Chapter Three

LIVING THERE

My home is like living in a zoo, only the animals are on the outside.

—Seven-year-old Briana Giorgione

BY THE TIME Mike Berry became comfortable enough to watch movies and eat popcorn with the Reagans, he already knew how easy they were to get along with. But his first meeting with them in the living room of Aspen was, as he described it, “surreal”—a word I also used many times throughout my tour. There the president and the First Lady were, dressed in informal camping clothes, as relaxed and friendly as anybody else, yet at the same time larger than life. It was not at all what he expected. He’d been on pins and needles going in, and there he stood laughing at the president’s jokes.

Indeed, Berry would have to adjust his expectations constantly during his time at Camp David, which spanned the last six months of Reagan’s presidency and the first two and a half years of George H. W. Bush’s. Originally, when he’d been approached about the job, which he’d never considered, he’d had qualms. In a prior post at the Navy submarine base in La Maddalena, Italy, Berry had had a Seabee in the public works department who had been stationed at Camp David during the Carter administration, and he’d lost a finger in the pin-setting machine at the bowling alley. A machine had jammed while Amy Carter was bowling, and after he cleared it, his wedding ring caught on the frame and tore his ring finger off. He managed not to scream and quickly wrapped his hand; Amy Carter never knew it happened. But it seemed to Berry like a bad omen.

Berry’s wife, Dee, had heard stories from the wives in Thurmont about their husbands working long hours performing tasks like, supposedly, painting grass. “You never want to get orders there,” she told him. But when the appointment looked likely and they talked it over as a family, his fourteen-year-old son, Ken, said, “Dad, why don’t you go for it?” It turned out the family was ready for an adventure. And that’s what they got.

Living on top of a mountain behind security gates is not what you’d call the average family experience. But then, military families are not exactly average. They are extraordinary and patriotic people, inspired and motivated to serve our nation and others, and they all understand that moving a lot and living in accommodations that are not always the best are part of the deal. CO Mike O’Connor, who’d had a previous tour in Japan, where his lodgings had paper windows, thought Cedar was charming: “A beautiful fireplace with unlimited firewood, bucks on the lawn, the president of the United States walking by. Pretty cool.”

Jim Broaddus and his wife, Kay, considered assignment to Camp David during Reagan’s presidency “pretty darn fabulous.” From the outset they vowed to make it a family experience for their two sons, Jeff and Scott, who were in the third and seventh grades. From the time he was six years old, Scott had wanted to become a Marine, and he was thrilled to be living around Marines, who were all very kind to him. (Today Scott is in the Marine Reserve.) Jeff was very athletic and made full use of the camp facilities, playing basketball in the hangar and skateboarding down the paths.

Joe Camp’s two sons, Derek and Joseph Jr. (known as JJ), were seven and four when he became CO, and they also found Cedar to their liking. When they arrived, he asked the boys to make a choice: each boy could have his own room, or they could share a room and have a playroom. They chose to share a room, and Camp said they still talk about how closely they bonded as a result.

Overall, one fact stands out: the COs are camping with the presidents and are in but not of their world.

Being a Cedar kid is a lifelong distinction that most CO offspring come to treasure later. (At least two, one of whom was my daughter Briana, wrote about the experience for their college essays.) But when they’re actually living it, it can be challenging. Kids love normalcy, and many of them are accustomed to being in communities where there are lots of kids to play with and there’s lots of freedom to roam. At Camp David there are many restrictions and a rather complicated schooling scenario.

Each family living inside the bubble deals with schools in different ways. Some homeschool, some use the public-school system off the mountain, and others use private or charter schools. There’s no right answer, only what is best for that family and their children. It’s just one of the many decisions families make every time they relocate.

Michele had researched the area before we moved from Coronado—something she always did for every duty station—so we had a plan going forward. Briana would attend second grade at the local public school, and Ryanne would go to preschool and kindergarten in Thurmont. We later moved Briana to a magnet school in Frederick, Maryland, for third grade, as it was a better fit for her, but getting to school was the real challenge.

We drove Ryanne to preschool or carpooled with other families, but Briana had to catch a bus, a very unusual pickup. As every parent knows, being on time for the school bus can sometimes be a mad race. In our case, it was a little more complicated than that. We drove Briana to the end of the access road in our golf cart, which had to go through the security gate and checkpoints and still arrive on time. If there was snow or freezing rain, it was doubly intense. The school bus stopped at the end of the access road in the park, and all by herself, Briana would step out of the golf cart and get on the bus, appearing through the mist from this wooded place of mystery.

When we missed the bus, which happened due to any number of reasons, I sometimes had to go back to Cedar, transfer Briana from golf cart to car—usually amid tears and anger from her and, often, her mom—and shuttle her off the mountain and down to school. She’d sit in the car sulking, more than once crying plaintively, “Why do we have to live here, Daddy?”

Third grade brought another complication. There was no school bus that came to the camp that could take her directly to her new school in Frederick, so we had to drive Briana to the high school in Thurmont, where she caught a bus to Frederick. On that bus were a few of her classmates but also middle-schoolers and high-schoolers, and we worried about our third-grader riding a bus every day with kids who were more than twice her age. Another link, another complication that added to the fraught nature of our morning routine.

