Oval Office Oddities

by Bill Fawcett

  LOST LOVE

  James Buchanan was a man of strong emotions. Having lost his first love, he never married. He strove for many years to be nominated and elected president. When he finally was elected, he was heard to ruefully remark, “Years ago, I wanted to reward my friends and punish my enemies. But now, after all these years, the friends I hoped to reward have passed away, and the enemies I intended to punish have long since become my friends.”

  TOOK GOOD CARE?

  Shades of Woody Allen. Our twenty-second president, Grover Cleveland, was single when he was elected president. At forty-nine, he married his former partner’s daughter, for whom he had been guardian. She was just twenty-one. When asked why he had not married before, Cleveland replied, “I was waiting for my wife to grow up.”

  OH ME?

  Following the footsteps as president after the charismatic Teddy Roosevelt was hard. William Howard Taft once commented, “When they say Mr. President, I always look around and expect to see Roosevelt.”

  DEFINED

  “Conservatism is the policy of make no change and consult your grandmother when in doubt.”—Woodrow Wilson

  AT SEA

  Upon being sworn in as assistant secretary of the navy, a job his cousin Teddy also held, Franklin Roosevelt wrote to his mother, “I am baptized, confirmed, sworn in, vaccinated, and somewhat at sea.”

  JUST THE TRUTH

  It came as a voice in the crowd and became a famous cry. “Give ’em hell, Harry.” To which Harry Truman replied much later, “I never gave them hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.”

  LATINIZED

  While Truman got an honorary degree from Oxford in 1956, the citation on it was in Latin and referred to the former president as “Harricum” Truman. When the citation was read out, one Oxford wit promptly cheered back, “Give ’em hell, Harricum.”

  NOT ALL ADVICE IS GOOD

  As a young member of one of New York’s most prestigious families, young Franklin Delano Roosevelt was given the treat of meeting then President Grover Cleveland while touring the White House. President Cleveland may have been having a bad day, as he was recorded as saying he had a strange wish for the young man: “It is that you may never be president of the United States.”

  The advice was not taken since Franklin D. Roosevelt became the longest-serving president in U.S. history.

  GOOD ADVICE

  The Truman Doctrine began the modern era of American involvement around the world. But somewhere we may have missed the whole intent. In Harry Truman’s own words, the idea was that “it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.” Maybe we need to remember what we are supposed to be doing sometime. Good idea?

  IT LOOKED GOOD ON PAPER

  President Richard Nixon, speaking to Joe Haldeman in happier times before Watergate, was recorded as commenting, “You know, I always wondered about that taping equipment, but I’m damn glad we have it, aren’t you?” Haldeman’s answer would likely have been different if he had been asked the same question a few years later, after he was freed from federal prison having been convicted in large part from the evidence on the White House tapes.

  PAIN AND POLITICS

  Lyndon Johnson, when majority leader, could be quite forceful in persuading his colleagues. He was known for poking his fellow senators in the chest, for putting his arm around them and squeezing their shoulders, speaking inches away from their faces, and occasionally kicking their shins to make his point. Hubert Humphrey, after getting just such a pep talk on rallying the vote for a bill, returned to his colleagues and raised his pants to show his scraped and bruised leg to demonstrate just how adamant Johnson was about winning the vote. Everyone got the message and they passed the bill.

  TRUE MAN

  You get a degree of latitude in what you can get away with saying when you are the former president. Sometimes you can just come out and say what others are thinking. Truman showed his dislike for the former California congressmen and later president when, rather unsubtly, not long after leaving office he described Richard Nixon as “a no-good lying bastard.”

  ON NOTICE

  Richard Nixon notified his vice president, Gerald Ford, that he was resigning when the vice president walked into the oval office and the president commented, “You will do a good job, Jerry”—August 9, 1974.

  HE DID SAY IT

  Lyndon Johnson really did once say about future President Jerry Ford that “Jerry is a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.”

  27

  WHITE HOUSE WONDERS

  The White House is the only private residence of a head of state that is open to the public, free of charge. If you have not yet taken the tour, it is something not to miss.

  A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME…ER, WOULD BE IN THE ROSE GARDEN

  At various times in history, the White House has been known as the “President’s Palace,” the “President’s House,” and the “Executive Mansion.” President Theodore Roosevelt made the White House name official after using it on his stationery.

  FIRST IN

  The first president to live in the Executive Mansion, the White House, was John Adams. He lived there from November 1, 1800, through the last four months of his presidency. Before that, he had lived most of the time in Philadelphia, where his wife remained.

  FOREMAN

  Construction began when the cornerstone was laid in October 1792. Although President Washington oversaw the construction of the house, he never lived in it.

  COMPETITION

  The actual architectural design for the White House was the subject of an open competition in 1790. The winner, James Hoban, had immigrated from Ireland. He won $500 and a lot in the new city. Among the contestants was an anonymous designer listed as AZ. This was Thomas Jefferson who, because he was also the person who had announced the contest, felt he could not use his name on the plans.

