Margaret Truman (10 page)

VII

I don't have any exact figures but I'm willing to bet that World War II produced the greatest number of VIP White House sleepovers of all time. Security concerns made it advisable for FDR to confer with world leaders at the mansion and their conferences were more easily arranged, and less subject to scrutiny by the press, if the leaders stayed there, too.

The White House logbooks of the era list, among others, the king of Greece, the king of Yugoslavia, the president of the Philippines, the president of Peru, and the prime contender for Winston Churchill's title of houseguest from hell: Madame Chiang Kai-shek. The imperious and temperamental wife of China's embattled Nationalist leader, General Chiang Kai-shek, Madame Chiang was a Wellesley graduate who spoke excellent English and was her husband's partner in political and diplomatic affairs. She was also as willful as any blueblood in her expectations and demands.

Madame Chiang refused to sleep twice on the same sheets. Even when she retired for a brief nap, which she did several times a day, she wanted the entire bed changed. She brought along her own silk sheets, which had to be washed by hand and stitched into the heavy quilted bag she had also brought with her. Howell Crim, the chief usher, gave Madame Chiang a secret nickname: the China Doll. Other members of the staff called her Mrs. Generalissimo, because of the way she ordered them around.

Madame traveled with an entourage of forty. Some of them were given rooms on the third floor, others slept at the Chinese embassy. On the second floor, beds were found for Madame's personal maid; her nephew and bodyguard, Mr. Kung; and a second nephew also named Kung.

As it turned out, the second Mr. Kung's clothes and haircut were deceptive. A valet who was sent upstairs to help him unpack came flying back to Chief Usher Crim's office to report in horror: “Your Mr. Kung is a girl!”

Miss Kung proved to be as much of a pain as her famous aunt. She not only made demands, she delivered them directly to the first lady. An exasperated Eleanor Roosevelt finally called the chief usher's office: “Mr. Crim,” she said, “will 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!”

Apparently the chief usher was not high enough in rank for Miss Kung. She transferred her complaints to the State Department, who solved the problem by moving her to a suite at the Mayflower Hotel.

Madame Chiang stayed at the White House more than once. She got along well with the president and she was an effective spokesperson for her country, but the only good thing the staff could say about her was that she was a very generous tipper.

VIII

During Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, the White House had a number of more or less permanent houseguests. In May 1940, FDR was meeting with his closest adviser, Harry Hopkins, and invited him to stay for dinner. Hopkins became ill during the meal and FDR offered him a bed for the night. Three years later, Hopkins was still using it. His young daughter, Diana, whose mother had recently died, was given a bedroom on the third floor, adding another member to the household.

Harry Hopkins's room was one of the state guest rooms on the southeast side of the house, which later became the Lincoln Bedroom. When the Hopkinses moved to a house in Georgetown in 1943, the Roosevelts' daughter, Anna Boettiger, and her family took over their quarters.

A great many of Eleanor Roosevelt's houseguests were women she had met in the course of working on the various causes she supported. I'm sure the women were all very high-minded but at least one of them had a dark side. The guest, who shall remain nameless because the teller of the tale, Alonzo Fields, was too discreet to reveal it, was having trouble closing her suitcase and asked one of the maids to do it while she went down to breakfast.

The maid had to rearrange the woman's clothes, and in the course of repacking them she discovered a fourteen-inch silver tray that had been bought for the White House in 1898 and bore the inscription “The President's House.”

The maid called Fields and asked him what she should do about it. “Maybe Mrs. Roosevelt gave the tray to her,” the maid suggested. “Should I tell the chief usher?”

“Don't tell anyone,” Fields advised. “Just give it to me and I'll take it back to the kitchen.”

He knew that Mrs. Roosevelt could not possibly have given the woman the tray, because it didn't belong to her. It belonged to the White House.

The maid was still concerned. Suppose the woman discovered the tray was not in her bag and wanted to know what happened to it?

Fields laughed and said, “The lady will never question you about this, and if she ever returns as a guest she will be ashamed to look you in the eye.”

I'm sure that's true, but I'm also sure that if the woman ever returned as a guest, Fields kept an extra sharp eye on the silver.

IX

These days, when someone does something remarkable, he or she may be invited to the White House for a handshake and a photo op with the president, but that's usually about as far as it goes. The world moved at a slower pace back in 1931, which explains why a sixteen-year-old boy from Kiowa County, Colorado, was able to spend four full days at the White House as a guest of President and Mrs. Herbert Hoover.

