by The President's House: 1800 to the Present : The Secrets;History of the World's Most Famous Home
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?
President and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt with their six rambunctious children (left to right): Quentin, Theodore Jr., Archibald, Alice, Kermit, and Ethel. Credit: Library of Congress
10
Growing Up Under Glass
THERE ARE PLENTY of perks to being the child of a president. One of my favorites was having my own car and driver. Another was the White House movie theater, where I could request any film I wanted. Also on the list: meeting, and being fussed over by some of the greatest figures of the twentieth century; having the best seats in the house at the theater, opera, or ballet; traveling by private plane or train; and receiving an incredible number of fabulous gifts.
Was there a trade-off for all these perks? You bet there was. I couldn’t go anywhere without a Secret Service agent in tow; I had to learn to say as little as possible when reporters were around; and, most annoying of all, I had to accept the fact that I was public property. Not only did everyone in the world feel entitled to know all the details of my life, but there were any number of people, both in and out of the media, who felt free to comment on my appearance. My nose was “crooked” and ought to be “fixed.” I had “heavy” legs. I was “immature.” I was too “mature.” And so it went, on and on. A few of the comments gave me a good laugh. I learned to ignore the rest, especially the ones that came from people who would never, under any circumstances, say a good word about Harry S Truman or anyone connected to him.
From reading about, and talking to, other presidential progeny, I realize that although our experiences of living in the White House are similar in many ways, they are also quite different. Anyone who has spent any part of his or her growing-up years at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has a highly personal set of memories, some good, some not so good, and, for an unfortunate few, some absolutely dreadful.
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 fat
her 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.”
VI
The two presidents who came after Ulysses S. Grant— Rutherford B. Hayes and James A. Garfield—each had five children. The Hayeses’ three older sons were born before the Civil War and were pretty well grown by the time their father took office, but their two younger children, nine-year-old Frances, better known as Fanny, and six-year-old Scott, were very much in evidence during their father’s presidency.
The Hayeses celebrated their first Thanksgiving in the White House by inviting the secretaries, executive clerks, stenographers, and telegraph operator with their wives and families to dinner. After dinner, the children played blindman’s buff in the State Rooms. Another game of blindman’s buff was held in the East Room when thirty children, Scott and his guests, celebrated his seventh birthday.