WHAT HAPPENED?

President Ford and Liberty in the Oval Office (White House Photo)

WHAT HAPPENED?

President Ford in the Oval Office (White House Photo)

Many of you kind souls who read Downstairs at the White House have written to express your significant aggravation that I ended the book with a cliffhanger. I did that because I thought I would write another book about the many strange, unusual, and laughable things that have happened to me over my lifetime. Not only did I not write the book, but I also don't have any good excuses for not writing it.

However, before I tell you what happened when President Ford invited 19-year-old me into the Oval Office on the spur of the moment in October 1974, I want to clarify that this event was not a "one-off."

As you'll recall from Downstairs at the White House, I spilled ice water on Frank Sinatra and fought unsuccessfully with the President of Italy for space in a men's room near the Oval Office. I set off Secret Service alarms in a stupid way only a teenager can, and, for God's sake, served my country as the backup Easter Bunny, to name just a few.

Before and after the White House, I've stumbled into situations that have run the gamut from peculiar and potentially dangerous to exceptionally interesting and laugh-out-loud funny. Here are just a few:

As a tot, I spit up on a well-dressed neighbor who dared to lean into my stroller to smile at me. My mother would have forgotten the incident had he not been Cuba's last freely elected president, living in exile in Miami. In 1977, the House Select Committee on Assassinations subpoenaed him to testify after being linked with Jack Ruby in testimony about the murder of President Kennedy. He committed suicide before he could appear.
Fueled with leftover anesthesia, I walked out of a hospital a day after extensive abdominal surgery with the intent of traveling a thousand miles to Disneyworld. A desk clerk, not noticing my connection to a mobile IV, helped me figure out how to take a bus to Orlando.
I flew from Philadelphia to Hartford on a plane captained by a pilot who sounded precisely like Elmer Fudd while sitting next to a guy trying to convince me we were going to die. That was after the pilot of my previous commercial flight climbed up on the wing and checked the plane's fuel supply with a dipstick.
In Louisville, Kentucky, I found myself on the other side of a wall from a gunman with an AK-47 who took eight lives in one of America's first workplace mass murders.
In Russia, I inadvertently helped the Russian pornography industry grow, slept in an insane asylum in Siberia guarded by sheepherders in silly hats, and challenged a goat guarding the lavatory on Russian airliner Aeroflot. It was the best part of the trip.
Near the Pentagon on 9/11, I felt the earth shake, our building sway, and participated in an event that should have been utterly impossible in the ensuing chaos.
One evening, I nearly pulled the President of the United States over a dais.

There's more, but you get the picture.

So, here's the Oval Office story. I'll repeat the parts from the book that will help this all make sense. You'll recall that the President had a beautiful golden retriever named Liberty.

"I had a bad habit of putting food in my suit pockets at lunchtime when I was starving, in a hurry, and needed to use my hands to carry other things. Occasionally, a hot dog wrapped in aluminum foil and topped with relish, onions, and mustard would leak and leave my trousers or jacket pocket in rough condition. No matter what dry cleaning chemicals the dry cleaner used, the suit always retained a slight fast-food aroma. People sometimes said that they got hungry whenever I walked by.

On Saturday, October 12th, I was on the run, possibly because I was the only messenger working in the East Wing that day, and the West Wing was a beehive of activity. By lunchtime, I was famished and hustled to the Roy Rogers Restaurant on New York Avenue to grab a roast beef sandwich, fries, and coleslaw. When I returned to my desk, I removed my suit jacket, threw it on a chair, and dug into the food. As much as I hate to admit it, I often ate recklessly. That day, I was eating in gulps and washing the food down my esophagus with cascades of Pepsi.

During the mayhem, some of the juice from the roast beef went into my left pants pocket. I went to the men's room to rinse the stain and wash my hands, which were sticky with ketchup from the feeding frenzy. The faucet didn't work, so I said to hell with it, wiped my hands with toilet paper, and returned to work. Later, someone sent me to pick something up in the West Wing.

