When moving day is also first day on the job
Moving day can be a trying time for anyone changing residences. It’s a unique challenge for movers packing out the most prominent U.S. family from the nation’s most recognizable house, and then moving in the new first family, all in a matter of hours.
That’s what the White House residence staff accomplishes every time the presidency changes hands. While the incoming president is on one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, taking the oath of office outside the U.S. Capitol, staffers are rushing around at the White House, moving out the departing first family and preparing it for the new occupants.
“It is amazing. It’s a logistical miracle, I think,” said Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Texas.
While world attention is focused on the pomp and circumstance of the transition of power, White House workers are preparing an unseen, seamless transition of domesticity. With one moving van in the front of the White House and another in back, residence staff move out one family’s belongings and bring in another’s. They stock carefully selected everyday items, such as favorite shampoos and toothpaste for the incoming family.
The move is done by a 90-member team directed by the White House chief usher, rather than by outside moving companies. Team members possess security clearances, building know-how and an understanding of White House traditions, says Kate Andersen Brower, author of the book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House.
From housekeepers to engineers, “all pitch in and become movers for the day,” Andersen Brower explains. They have 4–5 hours to complete the job — after the departing and incoming presidents typically leave the White House together for the inauguration and before the newly sworn-in president and his family return from the day’s festivities to dress for evening inaugural balls.
“It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation,” Andersen Brower explains. “It’s a huge lift, and the staff members are very proud of themselves for getting it done.”
Preparations start after the primary season is over, when the chief usher begins to research the preferences of candidates who might win the national election. That entails learning what the leading candidates’ families eat for breakfast and what household brands they prefer.
On Inauguration Day, the staff changes mattresses and cleans the residence. Much of the furniture stays in the historic home. Any renovations or redecorating desired by the new occupants will be done later.
Residence staff are apolitical. They don’t reveal who they voted for in any election, says Anita McBride, who served as chief of staff to former first lady Laura Bush. There are traditions in both the West Wing — the location of the president’s and his high-level advisors’ offices — and the central residence and East Wing office areas, all of which underscore the sanctity of the transition of power.
In a drawer of the Oval Office Resolute Desk — constructed from oak timbers of the British ship HMS Resolute and given to president Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 by the United Kingdom’s Queen Victoria — modern presidents leave a letter of encouragement and guidance for their successors. The letters have ranged from the whimsical to the gracious-in-defeat. In 1989, President Ronald Reagan used stationery printed with the phrase “Don’t let the turkeys get you down,” for his note to incoming President George H.W. Bush, and George H.W. Bush, having lost to Bill Clinton, wrote in 1993, “I wish you well. I wish your family well. Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.”
The residence staff has its traditions, too, McBride notes. During a goodbye meeting in the East Room, staffers give the departing first family the flag that flew over the White House on the first day of that family’s residency and the flag that flew the morning of the outgoing family’s departure. “It is emotional,” McBride says. “The staff gets attached to a president,” no matter the political party. Nevertheless, she says, staff members are “the utmost professionals. They have a job to do.” And on January 20, the residence staff does its part in the peaceful transition of power by welcoming the next president’s family.