Margaret Truman (16 page)

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Visitors to the contemporary White House are unlikely to get a glimpse of the president, much less shake his hand and give him their thoughts about the economy. Yet that does not stop them from getting in touch with him in other ways. Faxes and E-mail have become increasingly popular, but letters remain the medium of choice for Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Citizen.

The American people have been sending letters to the White House since 1800. Some of our early presidents tried to read and answer these missives personally, but as the numbers increased, the chore was passed to a secretary. By the end of the nineteenth century, when even two secretaries were not enough to keep up with the flow, the mail room was created.

Its staff grew from one man—handling about a hundred letters a day in 1897—to twenty-two in the Truman era. Another fifty or so people were on a standby list for emergency days when, for various reasons, the letters and parcels leaped from an average of 8,000 a day to an avalanche of 150,000.

The current White House mail room, now called the Correspondence Office, has a staff of almost ninety people plus a couple of dozen interns and a pool of over seven hundred volunteers. Most correspondents receive some kind of reply, usually a printed card rather than a regular letter.

Letters that might be of special interest to the president are extracted from the pile and brought to his attention. President George H. W. Bush's staff secretary once sent a memo to the Correspondence Office stressing the importance of being on the lookout for such letters. Attached was a letter addressed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt telling him about a theory the writer had that could create an unbelievably powerful bomb. The letter was badly typed and full of misspellings and crossed-out words but an alert mail handler had rescued it from the “nut file” and sent it on to the president. It was signed: Albert Einstein.

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Another avenue to the president is the telephone. Many of the callers have questions, such as how to apply for veterans' benefits or what their Medicare coverage includes. The operators cannot answer such queries but they provide the callers with the phone numbers of the government agencies that can give them the information they need.

The line also attracts a fair number of mentally ill callers. Although their comments often make very little sense, these callers are treated with the same courtesy as everyone else. For threatening calls, there is a buzzer that connects the call to the Secret Service and they take it from there.

Comment line volunteers will not stay on the line forever, even though many people, both sane and insane, would like them to. They are instructed to limit the conversations to two minutes so other callers can get through.

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The Gift Office has been set up to deal with the approximately fifteen thousand gifts that arrive at the White House each year. A staff of about a half dozen highly experienced employees registers the gifts, sees that they are acknowledged, and decides what should be done with them. Many are gifts from foreign governments and are quite valuable. They are considered gifts to the nation rather than to the president and they are usually sent to the Smithsonian Institution or the Library of Congress or kept for use in a presidential library. The president is allowed to keep only those that have minimal value, which is currently defined as less than $260.

A high percentage of the gifts that arrive at the White House are sent by private citizens. If a president or a first lady has a special hobby or a fondness for a particular type of clothing, he or she is likely to get buried in the stuff. When Dad was seen pitching horseshoes on the White House lawn, horseshoes by the hundreds descended on us. A similar glut occurred when a reporter wrote a story about Caroline Kennedy's love of chocolate. The White House Gift Office logged in everything from Hershey bars to a 6-foot, 190-pound chocolate rabbit from Switzerland.

Jerry Ford once received—and kept—a hand-knitted ski hat that had been sent to him by a retired nun. After she spied him wearing it on a television news clip, she decided it looked too tight. She immediately sent him a letter with instructions on how to care for it: Wet it and let it sit on your head until it dries.

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The White House is the only residence of a head of state in the entire world that can be visited by the public free of charge. Before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it was open Tuesday through Saturday from ten A.M. to 12 noon. This wonderful privilege was one of the many casualties of that dire day. Since then, the Secret Service has decreed that only limited public tours are permissible, and even these may be suspended in the event of a serious security threat.

A tour of the White House begins in the East Wing. Visitors pass through the ground floor corridor before ascending the staircase to view the historic rooms on the main floor. The corridor was a grubby work area until Charles McKim got his hands on it in 1902. He restored the vaulted ceiling and covered the walls and floors with marble. It is now a red-carpeted entrance worthy of welcoming the most exalted VIPs.

I have a special fondness for the rooms that open off the ground-floor corridor because their wood paneling was made from the timber that was removed from the White House during the Truman renovations. The Vermeil Room, which is used as a ladies' sitting room at formal events, features an exhibit of some rare pieces of vermeil—gilded silver. Next to it is the China Room, where items from the White House china collection are displayed and Howard Chandler Christy's portrait of Grace Coolidge dominates one wall. On the north side of the corridor is the library, which serves as a male counterpart to the ladies' sitting room across the hall. It's always a shock for me to realize that prior to the 1902 renovation, this beautiful space was a laundry room.

Upstairs, the East Room still features the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington that Dolley Madison rescued from British torches so long ago. On the mantels of the west wall are exquisite golden bronze candelabra bought in France by Elizabeth Monroe in 1817. The Green Room, completely redone by First Lady Pat Nixon in 1971, is still a treasure trove of Federal period furniture. The furnishings also include Gilbert Stuart's wonderful portraits of President John Quincy Adams and First Lady Louisa Catherine Adams.

The Blue Room, refurbished by Hillary Clinton in 1995, has seven of the gilded chairs Elizabeth Monroe purchased from one of Paris's foremost cabinetmakers. The rest of the furniture is in the same elegant Empire style. The mahogany marble-top table is one of the oldest pieces of furniture in continuous residence; it was bought by the Monroes in 1817 and has never left the mansion.

The Red Room is also in the Empire style. During the 1840s, this was called the Washington Room because Stuart's portrait of the ultimate Founding Father resided here. Another Gilbert Stuart portrait, this one of Dolley Madison, is one of the room's highlights. Dolley still emanates the marvelous good cheer that made her supreme.

The State Dining Room is almost as impressive as the East Room. Enlarged over the years, it can now seat 140 people comfortably. Above the mantel hangs George P. A. Healy's portrait of Abraham Lincoln, gazing down at the nation he preserved. He's all by himself on these walls—a lonely splendor that no one will ever contest.

That's a small sample of what you'll see in the President's House when you visit during the hours when it is also the people's house.

Questions for
Discussion

How have historic events influenced public attitudes toward the White House?

Why did it become necessary to restrict access to the White House?

What do you consider the most interesting room in the White House and why?