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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
David Smith in Washington

Nancy Reagan’s rehearsal dinners and Bush Sr’s overfed dog: chief usher’s White House memories

a women standing in front of other men and women
First lady Laura Bush, center, introduce from l-r, White House chef Cris Comerford, White House social secretary Lea Berman, and White House usher Gary Walters, as she hosts a media preview of the 2006 holiday decorations at the White House in Washington on 30 November 2006. Photograph: Ron Edmonds/AP

Gary Walters has a “special feeling” about the White House East Wing. He met his future wife Barbara when she worked in the visitors’ office there. But asked to contemplate the wing’s destruction by Donald Trump, the former chief usher evidently still believes that discretion is the better part of valour.

“All the presidents and first ladies have made changes in one manner or another – some larger than others,” Walters, 78, says with the measured cadence of a man who has spent a lifetime guarding privacy. “One of the things that I have seen not commented on was back to when the West Wing was built.

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