As I passed through the Residence, something large and fluffy hit me near the Diplomatic Reception Room door. My jacket was uncharacteristically unbuttoned, and whatever I collided with was tugging at my pants and noodling into my left pocket. I don't remember who was walking Liberty then, but whoever it was couldn't have been more apologetic. Being a dog, Liberty had followed her nose to the beefy smell I was giving off. I petted her. She licked my face. Then, we went our separate ways. That was it.

When I returned to the East Wing office, I realized something needed fixing. My pocket was sliced, and the tear ran down the seam from the pocket to the top of my knee. None of the damage was Liberty's fault. The suit had been slowly disintegrating for at least a month. When I got home, I had no choice but to throw the pants away. The following week, I went to the Sears store near my apartment on Wisconsin Avenue and bought new flare-bottom trousers that sort of, kind of, went with the jacket. I remember that the pants nearly did me in financially. They were six bucks, not including tax. I told the other guys in the Messenger Office about it on Monday. Norwood laughed so hard that he nearly passed out."

"The following morning, I woke up with a start, looked at the clock, and panicked. I overslept. That wasn't good. Worse, I would have to forego breakfast to make it to the bus stop on time. Far worse than that, a large acne family had staked a claim on my chin during the night.

When I finally got to the White House, I didn't get my usual late-morning glazed doughnut and cream-and-sugar-filled coffee. None of these, of course, were towering predicaments or even minor problems, for that matter. They were a bunch of nothing. Nevertheless, I felt compelled as a teenager to mire in unwarranted misery until I ate or the acne went away, whichever came first. At about 11:30 a.m., I took advantage of a lull in the workday and dragged my sorry self to an early lunch. Chocolate pudding was on my mind that day, and the only place I knew had it was the EOB cafeteria.

On my way, I stopped by the Oval Office to say hello to the Executive Protective Service officer stationed there and take my daily look at the nerve center of American power through the open door. The officer was a very nice guy, and as much as I liked to hang around that part of the West Wing, I also enjoyed chatting with him. That day, we talked about football. He was a New York Giants fan, and they were playing the Redskins that Sunday at RFK Stadium. We frequently bet on games for bragging rights, even though we each thought the other was criminally obnoxious in victory.

Just as I opened the throttle on my trash-talk about New York's 1-4 record, the officer flew out of his chair. I thought he was coming to choke me. Then, I realized that he'd seen something. He lunged toward the Oval Office door and started to close it. To say that I was startled would have been the understatement of the year. I froze like a deer in the headlights. President Ford came through the back door of the Oval Office from the south driveway, returning from making a speech at the Department of Labor. The wind kicked up, and some golden autumn leaves blew through the doorway.

The President picked up something on his desk, read it, and fired off a four-letter word. Things were moving at high speed. Five seconds passed. Maybe six.

As the door closed, President Ford looked straight at me. He raised his hand in what looked like a motion to come in. I had no idea what to do. If I went in, the Secret Service might arrest me. Maybe I'd lose my job. Then again, maybe I wouldn't. Then again, maybe the President wasn't gesturing to me at all. I felt my throat tighten. My heart thumped in my head. In the worst case, I was pretty sure nobody would eat me. So, I rolled the dice and walked into the Oval Office."

NEW SECTION

"The President looked at me and said, ''Come on in,' followed by something like, 'We have a problem.'

Right before my blood froze, I remember praying that I wouldn't trip. I didn't trip a lot, but this would have been the perfect time for 'whatever can go wrong will go wrong' to happen. To add to my anxiety, I could see a Secret Service agent watching me from outside the window behind the President's credenza.

I had only spoken to President Ford twice: once, when I physically bumped into him in the West Wing stairway on August 8th as he went to his last meeting with Nixon, and the second when I asked him how he liked being president as he left a White House picnic.

'I understand my dog jumped on you and tore your pants, and I need to remedy that,' the President said. I think I squeezed a 'yes, sir' out of my throat. He pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, reached across the desk, and handed it to me. It's important to know that in 1974, twenty bucks was the equivalent of about $100 today. At my government pay rate, it was almost as much as I made in a day. I was floored. Not thinking ahead, as usual, I asked the president to sign it, which he graciously did.

