Gary Walters has spent more time inside America’s most famous residence than almost anyone outside of a first family.
As the longest-serving White House chief usher, Walters worked nearly 40 years under presidents from Richard Nixon through George W. Bush. He’s now chronicling his experiences in a new book, "White House Memories: 1970-2007."
“The chief usher is responsible for three main duties,” Walters told Scripps News. “The first being to operate the home of the president and his family and to see their privacy in their home, which encompasses the second and third floors of the executive residence. The second responsibility is to be the site of official events of the presidency on the grounds and in the house — state dinners, receptions, press conferences, so forth. And the third and not the least important is the responsibility to preserve our American heritage through the White House museum for the American people.”
Walters said one surprise during his tenure was how he could help presidents and their families could truly make the White House their own.
“It’s the responsibility of the executive residence staff — which is about 90 people that I supervised — to make the daily activities that the White House and the president and the first lady comfortable,” he said. “They’ve got enough to worry about with other things that are going on in their life.
Part of his role, Walters said, was to remove everyday worries for the president’s family, even something as simple as deciding what’s for dinner.
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Asked if he had a favorite president or first lady, Walters declined to single anyone out.
“I admired every president,” he said. “The motivation of somebody to take on the responsibilities of the presidency are unbelievable. The time that’s spent, I don’t think the American people have any concept as to how much time each and every president spends trying to do what they believe is the correct thing for the American people. That is their primary concern.”
“And I learned through my own eyes and my own ears that they have that responsibility and they work at it diligently,” Walters added. “I also got to know the presidents and the first family as — from my own eyes, my own ears. And I think that was the thing that was the most important to me, was being able to deal with the family and get to know them as people and to provide the services that they desired in their home.”
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Public perceptions of a president and their private selves can differ, Walters noted, though it often depends on the individual. He shared a personal memory of President Ronald Reagan to illustrate his point.
“President Reagan was presented to a lot of the American people as just an actor and he was on stage all the time,” he said. “And I’d be one of those people — from my own interactions with the president — to talk about him as an individual who was the person you saw all the time. I had a very personal interaction with him on walking through the executive residence, passing a police officer and talking with his staff, getting halfway down the hall and turning around and walking back and apologizing to that police officer that he didn’t acknowledge him as he went past. President Reagan was a consummate gentleman.”
Watch Scripps News full interview with Gary Walters, the longest-serving White House chief usher, in the video player above.
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