Something to Write Home About: A Presidential Diarist Remembers
By Janis F. KearneyI was like most Americans. I had a good idea what the White House looked like. I’d seen pictures from textbooks and magazines, as well as countless images from television. Yet, nothing prepared me for reality. It wasn’t until January, 20, 1993, that I learned what it meant to come face to face with the President’s House.
I was 39 years old, and this moment dredged up 30-year old emotions. At nine years old, I felt the presence of God in my life…realized, that even in my small, inconsequential world, God was there. Nothing close to that feeling had presented itself to me before January 20, 1993. (Not that my parents hadn’t lived and taught religion all my life…I had to see it with my eyes and heart, to understand).
In many ways, this bright, chillingly cold January day would be the first day of the rest of my life...and, the last day of the life I’d known before. I stood, on January 20th, outside the northwest gates in a long line with other white house aides-to-be. The line was full of bright, young faces—mostly white, mostly years younger than me. A few dark faces were interspersed through the line.
As I finally moved toward the white house entrance I looked back at the mess still roiling at the northwest gate. The white house guards—some of whom I would get to know by first name, in the coming years—worked quickly, methodically, to identify the new staff, and clear us all in as close to noon as possible. I was one of the lucky ones already in the white house’s data system. A young guard scanned the computer for my name. He looked up at my face, nodded, and handed over the chain with the blue pass attached. “Come through these gates,” he directed, then buzzed me in. Sighing with relief, I left behind the population of temporarily “un-cleared”.
Inside the gates, at last, I stopped; taking in what I claimed as partly mine for the next eight years. As others walked ahead, I knew I was experiencing something different, something more. I needed to savor this moment, to capture it. Within my first few months in Washington, D.C., I depended on that moment, and that picture more than I’d admit to anyone. If it had been paper, it would have grown tattered and bent from use. I was a long way from home, and I needed that moment to remind me of just how much I had gained in exchange for what I’d left behind.