Clarke - My First Ladies

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eISBN: 978-1-4162-0693-4

Unless otherwise credited, all front cover, interior, and back cover photos courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the George Bush Presidential Library, the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, the George W. Bush Presidential Library, the White House Historical Association, or the White House Photo Office.

My First Ladies copyright 2011 Nancy Clarke. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American copyright Conventions. By Payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form, by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of Sellers Publishing, Inc. e-books.

September 2011

Dedication

To Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama, who each shared a small part of their lives with me while they served our country as wonderful first ladies.

To the Residence staff of the White House, unsung heroes whose mission is to make a home for the president and his family, and to keep the White House in its glory.

And to my family, whose love and understanding made it possible for me to work at the White House for thirty years.

I have loved flowers since the first day I saw my grandfathers garden. When I was growing up in Illinois, we didnt have much money, and we had to occupy ourselves with activities that didnt cost anything, like playing in our grandparents yard. This was one of my favorite things to do. My grandfather was a professional gardener who maintained estate gardens, and he made his own yard beautiful, too, filling it with many colors and varieties of flowers.

We lived with my grandparents for a few years, and then moved half a block away, so I spent a lot of time in that yard sometimes just looking at the blossoms, but more often picking the flower heads off the stems and squeezing snow berries to make them pop. Nancy! Get out of those flower beds! was my grandfathers constant refrain. When that didnt work, he tried to explain (Dont pick the flowers off the stems, because they need to finish growing) or bargain with me (You can water the flowers if you stay out of the flower beds). I loved watering the flowers, but I didnt stay out of his flower beds, which meant I would be temporarily banished from the yard. And then Id sneak into other peoples yards to play with their flowers, which always prompted a phone call to my mother. Eventually, I learned to stop destroying the flowers and to start caring for them almost as lovingly as my grandfather did.

My grandmother loved their flowers, but she wasnt as worried about my exploits in the garden. She was a seamstress who could sew the most exquisite things, from winter coats to wedding gowns, and she instilled in me a love of creativity. I think I got some of my artistic sensibilities from her. (When I was in grade school, I used to win a lot of little art contests and I like to think that many of the flower arrangements I made for the White House were temporary works of art, too!)

I didnt pursue floral work or anything artistic early on in my career, though. When I left Bradley University (which was located in Peoria, where I grew up), I took a job as a flight attendant with United Airlines. I knew there was a whole world out there that I hadnt seen yet and I wanted to start traveling and meeting new people. But in the back of my mind I still thought about flowers, and creating things. I moved to New York City for my first flight attendant assignment, and then I was transferred to San Francisco. I loved this job because I got to see every major city in the United States.

My travel came to a halt, though, soon after I met a handsome man in the U.S. Air Force test pilot school named Michael Clarke. We dated for five months and were married in November 1967, at which point I had to quit flying because back then flight attendants couldnt be married. It was difficult at first to give up my traveling career and to move far away from city life, but of course it was worth it to be with my husband.

We lived at Edwards Air Force Base, about seventy miles from Los Angeles, and I frequently drove to the L.A. flower market to buy flowers for our home. I didnt know a thing about floral design then I just knew I liked flowers that looked pretty, smelled good, and had lots of petals. Some of my favorites were peonies, roses, and snapdragons.

After test pilot school, my husband was transferred to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I continued to experiment with flower arranging in my spare time, although I still didnt think I was doing it quite right. I also worked as a receptionist until our son, Chris, was born in December 1969. We moved to Montgomery, Alabama for a year, and then during the summer of 1971 we moved to Dayton, Ohio, where our daughter, Suzanne, was born in October. In Dayton, I started to play with flower designing more, and I began giving arrangements away to friends because how many flower arrangements does one house need? It was fun to design things for other people, who seemed to like what I was making.

The Vietnam War was still going on, and when it was my husbands turn to go in 1974, he was stationed in Thailand to fly in Vietnam. I moved back to Illinois with my children to live with my mother, who was now alone because my father had recently died. I tried to get a job, even a part-time job, in a flower shop there, but no one would hire me because I didnt have any professional experience. Instead, I worked for a temporary employment agency and had an odd assortment of administrative jobs. At last the war ended, my husband returned, and we moved back to Dayton. I decided it was finally time for me to turn my flower arranging hobby into something more than a pastime, so I signed up for an adult night school class in home floral design. The teacher of the class owned a flower shop. If you come to work for me, she told me when the class ended, Ill teach you how to be a florist.

That sounded like a great idea to me, so I took a part-time job with her. She taught me a lot of basic designing, but I felt I needed more. While working in her shop, I learned that one of the top floral design schools in the United States Hixsons School of Floral Design happened to be located in Ohio, in the Cleveland area. Although it was three hours away, I knew immediately that I wanted to go.

Michael, I need you to stay with the kids for three weeks while I go to school, I announced to my husband one night in the spring of 1977. I am going to floral design school in Cleveland.

He looked at me like I was nuts and asked, Cant you find a school in Dayton? Of course I could have, but I explained that this was one of the best schools in the country, and there was nothing like it nearby. He always supported my crazy ideas, and the craft projects I came up with but never got around to finishing, and he was supportive again this time. Okay, he said. Go for it. So I did. Chris was seven years old at the time and Suzanne was six, and neither of them knew quite why Mommy was leaving for a while, but it was just a few weeks, and they got over it pretty quickly. I lined up a sitter for them every day from the time that school ended until my husband got home, and off I went.