I guess I have the notoriety of being the youngest first lady. Mona Locke was just
slightly older when she came to the Mansion than I had been.
In addition to having my mother with us at the mansion, we also had a wonderful
woman who babysat the children when my mother was busy, which she was a lot. She
was nicknamed Lolo and often came to Seattle with us for concerts and what have
you. She had been a sitter for Sally and Slade Gordon as well when they were down
in Olympia for the legislative session. Lolo gave our oldest son a cat called Boots.
Now I’m not a cat lover, but I put up with the cat. Well of course, Boots had kittens
from some friend of hers in the neighborhood. So, we had a couple of cats.
We also had a dog-- a very unusual dog-- in that she was an Irish wolfhound, the
biggest breed of dogs there is. Her name was Peggy. She was given to us by a gentleman
who was head of Pacific Northwest Bell. He was being moved back to the head office
in New York. He had this Irish wolfhound. We were friends, and he said, “Would you
like to have our dog?
We said, “Well, that sounds interesting.” I remember we went out to their house
to meet Peggy. He showed us a yardstick. He would measure her every week at the
shoulder. In one week, she grew two or three inches. Peggy was still a pup-- about
a year old. She was just the most lovable, wonderful dog. We all talk about her
still, and we have such fond memories.
She became quite a character at the mansion because she liked to greet everybody,
and she was so large. You know, she came up to my waist. In fact, I can remember
when she was still younger and I was pregnant with Bruce. She came and stood with
her front paws on my shoulders licking me in the face. We were very close. People
would say, “How is Dan? How is your mother? How are the children?” “How is Peggy?”
For some people, I’m sure she was a nuisance. Sometimes she would go out into the
neighborhood and have meetings with other dogs. So we tried to keep her around the
yard. She was very gentle and very loving and would try to sit in my lap when I
sat down. She would, of course, take over the chair. She was very much a part of
our lives for our twelve years in Olympia.
We also had two turkeys. We woke up one morning in the fall, probably in November,
and in the backyard we heard these “gobble gobble gobbles”. Somebody, a friend,
(we know who it was) had brought two turkeys to put in the little cage we had in
the back. We also had bunnies there. We had a lot of animals. The two turkeys we
got rid of pretty quickly. Then, of course, we had the gerbils that everybody has.
And Mother had tropical fish in a tank that she loved and the boys loved to watch.
Yes, we had a lot of animals.
When they first went down to Olympia, we found a preschool where our oldest son,
who we called Danny who was four. Mark, of course, was still too young. After preschool,
the boys went to Lincoln grade school—the neighborhood school within walking distance.
which is within walking distance. The boys could walk to grade school.
I volunteered at the school when I could. My schedule did not allow me to be there
on a regular basis. But I used to play the piano for the Christmas programs. I was
a music major and piano major in college. We also helped out with the Boy Scout
or Cub Scout groups. And we’d have the Christmas parties at the mansion for the
Cub Scouts. We did a lot of the school activities.
And we had a beautiful tree house. Dan and the boys built it. It was in an old,
marvelous tree with an enormous trunk that had a lovely fork about ten feet up.
It was just a logical place to put a tree house. However, it turned out to be a
very expensive tree house. They were all out there (the Governor and the three boys)
every weekend, week after week, building this thing. It was one story high with
a doorway and as well as a ladder. You could climb up the ladder through the trapdoor.
Or you could climb up the tree and go in the doorway. When it was very new, ( they
may have still been working on it), our son Mark, who at that time was about four,
fell through the trapdoor and all the way down. Hit the ground and cracked his head
open.
We dashed, as usual, to the hospital emergency room, which we did a number of times
with the boys. It turned out to be very expensive, because he actually had some
ensuing difficulties for a period of time. The difficulties fortunately went away
with time. But not before a few trips to Children’s Hospital in Seattle.
But the boys spent a lot of time in that tree house. Eventually it was removed by
somebody who followed us. I was sorry to see it go.
Also outside, in the back, when Governor and Mrs. Langlie lived there during World
War Two, they had what they called a Victory Garden. That’s what people did during
the war to help out. They grew their own vegetables.
It was just a rectangular area but we decided we would like to have our garden.
