Upstairs at the White House

by J. B. West

  “I can’t get over how young he looks,” Zella remarked.

  He did seem youthful, in good spirits, as did Mrs. Kennedy, who was making her first public appearance since her baby died.

  They left for Dallas the next morning before I came to work. All day, crews were in the President’s office, taking advantage of his absence to carry out Mrs. Kennedy’s redecorating plans.

  9

  I DON’T KNOW WHY she decided to go to Dallas. Politicking was certainly not something she enjoyed, and all of us were surprised that she’d step out of character and go. But then I remembered how closely she and the President had stuck together since her return from Greece—even to the point of canceling an invited houseguest to insure privacy on the second floor.

  “To think that I very nearly didn’t go!” she told me later. “Oh, Mr. West, what if I’d been here—out riding at Wexford or somewhere….

  “Thank God I went with him!”

  I always seem to hear bad news via the radio. I was at home on November 22, attending to my own redecorating, when the bulletin was broadcast: The President had been shot. Within minutes, I was back in the office. By the time I arrived, he had died.

  The White House staff was paralyzed. I summoned everybody, had the butlers prepare to serve coffee, had the maids prepare all the guest rooms, little meaningless gestures, but a signal that our work must go on, until the assassination was confirmed. I tried to remember what had been needed in the house for President Roosevelt’s funeral, but I was numb. Then Bill Walton called.

  “Mrs. Kennedy has asked me to take charge of the arrangements,” he said, “and asked me to get in touch with you.” I was so relieved to hear his voice. It told me that Mrs. Kennedy, even in her shock, knew what to do.

  “She’d like the house to be just like it was when Lincoln lay in state,” he continued.

  We ran down to the Curator’s office for a reference book, and Jim Ketchum found an old engraving of the East Room draped in black, and we worked from there. The President’s brother-in-law Sargent Shriver came in, and helped make a list of what we needed. First of all, we had no black cloth at the White House.

  I called Mr. Arata, who was doing some upholstery work for us at the time, to ask what kind of material we should use, and where could we get it at that time of night.

  “I know just the thing,” he said, and suggested webbing—the dark, thin material used underneath chairs to keep the springs from showing.

  “But I don’t have nearly enough,” he said. So we phoned upholsterers until we found one who had enough material. The owner came back downtown, opened the doors, and gave us every bit of webbing in the shop.

  Mr. Arata and his wife came back to the White House, and copying the 1865 engraving, they draped the webbing over the East Room chandeliers and windows. They worked all night.

  Bill found the Lincoln catafalque at the Capitol, directed the florist to the magnolia tree Andrew Jackson had planted on the South Lawn, and set up the room. Two candelabra, large urns filled with magnolia leaves, and the catafalque waited starkly in the center of the East Room.

  The priest also was waiting in the East Room when they arrived with the body, at about 4:30 in the morning. Nancy Tuckerman and I stood in the Blue Room, watching the military guard bring in the flag-draped coffin.

  Mrs. Kennedy, with the Attorney General beside her, walked behind it. When Nancy and I saw her, still wearing her pink skirt with its vicious bloodstain, we stepped out of sight. We wanted to spare her the sight of two more grieving friends.

  Robert Kennedy took the First Lady upstairs. He slept in the Lincoln Room that night, and Mr. and Mrs. Auchincloss slept in the room adjoining Mrs. Kennedy’s, in the President’s bed.

  There was no sleeping at all for me. I took a shower, changed clothes, and went straight up to my office.

  The priest arrived early, and, looking over the State floor, selected the Family Dining Room for the ten o’clock Mass. We removed the table and set up rows of straight-backed chairs for the guests. At ten, however, when Mrs. Kennedy came down, she looked into her most un-favorite of all the White House rooms, and saw her friends and family.

  “Oh, no, I want it in the East Room, where Jack is,” she whispered, and went back upstairs while we moved all the chairs into the East Room. She returned and the priest began intoning the Mass.

  After the service, she came out to the elevator to go upstairs. I was standing in my office door.