The boy, Bryan Untiedt, had become a national hero for saving the lives of a group of younger children when they were trapped in a school bus during a blizzard. He had kept them awake and moving to prevent them from freezing to death until they were finally rescued thirty hours later.

Whoever made the arrangements for Bryan's visit to the White House had neglected to tell Mrs. Hoover. She was dismayed to discover that he was due to arrive on the same day as the king and queen of Siam. Not very convenient. On the other hand, the White House has coped with far worse crises.

A car was dispatched to Union Station and Bryan, with a Secret Service man for an escort, was driven to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Instead of the mountain of luggage that most White House visitors bring, he carried only a cardboard suitcase tied with string and an inexpensive Brownie camera.

Bryan was taken up to the second floor where Mrs. Hoover waited to greet him. In spite of the royal visitors who were expected two hours later, she sat down and chatted with him for several minutes. After a while, Bryan was shown to one of the guest rooms and in keeping with White House custom, a valet was sent to help him unpack. It hardly seemed necessary. The suitcase contained only a few items of clothing and not much else.

Before long, one of the president's secretaries showed up and escorted Bryan to the Oval Office where he had a lengthy chat with the president. Hoover had two sons of his own and he and Bryan got along splendidly.

Lou Hoover asked two women friends who were also staying at the White House to take Bryan for a ride around Washington. They were almost mobbed by photographers when they returned. Bryan was hot copy. But the Hoovers would not allow him to be interviewed. Can you imagine any recent president passing up a chance to get on the evening news with this appealing young hero? I find myself admiring the Hoovers' approach. They were not trying to exploit the boy. They only wanted to reward him for his courage.

The frustrated news hawks reported Bryan was hobnobbing with the king and queen of Siam. On the contrary, he never even saw them unless he peeked out the window of his room, which was just over the North Portico. The Hoovers made sure he did not read these embarrassing articles.

At lunch that day, Bryan sat at the president's right hand, the place of honor. He spent the next three days sightseeing and making good use of his camera. He played with the Hoovers' grandchildren, romped with their dogs, and shopped for souvenirs to take home to his family. He also had several more chats with Mr. Hoover, sitting in the big armchair in his study, feeling completely at home in the President's House.

X

I don't know about you, but I found Bryan Untiedt's story uniquely American—and deeply moving. It could have happened in no other country in the world but the United States of America. I like to think the President's House, where democracy and power so mysteriously blend, had a lot to do with making it possible.

Questions for
Discussion

Why was Lafayette's visit to the White House such an emotional occasion?

Should the public have anything to say about who is invited to the White House?

Why did Franklin D. Roosevelt have so many houseguests?

II

When John F. Kennedy moved into the White House at the beginning of 1961, America had its dream first family: a young and handsome president, with an even younger and strikingly attractive wife, an adorable three-year-old daughter, and an infant son born on November 25, 1960, less than two weeks after his father's election.

The Kennedy children, Caroline and John Jr., were the youngest occupants of the White House since Grover Cleveland's children toddled the halls. They quickly became its star attractions. The media were so hungry for news of Caroline that one editor snapped at his Washington correspondent, “Never mind that stuff about Laos. What did Caroline do today?”

Being at an age where she was completely unself-conscious, Caroline provided more than a few newsworthy items. She once wandered into a press conference wearing her nightie and a pair of her mother's high heels. Another time, when a reporter asked where her father was, Caroline said, “He's upstairs with his shoes and socks off doing nothing.”

Jacqueline Kennedy set up a nursery school for Caroline and about a dozen other youngsters in the third-floor solarium. The parents shared the cost of hiring a teacher and purchasing blocks, paints, a sandbox, and other school supplies. Jackie also installed a small playground on the South Lawn, which the president could see from his office. When he wanted to take a break from work, he would step outside and clap his hands and the children would come running over for a visit.

Not long after the playground was installed, Jackie realized that it was visible from the street. When the tour bus drivers started making it a stop on their schedule, she had a line of rhododendrons planted along the fence to block the view.

Jacqueline Kennedy was so determined to maintain her children's privacy that she requested her husband not be photographed with them too often. Jack didn't always comply. Knowing how politicians love to get their pictures taken with children, as well as how cute these particular children were, I can understand why.