We planted a lot of vegetables--zucchinis and tomatoes. I remember we had a wonderful
recipe for zucchini soup, and we would freeze the base of it. We had so many zucchinis
coming so rapidly-- like people always do. You can only make so much zucchini bread
and eat so much zucchini soup. But when people came to lunch, they very often had
zucchini soup.
We eventually took that garden out and we made it into a pickleball court-- a court
sport played with a net and paddles and whiffle balls. We actually installed lights
so we could play at night. The beauty of the game is that anyone can play it. Maybe
not really well, but you don’t need to be really athletic. And it’s played in a
fairly small space. It can be very athletic and very demanding once you become very
good. So we would have people over and play on nice warm evenings in Olympia. We
enjoyed it a lot.
Inside the house, in the original mansion (before the additions were put on), my
favorite room was probably the library. It was small, intimate, quiet, and full
of books. We loved books. Many of them had been there previously, and we added to
the collection. Of course, later on, when the Mansion Foundation began, we received
a huge collection of books. I wasn’t able to sit in there for very long or very
often.
After the adding on, I loved the new family living room. I thought it, too, was
a very peaceful, quiet, lovely room. The big Palladian window at the end is something
that actually I had suggested. We had seen them in palaces and fine homes in Europe.
In our own living room today, we have a very small Palladian window. I just like
that look, and I think it adds a lot to the room--brings a lot of light in.
At the mansion, the tradition had been, for years preceding us, to have a live-in
housekeeper and live-in cook. So, that’s what we had. One of the people we loved
the most, Lerna Leidy. She had been the housekeeper for the Langlies. But at that
time, they called her an upstairs maid. She had been there through the Rosellinis.
When we got there, she was maybe in her mid-seventies. She was just the loveliest,
most wonderful woman. And I think that she grew to love our family, as she had the
other families she had worked with.
We had a number of cooks over the years. Dan once suggested I should write a book
called The Cooks I Have Known, because we had a variety of them. We couldn’t pay
them all that much. The budget was way too small. So living there in the mansion
was part of their pay--their board and room. That’s now changed. I think that was
a very good move. But at the time, I was maybe too young and too many other things
going on, but I just didn’t do anything about that.
We had a cook named Elsie who was with us for a number of years. She was a wonderful
baker. She made the most wonderful birthday cakes for all the children in different
shapes from football fields to animals. The kids always looked forward to her birthday
cakes. We were blessed with some wonderful help over the years. And then along the
way came a few sort of quirky people who were with us for a time—usually a brief
time.
I like to cook, and my mother was a good cook, too. But with young children, it
was very difficult, because there was a lot of space between the kitchen and the
dining room. At that time there was the big state dining room, and there was a tiny
little butler’s pantry with a little round table. When we ate in the dining room,
it wasn’t what you’d call close family surroundings.
I don’t know that I would have liked to live in the mansion without children. They
enlivened it so and made it into a home. We worked very hard at that. The children
were encouraged to always bring their friends home. We had a lot of things that
went on in our house.
We also had a lot of Cub Scout Christmas parties. And the ballroom, obviously, became
a place for all sorts of tricycles and tracks for cars and all that sort of thing.
Christmas was great, because we had all of our brothers and sisters and their children.
So all the cousins would come and stay with us for several days. And it was wild.
Originally, I had no secretarial staff to assist me. Then I had a woman come over
from the Governor’s Office for about an hour or two twice a week. And that was all
I had for a long time. I realized that things had expanded in such a way, and I
had been doing more things in the community and bringing more groups into the mansion,
that I had to have some help. So I hired a part-time secretary who was wonderful.
She was with me for many years. But there was no office for me. And her office became
one of the cloakrooms by the front door. I think it is still the office. So we got
her a desk. That was pre-computer days, so she needed a typewriter. It was pretty
primitive. Although hired as a part-time employee, I think she always worked more
hours than what she was compensated for.
I also enjoy remembering the music in the mansion. I had brought a parlor grand
piano when we moved there. It’s smaller than a grand piano. That was originally
in the drawing room. Then we put it into the ballroom. So we were able, with that
piano, to have various music groups perform. I think we had the Seattle Opera down
once every season. They would bring four or five singers and a pianist. We would
invite people in.
The performers were fun, and very entertaining. It was also lovely music. They would
ham it up a bit for us. That got us into having sort of formal music events.