  She came over, put her arms around me, and said, “Poor Mr. West.” I couldn’t speak. It was all I could do to stand. I just held her for a moment.

  “I want you to take me over to look at the President’s office,” she said.

  “I’ll come up for you whenever you’re ready,” I said.

  “Oh no, I’ll stop by your office,” she whispered.

  About twenty minutes later, she came down alone, and we walked over to the west wing. Down the same colonnade she had wanted to enclose so the President wouldn’t catch cold. Past the swimming-pool door. Past the Cabinet Room.

  But she never got to see the effect of the room she and Boudin had worked so carefully to perfect, for already President Kennedy’s office was being dismantled. Movers were carting away books, packing up model ships, carrying out the rocking chair. The President’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, stood bewildered in the middle of the room.

  Without the soft brown wood of his furniture, the new crimson carpet seemed blatant.

  “It must have been a grand office,” she murmured.

  “It was very nice,” I managed to say.

  As the moving men stood self-consciously by, Evelyn Lincoln said, “Oh, Mrs. Kennedy …,” and fled from the office.

  “I think we’re probably in the way,” Mrs. Kennedy whispered, and she looked around uncertainly. Suddenly I remembered that first day she had come to the White House and, like today, how unprotected she had seemed.

  Her eyes were like saucers, memorizing the oval office—the walls, the desk we had found in the basement, the small pictures of Caroline and John—then she walked out of John F. Kennedy’s office for the last time.

  We went into the Cabinet Room and sat down at the long mahogany table. She searched my face, as if she might find the truth there.

  “My children,” she said. “They’re good children, aren’t they, Mr. West?”

  It was a question, not a declaration.

  “They certainly are,” I said.

  We looked out over the sand-pile, the holly-encircled trampoline, the treehouse.

  “They’re not spoiled?”

  “No, indeed.”

  She stared into my face.

  “Mr. West, will you be my friend for life?” she whispered.

  I could not make a sound. I only nodded.

  Robert Kennedy stayed in the Lincoln Room all that week, the Auchinclosses stayed only one night, and the Radziwills moved in with Mrs. Kennedy. Lee Radziwill slept in a bed in Jacqueline Kennedy’s bedroom; her husband slept in the President’s bed.

  I slept on a couch in the Usher’s office.

  Sunday morning, the day the body was transferred to the Capitol, Mrs. Kennedy called down, “Mr. West, could you find me a mourning veil?”

  “I thought Provy had found one for you,” I replied. I knew that “veil” had been checked off my list.

  “What she brought was a black lace mantilla, which is all right for today. But for the funeral tomorrow, I want a regular mourning veil like Mrs. Dulles wore.”

  I called every funeral parlor in town. “Very few people call for them any more,” said one director in his apologetic, funereal voice.

  Finally we had Lucinda make a black veil. It was, of course, correct.

  On the morning of President Kennedy’s funeral, Mrs. Kennedy called Jim Ketchum, the Curator, and asked him to perform a very special task. “While we are at the Capitol,” she instructed him, “will you please get someone to help you, go up to the Yellow Oval Room, and remove th
e Cézannes from the wall. In their place, hang the Bennet and Cartwright prints [American aquatints, circa 1810]—and I’ll tell you why….”

  He was astonished that she wanted the paintings removed—her “glorious” Cézannes, which she’d worked so hard to bring back into the White House, and which hung so prominently in her favorite room.

  “This afternoon I’m going to be receiving President De Gaulle in this room,” she explained to Jim, “and I want him to be aware of the heritage of the United States, and these are scenes from our own history.” So Jim and Bonner Arrington, the carpenter, followed her wishes, and placed a strong stamp of America—prints of Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia—in the room where the President’s widow would receive.

  When the procession came back in cars from the Capitol, we had lined up all the guests in the White House: All the visiting Heads of State were in the East Room; the Kennedy relatives in the Green Room; White House staff in the State Dining Room; and Congress in the Blue Room.

