Book Excerpt: 'The Residence' by Kate Andersen Brower

— -- Excerpted from THE RESIDENCE by Kate Andersen Brower by arrangement with Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Copyright © Kate Andersen Brower 2015

Introduction

Living in the White House is like being on the stage, where tragedies and comedies play alternately. And we, the servants of the White House, are the supporting cast.—Lillian Rogers Parks, White House maid and seamstress, 1929–1961, My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House

Preston Bruce was sitting in his Washington, D.C., kitchen with his wife, listening to the radio and having lunch—the one meal they ate together every day—when an announcer interrupted with an urgent message: the president has been shot.

He jumped up from his chair, cracking his knee on the table and sending dishes crashing to the floor. A minute or so later came another announcement, the voice even shriller: The president has been shot. It has been verified that he has been shot. His condition is unknown.

This can’t be happening, thought Bruce. He threw on his coat, forgetting his hat on the brisk November day, and jumped in his car, tearing out of the driveway. His wife, Virginia, was left behind standing in their kitchen, shell-shocked amid the shards of broken dishes lying on the floor.

The normally unflappable Bruce was weaving through downtown traffic at fifty-five miles an hour—“I didn’t realize how fast I was going,” he would say later—when he suddenly heard a police siren blaring behind him. An officer on a motorcycle pulled up alongside him at Sixteenth Street and Columbia Road, jumped off his bike, and walked over to the driver’s door.

“What’s the hurry?” He was in no mood for excuses.

“Officer, I work at the White House,” Bruce said breathlessly. “The president has been shot.”

A stunned pause followed. Not everyone had heard the devastating news. “C’mon,” the startled officer said, jumping back onto his motorcycle. “Follow me!” Bruce got his own police escort to the southwest gate of the White House that day.Most Americans who were alive in 1963 remember exactly where they were when they learned that President Kennedy had been shot. For Bruce, though, the news had a special impact: Kennedy wasn’t only the president, but he was also his boss, and—more important—his friend. Preston Bruce was the doorman at the White House, and a beloved member of the staff. Just the morning before, he had escorted the president, the first lady, and their son, John-John, to the marine helicopter on the South Lawn, which would carry them to Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base. From there the Kennedys would leave for their fateful two-day, five-city campaign tour of Texas. (John-John, who was just four days shy of his third birthday, loved helicopter rides with his parents. He went only as far as Andrews; when he was told he couldn’t accompany his mother and father all the way to Dallas, he sobbed. It was the last time he would ever see his father.)

“I’m leaving you in charge of everything here,” President Kennedy shouted to Bruce, above the whir of the helicopter’s engines on the South Lawn. “You run things to suit yourself.”