One day early in second grade, Briana’s teacher asked the kids to write a description of their homes. Briana wrote that her home was like living in a zoo—she was fenced in, with the animals on the outside. Not knowing we lived at Camp David and finding the description a bit concerning from a little girl, her teacher asked for a parent conference. Michele went down to the school the next day.

“I think your daughter might have some psychological problems,” the teacher said.

Michele was alarmed. “Why?”

The teacher handed Michele Briana’s paper. Michele laughed. “I think she nailed it,” she said, and then she explained where we lived.

Meanwhile, we were trying our best to make life as normal as possible for our girls. That wasn’t easy because the list of things they couldn’t do far surpassed those they could. They couldn’t have a swing set or use the sandbox that Pop, my father and their grandfather, had made for them years earlier. They couldn’t run around outside the cabin or play in the woods. They couldn’t make noise when the president’s family was visiting. They couldn’t bother the guests; the rule was to speak only when spoken to. When they wanted to have a friend come and play, that child’s family had to endure a background check, which could put a damper on a playdate.

And when it snowed, they couldn’t build a snowman in our front yard—or mess up the snow in any way, for that matter. Our kids absolutely hated snow days because not only were they cut off from their friends due to impassable roads, they couldn’t even frolic in the snow like normal kids. They knew that all their friends were down the mountain sledding and building snowmen. Michele kept pushing me. “Can’t they just play in the snow?”

Finally, one day I gave in. It was supposed to warm up and melt the snow, and we weren’t expecting a presidential visit, so it seemed safe. Michele and the girls had a glorious day sledding near Rosebud and building a snowman. But the next day it did not warm up, and then I heard the Clintons were arriving. I was mad at myself for letting down my guard, and I went out and smoothed the snow and cleaned things up as best I could, still worried. But of course the Clintons never said a word. “See, the world didn’t end!” Michele said. Well, I knew they probably wouldn’t care and might even think I was being overly sensitive, but from my standpoint, it was not proper to have the camp looking messed up like that.

We did discover one oasis of normalcy, though. There was a small, unused cabin close to Cedar that we were allowed to repurpose as a playhouse. The girls named it Sweetgum, and we put a sign up outside, just like the other cabins had. They had a Little Tikes kitchen and an easel for drawing, and they brought dolls and games and spent countless hours there. Briana and Ryanne loved to play school and imagined Sweetgum as their little schoolhouse. Sweetgum survived to be used by at least one other CO’s daughters, but today it has a different use and the Sweetgum sign has been replaced by a marker reading C-6.

The camp has restored C-6 to its 1940s appearance—the interior is complete with a copy of Life magazine and a pack of Lucky Strikes. I’ve seen it several times, and they did a great job. At the Camp David CO and CMCs reunion visit in September 2016, we all took a tour, and when we walked to C-6, the Sailor tour guide gave some history of the cabin, yet she referred to it as Sweetgum in her remarks. Michele and I were very touched and proud—hey, we’re parents too—and we shared the backstory with our kind tour guide.

The girls had brought their hot-pink Barbie jeep from California, and they loved driving it down the path to Hickory, where they would go in, get lollipops, and say, “Put it on our dad’s tab.” The sight of those little girls tooling around in their car was a constant delight for the young Marines stationed there, who often found themselves in the role of big brothers.

When I was serving, the CO’s family was not allowed to have pets, which was a disappointment for my daughters. One day Michele took the girls to the Thurmont fair and they each won a goldfish at one of the games. Bringing the diminutive prizes back to Cedar, however, became a challenge. One of the special traits of the U.S. Marines is that they have absolutes. That’s how things get done, that’s how things remain in order, and at Camp David, when you’re in charge of security for the facility and for the president, there are absolute absolutes! So when Michele tried to bring the fish through the gate, the Marine guard informed her that she couldn’t. “There are no pets allowed,” he reminded her as she stood outside the car.

“They’re just little fish,” she protested. “In a plastic bag—we need to get them in some water.” Each daughter was intently holding her bag, half asleep but suddenly very nervous about what was playing out.

“Sorry, ma’am, no pets,” he repeated.

“It’s our dinner.” She offered the explanation with a straight face but gave a slight smile and subtle nod toward her concerned backseat passengers, and she was relieved when it worked.

“Yes, ma’am, you may get back in your car,” the sentry said, not missing a beat. The goldfish were in!

Nature did provide a real pet for a while; Michele found a turtle with a cracked shell on the grounds and brought it to Cedar. The girls named him Slowy and nursed him back to health, keeping him in an outdoor fenced area near the same side door that our neighbor raccoon had visited the previous autumn. One day Slowy simply ambled off, disappearing into the woods. We speculated that he’d been digging a hole under the fence for quite some time, unobserved. Patience is a well-known virtue of turtles.

My successor, Mike O’Connor, managed to smuggle in two barn cats he got from a local farmer. In his defense, he noted that there was a tremendous mouse and snake problem at Cedar—copperheads! Once the cats were on the premises, that problem ended.

