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Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast
History Makers: Presidential Seclusion with Charles Ferguson
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to Civics and Coffee, a history podcast. The show all about United States history delivered to you in the time it takes to enjoy your morning cup of coffee. I'm your host, Alicia, a historian trained in United States history with a passion for telling both the known and unknown parts of America's past. So grab your coffee and get ready for some bite sized history. Welcome back, everyone. I'm excited to share today's conversation with Charles Ferguson, author of Presidential Seclusion, which explores the history and legacy of Camp David. I hope you all enjoy the conversation.
- [00:42]
B
Hello everyone. Joining me today is Charles Ferguson. He is a historian and author who recently wrote a book exploring the origins and impacts of the Presidential retreat, Camp David. The book is called Presidential Seclusion and that will be the focus of our conversation today. Welcome, Charles.
- [01:02]
C
Well, thanks for having me, Alicia. It's great to be here.
- [01:04]
B
Thank you so much for coming on. Let's dive into this fantastic book. What motivated your decision to write about Camp David?
- [01:13]
C
Well, I was serving as the chaplain at Camp David, and alongside that I was also the official historian for Camp David. And doing both of those jobs, I had access to a lot of influential people that came up to Camp David. And part of the job was to give historical tours and to talk about the history to those visitors and guests of the President who came up. And so as I'm walking around telling all these stories and looking at the looks of amazement and wonder on the faces of some of the most powerful people in the world and, and how they responded to stories that they'd never heard, their reactions as they walked around in this beautiful secluded retreat for the President and his guests, I couldn't help but look at how amazing my job was. And I would come home and tell the stories of these interactions to my wife and how everyone was just so amazed at the stories and, and she suggested, well, why don't you just write this down for a wider audience? And so I began to dig a lot deeper into histories, went into the presidential libraries and their archives, started reading memoirs and finding articles and just as much obscure trivia I could find to craft a good narrative to explain what Camp David has meant for the last 80 plus years, not just to the US not just to the President, but to the world in general. And that's where the motivation came from. And it was just turned into a labor of love. And I had a lot of fun doing the research and learning more from the guests because they would tell me stories. Some of them I could put into the the book because I could confirm that Others, I think they're just legends. So I have to let them reside in the world of myth. For those that may or may not be telling tall tales when they were
- [03:15]
B
telling me stories, and how did Camp David originate? And what did presidents do to kind of escape the pressures of Washington before it existed?
- [03:27]
C
Well, I'll take that from the second part. First, before Camp David, most presidents would either retreat to their own personal homes, something they still do today, or they would focus somewhere in the D.C. area. President Lincoln would go to the old soldier's home in what's now the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, DC. Others would go to the Naval Observatory. It's only 50 or 60ft of elevation. But when DCs built on a swamp, every little bit counts. Others would go farther away. Roosevelt, who's the one that would eventually convert a site to the use for the President, he would go up to Hyde Park, New York, which was his family home, or go down to Warm Springs, Georgia, a place where he found relief from his polio because it literally has Warm Springs, not Hot Springs. And so he would travel between those places. His predecessor, Hoover, had his own retreat in the Shenandoah Mountains called Rapidan. And that's something Hoover would actually offer to Roosevelt as the presidential retreat. And for political reasons, that was soundly rejected. But the reason that Roosevelt decided to have a retreat close to D.C. was because of World War II, and not necessarily because the war was going on. But Roosevelt really enjoyed getting away from D.C. on the presidential yacht, the Potomac. And he would go up and down the east coast of the US or just tool around in the Chesapeake Bay, wanting to just get away from dc, have the cool ocean breeze. He was a previous Assistant Secretary of the Navy, so there was some nautical call in his blood. But what happened after the US entered World War II against Japan? We quickly entered against Germany, and Germany started attacking our convoys across the Atlantic. And their U boats were so prolific, the U boats were actually torpedoing Allied shipping within sight of the US Coast. There are stories of people on Long island looking out into the sound or off in the distance and. And seeing burning hulks of shipping. And they just. Roosevelt's advisors just became nervous.
- [05:59]
B
Yeah.
