Introduce and welcome all of you this very special evening as a continuing mission of the White House Historical associations, president ial sites summit, which i hear is going swimmingly and this panel will engage as i think, very powerfully entitled, entertaining at the white house, a conversation with former social secretaries. After that engaging conversation, were well, were welcoming you to a number exhibits that weve kept open. The star spangled banner just, in case you havent had enough lately. Of course, is right behind me. And its special chamber. The american presidency and the first ladys just above you on the third floor. And our new and culture wing three west with entertainment nation a spectacular a way to as well as some of our incredible curators who visit our guides up there. Each of these exhibitions as well as our museums overriding help us envision our mission and live it each day, which is to empower people to create a more just and compassionate future by preserving, sharing and exploring the complexities of our past. So we thank you for helping us enact this mission as we honor yours, we have much in common with the White House Historical association. You are cherished partners. Now, in your 60 seconds, very young year, of course, the Association Works daily to protect and preserve and, provide Public Access to the peoples house just up the lane. One very, very role, of course, in the white house is that of the white house. Social secretary, relying on ones expertise in protocol, tact, etiquette, hospitality. I think there might be some magic. It has, and it remains key to build relationships, maintain diplomatic ones, present the most welcoming experience possible at the white house. The Kansas City Star in 1921 reflected her duties will be as complex as that of an. That was laura harlan, the social secretary for, warren g. Harding and calvin coolidge, who served from that year to 1929. But, of course, was 20 years prior, in 1901, during president Theodore Roosevelts administration. That first lady edith hired the very First Official social secretary at the white house, Isabella Hagner james, and ever since social secretaries have helped create memorable experiences for all guests at the white house from kings and heads of states, artists, scholars and little children chasing those easter eggs at the white house easter egg roll. While the reins of the job varies and you will likely never them on a good night, we are very grateful for their impressive levels of patience. Their unflappable, calm pressure and their grace. Id like to introduce now its truly a pleasure to introduce the moderator and the panelists for this evening. Tonights moderator is none other than anita mcbride, who directs the legacies of americas First Ladies Initiative at american university. There, she also serves as executive in residence at the center for congressional and president ial studies. In the school of public affairs. I guess in her off hours, she also serves that adviser to the sign institute for policy and politics. Her remarkable white house experience spans decades and four and administrations including serving at first as an assistant to president George W Bush and chief of staff first lady laura bush. Shes joined this by an august panel. First Jeremy Bernard an author and, a political activist. He served as the white house social secretary and special assistant to president barack obama. From 2011 to 2015. He in paris and served as a Senior Advisor to the u. S. Ambassador for france before taking that role at the white house and as well as a liaison to the National Endowment for the humanities. He was president and ceo of the mayors fund for los angeles. From 2018 to 2020 and is the coauthor with lieberman of the book treating people well the extraordinary power of civility at work and in life. Gayle hodges. Bert, chairman emeritus of the American Academy in berlin, an institute that she cofounded in 1997 with the late Richard Holbrooke bringing, of course, American Scholars to germany, residency and research and community. Ms. Bert started her career in Civil Service at the u. S. State department in 1973, where she served as a personal assistant. None other than secretary of state henry kissinger. She was then assistant chief protocol until 83. In 1983, she up the lane again to be the white house social secretary for president Ronald Reagan and first lady nancy reagan, where she served until 1985. She then moved to germany where her husband was serving as u. S. Ambassador. Last but, certainly not least, is Amy Zantzinger currently the head of Amy Zantzinger interior design, which she established 1998. You can see some of the beautiful bleeding right of service and of design and, of care and of course, all with grace and civility. Her interior Design Business was put on hold for two years when she in february in 2007 was asked by president George W Bush if she would serve as his special assistant to the president and the white house social secretary and she did. With great through january of 2009 from 1993 to 1994, she zipped back to San Francisco and was the chief officer for that fair city. Amy also worked in the white house for president h. W. Bush in the Visitors Office from 1989 to 1992. Please me in giving a warm welcome to our incredible panel and our wonderful moderator. Thanks again. For. All. Welcome everybody. Welcome to the stage. Hello, everyone, again. This has been such a terrific day and thank you so much and thank for watching. Welcoming us to the American History museum. Its such a wonderful museum, a Perfect Place for us to have this conversation. And thank you for your generous introduction of all of us. You know, two of the museums most popular exhibits, of course, are on the american presidency and on first ladies. So its an ideal place for our discussion tonight, which is entertaining at the white house. And we are here with three of the foremost