CO Russ Rang, who served under Obama, had a slightly different family experience than the rest of us. He and his wife, Patricia, had four children—Henry, eleven; Lila, nine; Elsa, six; and Anna, four. Russ and Patricia had always homeschooled their kids and continued the practice at Camp David. The sunroom at Cedar became their classroom. “It was like being in an aquarium watching the world go by,” said Rang. Their classroom not only had books but a full view of the First Family and many foreign dignitaries passing by in their golf carts right outside the window. The kids also participated in Scouts and athletics down in Thurmont, but their fondest memories were of being in their sunroom school in the woods.

They reveled in the experience of nature. Elsa discovered a family of rabbits at Sweetgum and named the mother Cocoa, the father Peanut, and the baby Brownie. The children also befriended a bushy red fox—from a slight distance—whom they named David and who strolled by a few times a week. In late summer and early fall, they picked wineberries, roaming through the camp with their buckets, and learned how to recognize poison oak and poison ivy.

On the rare occasions when the president’s children are the same ages as the CO’s children, they can even become playmates. One morning Jo-An Howe was taking a shower at Cedar when she heard a knock on the front door. She hollered to the kids to go see who was there. Nobody went. There was another knock, and she hollered again, but then she realized that the kids were all out playing somewhere, so she put on a robe and went to the front door dripping wet. There stood Jackie Kennedy. Jackie said, “I was just wondering if Polly could come out and play with Caroline.” Before that, Caroline had brought up friends to play with over the weekend, but now Polly became her friend. Caroline had her pony Macaroni there, and the two girls would often ride together.

The children all adored Jackie Kennedy because she treated them so kindly. She would frequently invite Howe’s four kids, Julie, Hank, Polly, and Chip, to have lunch with Caroline and John John at a round table on the Aspen patio. “She talked to us,” recalled Hank Howe. “She wanted to hear what we would say. There were no pretenses. I was stunned because I was thirteen and I was thinking, The First Lady of the United States is being this generous and this genuine. It stuck with me.”

When Bob Reuning was serving as CO during the Obama administration, his daughter Hannah once played with Sasha at a party for camp crew and guests; the two girls were near the same age. “Can I stay overnight at your house?” Sasha asked.

This perfectly natural request gave Reuning pause. “You’d better talk to your dad,” he responded, knowing it was probably not in the cards. The Obamas told Sasha it wasn’t a good idea, and Reuning was a bit relieved because if Sasha stayed, that meant the Secret Service would be there too.

Kids see things from their own perspective. One day Ryanne asked Michele if she could go play with President Bush. Michele naturally said, “Honey, I don’t think you can do that,” to which Ryanne replied, “Well, he said I could come visit any time!”

Wendy Halsey’s daughter, Kate, was eleven when they came to camp, and she was under strict instructions to make sure she gave the Obama girls their privacy and space to play with their friends. For example, if Kate was playing in the game room and Malia and Sasha came in, she was to leave casually but immediately. One day, this occurred, but as Kate was starting to leave, the girls kindly asked if she would like to play with them.

Hank Howe’s friends all lived down the mountain in Thurmont or even farther, and he was allowed to ride his bike through town—to see one particular friend, that was a twelve-mile ride. “I remember being impressed that my parents had enough trust in me to [let me] do that by myself,” he said. “They probably wouldn’t have if they’d known that I rode my three-speed bicycle down the hill at about thirty-five miles an hour with no hands and not touching the brakes for two and a half miles.”

Probably the hardest adjustment for the CO’s family is the security. For one thing, Cedar kids are out in the world every day, and while there is a serious effort to maintain secrecy, everyone knows that kids talk. The idea can make an overly sensitive CO a little bit nervous. Wendy Halsey remembered how on the first day of school she instructed Tucker not to tell people he lived at Camp David—to just say that he lived in military housing. When the school bus pulled up on the road outside the camp, the bus driver exclaimed, “Do you live at Camp David?”

Shooting his mom an uncertain look, Tucker replied, “Maybe.”

In truth, though, as CO John Heckmann observed, it’s kind of hard for kids to disassociate themselves from the camp when they’re being picked up by the school bus right outside its gate. Like other COs, he instructed his daughters, Hannah and Beth, not to tell anyone at school they lived at Camp David. The first day, Hannah came home and said, “We didn’t say anything, Dad, but all the kids on the bus started asking us what it was like to live at Camp David.”

The members of the Marine Security Company, assigned from Marine Barracks Washington, DC, commonly known as “8th & I” (for its location on the corner of Eighth and I Streets), were handpicked, the cream of the crop and extremely professional and committed to their task. That was good news for the president and the crew, and working with them was one of the true pleasures of my time there. But it didn’t always work so well for the children, who could chafe at the high-security atmosphere. Going back and forth to school meant daily wanding and metal-detector checks on the way back in. “Julia knew how to assume the position,” CO O’Connor said of his seven-year-old daughter. Sometimes the extreme security measures could be embarrassing when friends were involved. One day Wendy Halsey’s daughter had a friend visiting and her father was waiting to pick her up, sitting in his car outside the gate, when the police showed up and started to question him. The next day at school a rumor spread that the girl’s father had been arrested picking her up from a playdate.