He handed me the money and said, 'You look familiar. Haven't we met before?' I cringed, thinking he remembered our near miss on August 8th and my unfortunate words, 'Excuse me, Mr. President,' the day before he took office. I don't know why I was surprised he remembered me, not because I was a spectacular human specimen but because my oyster-colored poplin suit and relatively long hair stuck out like a sore thumb against the White House background of navy-blue Brooks Brothers suits and well-trimmed hair. I had to balance my appearance between working in a Republican White House and being a '70s college student.

'Now, I remember,' he said. You asked me how I liked being president, didn't you? Well, I still like it. And I hope you still enjoy your job.' I'm reasonably sure I croaked out a 'Yes' and 'Thank you, Mr. President.' We shook hands, and I turned to walk out.

I'll never know why I froze for those few moments. But finally, I was feeling confident. That proved to be a big mistake.

The Executive Protective Service officer had closed the door I came through, and for some reason known only to God, I couldn't see the doorknob. I had been in the Oval Office, which still had the Nixon decor, several times, but always facing the president's desk with the open door behind me, not the other way around. The room wasn't huge, which made me feel even dumber.

Being quite sure that I didn't want to start knocking on anything I thought might be the door, I was just about to really humiliate myself and ask the President for help when one of his senior aides came through the door leading from the secretary's office. I nearly ran him over to get out.

The whole thing was over in three minutes if that.

It wasn't until much later that I discovered I had created an unnecessary dilemma for myself. In my hand was a $20 bill. It was also a $20 bill bearing the signature of the first unelected President in American history. Even being broke, I debated the issue of keeping it for posterity for a couple of days. If I'd had another $20 to my name, I would have saved the bill. Instead, it lost out to another pair of pants and a hot Reuben sandwich. "

Of course, there has to be a final, weird twist to this story because that's how my life goes.

Twenty years later, in June 1994, I joined a small group of American media executives involved in helping Russian newspapers build a free and independent press after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the advent of new press freedoms. On a Sunday, we crossed from Europe into Asia to Yekaterinburg, Russia, an industrial city of more than 1.5 million souls on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains. For history buffs, Yekaterinburg is where the Bolsheviks executed Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, and five children in Ipatiev House in 1918.

At lunchtime, we met a group of Russian journalists and their interpreters in a Chinese restaurant. Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" was blasting in English from creaky old speakers. It was amusingly surreal, especially when the servers brought a massive tray of steamed whole fish with bulging, glassy eyes.

When introductions were made, my interpreter told the group I was from Nashville, Tennessee, where I was the advertising director for The Tennessean and Nashville Banner. Sitting across a vast round table from me was a very distinguished-looking Russian. We looked to be about the same age.

While the general conversation bounced between Russian and English, the gentleman across the table said to me, in perfect English, "So, you're from Nashville?" I was understandably taken aback.

"Do you ever go to Pancake Pantry?" (a famous, popular restaurant in downtown Nashville). "Do you know John Seigenthaler?" he continued. "Did you ever meet Nixon or Ford?"

"Okay," I said to him. "This is too much. Yes, I go to Pancake Pantry. John Seigenthaler (an icon in American journalism) hired me. Yes, I worked in the White House while Nixon and Ford were president. Where is this all coming from?"

It turned out that my new Russian friend, a journalism professor at one of the universities in Moscow, was visiting the university in Yekaterinburg and was invited to our lunch at the last minute. He had just returned from spending nearly a year at a major university in Nashville. He had spent some time with John Seigenthaler, who knew I was going to Russia. Seigenthaler mentioned my name in the odd event we should cross paths.

Damned if the professor didn't say, "I think I'm supposed to ask you about losing a fight with Ford's dog." Seigenthaler had thought the story was hysterically funny. I made the mistake of telling the group about it and ended up with a Russian nickname that was something like "the House dog." I never understood it exactly, but the Russians thought it was funnier than hell and I've certainly been called worse. If nothing else, I got a few extra vodkas out of it."

(Below: Additional photos associated with the story)

Nixon Oval Office

Oval Office Door

The President, Mrs. Ford and Liberty

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed our time together.