experts and also that this is coordinated with the museums current exhibit at entertainment nation. So we are grateful to you. This is a highlight for our guests for the president ial sites summit. So you three are the best equipped to talk about our topic tonight. Im thrilled to be back together with. Each of you know, you all a long time worked with two of you and jeremy. Youve become a friend over the over the years. And one of the funniest people i. So we what i like and of course there are decades of service amongst these three over four decades of service. And in the three different or four different administrations that they serve, because you also serve 41 and and 43, you heard and they have mentioned the historical origins of this role, the role of social secretary. So we thought wed show you a of Isabella Bell hagner for those who may have not said very severe looking woman. I also want before we get started to in addition to welcoming everyone here, welcoming everyone thats watching live on youtube. So we have a far reach tonight. So, Isabella Hagner, ill just tell you very quickly, her, she was working as a clerk at the war department. She was transferred to the white house and worked closely with first lady edith roosevelt. This was the professional position. For a first lady. Mrs. Roosevelt, a large family. She needed managing social obligations and all the requests that were coming in to her. Theyll hagner wrote in her memoir hours until one has held the position of this kind, it is impossible to realize the ingenuity of the human mind in making their requests. So this question is a perfect way to start for all of our our panelists. What do you think of that quote . And can you recall in one at least one ingenious request you received . And, jeremy, im going to start with you. Good evening. Thank you for inviting me. This actually did surprise me. And that was some called they were they had an appointment to meet with the president at like 1230 and they called around nine. They were coming from new york, landing at a private an airport for private planes. And he wanted permission to have the helicopter take him to the south lawn. There he was on time for the. Meeting. And i love laughing because i assumed it was a joke. He was dead serious and i explained it. No one other than the president really gets up on his own helicopter or didnt want marine one to go. No, he wasnt bold to ask for marine one and give that credit for that. Okay. Thats pretty ingenious. All right, gail do you have a memory of one like that . I thought a a pretty ingenious one. Mahalo everyone to be here with you. I had a a performer who was coming to perform at a state dinner and his publicist called two days before and said he cant come without his therapist. And if you dont allow his therapist to and sit at dinner, terrible things could. And so i. So i didnt want terrible things to happen. So i said, okay, the therapist can come. And i had no choice but to see the therapist next to the artist. But then the next day i got the call. Could the therapist wife come . The list . Oh, yeah. Anyway, i thought that was. That was rather ingenious. He got there. He got a seat at the table. So the entertainment happened, the therapist came and the therapist went and nothing terrible happened. And theyre okay. Thats perfect. Amy well, when youre planning a state dinner, there are lots of special requests, people. The white house graciously asks guests if they have any dietary restrictions, and i was always amazed when kathy, who worked at my office took all the responses would say that interpret dietary restrictions as almost like preferences no butter, no you know. You know as opposed to true dietary allergies allergies exactly. But for a dinner we also had an instance where woman coming it was actually a state dinner for the queen. She was very concerned about her dress and she wanted to stand out and she had purchased an Oscar De La Renta gown, but she wanted to stand out so much. She wanted to make sure that nobody else was wearing the same. So she had my office hold a second gown in our office that she could change into if somebody was wearing one of the dresses. That sounds very reasonable. Me you never had that request. Tuxedo i always had an extra tuxedo, but yes, yes. I mean, each of you like in your offices. Speaking of that, do you always have to have clothes at the ready. Didnt you and like did you have a little bag . A little extra. A little extra. Like because some of the days it was really so after one, you know, most days unfortunately they didnt fan out evenly. So some days wed have three events and it was i was constantly trying to reiterate to my staff, i know were going from one to the other, but try to take in the moment at the end of the day to enjoy the events. Because, you know, i to the point where people be, oh, yeah, i had a medal of freedom today and this and it was easy to lose sight of what each of those meant to people. And what they meant right when. When youre so busy. Yeah, yeah. Youre so busy. Youre just going from one context and and youre youre planning the lists for the next events, and you just you you have to keep rolling. And in speaking that really maintaining guest lists and being at the ready for events that were going to going to happen at the white house during the time you were there everything was really primarily paper based. Oh, right. Only, only, right and the way that you maintained everything were files nothing computerized that changed over time. How did change how did that affect you being able to do your job i guess you didnt know any different right. I mean we the highest tech we had was if you had a ibm correcting selectric typewriter that that was like because you could also get a non correcting selectric typewriter. So you got the correcting one, you like. It was great. Everything was on paper. Copies would then be mimeographed messengers would