During the early years of the Reagan administration, the White House kept camp access very tight—perhaps in response to the assassination attempt that occurred early in Reagan’s term. CO Jim Rispoli was frustrated when he was told his eight-year-old daughter, Christina, couldn’t have friends visit unless they were cleared by the White House. He didn’t have authority as commander to clear them himself. This seemed unnecessarily overbearing to him. He went to the White House and argued, “These kids are not a threat.” He got a concession—children ten and under didn’t need White House clearance.

When kids slack off or forget the security routines, they can be in for quite a scare. Hank had been kind of deputized by the Sailors as an honorary Sailor. They gave him a uniform and let him hang out with them occasionally. But one time he was reminded he wasn’t a member of the crew: Caroline and Polly were out riding, and Hank was at the stable with three-year-old John John. Several Secret Service agents were nearby. At one point John John told Hank he had to go to the bathroom. There was a big field house there with a bathroom, so Hank took John John by the hand, walked him the fifty yards or so there, and went inside with him. They were about halfway down the hall when the door burst open and two Secret Service agents came flying through with guns drawn. “I thought my life was over,” said Hank. “I seem to recall one of them diving through the door and rolling on the floor in kind of a tactical mode, and one guy came up to me and in the most powerful voice I’ve ever heard, he shouted, ‘Don’t you ever take John John out of our sight again. Do you understand?’ I thought I’d seen the Lord.”

Mike Berry’s son, Ken, had a similar fright involving security. Soon after the Berrys moved to camp, Ken was returning from a school activity. Typically, he would get a ride up from Thurmont to the access road, where a phone inside a box affixed to a tree allowed him to ring the main gate and get permission from the Marine on duty to advance. But being new to all this security protocol, on this day, he forgot to make the call. As he walked toward the gate, he was suddenly surrounded by Marines with guns drawn screaming, “Freeze! Freeze!” He was scared to death—and it never happened again.

Berry’s daughter, Kristi, twelve, loved to run, and one evening after dark she decided to take a run on the camp’s perimeter, as she had done many times before during the day. Berry, who was at an off-camp social event with his wife, got a call from the first sergeant. “Do you know where your daughter is?” he asked. Berry said she should be home at Cedar. “Could she be running around the perimeter?” Berry replied, “Could be.” Security had picked up her small form where she wasn’t supposed to be, and they brought her home. That didn’t happen again either.

Wendy Halsey’s thirteen-year-old son, Justin, decided to go over to the game room at Hickory one night around nine thirty—without telling his parents. It turned out the Marines were doing exercises in the woods, and Justin came face to face with a very serious Marine with a gun. Terrified, he raced back to Cedar.

I sympathize with Justin because the exact same thing happened to Michele and me. One dark evening we decided we would go to the gym—Wye Oak—for an evening workout, and we left Cedar a few minutes apart, she before me. When I arrived at Wye Oak, I was a bit shaken, in a good way, about the Marine Security Company drill I had inadvertently walked into; I had been promptly ordered, with rifles drawn and pointed, to kiss the asphalt road immediately! Michele had experienced the same ordeal and tried to call me at the house, but I had already departed. We didn’t have cell phones then. A similar incident occurred when Michele’s family was visiting one weekend and young nephew Michael asked Aunt Shelly why there were Marines with guns surrounding the house.

Knowing these drills were taking place, we made some changes. We agreed to notify the security post whenever anyone in our family left Cedar at night, and the Marines would notify us when they were running a drill after working hours.

Michele tried mightily to ease the difficulties of going through the gate, especially the kids’ boredom during long waits. One day, the wait was longer than normal. As always, Michele had packed snacks and drinks as well as toys and coloring books. But as the wait dragged on and the girls became restless, she suddenly cried, “Chinese fire drill!” They flung open the doors and raced around the car. Over the intercom, a voice boomed out, “Get back in the car.” Laughing hysterically, they complied. Relating the story to me, Michele defended her action. “Oh, you only live once. Let the kids have some fun for a minute.” I, of course, was not amused.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the kids in the family who had security issues. Michele’s father, Coach, was quite a character, and one day he drove up for a visit. Having been to camp before, he thought he would be helpful, and he jumped out and put his hands in the air, which was a protocol break because you don’t do anything unless you’re instructed to do it. “Get back in the car,” the Marine said. I was watching this from the other side of the gate, a little bit anxious. But the worst point came when the Marine asked him to open the hood. It was a new car, so he didn’t know how. As he fumbled around, I stood there laughing a little. Fortunately, the accommodating Marine guard and my father-in-law eventually learned where the latch was located, and after that they let him in. Other relatives presented similar security challenges. My mother once drove to the camp with an expired license. And my cousin showed up carrying mace!

