The Residence - Inside the Private World of The White House by Kate Andersen Brower

Author:Kate Andersen Brower [Kate Andersen Brower]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062305190
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-02-24T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER VI

Sacrifice

That first day, I thought the Usher’s office was a twelve-by-twelve-foot madhouse. People ran in and out of the room all day, the phone rang incessantly, and the buzzer buzzed.

—J. B. WEST, USHER AND CHIEF USHER, 1941–1969,

UPSTAIRS AT THE WHITE HOUSE: MY LIFE WITH THE FIRST LADIES

Usher Nelson Pierce lived with his wife, Caroline, in a pretty white Colonial house in Arlington, Virginia, about four miles from the White House. Before he passed away, on November 27, 2014, he and Caroline liked to sit on the porch swing on summer days. During an interview, when I asked him how long they’d been married, he glanced over and asked her to remind him. She did not seem to mind his momentary memory lapse; in fact, she seemed to be used to taking a lead role in the relationship. Because of her husband’s grueling schedule, Caroline spent much of their sixty-six years of marriage taking care of their four kids—two boys and two girls—almost singlehandedly.

One date Pierce did remember is the exact day he started at the residence: October 16, 1961. During his more than two decades at the White House, Pierce’s hours were so long and unpredictable that it felt “strange” to his wife when he was actually home. The ushers’ shifts changed so often that the Pierces kept a calendar on the table by their telephone so Caroline would know when he was working. She said her children have “lived the White House.” Over and over, Caroline had to tell them: “‘We can’t do this because Dad has to work. We can’t go today because he has to work.’ Your life revolved around the White House.” (She teased him that their children’s friends never understood what Nelson did; given his title, they all assumed he was an usher in a movie theater. “That took him down a peg,” she joked.)

But the privilege of working in the White House was never lost on Pierce. One day, Steve Bull, an aide to Richard Nixon, was leaving the West Wing just as Pierce was coming up the steps to start his shift. Bull made fun of him for wearing his White House ID around his neck on the driveway before he needed it out. Pierce told him earnestly, “Out of the two hundred and ten million people in this country, how many of us have the privilege of putting it on?”

Bull paused and replied, “I never thought of that.”

In all his years at the White House, it was trying to keep up with Lyndon B. Johnson that put the greatest strain on his marriage. A nocturnal animal, Johnson often ate dinner after 10:00 P.M., slept a few hours, and woke up again at 4:00 A.M. (Carpenter Isaac Avery, who started at the White House in 1930, had never seen anything like it. “The Kennedys lived in a hurry,” he said. “President Johnson lives in a race.”)

The president’s daughter Lynda recalls that her father “worked a two-day shift.” She said he “would get

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