- [06:00]
C
And they looked at Roosevelt and said, we just can't. We can't do this anymore. You've got to get off of the yacht and stay on land. But his political advisors were like, hey, we can't. We can't have you going to Hyde park all the time. We can't have you going all the way down to Warm Springs. All of the time. And so they started looking for a place that was close to D.C. and Roosevelt and his advisors came up with three general criteria. Had to be within a two, two and a half hour drive of Washington D.C. it had to be an elevation of 1800 foot or higher. Not for Roosevelt's polio, but he also had asthma, so they had to worry about that. And then it had to be relatively secure, both physically and aerially, so people couldn't really find it. And his aides went out and just started scouring the countryside looking for places. And they had narrowed it down to three locations that were close. Two were actually on Catoctin Mountain, Catoctin Mountain camp number three, which does become what Roosevelt would call Shangri La, his retreat. Catoctin Camp number two. And then another site that was in Frederick county about 30 minute drive south. But for reasons I can't really determine, I don't know if it was political or if the owner of this mountaintop property was holding out for Guggenheim, the famed architect, to build a tourist attraction on top of this mountain. And there were designs for this and everything. The Guggenheim Museum in New York City is actually the, the design of that is similar to what was going to be at this tourist location in Frederick County. So they had narrowed it down to those three sites. They took Rose FDR to High Katakte number three, that camp that did become Shangri La. And when he stepped out of, when FDR stepped out of the car, he looked around and he said, this is my Shangri La. And at that moment, everyone knew that this was gonna be the site of the presidential retreat.
- [08:17]
B
Yeah, well, and so that actually brings me to the next question is, you know, everybody knows it as Camp David. And I think many people are gonna be surprised to learn that it wasn't originally known as Camp David and that it was, it actually was originally known as Shangri La. So how did this moniker come about? What was the origin story behind Shangri La?
- [08:42]
C
Well, I'll take it in two parts and answer both the naming questions. They always come up. So the first was Shangri La. There was a book that was written in 1933 by a British author named James Hilton, and it was called Lost Horizon. There's actually been a Broadway play based off of it. There's a couple of movies that you can watch. I think book's been printed a number of times. It was the first ever mass market paperback ever published in America. So it was popular. I tell everybody it's kind of like the Harry Potter of the Day everybody had read this book. And in this book a group of British expats are leaving India. It's not really clear what country they were leaving. The plane has a crash and it seems like it's in the Himalayas Again. James Hilton didn't really talk about the necessary, the specific country, just left it up to your imagination. So this plane crashes and the survivors are taken in by a Buddhist monk type figure who takes them to his retreat. It's called Shangri La. And at Shangri La you can do whatever your heart desires. Time slows down. It's for rejuvenation, relaxation, learning, whatever you, you desire. And as long as you stay there, time is, is pretty much standing still. And that was the first time the word Shangri La had ever been written was in this book. Roosevelt and Hilton became essentially pen pals. Roosevelt had written the read the book. There's some correspondence between the two about how much Roosevelt liked the book. And he quoted part of it in the 1932 or sorry, 36 during one of his acceptance speeches. And so the author and the President are going back and forth and Roosevelt would use Shangri La for kind of anything secret. There was a after. Right around the time that Roosevelt chose Hikataka Number three as his retreat site, the Doolittle raids occurred where we had bombers that we launched off of an aircraft carrier that attacked the Japanese mainland for the first time. So, you know, Doolittle raid. And there was a dinner right after that where someone had asked Roosevelt, we know we're having bases any where near there, where did these planes come from? And he just quipped, from our secret air base in Shangri La. That was kind of his thing to talk about secret places. And when he said this is my Shangri La, that was not just saying this is the retreat site. That was going to become the name. And he used it. It was his secret hideaway away from the pressures of DC away from the press, away from all of the pressures of the presidency. Well, fast forward when we get to Eisenhower, he comes in to the presidency and he starts just renaming the perks of the presidency. There were a couple of yachts and he named those after his granddaughters. And he realized he had a grandson and he hadn't named anything after David Eisenhower and thought, hey, I've got this retreat up in the mountains. It looks a little bit like a boy scout camp. So I'm just going to call it Camp David. With the sole intention that when he left office, his successor would name it whatever he or she desired. Kennedy comes into office and Kennedy starts renaming or redid, rename the yachts. And all of a sudden everybody thought that, you know, maybe this was going to get renamed as well. Unfortunately, the assassination happened, and then no one really wanted to change the name. And after the Camp David Accords, no one would dare change the name. And so that's kind of the story of the name and how it changed the origins and then how it changed later.