The CO’s kids are expected to behave with a maturity beyond their years. At the same time, they observe the children visiting with the president not always doing likewise. Jackie Kennedy made sure her kids behaved themselves, but Commander Howe recalled the sheer chaos that would ensue whenever Bobby Kennedy brought his large brood to the camp. There were eight kids at the time (eventually there would be eleven), but in Howe’s memory it was “like there were sixty-five kids.” They took over the place, wildly climbing over the porches and railings, running through the woods, and generally roughhousing. The crew did its best to handle the situation—mostly concerned that one of the children would get hurt—and fortunately there were no terrible incidents. But Howe’s four children, forced to sit and watch the fun without being allowed to join in, envied the wild abandon Bobby’s kids were allowed.

George and Laura Bush’s twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, were lovely girls but notoriously free-spirited when they were young, and once, just after they celebrated their twenty-first birthdays, they’d planned to join their parents at camp but were late arriving. Bush called O’Connor. “Where are my daughters?”

“They’re in Georgetown, sir, but headed to camp.”

Later, when they still hadn’t arrived, Bush called again. Still no sighting. The girls would not get to camp until very late. Bush was scheduled to fly out at eight a.m. and at the landing zone O’Connor teased, “Where are your daughters, sir?”

Bush started laughing. “When did they arrive?” he asked.

“The log says two a.m., sir.”

“Better than the night before,” he replied.

Children are unfiltered and honest reality checks on our adult pretensions, and this is certainly true of those who live at Camp David and get used to seeing the president strolling or riding by their houses. During the first month at Camp David, every time President Bush rode by Cedar, Julia O’Connor would get up from what she was doing and wave to him. Gradually, though, she got tired of it, and after a while, when she heard him go by, she’d simply raise a limp arm, her eyes fixed on the TV.

In the beginning, Wendy Halsey’s kids loved going to the landing zone to see the president’s helicopter land. Eventually, though, when she said, “Do you want to go to arrival?” they’d shrug indifferently and decline—“We’ve already seen it.” It was much more exciting for them when the president’s dog Bo strayed onto their lawn.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t moments of awe, especially when the kids’ friends are present. Julia had a friend visit once, and they were playing in the swimming pool. After a while, they went to use the bathroom, which was right next to the gym. When they walked out of the bathroom, there was George W. Bush on the treadmill right in their path. Julia’s friend began to stammer something.

“What’s wrong, young lady?” asked the president.

“I’m having trouble getting my words to come out,” she said with wide eyes.

“That’s okay,” the president assured her. “It happens to me all the time.”

Although COs try to stay in the background, I saw early on that this was a place where relationships mattered. I realized that my relationships with the president and the First Family, with their guests, with WHMO and other units, with the crew and families, and with my family were absolutely critical to my success. These relationships take many forms, and the CO must be able to meet everyone’s needs silently and often invisibly. Still, the most memorable times for the CO families and the crew come when the president and First Family make warm overtures that, just for a moment, put all of them on a common human plane.

Lyndon Johnson was well known for terrorizing the crew, but he had a soft spot for Commander John Paul Jones’s two young daughters, who might have reminded him of Lynda and Luci when they were young. He liked to take them to Aspen for ice cream. One morning Jones’s wife, Winkie, was still in her nightgown when the president came walking into Cedar looking for the girls. She was flustered, but he apparently thought nothing of it. And off he and the girls went for ice cream.

Pat Nixon loved CO Dettbarn’s sons, John, eleven, and Jamey, eight. One Halloween she invited the boys to dress up and trick-or-treat at the camp. They dressed up—John as a go-go girl and Jamey as Count Dracula—and knocked on the door of Aspen. Mrs. Nixon greeted them and gave them candy she took from a carved pumpkin by the door. The president even came out to share in the moment. The AP picked up the story, and the next morning the local paper had a headline: “Dracula Visits Nixons.”

One day while the Reagans were at camp, the president’s aide called Mike Berry and said that Jack Kemp had given Reagan a football, and Reagan had brought it with him. “Bring Ken to Aspen,” the aide said. “The president would like to give him the football.” So Berry brought his son to the president, who signed the ball and gave it to Ken. It was a thoughtful gesture.

The Heckmanns were thrilled when George and Laura Bush invited them to dinner at Laurel one evening, along with the chaplain’s family, expressing a desire to get to know them better. It happened to be Beth Heckmann’s seventh birthday, and it was also the birthday of Miss Beazley, the Bushes’ dog. The Laurel culinary crew had made two cakes, one for Beth and one for Miss Beazley. They ate cheeseburgers and cake and enjoyed a wonderful time together.

The simplest gesture can mean so much. President Obama, as I’ve said, made it a practice to spend a few minutes with the family members who came to witness arrivals. These were mostly military families, the spouses and children of those who served at the camp and lived in military housing below. The president would thank them for their service and tell them how important the spouse’s or parent’s job was. The current command master chief, Joe Maioriello, observed, “That single two-minute encounter with the president pays for a year of goodwill. They’ll shovel snow uphill for that. Families never forget it.”

Chelsea Clinton had the same effect on many of the young girls at camp; she would often spend time talking to them after chapel services and was always kind and thoughtful. Briana considered applying to Stanford solely because Chelsea went there.