come and pick up copies to take to the west wing. Mrs. Reagan and i would literally put cards down on the floor cards with ten sticky notes, and we would do the seating the floor with sticky notes, and we would crawl over there and crawl over and crawl over there to do seating. And where would you do . Up in the residence. Up in your office . Yes. Yeah. And you would just leave it there and leave it there and then i would take it all. The the the cards were numbered. I would take it all downstairs and then wed type it up on an ibm lecture and, and, and it would be distributed. You didnt know. You didnt know any different. And, you know, many, many state dinners. I mean, that would be so are all those cards and the sticky notes are those in the president ial library . Do you know. Yeah, they werent actually sticky notes. They were little cardboard arrows that we would write on and then we would cross out and in we had blue for men in pink when were the old days you. Oh, amy, what about you . Started it. Graduated a little bit from having worked for bush 41 and 43. I do remember those big envelopes, you fried the memo in, and they were messengers all day long around delivering papers for email. But when i was social secretary, we had this incredible program. It was a giant screen behind my desk and we would input all the names and then we would be able to populate with the number of tables and we could divide out the guest and then drag the name to the tables and it was pretty incredible for a state dinner. The whole, you know, the whole screen was filled with filled with names and, people. But it was a great way to be able to sort of see the whole picture. It sort of the modern version of what gail and mrs. Reagan were doing on the floor. But i was sort of there as things changing. We were only allowed to blackberries and i was sort of at the beginning of the internet where you could actually you know, for i would Research Potential dinner guests on the internet that was just starting. And then jeremy, jeremy, you i would have loved that program, let me tell you, because i still did it pretty old fashioned. But the well, i know its still i think your predecessor took it down after amy. Yeah. Thats why you didnt have the benefit. Right. So i will remind her of that. The, the big thing that i think changed with gary, the obama years is we and i remember kind of the back and forth with calligraphers getting to the point where we would invitations out via email, then when people would come to an event. We would give them the hard copy. So they had a symphony here. The one thing we didnt do that with and we didnt do that at all events, but it got to the point we were. But one thing we didnt do that it was with state dinners. Mrs. Obama always wanted make sure there was time enough for invitations to be sent and when one point the state Department People in state were pushing a state dinner in a relatively short time. So i said, im telling you guys, you want me to bring it, ill bring it to her. This is not going to fly. And sure enough, she said, absolutely, its not fair to you guys. Its not fair to the guests. No. You have to have enough time. We would follow up with emails and sometimes the invitation as well by email. So we could interact via email about whether someone was coming or making sure they got the invitation. So what is the optimum amount of time between when a invitation would go out and the dinner is going to happen . Whats the length of time that mrs. Obama considered optimum . Or either i think she was because she wanted the invitations to go out at least several weeks before the event. I think it was like ten weeks. Yeah. Oh, thats a lot. Thats a lot of hours out. 4 to 5 weeks in advance. We didnt send them out but they to our study, we would at least have two months to prepare. Yeah, well, lets talk about state visits actually. We have an image to show you the first state dinner ever hosted in the white house was by president Ulysses S Grant in 1874 for the king of hawaii. And obviously there are traditions that dictate a lot of the certain elements that you always incorporate in state dinners. But president s and first ladies have an opportunity obviously to make each state visit their own, and they all have styles. We see the pomp and circumstance, of course of the arrival ceremonies. We dont know a lot about that process. You could share some of that with us. Tell us how that how that works. And some of the decisions that you all made that went into your guest list or entertainment menus. Id love to hear a little bit about that. Gail, do you want to start with us, please, about i guess i see a lot of men in that photo, a lot of men at that at that state dinner. And as a matter of fact, it was one of the things i worked on. I kept a a list of of single women because every foreign delegation for a state dinner and they were about 15 and number they were only oh almost always men all men. So i would be heavy on men. So i always needed women. My husband says he fell in love with me when he discovered that i subscribed both People Magazine and the new york review of books, and he thought there must be Something Weird there about this woman. But, you know, i read every all the time we had 11 state dinners a year. We had a state dinner every month except august. And so i was constantly making up guess lists and i files of clergy people you know people who had just invented something created something. Of course, we always had the judiciary with i had a formula that the people we had to have the executive branch, the legislative branch, the judiciary, and then i would start to deal with minorities. A Union Represented gives, you know, a smattering of everything. And then the celebrities that was always fun celebrities and, the reagans coming from hollywood, the celebrities always came. So we i never had a hard time getting celebrities to come. I had a hard time getting ente