- [12:47]
B
And you touched on this in a previous answer about, you know, the reason why Shangri La and then Camp David kind of was chosen was for its security. They needed someplace that was going to be private, not accessible, to protect the President. So given kind of the secret nature of its early days, can you kind of discuss the creative ways the presidential retreat was staffed so as to not draw suspicion as to what exactly who was there and what it was for?
- [13:20]
C
Well, those creative ways also answer the question of why it's a Navy retreat. I tell it usually on the tours. I would tell everyone that would ask that question. I was like, why is the Navy on this Possession is nine tenths of the law. Roosevelt and his advisors were definitely political animals, and they knew that they had to keep the cost of Shangri La low. Roosevelt set a budget and really started striking through any kind of improvements. It would blow the budget up. They did exceed his budget by a little bit, by today's standards. A lot back then, but a little by today. And one of the things that they realized was, well, if the President is up at the retreat, he can't be on the yacht at the same time. So all of the staff and service members that are trained to care for the President on the yacht, they know what the President likes. They know how to connect with fdr. Let's just bring them up to the mountain whenever FDR is in residence. That way we don't have to hire any other people. We can keep it on the down low. No one will know where anybody's coming from. And the same with the guards. They pull guards from Marines that were stationed in the D.C. area and brought them up for the visit and then took them back down when they. The visit was over so much that the guards from the Marines, the Navy staff, would stay on Shangri La because they were kind of right there, you know, waiting hand and foot. The Marines would stay at the base of the mountain at what is now called Misty Mount. And for any of the audience that's in the D.C. area, you can still stay and rent the cabins in Misty Mount at Kataka national park or Kataka Mountain park. Just go online and. And reserve them throughout the year. They've added heat and aircon to them, but that was kind of how creatively they hid what was going on from people other than just not telling anybody where they were going. And even with all that secrecy, it didn't always hold, because when FDR brought Churchill up in May of 1943, which is the first time a foreign leader visits Shangri La after it's completed, as they're driving up through Frederick, people notice that that's the President. And during the visit, FDR goes down into Thermont at the Cozy Inn, a hotel, and is playing songs in the jukebox and is flashing people his famous V, you know, with his fingers. Everybody realized that something was going on up there. So even with all the secrecy and trying to keep it as private as possible, most of the time it's the President or their guest that let it slip that somebody's up there.
- [16:19]
B
Well, and you talk about how, you know, Roosevelt was on Shangri La during World War II. So can you talk about, like, the evolution of communications that were in place at Shangri La and some of the kind of the novel ways that staff ensured that Roosevelt had access to information during wartime? Because this. This is a critical moment in the time of the presidency for Roosevelt. He needs to be able to access information and make decisions about troop movement and so on and so forth. And so I know that the staff had to get kind of creative. So can you talk a little bit about that?
- [16:57]
C
They had to get creative, but the information demand back then was not the same as what we would expect. Now. There are stories of aides coming in to talk to Roosevelt at Camp David and give him wartime reports, and he would pretty much throw his hand up in the air and say, talk to the hand, because he was playing cards or working on his stamp collection or something that he thought was more important in the setting he was in to relax and to recuperate and keep his mind clear for whatever decision he did have to make. That being said, the White House, what is now called the White House Communication Agency, it was the signal detachment of mostly army soldiers. They went up to this mountain, and there was no communication up there. So they had to run cables and wires and all kinds of antennas. Whatever they needed, they went and built, built all that to give the. The President whatever kind of communication needs he would have. What eased that was at the same time they were building a rail car to attach to the President's train that had communications equipment in it as well. So that when Roosevelt would go up to Hyde park or down to Warm Springs, he was still in relatively constant communications contact while he was traveling. So the needs of the wartime, they, they knew that they needed some kind of communication network. And Shangri La just became one node in that network that they were building for all of the President's travels back and forth. Normally when he would go overseas for the conferences across the Atlantic, he would travel on Navy warships. So obviously he had the communications there built into the ships, the security and coded communications. And they just took kind of that infrastructure or that idea and brought it on the mainland to help the President get information wherever he needed to go. But he wasn't in constant. 24 7, we're going to wake you up for every little thing mode during the war. Which, as someone who is in the military, it kind of shocked me at first, but then I realized, well, that makes sense. You know, he didn't have satellite communication to really dominate his thinking 24 7. But the signals detachment, which has become the White House communication agency, they did a phenomenal job getting all of that set up. And to this day, every time you see or hear the President speak, the White House communication agency are the ones behind all of the audio visual needs of the President. And they call themselves the Voice of the President because of that. So every time you see the President on tv, it's the communications agency that is making that happen.