At the Clintons’ last weekend at Camp David, in 2001, after final thank-yous and farewells at the landing zone on a cold, dark January night, Chelsea, now grown up at twenty, handed me two stuffed animals—a cat and a panda bear. “I brought them to camp eight years ago,” she said, “and I want Briana and Ryanne to have them.” I was touched. It was a very kind gesture by a thoughtful and mature young woman. Thinking about those stuffed animals, I wondered how many happy and sad moments they’d witnessed, how many stories they were told and games they’d played, how many tears they’d absorbed, how many months they sat in quiet solitude waiting for their owner and best friend to appear.

When I walked the First Family to Marine One, I quickly placed the stuffed animals in Golf Cart One, not wanting to hold them while I saluted farewell. It being January, the golf cart had a plastic canopy, but I was in a hurry and didn’t zip the flaps. As the helicopter lifted off, creating a stiff wind, the golf cart flaps blew open and the stuffed animals shot out onto the wet asphalt road. They were rescued by Master Chief Kevin Timmons, who broke ranks to grab them, and after a cleaning by Michele at home, they were good to go. The girls still consider them among their most cherished possessions.

The Clintons were very warm and gracious, the president as charismatic and engaging as so many people have said. When they visited camp, they almost always had guests and didn’t interact with the crew much—it was just their way. The arrival of George W. Bush was a different experience. The first time he came to Camp David, on February 2, 2001, I met him with a salute at the landing zone. He addressed me by name and put his arm around me—a presidential hug! I was taken aback, but I came to see that the Bushes were extremely friendly people, and Bush loved mingling. When he noticed the people who had come to see his arrival, the new president walked through the light, crusty snow and grass to greet them at the flagpole. He shook each person’s hand, asked the children their names, and greeted Michele as well. Our new neighbor was certainly making a good impression, and the first visit for 43 was off to a great start.

The Bushes’ respect and love for Camp David and the crew were always evident. They could even be deferential to the crew, which was a little jarring. One Saturday morning during another visit, I was showering when my Alpha Mate—the pager I always had at the ready—began to vibrate. (Remember, this was 2001 technology.) I hopped out, toweled off, and read the message: Please call Aspen. Oh boy—always worrisome.

I called and Laura Bush answered. “Oh, hello, Mike. Do you think it would be okay if the president’s brother Marvin came up today?”

Did I think it would be okay? Was she asking my permission?

“Of course, Mrs. Bush,” I said. I hung up thinking, That was something. But it’s just the way she was.

Bob Reuning noted that the Obamas were so kind, relaxed, and laid back that he felt it necessary to counsel the crew never to forget that Obama was president of the United States, fearing that “his congenial attitude might cause us to drop our guard.”

ONE CAN’T TALK about living at Camp David without talking about dogs. Although my family wasn’t allowed to have pets, other CO families were. And then, of course, there are the presidents’ dogs—who were the real stars. The saying “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog” strikes a note of truth for those who have labored in the highest office. The quote was long credited to Harry Truman, but there is doubt he ever said it, since he wasn’t a dog lover. Feller, a cocker spaniel given to him as a gift in 1947, was promptly turned over to the White House physician and then exiled to Shangri-La until 1953. The crew would occasionally take Feller to be groomed in Thurmont in case the president wanted to see him, but Truman never asked. Most modern presidents, however, have had a beloved First Dog or Dogs, and inevitably their favorite place to be is Camp David. Reagan’s Cavalier King Charles spaniel Rex loved the camp so much that he could sense in advance when the president was planning a visit. One military aide always knew when the president was headed for Camp David, he said, even before it was announced, because Rex was at the door ready to go. Before Ronald Reagan left office, as a farewell gift, the Camp David crew built Rex a doghouse shaped like the White House and lined it with a piece of carpet from Aspen.

On the last day of his presidency, Reagan invited CO Berry and his family to the Oval Office so he could say farewell. During this visit, Reagan was reminded by his aide Jim Kuhn that it was the Camp David carpenters who had made the White House–shaped doghouse for Rex. Kuhn asked Berry, “Did you cut a hole in the carpet in Aspen?” Hearing this, Reagan gave Berry a surprised look—as if they’d do that! “No, sir,” Berry quickly assured Reagan. “We had some spare carpet.”

I think I can speak for the dogs when I say that the White House was not a particularly friendly habitat for them. The Eisenhowers were forced to banish their Weimaraner Heidi to the Gettysburg farm after she soiled a twenty-thousand-dollar carpet in the Diplomatic Reception Room. And while the Barney Cam made Bush 43’s Scottish terrier a national star, it also exposed his incorrigible nature and the havoc he wrought. Michelle Obama admitted that Bo sometimes made deposits in inconvenient places. All of these acts, one has to assume, were a form of canine protest against the terrible restrictiveness of the environment. Camp David, however, provided room to romp and take frequent walks with their favorite people. For the Obamas’ Portuguese water dogs, Bo and Sunny, Camp David also provided them with some much needed downtime. The dogs were in such demand for public appearances, they had their own official White House schedules.

