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Executive Chef Walter Scheib, who had been on the South Grounds at the moment the Pentagon was struck, ran to the Kitchen to gather his staff before fleeing the White House. The group is seen here at the corner of H Street NW and Connecticut Avenue observing military jets fly over.
overhead. She remembered feeling a bit unnerved and described the streets of Washington as eerily quiet and calm before everyone knew what was happening. Some staff received word to evacuate after most had already left the building. Staff Kitchen Chef Rachel Walker and contractor Marybeth Williams were frying 70 pounds of chicken when Ben Kelly told them about the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center tower. Cell phone reception in the Staff Kitchen was very poor, so the chefs did not receive notice to evacuate. Assistant Chef Cristeta Comerford telephoned from the Northwest Gate instructing the kitchen staff to leave the building. Walker and Williams ran up the staff spiral staircase and met Chef Scheib, who had returned to get them. Houseman Willie Murchison was sitting in the men’s locker room with colleagues Ben Morrow and Lindsey Little when they learned on TV that the White House had been evacuated. Murchison recalled, “It said the White House had been evacuated, and we all looked at each other like, ‘This can’t
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be, because we’re still in here.’ We got word from the television, ” he reflected. Some staff never received notice to evacuate. Presidential Butler William (“Buddy”) Carter remembered working with two other butlers in the walk-in refrigerator area cutting lemons and limes for the picnic. When they walked into the First Floor Pantry at approximately 11:00 a.m., no one was there. Carter said, “So when we came upstairs, the house was empty, but we didn’t know it because we don’t pay that any mind. So we came into the Pantry, and we actually sat down and started cutting lemons and limes. This was about 11:00, 11:30 a.m. Yes. Everybody in the house had gone except for the three of us.” Two engineers, Matt McCloskey and Richie Carter, were making repairs to the hot tub located next to the Cabana on the South Grounds. They did not receive a page to evacuate, and they did not carry a cell phone or radio. When they called the Usher’s Office to check in, a Secret Service officer answered the phone and told them they should have evacuated forty-five minutes earlier. They left but were
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Unaware of the unfolding drama, Houseman Willie Murchison (seen left preparing the North Entrance for a State Dinner) and his colleagues learned of the evacuation on the television in the men’s locker room. “We all looked at each other like, ‘This can’t be, because we’re still in here,’” he later recounted. He returned to to work the next day explaining, “I was shaken like everyone else, but we still had a job to do here. . . . We had to press on.”
NATIONAL ARCHIV ES AND R EC OR DS ADMINISTRATION
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