- [20:09]
B
Yeah, I remember being just so fascinated that they just created a communication system out of thin air, basically to, to be able to allow the President to have access to information from, from the retreat.
- [20:21]
C
So I thought it's amazing what the military can do when, when they're given, you know, like this is what you're going to do and, and, and make it happen.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And what's interesting is the White House communications Agency, the signals detachment, there was a. Well, actually they were downsizing them after World War II and they almost went away. They were down to bare bones. And then the Korean War kicked off and they they ramped back up. And from that point forward, they realized that they needed military expertise to run the communications. They still have civilians, you know, that have the expertise that are along work alongside the military now and, and back then. But that was something that almost didn't survive the peace dividend from World War II.
- [21:09]
A
Well, okay.
- [21:09]
B
And shifting from Roosevelt to another President, you share how kind of, despite not necessarily being a frequent visitor himself, President Truman kind of had an impact on the early character of Shangri La. What were his Contributions. And how did he safeguard the camp for future administrations?
- [21:32]
C
The one thing he did, despite really not liking Camp David, was he installed plumbing in a lot of the buildings and winterized the cabins so that they could be used outside of the summer season. Roosevelt would only go up there between May and maybe September. Generally, Truman, who only visited 10 times in his eight years, the lowest number of any president by far, he just, he was a Missouri boy, did not like the trees. He felt claustrophobic that by winterizing the cabins and also allowing his staff to go up in his absence. I think those two things are the reason that camp were Shangri La, what it was called back then, survived the Truman administration. I don't think it would have survived after Truman had those two things not happened. And he also, because of his wanting wide open spaces. The first visit he mentioned that he felt closed in and the staff was like, well, we can fix that. And they went and just cleared off this huge slope behind the President's cabin and then cut a notch in the tree line so that the President from the back patio could look out to Keysville, Maryland, which is the home of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the, the national anthem. Just all the weird little connections in history kind of are in that story. And, and that Valley View is still there today. And it, it set up something for, for Eisenhower later. But again, Truman's two big contributions were winterizing the cabins and letting the staff go up because it, it proved a use beyond just the President.
- [23:30]
B
Yeah, well, and then I want to talk about another president which was President Johnson. And I know he had a much more robust relationship with, with Camp David. And so he was president during a very tumultuous time in American history. And you explore in your book kind of this relationship with Vietnam, Camp David and President Johnson. And so can you just expand on that a little bit and kind of talk about how Johnson used the camp to kind of get away from the pressures and how kind of Vietnam really motivated his desire to kind of get out of Washington and, and use the camp as a place of kind of thoughtfulness and, and how to kind of direct his policies.
- [24:26]
C
Yeah, it, Johnson in Vietnam. I mean, that was the, it was actually a defining moment, obviously, in, in his presidency to continue building up after Kennedy had put advisors into Vietnam. And as the buildup got larger, the protests got bigger. And so much so that the protests, I mean, for both Johnson and Nixon, they could hear the protest outside the White House. I mean, people were just protesting right outside the gates, something that still happens today. But I don't think to the volume or the closeness that we see today. So for Johnson, it was just such an easy place just to get on the helicopter and get out of Dodge to go up to the mountain, reflect, relax. He would talk to people about Vietnam up at Camp David. He would invite trusted friends and advisors who had nothing to do in the government that would come up and talk to him and just asked them their opinion about how things were going not just on the international front, but also the domestic front. And that was a key place for him because it truly was a refuge for him and the family just to get away from the noise, be themselves, which is the purpose of Camp David, to allow the President to be themselves with their friends and family and guests that the press aren't going to see. They can, you know, the. The President you see on TV and the President that's in private, a lot of times are different. And so this is a place for them to be themselves. And he had that ability to do that. And he would get away, not every chance he could, but as often he. As he could to just go and relax and avoid all the mounting pressure, but also to reflect on what his next steps were and what he was going to do regarding Vietnam. It was also at Camp David where he came to the decision that he wasn't going to run for reelection in 68 and kept that quiet for months before he announced it. And the best I can tell, that decision was made one weekend at Camp David.