Being the First Dog confers special status, and that’s why over the years CO families were rarely allowed to have pets. If they did have them, the restrictions were great. CO Howe recalled that some friends of the Kennedys often brought their wirehaired terrier George to the camp, and George was so happy there, the guests gifted him to the Howes. The Howe children were delighted, but then the inevitable happened. The Kennedys had a Welsh terrier, Charlie, and one day the two got into a big fight. After that, whenever the Kennedys were at camp, George was banished to Cedar, relegated to staring longingly out the window as the First Dog had the run of the place.

Nikita Khrushchev gifted Kennedy with a dog: Pushinka, the daughter of Strelka, the dog who had gone into space for the Russians. White House dog watcher Traphes Bryant noted that before she “could be given the run of the place, she had to be checked through security” so they could determine if she was a spy. (She wasn’t.)

President Johnson’s beagles Him and Her were his best-known dogs, thanks in part to a Life magazine photo that showed him picking Him up by the ear, which enraged dog lovers. But the Johnsons had several dogs over the years, including a white collie named Blanco. The dogs made frequent trips to Camp David. After one visit in 1965, Johnson wrote in his diary that Him and Blanco had had a great time, running in the woods, chasing chipmunks, and barking at the sentries. “Where do I go to get a job as a dog?” he wrote.

Checkers was the most famous Nixon dog; he featured in a 1952 scandal. But Checkers died four years before Nixon was elected president. The Nixons were great dog lovers, and when they came to camp, they often brought King Timahoe (an Irish setter named for a hamlet in County Kildare, Ireland, where Nixon’s ancestors were from) and Tricia and Julie’s dogs Vicky (a French poodle) and Pasha (a Yorkshire terrier). At the time, the CO family was allowed to have pets, and the Dettbarns had a Samoyed named Frosty. Frosty, who was large and female, and Pasha, who was small and male, loved each other and would run around camp together. However, Frosty and Vicky did not get along.

During one visit, while Dettbarn was at dinner with the staff, he received an urgent call telling him to report to the medical clinic. He hurried to the sick bay and saw, to his horror, the chief corpsman holding Vicky on the table while the president’s physician stitched her wounds. With a sinking heart, Dettbarn realized what had probably happened, and a call to his wife, Gloria, confirmed his worst fears. Gloria said that Frosty had escaped from Cedar and immediately ran to Aspen, where she knew Vicky would be on the porch. Vicky didn’t stand a chance. Sickened, Dettbarn took hold of Vicky while the doctor finished stitching her up. Then, with the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head, Dettbarn brought her to Aspen, wondering how he would explain the injury to the Nixons. Their valet, Manolo Sanchez, met him at the door. He told Dettbarn to come back in the morning, leaving the worried CO to contemplate his fate overnight.

Dettbarn returned to Aspen the next day and apologized profusely to the Nixon family. The president and the First Lady seemed not to mind, but Tricia was very upset. Vicky had silver hair, yet the new hair that grew back over the wound was jet-black. Dettbarn had a constant reminder—not that he could ever have forgotten—about the nearly career-ending event.

The love between Pasha and Frosty would not be denied. One day the Nixons were aboard Marine One preparing to depart Camp David, and they couldn’t find Pasha. Instant concern and fear swept the First Family and the crew. They searched everywhere, without success. Dettbarn called Gloria and asked her if she had seen the dogs. She looked around inside Cedar and, lo and behold, Pasha and Frosty were curled up together under the TV, sleeping.

Bush 41’s English springer spaniel Millie achieved fame when Barbara Bush wrote a bestselling book about her, Millie’s Book. Bush also used Millie in a campaign ad in 1992. “My dog Millie knows more about foreign affairs than these two bozos,” Bush said, referring to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. But it was Millie’s offspring Ranger who was most beloved by the president. Ranger was a perfect Camp David dog; he loved to prance on the paths and run in the woods. He was a great companion for the very active president.

Mike Berry’s family was allowed to bring Sam, their female black Labrador, to the camp during the Reagan and Bush 41 presidencies. At the beginning of Bush 41’s term, Barbara Bush told Berry’s wife, Dee, “This is Sam’s home. She doesn’t need to be on a leash.” Privately, Berry disagreed. “I know what the First Lady is saying, but Sam needs to be on a leash, just to be safe,” he told his family. However, the Berrys thought it would be okay to take Sam on unleashed walks during the First Family’s mealtimes, when they were in Aspen.

One day, when Dee judged the coast was clear because the First Family was at lunch, she took Sam out without a leash. They were almost home from their walk when the president and Mrs. Bush appeared with Millie. The two dogs went at each other ferociously. From his office window, Berry saw the entire presidential entourage stop in front of Cedar, and he knew immediately this was not good. In fact, there was a full-blown dogfight in the yard. The First Family was calling Millie, and Dee was calling Sam, but neither dog was paying any attention. Finally, Dee dived on top of Sam and held her down while the Bushes pulled Millie away.

The Berrys didn’t hear more about it until the next morning after church, when Mrs. Bush said to Dee, “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

“Yes,” Dee replied, “and yesterday was beautiful too.”