Several of us were involved in starting what was called The Governor’s Festival
for the Arts. Lud Kramer, who was then the Secretary of the State, was the real
mover on that. I was quite involved as well trying to set up a season of various
people coming in and performing in Olympia. We usually had to get people who were
on their way to Seattle or Portland to perform. Olympia was generally a destination
place. So that’s how we found people to come perform. One of the ones I remember
very well was Victor Borge, who was extremely entertaining. He was the Danish pianist
who had such fun playing the piano. He had a wonderful sense of humor. Each season
we had four or five concerts in the local theater there. We had wonderful turnouts.
Then we would have a reception afterwards at the mansion. And Victor Borge came
out to the mansion.
We also had Pearl Bailey, an African American singer with a wonderful voice and
a great sense of humor. This series was very successful for a time and brought a
lot of notoriety to Olympia. But, it just died a natural death.
During that time, there was talk of the demolition of the mansion—of it being torn
down. I found out through a reporter it was being discussed at the Capitol Committee.
And the Capitol Committee was a three-person, committee that decided the direction
of building on the campus. And it was the governor, lieutenant governor, and the
commissioner of public lands. The commissioner of public lands at that time thought
the mansion should be torn down, and the building that should replaced with an office
building identical to the building on the other side of the Capitol. That’s what
the original plan for the Capitol was. The ground would be leveled.
So at any rate, the committee had a vote, and it didn’t pass because the other two
wanted to keep the mansion--my husband and the lieutenant governor at the time.
But this persisted. It was thought of as an old home, if you can call sixty years
old.
The problem was that there had never been really good maintenance of the mansion
because it became a political thing as opposed to just a straight government maintenance
project. The legislature wouldn’t allot funds for any major capital output and major
necessary maintenance. So the mansion had a lot of functional problems like heat.
And there were the plumbing problems. The house just needed upgrading in so many
ways
After I moved there, I realized many of the townspeople would say, “I’ve never been
to the governor’s mansion.” So I’d say, “Well, we have to get you there.” I opened
up the mansion, and we had teas during the legislative session every Wednesday for
people in the community. These were people involved in the Lion’s Club or the Rotary
or local government. Elected officials, service clubs, whatever. We got a lot of
people.
Then I thought, well, I think we should have tours. So we organized a group of docents.
Originally, I did all of the touring myself, before there were docents. I remember
once when we had the docent program in place, we got busloads of people from retirement
homes around the area. One group was down from Seattle. They arrived at the mansion,
and they all had to go to the bathroom. All thirty-five or forty of them on the
bus. There was one public bathroom on the first floor. That’s it. I would tell people
“There’s one back there.” They didn’t care. They were all over that house looking
for a bathroom. These were elderly people, and they had an urgent need. There was
not a thing we could do, and I understood.
It was a variety of things that led to the next steps of what was needed. First,
get the Capitol work done. And that had to be paid for by the State -- additions
or whatever—yet to be determined. But the first effort Dan made to get money in
the legislature failed. Actually it was a wonderful plan, but it failed. It became
so political. Dan just felt he had to back off of it for awhile. Actually, the second
try was the one that succeeded.
The State was going to take care of the heat and the lighting and the construction
that would provide more restrooms and all those things. But they were not going
to buy the furniture that’s necessary here, the furnishings. That’s when I sort
of came up with the idea of forming a foundation.
It was a wonderful learning experience for me. The first thing I had to do was figure
out exactly what it was we wanted to accomplish. So I sought some professional help.
I talked to several people--a good friend who ran a gallery in Seattle as well as
others about who would they suggest for as a designer. This was quite a while before
the foundation was formed. They all came up with the same name, Jean Jongeward.
She became the designer who helped us with the furnishings and selections. The boys’
rooms had been the first thing she looked at. One son’s bedroom had been Mrs. Martin’s,
bedroom in the ‘30s. By that time, it had very faded pink brocade and flower painted
furniture. We decided it was time to become a little boy’s room. One of the other
bedrooms on the other end had been definitely a girl’s bedroom. Jean helped us with
those things.
I needed to know what time period of furnishings we should be looking for. Architects
and various people helped me with getting the ideas together. Then we needed to
form an organization. We had some legal help. That’s when somebody suggested Lorraine
Gandy to me, Mrs. Joseph Gandy, Seattle, a recent widow. Her husband had fairly
recently died. She had been very active in a number of things as had her husband.