- [26:55]
B
Well, and you. You talked about Nixon in, In. In your previous answer about Johnson. And so, you know, despite his rather infamous tenure of office, President Nixon had a much different relationship with Camp David. So can you talk about why Nixon maybe cherished the retreat and what ways he left his mark on. On Camp David?
- [27:17]
C
Nixon definitely enjoyed the retreat, and he used it for the same reasons Johnson did. Like I said, it just. It was a place just to get away. And especially as. As Watergate started to close in around him, he used it more and more and more because he could get away within an hour and just be away from the press and all of the noise. And he loved it so much because on top of all of the distractions, and he was up there all the time, he decided or gave the go ahead for a number of renovations that happened during his time in office. He installed a pool behind the President's cabin, which is at that point called Aspen, that is still there today. Multiple heaters in the boiler room for the pool, so that no matter how cold it is, you can Have a nice relaxing swim in the water. I don't know why you would want to at that temperature, but Nixon being Nixon, it kind of makes sense. He also built a brand new dining, conference facility and office facility that is now called Laurel. And also two, what we call Premier cabins, Dogwood and Birch. Two guest cabins, identical floor plan, actually the same distance from the front door of Aspen. So that no matter who comes, if you have two world leaders, nobody can complain that the President favors one over the other. I don't think that was the thought behind it. I can't find any reason or any documentation saying this is why we did it, for this diplomatic reason. Most likely it was, you have one set of architecture plans, you save money by not having to buy another set, and you can just save construction costs and everything by building two on the same design. But it worked out and it was a. It was a good thing for the country to have so that multiple leaders come up to Camp David. You have this ability to really treat them fairly and equally and open the door to whatever you're trying to accomplish while you're up there. And it feeds into this whole idea of Camp David being a place where you can be yourself, you can relax, and world changing events will happen because of the environment and just the feel that you get while you're inside the gate at Camp David. Yeah. And so that was a big thing for, for Nixon because now he's got these upgraded facilities that he can invite his friends to. His family can stay in better facilities as well. So it all worked out in his favor in terms of timing, for the. The budget to do the renovations, but also for some of the visits he had. And one of the, or actually the major visit he had was Leonid Brezhnev came up to visit right after Laurel, the new office facility, that Laurel cabin was constructed. And he got to take or show off his mountain retreat, which is obviously way better than whatever the Soviet Union had. So it was kind of a bragging moment to say, look at what I have.
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B
Well, and one of the things that you kind of explore in this book is the idea of the spirit of Camp David. So what is the spirit of Camp David and how have different presidents used it to their advantage?
