THE PRESIDENCY by HUGH SIDEY: A Real White House Operator

The Presidency

An anxious Cabinet officer was calling, and he asked to be put through immediately to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was in conference and had left word with White House Phone Operator Mary Crowe Burns that he wanted all calls cut off.

Mary Burns considered the time of day, the people in the meeting, the state of the world and L.B.J.’s frame of mind and tone of voice when he had said, “No calls.” Then she put through the call.

When Johnson answered he rumbled, “Woman, do I have to send you a memo? I said no calls.” Burns said she felt it was important that the caller talk with the President. Johnson accepted the call without further grumping.

That is only one of the thousands of memories that Burns has taken with her into retirement after 30 years as a White House switchboard operator, the last three as chief operator. Part technician, part diplomat and security officer, Burns and the others like her live at the vortex of the White House nervous system. Without them, Presidents can be rendered blind and dumb.

When Caroline Kennedy lived at the White House, she picked up the phone one night and Burns heard this request: “I want to talk to Santa Claus.” Burns turned to a man in the telegraph room and asked for help. He got on the line with a jolly “Ho! Ho! Ho!” and a report from the North Pole for the five-year-old Caroline. A few minutes after Caroline hung up, the President’s line was alight again. “Mary,” asked a startled John Kennedy, “how did you do that?

When Burns first went to work under Truman, the world was in turmoil. Once she worked at her switchboard for 40 days without a break. But it was worth it when Truman called one night, feeling lonely. Bess was away. Margaret had sailed for Europe. “Get me Margie,” Truman ordered. Burns affirmed the request but was not sure just how quickly she could comply, since the President’s daughter was two days out to sea. Margaret Truman was raised on a ship-to-shore connection in ten minutes. When the conversation ended, the President rang Burns back. “No one has ever had such service,” he said.

Burns could gauge the intensity of presidential concern from her headset, but she kept it all to herself. The phones hummed with hushed anxiety during the Cuban missile crisis, kept secret for six days. The Kennedy assassination strained the White House switchboard more than any other single event. Calls came in from all over the world, but the lines were so busy that only a fraction got through. People would call in distress and just sob, “Get me the East Room,” which was where Kennedy’s body lay.

Crank calls have mounted over the years. Bums relishes the time a White House operator, caught in heavy telephone crossfire, hooked two crank calls together so the angry citizens could rail at each other. One man called during Eisenhower’s Administration and said he was HEW Secretary Arthur Flemming and wanted to talk to the President. Mary sensed something was wrong. She stalled, got Arthur Flemming and learned the caller was an impostor.

Once, during Johnson’s years, when the presidential light blinked there was banging on the line. Finally L.B.J. came on to explain that his grandson Patrick Lyndon Nugent “is breaking up the phone.” Another time Johnson was cut off three times at the other end of his connection, and he rasped to Burns, “Honey would you mind reading a magazine and letting me finish my call?”

Burns has found all the Presidents to be courteous. Truman asked for an aide once but instructed Burns not to summon him to the phone if the fellow and his wife were having dinner. The morning that Tricia Nixon was to get married, the rain started and stopped several times, and plans for the Rose Garden ceremony teetered back and forth. Finally, Nixon called and politely asked, Operator, do you know if this wedding is going on today?” It did.

Each year the White House switchboard grows technically more proficient. But nothing that science has produced can match Mary Burns.