He was one of the starters of the world’s fair in Seattle (1962), a very well known
businessman. Mrs. Gandy was a very wonderful person with wonderful taste.
I went up to meet her and asked her if she would be the chairman and help to get
it organized. She was delightful, but said she had to think about it. But she finally
said she would like to do that. She worked very hard. It was a lot of work for both
of us in the initial stages. We went around to various communities, getting a group
of people, friends mostly, together. They would help us organize people from their
community to become members of the foundation. That was the original work. We needed
to get people, mostly women and some men, involved in just being on a foundation.
And we established through Jean’s help what style of furniture we were looking for,
and on and on.
Right away, I was being offered things. Everywhere I went, somebody would say, “Well
I have Aunt Sophie’s tablecloth that would just be perfect.” I knew I did not want
to be the one who would say yes or no. I also knew that there had to be guidelines.
So it was very important that we form what we called the Acceptance Committee. It
was a three-person group. It was headed a woman who had been the buyer for the Old
World shop in the old Frederick and Nelson department store. The Old World shop
was a part of Frederick and Nelson where they sold antique furniture, lamps, dishes,
things of that nature. Furnishings. And so she had this great knowledge and she
had retired from that job.
When people would offer me things, I’d say, “I can’t accept it. But send me a picture
and we’ll give it, whatever, give it to the committee.” Through that process, we
did receive a number of things that are still in the mansion and quite lovely. Everybody
was so generous. It was wonderful that they were willing to offer these things.
But some things just weren’t appropriate. We had to sort of depoliticize it, and
it had to be some experts who can make the judgments.
Then we needed money. So Lorraine and I actually made several trips around the State.
Driving from here, hither to yon, we’d get these women who we had known, and they
would set up teas, lunches, whatever, and bring people in. We would give what I
called our “dog and pony” show. We would talk about what we were trying to do and
show drawings of what we had hoped to achieve and to acquire, and how it would be
operated, and on and on. They, then in turn, gave fundraising parties, events, in
their communities around the state and would raise money. We had annual meetings,
we still do, in the mansion. So they would all come together and share what they
had done during the year and go out and do some more the next year.
And then we had some nice big gifts that came along. One was a lovely Seymour demi-lune
server in the entryway sort of of the mansion. That was a complete surprise gift
from New England. And it just built and built and built until more and more people
were aware of what we were trying to do and why we were trying to do it.
I learned a lot of things about how to start a foundation. I learned about furniture,
somewhat. I’m no expert at all, but it was good for me to understand the differences
between early eighteenth and late eighteenth, early nineteenth century, and the
British, the French, the American and all that. It was fun.
We also did make it important to separate the private areas from the public areas.
Although, with the foundation they have overlapped a little bit, nevertheless the
private rooms, the living room and the family dining rooms, are the private rooms,
and the foundation really has no say on what goes on in those rooms, or they shouldn’t.
During our time in the mansion, we had visits from a number of dignitaries. Early
on, we had kept this close association with Japan, which had been started, actually,
by Governor Rosellini. We went to Japan several times to establish the contacts
and relationship between our state and the Hyogo prefecture. And then they would
come and visit us as well. So we had a number of Japanese governors.
We had one big group of just Japanese governors. I remember the dinner oh, too well.
I was young. I’d been to Japan. I should have known better. At that time, in the
‘60s, at a big formal dinner, often prime rib was the menu of choice. And these
people, I learned later, had arrived in Seattle, been bussed to Olympia for some
sort of a brief meeting, and then dinner at the mansion. Well, they were jetlagged.
They were so tired. They were primarily older, because governors in Japan are usually
into their sixties and seventies before they’re elected. And they really don’t eat
a lot of rare roast beef. I remember afterwards helping to clean up the tables.
There was roast beef on all the plates except for Washingtonians. They ate theirs.
But the Japanese did not. In those days, we had these cocktail hours. The Japanese
don’t even drink very much. We should have ordered more orange juice for them. That
was a learning dinner for me.
We had a very nice association with one governor who was there for quite a long
while. We had visited with them, and they had visited with us. And one time we were
having a state dinner honoring them. He and his cabinet were in Olympia. I noticed
people around the tables were chuckling to themselves, tittering. I looked around.