- [31:02]
C
Every president has used the spirit of Camp David to their advantage in some way or another, even before they knew that it was called the spirit of Camp David. And the irony of that term, it was coined by Nikita Khrushchev when he visited in 1959 with Eisenhower. And back then, this would be unheard of today, they both stayed in Aspen Cabin together, bedrooms right next to each other, no staff, and they could talk and converse throughout the night walking around. But even before they retired for the evening, when they woke up to have breakfast, they were always around each other. And this is something we just don't see anymore. Everybody talks for a little bit that goes their separate corners and figures out what they're going to say next and comes back in. So Khrushchev was so amazed by this place that originally he was a little scared of because he heard camp and he asked his staff, is this a prison camp? What is going on? Because the Soviet Union camps are, have a bad connotation. So Khrushchev or sorry, yeah, Khrushchev comes up and just has this amazing time and it's part of a two week visit that he did where he got to go all around the US See farmers, see industry, and he realized just the power of this place to bring two rivals at the time, you know, public enemy number one of each other together. And at the end of that visit, there was a, a very noticeable thaw in the Cold War where the two countries were coming closer and closer together such that I think that there may have like, I think the impact of Francis Gary Powers getting shot down in 1960 is underplayed in terms of how us and the Russians were so close and Camp David's ability to bring them as close together as they were in late 59, going into 60. There were some real inroads being made between the two countries before the U2 was shot down. And so the spirit of Camp David became this real thing that presidents can point to and say, well, look what it did did for Khrushchev and Eisenhower. And presidents since then have used it to, to their advantage, notably Jimmy Carter, who brought Egypt and Israel together to sign the Camp David Accords, which is still holding over 40 years later. Almost 40, almost 50 years later. And this, this spirit just keeps coming back. Clinton tried to do Palestine and Israel in 2000, knew that Camp David was the only place where that might happen. So Even Trump in 2019 realized the, the spirit of Camp David and the power of Camp David by inviting or had planned to invite secretly the Taliban, Afghanistan and US Representatives up to the retreat to talk in secret without any pressure, any media about how to end the conflict in Afghanistan, the war in Afghanistan. That would have been a historic meeting. But Trump canceled it. The only reason anybody knew is because Trump canceled it the last minute because of a suicide bombing that occurred in Afghanistan. And he said, I can't trust Afghanistan or I can't trust the Taliban. So we're not going to go forward with this meeting I had planned. And everybody's like, wait, what? What meeting? So presidents have known about it throughout time and used it to their advantage to bring some of the tougher problems of the world to Camp David to try to figure out how to find the best way forward from whatever problem they're trying to solve.
- [35:01]
B
Yeah, well, and kind of speaking about this and thinking about this spirit of Camp David, you know, the book also talks about how upon inauguration and upon coming into office, several incoming presidents have kind of indicated a desire to maybe close Camp David or to kind of get rid of it, only to change course after visiting. And so what is it that you think that it is about this retreat that makes these men reconsider?
- [35:32]
C
It's the privacy. And when you get up there, the president comes up and obviously when they're elected, they every president wants to cut cost and try to save money. The noble goal of making the government run as lean and efficiently as possible. Then they come up and realize, make their way into the gates and realize this is the only place where they get a break. When you're president, you're never on vacation. The office follows you everywhere. Like we had talked about earlier, the 247 communication. Like when it's following you all the time, you never get a break. And most of the presidents, even if they have personal homes, the press is hounding them or right outside. Whenever they try to go anywhere in their where they're from or around their vacation home, the press just swarms them and tries to get the photo of the day. But at Camp David, they could do any everything they need. They can work if they want to, they can use the amenities. There's a pool for them, a pool for their staff, there's a video arcade, there's a movie theater, there's a skeet shooting range, can be an archery range, they can ride horses. A number of have done it up there, walk the trails. There's a little four hole pitch and putt for golf behind the President's Cabin, horseshoe pit playground for children and grandchildren. Everything they might need or want is there and they can just be themselves and not worry about paparazzi and press. When you have the pressure of the office on you and you go to the one place where it lifts a little bit, that's why I think no one's ever going to get rid of it because the feeling just has to be such a relief. To know that there's a place where you can go, your family can go without you. Just say, hey, I'm sending them up there where they, everybody can go and just take a breath and relax and be themselves. You can be yourself with old family friends that you've known for decades. And they can come up and give you advice. And no one needs to know they're up there. If you want to invite celebrities up, no one needs to know they're coming up either. They can fly into small regional airports and get whisked away. And no one's the wiser that they're in town to come to Camp David to visit you.
- [38:04]
B
And so thinking about, you know, this presidential retreat that's been 80 plus years in around, what, what would you say is Camp David's legacy?