  SHORT-TERM TENANTS

  James Madison and Dolley had only lived there a few years and were just getting the mansion into shape when the British showed up and burned the building. This was in retribution for American soldiers having burned government buildings while invading Canada at the start of the War of 1812.

  NO RED PHONE

  There is a certain irony in that the War of 1812 and the burning of the executive mansion were unnecessary. The main reason for the war was the impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy. The British warships, always short personnel, would stop American merchant vessels and take off the sailors they needed, claiming they were runaway British sailors (which some were). The ironic part is that, two days before the United States declared war, the British Parliament suspended this policy. Had there been faster communications, it is highly likely no war would have occurred.

  THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

  In 1800, Washington, D.C., was nicknamed rather derogatively “The City in the Wilderness.” The U.S. capital had been located in Philadelphia, but in November 1800, the government moved to its new location. John Adams and his wife tried to take their buggy there, and for a while did fine on the well-marked roads. But when they turned onto the paths that they thought led to the new city, they were soon lost. A friendly local finally guided the President and First Lady to their newly constructed home, today’s White House, upon discovering they had already gone eight miles out of their way and had no idea how to find the new capital.

  ROUGHING IT

  Abigail Adams recorded in her diary just how hard life in the new capital of Washington, D.C., was during the city’s first few years. The president’s mansion had yet to be called the White House. To Abigail, the winter was cold. When it was warm, it was rainy, and the nearby swamps ensured that warm weather meant a constant threat of disease. In the winter, the new mansion was hard to heat. There were eleven fireplaces, so few that many rooms could not be warmed. Also, the city was new and not enough people li
ved in the area, so there was no one to chop wood or sell it to the First Family. Eventually, to save on heat, the presidential family closed off over half the building and lived in only six rooms. To keep it from freezing, the First Lady records that she hung their laundry in the East Room. Abigail also found life in the executive mansion solitary. The roads were bad and the nearest neighbor was almost half a mile away. This meant the president and First Lady actually looked forward to when the Capitol building would be finished and Congress would arrive. This is likely one of the last times this occurred.

  WHAT COMES ROUND

  The East Room of the White House has hosted laundry and many state events, but the best use we have seen for the large area occurred while Hayes was president. It was at about this time that bicycles were the high-tech and “in” new toy for young men. It is recorded that Webb Hayes, the president’s twenty-year-old secretary, avoided the dangerous and muddy Washington streets by learning to ride his new bike in the East Room.

  ON THE RUN

  There was one time when the president of the United States actually had to flee the White House. This came in 1814, after the American militia had been soundly defeated by a British landing force in the Battle of Bladensburg, sometimes referred to derogatorily as the Bladensburg Race, since the poorly trained militia fled virtually without fighting. Having won at Bladensburg, the British marched on the new American capital on August 29, and President and Dolley Madison were forced to leave on very little notice. Their flight was so precipitous that a meal was left uneaten in the White House dining room. The British officers actually sat and enjoyed the presidential food before setting the building on fire. This was less an act of spite than one of revenge. Earlier in the war, American units in Canada had set fire to a number of government buildings and this fire being set by the highly disciplined British Army was considered a response to the American’s earlier efforts. The British also burnt the Treasury, State, and Navy buildings for good measure. While all this was going on, President Madison was himself in a forest some seventeen miles away.

  Three days after the British burned the presidential mansion, the Madisons returned and were determined to rebuild. A major storm had put out the fire, but the interior of the mansion was completely gutted. Only most of the Virginia sandstone walls still stood. But even those elegant stone walls were now deeply stained with black from the fire and smoke and no one could determine any way to return them to former stately colors. It was then decided to simply paint the walls white to cover the stains. It probably took a few coats, but the result was impressive. It was not long after this that the presidential or executive mansion began being referred to unofficially as the he “White House,” and so it has been called ever since. President Madison and Dolley never returned to live again in the executive mansion. One of the looted items, a walnut medicine chest, was taken by a Canadian soldier and returned to the White House by his descendants in 1939.

  PLATED

  Florence Harding wanted a higher-class presidency. This was tough to do when Warren preferred to go out tavern-hopping with his friends. Part of her effort to accomplish her goal was to have the White House silverware gold-plated—three times.

  FIRE SALE

  If the British burned the executive mansion again, repainting the White House would require an estimated 570 gallons of paint to cover its outside. This assumes two coats would be needed as charred rock is hard to hide.

  HOUSE PARTY

  In 1829, a mob of an estimated twenty thousand inaugural revelers partying inside the White House got violent and destructive. Many were hurt, and after being protected by several of his stout frontier friends, President Andrew Jackson had to flee to the safety of a hotel. Soon the staff set up on the lawn washtubs filled with orange juice and whiskey to lure the mob out.

  MODERN APPLIANCE

  Until 1850, all cooking for the White House was done over an open flame in a fireplace. Only that year did Millard Fillmore personally purchase and install a cast-iron stove. There were no instructions and the presidential cook had no idea how to use the newfangled thing. So Fillmore went to the patent office and was shown there how to use the stove so he could teach the cook.