Like many little girls, and a few little boys, Caroline liked to talk on the phone. She was on the line with her father one day chatting about the gifts she was hoping to get for Christmas. In the course of their conversation, she told him how much she wished she could call up Santa Claus and tell him exactly what she wanted.

The president promised to see what he could do. He called the White House switchboard and asked one of the operators to take Caroline's call and pretend she was answering the phone at Santa Claus's workshop at the North Pole. Then the president put in a call to the nursery and told Caroline he had managed to get through to Santa Claus's workshop.

Caroline got on the line. Her face fell when she was told that Santa wasn't home but she brightened up when she discovered that she was talking to Mrs. Santa Claus, who offered to take a message for her husband. Caroline rattled off a long list of toys for herself and John and hung up thoroughly convinced that she had been connected to the North Pole.

In his early months at the White House, young John Kennedy spent many hours napping in his carriage on the Truman balcony. He was too young to get into mischief then, but he made up for it when he reached the toddler stage.

John was fascinated by the White House helicopter and loved to take it on family trips to Camp David or Glen Ora, the Kennedys' Virginia estate. He refused to accept the fact that his father sometimes used it for other purposes. John would be all smiles as he watched the helicopter land on the South Lawn then burst into tears when his father climbed in and took off without him. Onlookers sometimes thought he was crying because his father was leaving, but it was really because John wasn't getting a ride.

The Truman balcony provided Caroline and John with a perfect vantage point from which to observe the arrival and departure of VIP visitors and the ceremonies to welcome heads of state. One day while the television crews were setting up their equipment to film the arrival of Marshal Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, John dropped one of his toy guns. It fell through the railing on the balcony and landed in the tangle of wires below. A cameraman got a shot of the falling gun and it was later inserted into a newsclip of Tito's speech. One network reported that the gun had landed on Tito's head; another account had it beaning one of the soldiers in the presidential honor guard. Neither story was true, of course, but it made good copy and that's all the reporters cared about.

Caroline and John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s childhood days at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue ended abruptly when their father was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Plans were already in the works for the children's birthday parties. John's third birthday was on November 25 and Caroline's sixth on November 27. The parties were canceled but the children had a combined celebration about a week later, the only happy event during those sad weeks when their mother was preparing to move out of the White House.

Isn't it ironic that John, who was so entranced with flying as a little boy, died when the private plane he was piloting crashed into the sea off Cape Cod in the summer of 1999?

III

Over the years, there have been very few presidents' children as young as Caroline and John F. Kennedy, Jr. Most first offspring have had either one or both feet out of the nest for the simple reason that by the time most men get to the White House, they are fifty-something or more. Dad was a few weeks shy of sixty-one.

Grover Cleveland is the wild card in all this. A forty-seven-year-old bachelor when he was inaugurated for his first term in 1884, he surprised everyone by marrying his twenty-one-year-old ward, Frances Folsom, two years later. The Clevelands' first child, Ruth, was born in New York City, where her parents had moved after her father lost his bid for a second term. He was reelected the following year and returned to the White House on March 4, 1893, precisely four years after he left.

Two-year-old Ruth promptly became the nation's darling. She was so popular that the candy bar, the Baby Ruth, was named in her honor. By the time Cleveland's second term ended in 1896, Ruth had two little sisters, Esther and Marion. Esther was the first, and only, child of a president to be born in the White House. Marion arrived while her parents were at their summer home on Cape Cod.

Grover Cleveland had always cherished his privacy and given short shrift to the press. Now that he had three young daughters, he became more determined than ever to keep his family out of the limelight. The Clevelands bought a home, Woodley, in a rural section of Washington and the family spent as much time there as possible.

In 1962, a writer for The New Yorker talked to Esther Cleveland Bosanquet about her memories of the White House. She recalled several things: a huge Christmas tree with heaps of toys underneath, the Easter egg rolling on the lawn, and visiting her father in his study in the evenings. “I remember very vividly that he once let me dip my fingers in his inkwell and make big blobs on his papers.”

In 1929, Marion Cleveland Amen was invited to the White House by Lou Henry Hoover. The visit triggered no memories until she visited the family quarters on the second floor. There she was struck by the strong, slightly musty scent of roses. Later, she asked her mother if there was anything unusual about the smell of the second floor. “Yes,” her mother replied, “that one floor had the smell of an old house by the sea, a musty scent, overlaid with roses.”

