floor solarium, and we built it, complete with sandbox, rabbit cages, guinea pigs, goldfish and plants. We ordered sand from National Parks, and put up low bookshelves, for which Mrs. Kennedy selected hundreds of schoolbooks from the list the teacher had prepared. It soon became a full-fledged nursery school—a co-op with ten pupils, whose parents shared the teacher’s salary with the Kennedys.

  “Somebody’s been up here making the biggest mess!” the teacher, Alice Grimes, complained one morning. “And it’s not the first time, either. Something is going on in this nursery school at night!”

  Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, I summoned Wilma, the maid.

  “It’s just Mrs. Kennedy and Caroline,” she reassured me. “They come up here at night and play in the sand.”

  Despite its after-hours use, the school followed the strictest regulations for educational institutions in the District of Columbia. As she was filling in Caroline’s required medical form, Mrs. Kennedy sent me a note:

  “As the White House school comes under your administration, it would give me a great sense of security if you would fill out the enclosed physical examination form and return it to Miss Grimes.”

  But the President’s wife had already filled in some of the blanks on “my” medical form. On the question of “heart diseases,” she wrote “almost too old but heart still palpitates at times.” Recommendation of oculist? “Not to look at any more portraits of First Ladies.” Does he have a midday rest? “Sneaks one in occasionally when lady boss has one.” And finally, to the question as to whether the school child tires easily, she replied for me, “Yes, after tramping around house with decorators.”

  One morning, as we were roaming around the ground floor, Mrs. Kennedy said, “Mr. West, will you take me to the bomb shelter?”

  I was a bit startled, hoping there wasn’t a disaster brewing.

  “Why, certainly,” I said, and walked toward the elevator.

  The ground floor of the White House, accessible to the south, west and east entrances, is underneath the State floor. Below that, a Truman renovation addition, are two basements, which are used for storage, for laundry rooms, and for servants’ dining rooms and locker rooms. All the way through the basement lower level, and to the compartment beneath the east wing, is a protected corridor leading to the bomb shelter, built during World War II. Underneath that is the new bomb shelter, set up for use by the President anytime.

  So I took Mrs. Kennedy down to the bowels of the White House, and we opened the door to the bomb shelter. She gasped, as an army of Signal Corps men sprang to their feet. The bomb shelter doubles as a command post for the Signal Corps, with their fantastic communications control rooms laid out underneath the east wing.

  We looked around, then left.

  Once outside, Mrs. Kennedy began to laugh.

  “How amazing!” she said. “I didn’t expect to find so much humanity! I thought it would be a great big room that we could use as an indoor recreation room for the children, I even had plans for a basketball court in there!”

  Mrs. Kennedy sent a note to me: “Mr. West, please do not send my folders up for me to look at after 11 a.m. I want to keep my afternoons for the children as much as possible.”

  She read to her children for an hour every evening before dinner, and even though she and her husband usually did not dine with them, she sat in while they were eating.

  When she went on a trip, Mrs. Kennedy always wrote and pre-addressed postcards for John and Caroline, one for every day she would be gone. “Please mail them for me, Mr. West,” she asked. “One every day. I don’t trust anybody but you to do this, and I don’t trust the mails from overseas.” I found canceled foreign stamps in the mailroom, and glued them onto her postcards.

  When the First Lady was away from the mansion, she communicated to me via the Secret Service. Wherever she was, her agents were, and their walkie-talkies or car radios were always in touch with “home base,” one floor below my office.

  One dreary Monday in 1961, I was sitting in my office, poring over the latest estimate for fabric for the Red Room walls. A steady spring rain washed the boxwoods on the north lawn, outside my window. I looked out at the umbrellas on Pennsylvania Avenue, glad to be inside. Suddenly a call came from the Secret Service.

  “Mrs. Kennedy is on her way back from the country,” the agent reported. “She wants you to meet her at the south entrance. And she says to wear a raincoat.”

  Armed with my old trenchcoat, I dutifully waited just outside the Diplomatic Reception Room door, until Sergeant Lee drove the Mercury station wagon up in front. Her Secret Service agent sat in the front seat and Mrs. Kennedy hopped out of the back. She was wearing Pucci pants, and her beat-up old trenchcoat matched mine. She greeted me with a big smile.

  “Mr. West, will you take a little walk with me in the rain?” she asked sweetly, and took my arm.


  The south lawn looked especially dead in the drizzle, and I wondered if the President, whose pet peeve was the condition of the White House lawns, had more complaints against our sixteen-acre headache. Mrs. Kennedy and I walked along the circular driveway, toward the children’s play-yard, looking out over the wide expanse of wet grass. We walked past Andrew Jackson’s magnolias, past Franklin Roosevelt’s lindens, underneath dripping oak branches, finally coming to the carefully hidden spot between the Jefferson mound and the pin oaks President Eisenhower had planted. The treehouse and slide were mounted in Herbert Hoover’s white oak tree.

  “Please thank the carpenters for doing such a great job,” Mrs. Kennedy murmured. “The slide comes down from the tree just exactly right. In fact, Caroline wants to push her baby brother down, carriage and all.”

  We walked until we approached the southwest gate. Then she stopped suddenly and pointed to the iron-grill gates.

  “We’ve screened off the playground on the south by the mound and by the trees,” she said. “But if you stand right here, you can get a good view of the children playing. Do you think you could plant rhododendrons or something along this fence so that everybody can’t stare in?”

  As we headed back, full circle, around the tennis courts, under Grover Cleveland’s maples, she kept talking about her desire for privacy. How she didn’t want her children to become “spoiled.” How she had a fear of exposing her children to the unknown public.

  “Oh well,” she sighed. “I guess you can’t block off any more than that. They’re entitled to some view of the White House…. But I’m sick and tired of starring in everybody’s home movies!”

  If Mrs. Kennedy had her way, I thought, the White House would be surrounded by high brick walls and a moat with crocodiles.

  Thoroughly drenched, I phoned the National Park Service right away: “Mrs. Kennedy would like rhododendrons around the southwest gate.”

  The next day, three trucks, with six Park Service gardeners, arrived with thirty large rhododendrons.