“Oh, you would know about that, wouldn’t you?” Mrs. Bush replied jokingly with a gleam in her eye. After that, there were no further unleashed walks and no further problems between Sam and Millie. A couple of months later, before Sam delivered a litter of nine puppies, the First Lady had Millie’s whelping box sent up from the White House.

One afternoon she and Laura Bush came by to see the new puppies. They stood around talking puppies with Dee for a while in a neighborly fashion, and Sam was perfectly well behaved. But as Laura and Barbara Bush turned to leave, Sam spotted a man at the end of the driveway and barked at him. It was a Secret Service agent. “That’s okay,” said Barbara Bush. “Sam can eat him if she wants to.”

For those COs who brought dogs to the camp, it was always a little nerve-racking—and not just because they might get into a tussle with the presidential dog. Russ Rang’s family brought a rescue dog, Winnie, a Catahoula leopard hound, to the camp five months into the tour, and once during a visit, they needed to take her down the mountain to the vet. Rang knew that during presidential visits, the Secret Service canine patrol was at the gate, and he worried about what would happen when Winnie encountered the Secret Service’s German shepherd. Fortunately, the trip through the gate was uneventful.

Bill Clinton’s chocolate Lab Buddy was a loyal and good-natured dog, and one reason he loved Camp David was that it put some distance between him and Socks the cat, with whom he feuded at the White House. Or, to be accurate, Socks, who had been there first, feuded with Buddy. Camp David being Socks-free, Buddy was in his element. I can remember how happy he always looked bounding down the steps of Marine One. Occasionally he would roam unleashed. My daughter Ryanne still remembers the day Buddy came bounding onto the deck of the staff pool and licked her face with his big tongue as she was contentedly asleep on a lounge chair. She wasn’t amused at the time.

Buddy often spent much of the day and the night in Chestnut with our duty section, and Michele would occasionally retrieve him from the post and bring him over to Cedar to play with the girls. One time around the holidays, Buddy was inside Cedar and Briana and Ryanne weren’t paying close enough attention. They quickly realized that he had wandered into the next room and started munching on the elaborate gingerbread house the girls had made the week before. “He’s eating our house!” the girls cried, and Michele rushed in to drag him away.

Buddy achieved national fame with the publication of Mrs. Clinton’s book Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets —although Socks got top billing. The letters were culled from the thousands that poured in from children across the nation. “Do you have a best friend?” one child asked Buddy. Mrs. Clinton replied, “While the President is our dog’s No. 1 buddy, he has many friends—most of them people.”

Barney, Bush 43’s Scottish terrier, was lovable and beloved by Americans, but he was like a naughty child. Barney’s goal in life was to escape restrictions. When the Bushes were at Camp David, the crew grew accustomed to hearing the president’s loud cries echoing through the trees—“Barney! Barney!”—as Barney yet again disappeared to chase a chipmunk down a hole.

Barney was always with the president, his master, and many photos show Bush holding him as he came off of or prepared to get on Marine One. One Sunday morning, Laura Bush was walking Barney before services in Evergreen Chapel, and when they passed our home, Barney made a beeline for the kitchen door and darted inside. He scampered through the house, delighting the girls but leaving tiny muddy paw prints on the carpet, as it had rained the night before. Mrs. Bush was mortified; Briana and Ryanne were electrified.

Barney was very territorial, and he bristled if there was another dog around, but there was one exception—his “niece” Miss Beazley, a Scottish terrier puppy that the president had given the First Lady as a birthday gift in 2004. Barney and Miss Beazley were adorable together, featured on White House Christmas cards and in home movies. Barney was also okay with Spottie, a springer spaniel who was one of Millie’s offspring, an extremely well-behaved dog. Vladimir Putin was surely correct when he bragged during Bush’s presidency that his dogs were “tougher, stronger, meaner” than the president’s.

When Bob Reuning was offered the job of Camp David commander, he thought he might have to decline. The Bushes were clear about not wanting staff to have dogs because of Barney and Miss Beazley. The Reunings had two dogs, a golden retriever named Maddie and a miniature dachshund named Daisy. They had been unable to find a temporary home for the dogs, so Reuning told Rear Admiral Mark Fox, director of WHMO, about the dilemma.

Fox called him in: “Are you confident you can keep the dogs away from the Bush dogs?”

“Yes, sir.” So the Bushes agreed to let him keep the dogs and there was never a single incident. They were locked up tight when the Bushes were at camp.

Vice president Dick Cheney learned firsthand that it was unwise to introduce a competing dog at the camp. A confrontation between Barney and Cheney’s yellow Labrador Dave sealed the latter’s fate. It occurred at Laurel when Cheney brought Dave along to breakfast one morning. Unfortunately, Barney was already in the room, and according to Cheney, a “hot chase” ensued. Arriving in the midst of the bedlam, President Bush demanded, “What’s going on here?” Cheney took hold of Dave, calmed him with a pastry from the table, and took him back to his cabin. Soon after, he was informed that Dave had been banned from Laurel—presumably on the order of the president.

The president no doubt let Barney get away with his shenanigans largely because of the vital role he played in his life. “Barney was by my side during our eight years in the White House,” Bush said. “He never discussed politics and was always a faithful friend.” That’s pretty good company.