IV

Not until Abraham Lincoln became president in 1860 did the White House have honest-to-goodness kids in residence. The Lincolns' oldest son, Robert, was a dignified Harvard freshman, but his younger brothers, ten-year-old Willie and seven-year-old Tad (whose real name was Thomas), kept things hopping at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In the course of exploring their new home, Willie and Tad discovered the bell system that was used for summoning the White House servants. They also figured out how to make all the bells ring at once, which caused chaos when footmen and housemaids rushed to respond, only to discover that no one had called them.

Willie and Tad became friends with the sons of a Washington judge, Horatio Taft, who lived nearby. The boys—Horatio Jr., who was known as Bud; and Halsey, whose nickname was Holly—often visited the White House, and occasionally all four boys could be found wrestling with the president on the parlor floor.

When Willie died of typhoid fever in February 1862, Tad was as downhearted as his parents. His father did everything he could think of to cheer him up, including buying him a pair of goats. The president knew Tad's high spirits had returned when he hitched the goats to an upside-down chair to make a chariot and went tearing through the East Room. The sight startled a group of women visitors and sent the president, who was watching from the hall outside, into a fit of laughter.

Tad's other misdeeds included locking his father in Lafayette Park, and standing in front of the White House waving a Confederate flag while his father was reviewing Union troops.

I wish I could report that Tad developed into a charming and fun-loving adult but he died of pneumonia at the age of eighteen, adding still further to his widowed mother's enormous burden of grief.

V

By the time Ulysses S. Grant became president in 1869, the White House and its occupants found themselves in full view of the public eye. This new focus developed in tandem with the growth of the popular press. As more and more women became educated, newspapers and magazines started catering to their interests. Articles about the chief executive and his family became a staple in the women's magazines of the era.

The Grants did not object to all this attention. But they tried to keep it under control. Julia Grant had the south grounds closed so the children could enjoy the White House backyard without being gawked at by strangers.

There were four children in the Grant family. The oldest, Fred, was at West Point. The second, Ulysses Jr., nicknamed Buck, went off to boarding school not long after his father's election. That left only thirteen-year-old Nellie and ten-year-old Jesse living at the White House full-time.

As the only girl, Nellie was her parents' pet and they could not resist spoiling her. Realizing that she was in need of more discipline than she was getting at home, they decided to send her to Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. The president took her there himself lest “Julia cry and bring her back.”

Grant had barely returned to the White House when a telegram arrived from Nellie demanding to come home. Her parents urged her to stay longer, assuring her that she would get used to the school, but Nellie was adamant. By Thanksgiving, she was back in Washington, where she spent most of her time going to parties and driving around town in her phaeton, a horse-drawn version of today's convertible.

Jesse gave his parents fewer headaches. He was one of those boys who are always involved in some kind of hobby. He had a microscope and a camera but his favorite instrument was a telescope that was a gift from one of Ulysses S. Grant's admirers. Jesse set it up on the White House roof and he and his father became amateur astronomers, studying the planets and constellations each night until Julia Grant had to send someone up to remind them that it was time for Jesse to go to bed.

Another of Jesse's hobbies was stamp collecting. Once he and one of his cousins, Baine Dent, saved up the astronomical sum of five dollars and sent away to a Boston company for some foreign stamps they had seen advertised in a newspaper. Weeks went by and the stamps never arrived. Finally, Jesse consulted his good friend Kelly, a member of the Washington police force assigned to the White House.

Kelly advised young Jesse to speak to his father about the matter. Jesse did and the president responded by asking him what exactly his son expected him to do about it.

“I thought you might have the secretary of state or the secretary of war, or Kelly, write a letter,” Jesse replied.

“A matter of this importance requires consideration,” the president told him. “Suppose you come to the cabinet meeting tomorrow and we will take the matter up there.”

When the problem was presented to the cabinet members, both the secretary of state and the secretary of war offered to intervene, but after some discussion it was agreed that a warning from Officer Kelly would carry the most weight.

And so, “the sweat standing out on his forehead, his great fingers gripping the pen,” Officer Kelly wrote the following letter on Executive Mansion stationery:

I am a Capitol Policeman. I can arrest anybody, anywhere, at any
time for anything. I want you to send those stamps to Jesse Grant
right at once.

Kelly, Capitol policeman

Jesse and Baine got their stamps and then some. “As I remember,” Jesse recalled, “that five-dollar assortment exceeded our expectations.”