  BETTER THAN A STOVE

  It was only after Abigail Fillmore in 1850 raised a bit of a ruckus and refused to even live in the White House that Congress broke down and paid for indoor plumbing to be installed. Before this, bathwater had been carried in buckets and heated over the fireplace.

  TAKING THE HEAT

  It wasn’t until the administration of Franklin Pierce in 1853 that there was central heating in the White House. Before this time, all heat came from fireplaces spread all over the building.

  ROYAL BEST

  When James Buchanan was president, the Prince of Wales visited. In order to make sure that Bertie had a room worthy of his station, the president gave him his bedroom and he slept on the couch.

  EGG ROLL

  The first Easter egg hunt was held at the White House by Lucy Hayes in 1878. “Lemonade” Lucy was a great advocate of morally uplifting events and a great supporter of the Woman’s Temperance Union.

  COME ON OVER TO MY HOUSE

  The White House has been traditionally open to visitors. It was never more so than when Lincoln was president. Or, more accurately, when Tad Lincoln was first son. The young boy would regularly be playing on the streets near the White House and when he got hungry would lead a small mob of his playmates, some street urchins, into the White House kitchen and demand the cook feed them all. This likely upset the kitchen staff’s schedule regularly, but they always managed to prepare something for every child to eat.

  PILLAGED

  It was a mournful and chaotic time after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. While most of the nation mourned, some saw this as an opportunity. The White House was not guarded at this time. With Mary Todd Lincoln virtually out of her mind with grief, the lower floors were sitting open and unwatched. Dozens of looters or souvenir seekers snuck, or boldly strode, into the executive mansion and helped themselves. Furniture, papers, pictures, and personal items disappeared. The value of the china taken alone would be over half a million of today’s dollars.

  NOT FIRST ADAPTERS

  Even though telegraph communication was widespread and vital during the Civil War, no one got around to installing a telegraph office in the White House until Andrew Johnson took over as president.

  LEMONADE LUCY

  Rutherford and Lucy Hayes were teetotalers and forbade even wine being served in the White House. There was, at first, a good deal of consternation and concern that the lack would be taken as an insult by visiting dignitaries. The offer of a glass of wine was commonly used to show a person was welcome at an upper class home. But no one did take offense, though Lucy Hayes was nicknamed in the press “Lemonade Lucy,” which seemed not to bother the cheerful and very popular First Lady at all.

  ZAP

  The White House was finally wired for electricity during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison. His wife, Caroline, distrusted the modern invention and refused to touch a light switch for fear of being electrocuted. Actually, the whole family was unsure about the newfangled light switches. They preferred to have the White House usher turn off the lights and often simply left them on all night if he failed to do so. The introduction of electric lights was just one of many improvements. The sorry fact was that by 1889, when Harrison took office, the executive mansion was in bad shape. There was even a discussion of moving the President’s official residence to a newer building. Still, the Harrisons were not afraid of change, and added many modern amenities to the White House. Among these was the building’s first switchboard, which meant that, for the first time, there was more than one phone line in the building.

  PRESIDENTIAL UREIC POISONING

  When Benjamin Harrison moved into the White House in 1889, moving in with the president was his wife, their son and his wife, their daughter and her husband, their childrens’ three
kids, Caroline Harrison’s father, and her niece. This is a total of eleven First Family members. At this time, the White House was still just a residence and there was only one bathroom in the whole building.

  NATIONAL NUPTIALS

  Grover Cleveland was the only president to be actually married in the White House. It was an elegant ceremony. Two others, Tyler and Woodrow Wilson, did marry while serving as president, but not in the executive mansion.

  ROSE GARDEN

  In 1902, Edith Roosevelt, along with the official gardener, Henry Pfister, designed a colonial garden. However, in 1913, Ellen Wilson, the first wife of Woodrow Wilson, replaced the colonial garden with one featuring a variety of roses. The West Garden has been officially and generally known as the Rose Garden ever since. In the Rose Garden you can see not only a variety of roses but also blossoming magnolia trees and Katherine crab apple trees.

  NO FUN

  During his first term as president, Teddy Roosevelt was walking around the White House grounds and came upon his son Quentin on the latest fad toy, stilts, standing in one of the flower beds. He ordered, “Quentin get out of there.” His son’s annoyed reply was, “I don’t see what good it does me for you to be president.” He had a point—what use being a member of the First Family if you can’t tear up the daisies occasionally?

  HIDE!

  Herbert Hoover seems to have been very uncomfortable with the large staff he found was needed to maintain the White House. Or maybe he just was not comfortable in the presence of domestic staff at all. All of the servants, maids, and gardeners working at the White House were under strict orders to get out of sight whenever President Hoover was around. Neither he nor his wife spoke to the White House staff. A series of hand signals was used by Lou Hoover to instruct the servants nearby as to her needs or what to do. Herbert himself preferred not to deal with them directly at all. So how did they keep out of the president’s way? Each room or area had a bell system, and whenever anyone heard three bells ring, it meant that the president was coming into their area. Either the service personnel left the area or hid in the closets. Ground staff jumped behind bushes or hurried behind trees. Those who failed to make themselves scarce might be fired, a serious threat during the Great Depression.