Visiting the First Ladies’ House - Week 34: Holms on the Potomac

     

Jackie Kennedy looks fantastic on the CBS Tour of the White House. Most of us saw her in black and white, because color televisions were expensive in 1962. 

In front of the White House!
Elder and Sister Holm, Sister Simler from Kamiah, Idaho, and Elder and Sister Pond from Meridian. 

    Jackie Kennedy walked the American public through the White House on February 14, 1962 via CBS television. I was seven years old, so I don’t remember, but we must’ve seen the show, because for years, we kids would say (with a touch of sarcasm and an exaggerated Boston accent) “This is the Bleu Room!” when we showed friends around our small home.
    Using a National Geographic magazine series as my source, I wrote a report about America’s First Ladies, including Jackie, in fourth grade, clipping and gluing their portraits to my essay. 

    The White House – 2000 miles from rural Idaho—has been the treasured home of United States Presidents and their families since John Adams moved there in 1800. I dreamed of seeing the abode of First Ladies and their husbands,  but years passed, with never enough time and money visit Washington D.C.

The Green Room. George Washington’s 1796 portrait by Gilbert Stuart was the oldest thing in the White House in 1962, but this 1760 Benjamin Franklin portrait was acquired later. 

Jackie Kennedy said she wanted the White House to have as fine a collection of paintings as could be found in the United States.    

Then we were called to serve our mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Maryland / DC. I finally SAW the Blue Room, the Red Room and the Green Room—and not on a black and white television program, either. 

Touring the White House—at least the portions open to the public – is free. (Our tax dollars at work!) We emailed our United States Senator’s office and when the White House replied, we registered with driver’s license information, SSI number and so on. (Yup --those are the rules.)

            Gilbert and Deanna Pond and Sharon Simler, other senior Idahoans serving in the Washington D.C. North Mission, joined us.

            We stood in line, then went through three checkpoints: to show our tickets; to verify our identification; and to be scanned for weapons. We didn’t get a clear look at the building from a distance because we were under canopies that covered the entrance, which left us feeling we hadn’t seen the outside façade very well. 

We stepped into a sunny windowed hallway alongside beautiful gardens. On the second floor, the East Room, the largest room in the building,  seemed small, about the size of a high school gymnasium. A sign explained that it WAS considered a large room when it was built. Over the years, artists’ renderings and the magic of cameras made the room seem larger than it is; it is decorated with life size portraits of George and Martha Washington.

           

Part of the East Room.

The Blue Room is the most formal room  for receiving lines. Mrs. Kennedy showed a pier table which was found in the White House basement being used as a sawhorse before being restored.  In the tour, she was not afraid to show rooms that were messy and under renovation--perhaps to remind the public of the huge amount of work still to be done.  

Vivid and tasteful, the Blue, Green and Red rooms live up to their names. Wonderful portraits hang in all the rooms. My favorite is Lincoln with his chin in one hand in the State Dining Room. All the rooms we saw are used for official events during non-tour hours. 

    Toward the end of the tour, we stood by the flag and soaked it in: we had walked where First Ladies and their gentlemen had walked, and had seen the history and beauty of the White House: a grand expression of this Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. We exited to the side of the familiar front door and took “sidewise ” photos of the lawn with the building behind it. 

The State Dining Room 

  

Our tour ended on the second floor. The Lincoln Bedroom is on the  third floor, closed to the public. Lincoln didn't actually use the bedroom; in his time, it was his Cabinet room. At that time, all kinds of people crowded into his offices on the third floor. However, his wife, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln bought the bed and other furniture for the White House, which made her husband angry because of the expense. After his death, Mrs. Lincoln had to sell furniture because she was destitute. (Many other items from the White House met a similar fate over the years. Mrs. Kennedy worked to find these items and acquire them through private means.) President Truman made the bedroom a shrine to Lincoln. A draft of the Gettysburg Address hangs on the wall. 

After the tour, we did our homework belatedly, watching a video of Jackie’s tour.

“The tour is the culmination of one of Jackie’s most influential projects. As a result of her work, the White House itself and the artwork and artifacts inside it are now preserved by the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution. But before the Kennedys, upkeep of these historic treasures was ‘idiosyncratic and non-routinized,’” says Barbara A. Perry, the author of Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady of the New Frontier. 

President Kennedy joined the program, saying that when children visit the White House, they love this country more as they learn of people who are legendary who were alive and who used these rooms. He said, “History is prologue—it doesn’t give us a key to our future, but it gives us knowledge and perspective.”

One gorgeous October Saturday, five Idaho missionaries were grateful that First Lady Jackie Kennedy and others have preserved our nation’s presidential home.