  Mrs. Kennedy got out of the limousine at the White House, and all those waiting inside joined the procession behind her by order of rank, and walked behind the body to St. Matthew’s Cathedral. After the ceremony at Arlington, she returned to the White House. Then she went upstairs to the Yellow Oval Room to receive, one at a time, President De Gaulle, Prince Philip of England, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, and Ireland’s President Eamon de Valera. Afterwards, she stood in the Red Room and received all the other visiting Heads of State.

  Following this, exhausted, she turned to me with only one question.

  “Mr. West, did you see whether President Johnson walked or not?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” I said, “I saw both the President and Mrs. Johnson.”

  “The Secret Service didn’t want them to,” she smiled wanly.

  Robert Kennedy still stayed at the White House, as did I.

  Every night until she moved out of the White House, Mrs. Kennedy and the Attorney General went to the President’s graveside to pray.

  On Wednesday, Mrs. Kennedy and the children flew to Hyannis for Thanksgiving, and I went home, for the first time in six days.

  But I couldn’t stay. We were fixing up the East Room for the month-long period of mourning, and although I had left instructions on how to do the room, I began worrying about it.

  After dinner, I looked at Zella and, though I was about to drop, said, “I have to go back.”

  “I’m going with you,” she said firmly.

  As we walked into the East Room, Zella gasped, “Oh my God!”

  Lying stretched out on the catafalque in the center of the room was Bonner Arrington, the carpenter. Wearing overalls, arms folded across his chest, eyes closed, he clasped a dead lily in his hand. At first, I was shaken with horror. Then I started laughing, and Zella started laughing, and the week of tension collapsed inside us, as tears of relief flooded my cheeks.

  The White House would survive.

  Mrs. Kennedy sent me a note from Hyannis, about the manuscript of Jim Bishop’s book, A Day in the Life of President Kennedy, which he had been writing to coincide with the 1964 election.

  Dear Mr. West,

  I thought you might be interested to know about the Jim Bishop article, which is so full of 3rd rate cliches I don’t care if it appears or not, as no one will ever believe it about our President.

  I am referred to as always running up to the President, holding hands and saying, “At last, just us, alone.”

  “George Thomas (the valet) works harder than anyone in the White House—his light can still be seen flickering at 2 a.m., and he is up at 6 a.m.”

  But the one time Jim Bishop did pull himself out of the bog and reach great heights was in his descripton of you—It reads “J. B. West, a man with an elegant smile, the smile of a jaded dandy.” Boudin would be pleased!

  Affectionately,

  Jacqueline Kennedy

  We moved Mrs. Kennedy into Averell Harriman’s house in Georgetown (the Harrimans moved into a hotel), where she stayed until she bought the house across the street. The next week, she invited Nancy and me for dinner at the Harrimans.

  She met us at the door, and I kissed her.

  “Oh, Mr. West, you never kissed me when I lived at the White House,” she whispered. I started to laugh, and she stepped back, narrowing her eyes wickedly.

  “Did you ever kiss Mamie?”

  “All the time,” I answered.

  Mrs. Kennedy came back to Washington for the reburial of her husband, after his permanent gravesite had been finished. She stayed with Mrs. Mellon, who called to invite me to the service.

  It was 7:00 a.m., and pouring rain, when I joined Mrs. Kennedy and her family at Arlington.

  She greeted me warmly, then looked over her shoulder.

  “Oh, Mr. West, you’d better hide. Here comes President Johnson.”

  But, of course, I didn’t have to hide. I was running the White House for the thirty-sixth President of the United States.

  The Johnsons

  1

  FROM HER VERY FIRST days as First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson had her own priorities in order.

  “Mr. West, I just want you to know that when I move into the White House, I want you to run it,” she told me, four days after her husband became President. “I’ve been running a house for thirty years, and I want to devote my time to other things.”

  It was November 26, the day after President Kennedy’s funeral, when Mrs. Johnson telephoned me, the Texas accent strong in her low, alto voice. Mrs. Roosevelt’s accent had been Eastern, Mrs. Truman’s that of the flat Midwest. Mrs. Eisenhower had no accent at all that I remember, and Mrs. Kennedy’s finishing-school training had erased any regional flavor from hers—but Mrs. Johnson spoke pure Southwest.

