White House Staff Ready for Move

Monday, December 4th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) â€” On Inauguration Day, in a frenzied but carefully choreographed four hours, Bill and Hillary Clinton and their household goods down to toothbrushes will be moved out of the White House.

As the inaugural parade rolls by outside, a new presidential family will be moved in, right up to stocking the pantry with their favorite foods and snacks.

Standing at the intersection of incoming and outgoing streams of furniture and crates, watching as teams of workers empty closets of one president's pinstripes and fill them with another's, will be Gary Walters, a 30-year White House veteran whose title of chief usher is an inheritance from the 19th century.

The move is wrenching for all concerned and Walters, 53, has commonsense rules, starting with the obvious ``Don't panic!'' and ending with the catchall, ``Be prepared for anything!''

This year's move is made more difficult by the long uncertainty over the identity of the new president.

But the chief usher's rules decree that even in this chaotic political season the staff is ``blind to politics.''

Emotional farewells, however, are OK â€” even expected.

``The emotional strain cannot be exaggerated; this staff has literally lived with the outgoing family for four to eight years,'' Walters said.

By late afternoon, when the new first couple walk from the inaugural reviewing stand on Pennsylvania Avenue, Walters will be waiting at the North Portico.

He is the mainspring of the professional staff that makes the White House a precision instrument for the president and first lady who live there.

Both a big-picture and a detail person, Walters manages a historic house that is at once national symbol, presidential office, ceremonial arena, family home and a museum filled with treasures viewed by more than a million people a year.

At a recent conference on White House history, former presidential press secretary Marlon Fitzwater described him this way:

``If you have to wake the president and tell him Iraq has fired a Scud missile at Israel, you call Gary Walters. If you want to know where they put Gorbachev's coat, you call Gary Walters. And if you want to know if the president is awake and in a bad mood, you call Gary Walters.

``And by the way,'' Fitzwater added, ``he will tell you if the president is awake, but he won't tell you about the president's mood. He's a man who keeps confidences.''

Walters is just the latest keeper of presidential confidences in a 200-year-old tradition that began when John Briesler, President John Adams' chief steward, arrived in the fall of 1800 to make the cold and barnlike house a home.

Inauguration Day is the supreme test. ``There is no more complex or demanding time,'' Walters said at the conference, sponsored by the White House Historical Association.

He explained that regardless of the outcome of this or any election the staff remains loyal and committed to the comfort of the outgoing first family until noon on Inauguration Day.

But after that is rule is, ``We will adopt the new family's routine, and not the other way around.''

The move begins when the new and old first families leave together for the Capitol, shortly before noon on Jan. 20.

Pre-positioned moving vans move up to the South Portico. Teams of workers move furniture and boxes in â€” and out. Upstairs there are packers and unpackers. Teams of ``placers'' position new furniture and hang clothes in newly emptied closets.

The two aims, Walters said, are that ``the departing family be as much at home on inaugural morning as is humanly possible'' and that ``the new first family comes into a White House which has been transformed into their home.''

That means ``their clothes in the closets, not in boxes,'' he said. ``Their furniture in the place they have designated and even their favorite foods and snacks in the pantry.''

One of the most important activities of the day, Walters said, is the preparation of an inventory of everything the new first family brings to the White House with them.

``We need to know what they bring with them so that when they depart they take everything that belongs to them and nothing that belongs to the government,'' Walters said.

It all has to be done in four hours.

``I get to answer all the questions and be a kind of traffic cop,'' Walters said.

``Eight years ago this was an amazing feat,'' he said. ``I had lost my voice to laryngitis and had to write everything on a pad of paper.''

â€”â€”â€”

EDITOR'S NOTE â€” Lawrence L. Knutson has covered the White House, Congress and Washington's history for more than 30 years.