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made a list of everyone’s belongings and where they were located and even had to break into a housekeeper’s locker. Purchasing Agent Bill Grayson recalled literally catching a ride from Housekeeper Diane Kittle’s daughter on a construction crane to get to his car. “We walked to Fifth Street,” he recalled. “And she got inside the crane, and I got up and held on the outside of it, and [her uncle] drove us across town to his car. It was her uncle, and he drove us to Waldorf.” Staff who stayed or returned to the White House helped Gary Walters clear the South Grounds for the arrival of Marine One. Daniel Shanks recalled coordinating with Walters and Walter Scheib to serve meals to the Residence and administration staffs and security personnel. He described how he, Walter Scheib, Kitchen Steward Adam Collick, Buddy Carter, and Painter Bob Gallahan prepared a buffet out of the Main Kitchen using the food planned for the Congressional Picnic. Approximately 650 meals were served. When the D.C. Metropolitan policemen and Secret Service officers thanked Scheib, he responded, “Listen, you guys keep the guys on the outside that are supposed to be on the outside, and I’ll feed you. You’ll get all the food you want.”
white house history quarterly
WENDY ELSASSER
The group got separated. Elsasser and Lydia Tederick were with others who eventually caught a cab to Fulghum’s home at Ninth and C Streets NE. Fulghum and his group walked as he pushed Costello’s wheelchair. They were reunited around 1:00 p.m. Fulghum offered his landline telephone so that everyone could make local and long distance calls to loved ones. He said, “But we still didn’t know if Washington was safe at that point. We knew that we were safe together, but we didn’t know what else was going to happen for the rest of the day.” Some people watched TV; others chose not to. Keith ordered sandwiches for everyone and offered whatever food he had in his home. Lydia Tederick finally heard from her husband, Mike, who worked in the Operations Department at the White House. He had stayed to help Gary Walters remove the picnic tables from the South Grounds. At about 3:30 p.m. Mike Tederick offered to come in his Toyota pickup truck and drive people back to the Ellipse if they needed to get to their cars. Staff piled into the truck. Elsasser recalled, “I mean, literally, there were like six of us in the back of the pickup truck, a couple in the front, and there was nobody on the roads. And that was an eerie thing.” Before picking up his colleagues, Mike Tederick
Staff members who had evacuated to Fulghum’s house on Capitol Hill show their relief after climbing into the back of Operations Aide Mike Tederick’s pickup on the afternoon of September 11, 2001. Tederick, who stayed and continued to work at the White House during the evacuation, had retrieved his colleagues’ abandoned car keys and delivered the group back to their cars. Elsasser remembered, “There were like six of us in the back of the pickup truck, a couple in the front, and there was nobody on the roads. And that was an eerie thing.”