  “Can you come out to The Elms, to discuss our moving in to the White House?” she asked politely.

  Armed with blueprints, floor plans, and photos of every room in the mansion, I took a White House car to the exclusive Spring Valley section of Washington. Mr. Johnson and his wife had bought Perle Mesta’s old house, the place where the hostess with the mostest threw some of her most lavish parties. The Vice President of the United States had translated its French name, Les Ormes, to The Elms.

  For some reason, I was surprised at the tasteful, French elegance of Mrs. Johnson’s home. I hadn’t expected to find a ranch in the middle of Washington, of course, but the Johnsons were so publicly and indelibly identified with the state of Texas, I fell into the trap of looking for a stereotype. Instead, I found myself in familiar French territory—Jacqueline Kennedy would have been right at home.

  I was met by a uniformed maid, and followed her through a spacious entrance hall, to a small reception room. Mrs. Johnson, dressed in black, more petite even than Mrs. Eisenhower, came in to greet me. She was accompanied by two ladies.

  “This is Bess Abell, who will be my social secretary, and Liz Carpenter, my press secretary,” she said.

  Little did I realize how important a role these two very dissimilar women, Liz and Bess, would play in the White House scheme of things. I barely took notice of the First Lady’s two lieutenants that day, I was so intent on introducing Mrs. Johnson to the White House, its floor plans, its patterns.

  In every picture I pointed out the new permanent acquisitions from the restoration project, and Mrs. Johnson nodded her approval.

  “I especially love the Yellow Oval Room upstairs, where we gathered before State dinners. It’s my husband’s favorite color.”

  When I mentioned that it had been a study for Presidents Eisenhower, Truman, and Roosevelt, she asserted again, “I love it the way it is.”

  Mrs. Johnson’s questions were brief, to the point.

  “What furniture shall I bring?”

  When she discovered that Mrs. Kennedy was taking only her own bedroom furniture and that of the children, she said quickly, “That’s all we’ll bring, then. My bedroom and my girls’. I’ll ask my secretary, Ashto
n, to make a list for you.”

  Then she glanced over at Liz and Bess, who’d been thumbing through the books as well, and they left us alone. As if on cue, I thought.

  Mrs. Johnson lowered her voice, confidentially.

  “Can I bring my servants with me?” she asked, and when I said yes, “How will they be paid?”

  There are two vacancies on the federal payroll, I explained, because Provy and George are leaving with Mrs. Kennedy, and we could stretch to find a third place.

  “Let me discuss it with my husband,” Mrs. Johnson said, “and I’ll get back to you.”

  As I rose to leave, the new First Lady looked at me intently, and emphasized, “I want you to run the White House.”

  There was nothing tentative about Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson. During those difficult days of transition, she quickly organized her staff, her way of living, her family responsibilities. She was no stranger to the White House. I had seen her at all of the Kennedys’ official parties and at quite a few of their private soirées. But as the Vice President’s wife she had always seemed to stay quietly in the background, standing beside her towering husband, smiling politely, saying the correct things. In the years to come, I discovered that she was gentle, feminine in manner, earnest, and studious. But always, she seemed to have a cellophane shield around her, through which she appeared, highly visible, dignified, yet somehow protected. And I did not run the White House, Lady Bird Johnson did—and in a way no other First Lady had done. She was rather like the chairman of the board of a large corporation.

  Her two generals (I’d thought of them as lieutenants, at first) managed the corporation. Liz was in charge of the Public First Lady; Bess the White House First Lady. My role was to operate the Executive Mansion. Indeed, White House management was functioning more efficiently than ever before. With the three able ushers, Nelson Pierce, Ray Hare, and Rex Scouten, and my invaluable assistant, Bette Hogue. The staff performed smoothly, silently, and the mansion seemed almost to run itself, like an automatic elevator.