Well, there’s that little musician’s balcony in the ballroom where the dinners were.
And there were our boys in their pajamas peaking to see what was taking place.
And the Japanese, lovely people as they are, thought that was such a nice thing.
They all chuckled and thought that was very cute. Of course, I excused myself and
put them back in their beds.
We also had other people. I do remember Vice President Agnew visited the mansion
one time. He was there for a meeting. He came over briefly in the late afternoon
to greet us, as they do. So I’d asked our boys if they’d like to come down and meet
him. Our two older ones did. They didn’t dress up, but they cleaned up. And they
came down. Bruce who at that time was about four did not want to do it. I went up
and tried to talk to him. I said, “Bruce, someday you’ll be able to say that you
met the vice president of the United States.”
And he finally came down. Bruce was a very accommodating child and very easy going,
usually. But, he just did not want to meet Spiro Agnew. We finally brought him in,
and there were photographers. And they all snap, snap, snap, and Bruce was crying
the entire time. I guess I probably pushed a little hard. I didn’t want to, but
I had. And that picture was all over the country on the front page. This little
four year-old boy shaking hands with the vice president, tears running down his
cheeks. Of course, that son now works in Washington, D.C., and often gets teased
about that.
The Nixons also came to Olympia. Betty Ford, when she was a first lady also came
to visit us. But I do remember we had a little tea for Mrs. Nixon, Pat Nixon. I
invited just a few people in, to have some tea and sit in the drawing room and talk
with her. One of our guests couldn’t get a babysitter for her child who was three
or four. She would not sit in her mother’s lap. And Pat Nixon said, “Would you like
to sit in my lap?” And the little girl came over and sat in Mrs. Nixon’s lap and
was very content. We continued on with our conversation. I thought that was a very
nice, a very normal thing for a woman to do. But it was particularly nice when it
was the first lady.
I remember Governor Romney, whose son Mitt Romney recently ran for President, he
and his wife came through. I remember the governor of Oklahoma was there at one
time. Another time, the governor of Alaska, Wally Hickel, came. We periodically
had what we called these state dinners for somebody. And they were always in the
ballroom. And they were a lot of work for us, but they were fun to do. Lerna and
I, would do all the flowers. A lot of bouquets for the center of the eight or ten
tables in the ballroom. I loved to do flowers, so that was not a chore, but it all
took time. I also did a lot of the grocery shopping. I worked out the menus. I probably
should have figured out a better way to do it, but I didn’t.
Washington State is somewhat unique in how the governor’s home is both private and
public. I found that out just by getting together with the first ladies of the various
states once or twice a year at conferences. There’s a lot of shop talk. We talk
about what’s going on and what we’re doing. It was always very interesting. And
the way our mansion was built, it was not really built for privacy for a family.
Either you lived in the whole house, or you were cramped upstairs in the tiny little
sitting room. So when you had anybody in, if you lived all throughout the house,
it was not necessarily welcoming for big visitors, because it might not have been
very clean and tidy. From that standpoint, it was sort of a difficult house. You
just do what you can.
In setting up the mansion foundation, I felt it was very important that my tastes,
my desires, my needs, my wants, were not necessarily what guided the foundation.
That, I really think, is very important. And so it was important that the rules
be set that the first lady would not be the guiding light.. That’s just what had
happened before. Each family who moved in did things as money was allowed, and oftentimes
without much money. There was no continuity in the style. Every room was sort of
different, except for the original furniture that was sort of late Victorian. And
so I purposely insisted that the first lady would not be part of the decision making
process. She would be an honorary member.
I’ve since talked to, I think, to every first lady who succeeded us. I’ve laughed
and said, “I bet you sort of hate the fact that I did this.” And they all agreed
it was a good thing. But I know that a couple had asked, “Why did you do that? Why
did you do this?”
And I said, “Well, there were reasons.” I didn’t have to make all of the decisions.
The colors, the décor were not my decisions. Professional people did that. And the
foundation, which has done such a wonderful job, an admirable job, of continuing
on with the spirit of the initial beginning of the foundation, has been a wonderful
caretaker for the furnishings. The people who are involved with it make me very
proud because it’s just a very good functioning organization that does a wonderful
job.