Behind the scenes at the White House

One of the books that I’ve had on my bookshelf for several decades is “My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House,” by Lillian Rogers Parks, published in 1961.  
I pull it down every 10 years or so and reacquaint myself with the interesting story captured between the covers, for not only was Lillian a maid and seamstress at the White House for 50 years, her mother, Maggie, had started under the Taft administration and served for 30 years.
Lillian was born in Washington on Feb. 1, 1897, and “first saw the inside of the White House as a tiny child, crippled by polio…” Her mother, having no place to leave her one day, brought her along to the White House while she worked for President and Mrs. Howard Taft.
“Maggie” Rogers began to work as a White House maid in 1909 with William H. Taft, the 27th president. Lillian wrote that her mother would come home from work with stories, and she would feel as though she was a part of them.  
While her mother was employed as maid to Mrs. Hoover, she began to bring home extra mending from the White House, and Mrs. Hoover noticing the quality of Lillian’s work, asked Maggie to bring her daughter to the White House to interview for a job as seamstress. Thus began Lillian’s career backstairs at the White House.
The Hoovers were fierce about servants not being seen or heard.  Upon the sounding of three bells for the president and two bells for the first lady, announcing that they were leaving the living quarters, the servants were to disappear by hiding in closets.  
When the Roosevelt family arrived and saw the servants popping in and out of hiding places, FDR ordered them, “Stop it and just act natural.”
In fact, “little” Lillian was allowed to ride in the president’s elevator. He confided in her one day, “Little girl, you know and I know that one can overcome anything.”
The White House staff was horrified that Mrs. Eisenhower instituted the use of box cake mixes in the kitchen.
Understanding that the first lady had never had a home of her own, there was some downstairs talk about Mamie’s reference to “my” carpet and “my” drapery. Where Eleanor Roosevelt thought the White House belonged to “the people,” Mamie thought it belonged to her, although only temporarily.
Lillian wrote that under the Hoovers, the staff had to whisper and not make a sound in the pantry when they were eating, but the Roosevelt family, which loved noise and talked excitedly and loudly, “never wanted us to stop working just because they were eating supper.”  
One of my favorite events as recorded in her book was when President Harry Truman called an aide to the Green Room.  Pointing to the green oval rug with the U.S. seal in the center, said he didn’t like the fact that the eagle was facing the arrows grasped in his claws instead of the olive branch, the symbol of peace. He decreed then and there that henceforth, the eagle would face the symbol of peace.
Downstairs at the White House, staff referred to the Trumans as the “Three Musketeers,” showing the closeness of the family, broken when daughter Margaret moved to New York to pursue her career.
Where FDR did not swear, Truman made up for it with his “blankety-blank this and blankety-blank that,” generally followed by his wife’s admonition, “now you didn’t mean that.”
She remembered well the night President Khrushchev and his wife came to dinner at the Eisenhower White House and one of his aides looked at the dark skin of many of the White House employees and asked, “Are those your slaves?”
The book takes the reader through eight presidents – Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower.
Lillian said that the White House, in her memory, was hardly ever dogless and the Roosevelt’s took the prize for number.
Lillian Parker died at age 100 and wrote two more books about her life as a White House seamstress and maid through several more presidents.
The behind-the-scene look she provides is rare, and Lillian has made it entertaining.