- [38:15]
C
Its legacy is first what I just talked about. The, the ability for the President to have a place to go and also to invite their friends and family just to, to, to be themselves. The other legacy is the spirit of Camp David gives this safe space for really big discussions to happen and really big outcomes to occur. Obviously, everyone's going to connect Camp David to the Camp David Accords. And that's always. Well, as of right now, that's the biggest foreign policy achievement that's occurred at Camp David. But there's been a lot of domestic and other foreign policy events that are close to it. Nixon made the decision to come off the gold standard and float the dollar at Camp David. And that's had worldwide impact that people don't think about a lot. The G12 was up there, or, sorry, the. At the G8 at the time, now the G7 in 2012. And these world leaders got together, invited some countries from Africa to show Africa's importance. So African leaders got to visit Camp David, which I believe was one of the first times, if, if not the first time where countries from Africa had been represented at Camp David. It's a place where the President can invite people that they want to build a relationship with to come up and see what a partnership can do in the future. And if both sides don't agree, then no one's any the wiser that talks have failed. They could just say, well, I invited him up just because I wanted to hang out with this group foreign leader with no pretense and no one's a wiser of what really the reason was.
- [40:07]
B
Yeah. And what do you hope people take away from your book?
- [40:10]
C
I hope they take away like big picture that history's not what I thought it was. Or maybe what most people think it is when you come through school, it's not memorizing dates and names. It's connecting the people and the place to the. And the story. That story is what's important. This changed, like researching this and being the historian completely changed my idea of history. I've always loved history books. They're great stories. But I never really understood the connection between people and place until I got deep into this book. Camp David changes the presidents, and the presidents change Camp David. It's symbiotic, and it's just such a great metaphor for how history works. That way. We change history, history changes us. And the other thing is, I want people to realize that everyone's making history every day. We're all part of this history. We're all important in how the world revolves. You may not see the fruits of your labor. You may not realize the history you've made now. And I say that because one of the things that is an undercurrent in the book is all of the staff members, military and civilian, who have worked at Camp David over the last now almost 84 years. It would not be the same place without them. And the presidents would not be able to make world history without the supporting staff in the background behind them. And so there are countless numbers of individuals who have worked on White House staffs, the military that work at Camp David, that have set the stage for amazing things to happen and don't realize that they've done that or are not taking ownership of the fact that they had a big part in history. They. They minimized their. Their impact and that. That expands to anybody. I think everybody has. Leaves their mark on history. And I hope people take that away from. From reading this book and. And seeing some of the stories of the staff members. And if you read the. The chapter in the book, especially the one about the Marines, it focuses on how these little stories of the Marines and what they've done over the years, they're humorous, but what they did was set the stage for something bigger to happen. And I hope that's something people grab from the book as well.
- [42:49]
B
Well, Ed, we've only kind of scratched the surface of this book. There are so many anecdotes and stories that we haven't touched on. But is there anything that we haven't talked about that you want future readers to know?
- [43:04]
C
I do want people to realize that Camp David connects with pop culture more than people think. And as you read the book, you'll see there are celebrities in there that have been invited up to Camp David. There are probably many more that have been invited to Camp David. But the only way we know is if people talk about it or it leaks into the press. And so Oprah Winfrey's been up there, Beyonce's been up there, George Strait, Andre Agassiz. So famous people throughout the last 80 years have come up and experienced Camp David and again left their market Camp David. And Camp David has left their mark on them. So much so that they actually would talk about their experience. And it's something that a lot of times people the connection between politics and pop culture usually goes on the I'm on a grandstand trying to talk about my pet issue. This is a human connection between pop culture and politics that I think we need a little bit more of to realize that we're all kind of on the same team in terms of what we want in the future with the country. So it doesn't. You don't like a celebrity isn't somebody that's always going to be preaching down to you through politics. This is a place where celebrity and politics come together in a really positive way that help encourage and ground the president instead of divide the country.
- [44:37]
B
Wonderful sentiment to end on. And to the listeners out there, definitely consider grabbing a copy of Presidential Seclusion. It is an intriguing behind the scenes look at one of the most iconic, yet most guarded areas of presidential life and you will learn some incredible facts about the retreat and the families who walked the grounds. Thank you again, Charles.
- [45:01]
C
Thanks for having me, Alicia. It's been a wonderful conversation.
- [45:04]
A
Thank you again to Charles for spending time with me. If you have any interest in presidential history, I recommend grabbing a copy of Presidential Seclusion. And as a reminder, you can get
- [45:15]
B
a copy of the book through my
- [45:16]
A
affiliate shop on bookshop.org thanks peeps. I'll see you next time. Thanks for sitting down with me as I explored this chapter of American history. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe and share with your friends. I look forward to our next cup of coffee together.